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Charles Douglas and I came into this Friday show with a lot to discuss. We had news of the day to get through, primaries to dissect, a Platner update to deliver, and somewhere in the middle we landed on a thesis: economic populism is resilient to scandal. By the end, we were debating summer music playlists, which tells you everything you need to know about this community.

We started with Trump’s latest fake Iran War deal moment. We got into the Horace Cooper CNN clip and the broader Black conservative grift machine. We updated the California picture, which has genuinely improved since the initial results came in. We talked about Bernie Sanders as a progressive barometer, with honest critiques attached. And we spent real time on Graham Platner, not to relitigate our conversation from last week, but to land somewhere more useful: what the fact that he won tells us about where the Democratic Party’s energy actually is right now.

I appreciate those of you who tuned in live and contributed so much to the conversation. This is truly the best community on Substack. If you’re just catching it now, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below.

The Iran “Deal” Is A Pump & Dump Scheme

We have been here before. Thirty-eight times before, according to CNN’s count. Trump announced another imminent Iran deal, the details were immediately contradicted by Iran, and by morning Trump was on Truth Social calling Tehran “dishonorable.”

• Trump has claimed an imminent Iran deal at least 38 times, and the pattern is not random. Every time one of these announcements drops, someone has already shorted the market by hundreds of millions of dollars, roughly twenty minutes prior. I said this directly, and I will keep saying it until someone with a subpoena takes it seriously: this is insider trading at a scale that is pretty much indisputable at this point. Mainstream financial media has largely accepted that this is happening. What we are waiting for is accountability, and under this administration we are not holding our breath.

• The victims of this scheme are not abstract. Charles made this point with real force: the people getting burned are not day traders. They are regular people with 401ks and pension funds watching their retirement accounts get used as a casino while the people running the scheme build bunkers and buy islands. The wealth being extracted is not coming from nowhere. It is coming from us.

• Trump owns defense contractors. His sons own drone manufacturers. The Pentagon gave them a $600 million loan. I laid this out plainly: this is not a gray area. The president of the United States is waging a war in which he personally profits from the continuation of hostilities. That is the definition of a conflict of interest at a scale that should be dominating every news cycle.

• Even if a deal happens, there is no returning to the previous status quo. I made this argument, and I want it on the record: supply chain shocks are already locked in. Gulf nations have ramped down oil production, and it will take a long time to get that back up to speed. Iran now knows the full extent of its leverage over the global economy with the Strait of Hormuz. A deal does not erase any of that. The damage is done. And we are still paying $450 more per household on energy while people in a Signal chat somewhere get rich off the announcements.

The Black Conservative Grift & Why Demographic Representation Is No Longer Enough

Horace Cooper went on CNN and said, with a straight face, that Trump’s policies are specifically helping Black Americans. He was so convinced of it, he wrote a book about it. Abby Phillip immediately fact-checked him with the Black unemployment data. I quote-tweeted the exchange with a fact-check of my own. Charles and I spent some real time here because the broader issue is worth taking seriously.

• The Black conservative grift machine is well-funded, and it will find you. I disclosed something I do not talk about often: I get far more sponsorship requests from right-wing products than left-leaning ones. The money is on the right. The second a Black creator gets any platform, the machine approaches. Candace Owens ran an anti-Trump blog in 2016 before getting swept up. Charlie Kirk’s team approached me in 2022 to fly to Arizona and appear on his show. I declined. I declined because I know what that orbit does to people and I know what my values are. But the financial incentive to go the other way is real, and people should understand that when they see a Horace Cooper on their screen.

• Trump’s decade has forced a necessary evolution in how voters think about representation. Charles made this observation clearly: before Trump, representation mattered in a way that stood on its own. Getting someone elected who looked like you and came from a disadvantaged community was a win in itself. That is no longer sufficient. What the Trump era has done, and Charles acknowledged this is a painful clarification, is force voters to interrogate the policies behind the face. Winsome Sears running against Abigail Spanberger in Virginia is the proof of concept. Voters did not back Sears because she was a Black woman. They looked at what she was going to do and chose accordingly. Deb Haaland, on the verge of becoming the first Native American governor, is the counterexample: representation plus substance, which is what the moment demands.

• There is no excuse for backing this agenda today, and Charles was direct about that. Ten or twenty years ago, when the debate was tax policy, and it was a different world, maybe you could make a principled argument. Not now. The lines are too clear. You are siding with white nationalist authoritarianism when the evidence is this obvious, and no amount of book deals or cable news appearances changes what that means for the communities you claim to represent.

California Update: Nithya Raman’s Real Shot & The End Of The Career Politician

The initial California results looked one way. The final count looks considerably more interesting. Charles had a lot to say about what actually happened and what it means.

• Two-thirds of LA voters did not vote for Karen Bass. Charles made this the headline, and he is right to. Nithya Raman is now in the top two. The MAGA candidate, Spencer Pratt, is eliminated. What looked like an establishment hold is now a genuinely competitive race between an incumbent whose tenure voters have judged harshly on homelessness and the fires, and a candidate aligned with Mamdani, AOC, and Bernie who is talking about reinventing Los Angeles from the ground up. Charles said he was judging LA before this, and he takes it back. I think Raman can win some of the Pratt anti-incumbency vote too, because what those voters wanted was disruption and she is the more credible version of it.

• The career politician model is broken, and voters can smell it. I said this on the live, and I will stand by it: there is a specific mold of Democrat that people are exhausted by. It is the person for whom this is their next career step. The person who is just moving up the ladder because it is their turn. That is not a calling. That is a job. What Mamdani has, what Raman has, what the candidates winning these primaries have, is the unmistakable energy of someone who is about the cause before they are about the title. Voters know the difference right now. They are starving for it.

• The people who should run are usually the people who need to be talked into it. Charles made the AOC point that landed with me: she said her opponents mistake her for someone seeking a seat, when she is fighting for a cause and will do whatever serves that cause. I made the Obama point: Harry Reid had to walk a newly elected senator into his office and tell him to consider running for president. Obama was reluctant. Michelle did not want him to run. He was pulled to it by the moment and by the people. That is the model. Charles put it simply: the people who do not want power are the ones we want in power, because they will get the job done for the people, not themselves.

The Progressive Bernie Barometer, And An Honest Critique

Charles came into this live wearing a Bernie Sanders shirt, which prompted some teasing, but his underlying point is worth taking seriously. Bernie is batting a thousand on endorsements this cycle, and that is not a coincidence.

• Charles claims that Bernie Sanders is the best barometer in American politics for where working-class voters are headed, even if you would not vote for him yourself. Charles made this case plainly: the Montana smoke jumper candidate, Justin Pearson running against a beloved 30-year incumbent in Memphis, Mamdani, all of them controversial picks at the time, all of them winning. Common Power’s own candidate selections have aligned almost exactly with Bernie’s endorsements. You do not have to agree with everything he says. You do not have to think he is the messenger for every issue. But if you want to understand where the energy is, watch where he points, Charles said.

• I agree with Bernie being early on the working class message, but my critiques of him are real. I said this on the live, and I mean it: Bernie took too long to respond to the Supreme Court Callais ruling. His broader pattern on systemic racism has frustrated people who are close to him, not just his critics. And his handling of the 2016 rigged-primary narrative, even if I understand what he was getting at, let something loose that I have not forgiven easily. But the critiques of Bernie on race are real, and they come from people inside progressive politics, not just from establishment Democrats trying to discredit him.

• The New Deal problem. In my conversation with Jamaal Bowman earlier this week, Bowman was the one to point out that the New Deal left out a lot of Black people in its implementation. That is the history we are working with. What I am seeing now, and Charles agreed, is a genuine convergence where the working class economic message and the racial justice message are blending in ways that are undeniable. You cannot deny that the Trump administration is targeting Black political and economic power simultaneously. That fusion is where the real power of this coalition lives.

Platner Won. The Takeaway: Economic Populism Is Resilient To Scandal

We spent real time here, partly because we spent real time on it last week and people deserve a follow-up, and partly because Charles landed a frame by the end of this conversation that I think is the most important political observation made this episode.

• Harm reduction voting is not a compromise. It is a political tradition with deep roots. Charles said this with real weight: Black voters in deep red areas have been making harm reduction decisions for generations. Voting for the least harmful Republican in Indiana or the least hostile candidate in a race they cannot win is not cynicism. It is political survival. Eyes on the prize is a slogan that comes from exactly this tradition. Common Power does not have the privilege to look at the Maine map and say they do not need that seat. Charles challenged anyone sitting in a blue state to go to Maine and tell the people who voted for Platner that they were wrong. That is not politics. That is condescension, according to Charles.

• My lane is journalism, and I am committed to staying in it. I was honest about this: you will not find me shilling for Platner on panels. You will not find me going blue MAGA and discrediting the women. But you also will not find me playing false equivalencies. Republicans backing Trump, who has been found liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, who covered up the Epstein files, who has never apologized for anything in his life, do not get to enter this conversation as moral arbiters. Multiple things can be true at once. The Democratic Party is grappling publicly with a flawed candidate because we have standards. That is not hypocrisy. That is conscience.

• The one distinction I will make for Platner is the one that matters most: he apologizes. I said this clearly: the key difference between Platner and Trump is not only the severity of the allegations, but how they reckon with them. Trump has never acknowledged a failing in his life. Platner has apologized, says he has grown, and is owning most of the conduct. That does not make the conduct acceptable. It does not mean I am not still frustrated that he ran knowing what was in his background. But it is a real distinction, and I will not pretend it is not.

• The big takeaway: economic populism is resilient to scandal. This is Charles’s frame, and it is the one I want people to leave with. This guy was about as flawed a candidate as you can have on the Democratic side, and he still won because people believe he is fighting for them. That is how powerful the working-class economic message is right now. Charles said it directly: if real economic populist messaging could survive all of this, it has real standing as the predominant platform for the party heading into the general. And then the obligation is to follow through. You say you will improve material conditions. You get in office. You do it. Because if you do not, they will swing back and vote for someone else, and they will be right to.

• People are desperate because they are not thriving. Charles closed with this: Things are bad and getting worse. Wealth is concentrating at a pace that has no precedent. Elon Musk just became a trillionaire while people cannot pay their utility bills. That desperation is why voters will ride for whoever they believe has their backs. The candidates who can credibly answer that desperation with a real economic vision will win. That is the whole game.

Bottom Line

The Iran War is a grift, and someone needs to investigate it. The Black conservative machine is well-funded, and we need to call it what it is. California has more life in it than the initial results suggested. Platner won; the people of Maine made their choice, and the lesson is not about him. The lesson is that when people believe you are fighting for their material conditions, they will ride for you through almost anything. Working class politics is the message. Run on it.

If this conversation mattered to you, I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! Independent pro-democracy journalism only works if people back it. And if you’d like to get involved and knock doors this election year, I also highly recommend checking out Common Power.

Ahmed Baba News

Independent pro-democracy journalism, analysis, and commentary. Delivered to your inbox 2 to 4 times a week. Become a free or paid subscriber.

Thank you for watching! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value pro-democracy journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference.

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Donald Trump is weak and leading the Republican Party into political ruin. He wants us to think he’s more powerful than he is, but his failures have never been more evident.

Let me explain.

I’m an independent journalist who has been covering Trump for over a decade now. I’ve made appearances on MS NOW and CNN, and my work has been cited in The New York Times and The Washington Post. I documented every day of Trump’s first term and was among the first to cover Project 2025 back in 2023. Now, I run a best-selling Substack publication called Ahmed Baba News.

It’s been a while since I did a dedicated video on Trump’s political weakness. And let’s just say, things have gotten worse for him and the Republican Party.

Annualized inflation just hit 4.2% for the first time in over 3 years. It was about 3% when Trump took office. And now, President Trump is bogged down in a costly, unpopular war that has resulted in a more extreme Iran that has realized the full extent of the leverage it has over the global economy. With the Strait of Hormuz still closed, energy prices remain high, as everything from fuel to fertilizer causes direct hits to the pocketbooks of Americans.

Meanwhile, Trump’s authoritarian overreach has also backfired. His ICE raids have resulted in the separation of countless migrant families and the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Trump’s grifts have taken center stage as he uses the White House as just another asset on the Trump family balance sheet. Whether it’s Trump himself making 3,700 stock trades in Q1 of this year, including in companies that benefit from his moves, or insiders using the Iran War as a pump and dump scheme, Americans see through it. This is why Trump is a historically unpopular president.

When you look at Trump’s approval ratings over time, you see the story of a president burning through his political capital at a rapid pace.

Take a look at his polling averages in The New York Times. You can literally see the story of his descent. As the early months went on, the story of Trump’s second term quickly shifted from a wannabe authoritarian consolidating power into a lame duck president whose toxicity led to a politically ruined Republican Party and a revitalized opposition.

Trump started off his term with a surprising amount of support, with Americans seemingly believing his campaign promises. It becomes clear, pretty quickly though, that he was lying about reducing costs, lying about his ties to Project 2025, lying about wanting to release the Epstein files, and lying about no new wars.

Trump immediately hired multiple authors and contributors to Project 2025, including one of its main architects, Russell Vought. Trump then unleashed the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, to gut the federal government.

As someone with a deep knowledge of Project 2025, I saw in real-time how he was botching its implementation by moving with a ferocious incompetence and triggering a cascade of court losses. My article at the 10-day mark of Trump’s second term was literally titled: “Trump’s Incompetent Overreach Is Already Backfiring.”

It was clear to me from the start where all this was headed.

You can see during the months of February and March, Trump’s political fortunes change pretty quickly as Americans watch Trump and his cronies enrich themselves as he unleashes tariffs that unilaterally raise prices on the American people.

Then comes the Big Beautiful Bill, which is the largest legislative wealth transfer from the poor to the rich in American history. Trump’s refusal to release the Epstein files resulted in real fractures in his base, which worsened into the fall as right-wing figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene defected from the President and the House forced a vote to release the files. Then, we have the ultimate betrayal of Trump’s “no new wars” promise as we entered 2026, and the bottom really fell out, with multiple polls having Trump’s approval in the mid-30s.

Underneath Trump’s terrible approval numbers, you see what’s driving it. Trump is underwater on all key issues.

Harry Enten at CNN this week found Trump’s net approval rating on inflation is negative 50 points in at least 8 polls this year. Trump also has an 80% disapproval rating on gas prices.

Now I know what the pushback to this often is. That Trump remains popular with MAGA Republicans. But that is an increasingly shrinking subset of people. I’ve been laying out this case forcefully.

In an appearance on MS NOW’s The Weekend Primetime last month, I pointed out that Trump keeps touting 100% support among MAGA Republicans but that same NBC poll previously found that the number of Republicans who identify as MAGA is dropping. It fell seven points to 50% of Republicans. So, Trump has consolidated total control of a base that is actively contracting. Congratulations, Donald. You have 100% of a shrinking pie.

Trump’s unpopularity has resulted in seismic shifts not only in the November 2025 elections, but in special elections across the country. Now, as we head to the midterms, Democrats lead Republicans in the generic ballot, with the House likely to flip and the Senate realistically in play.

So, we’ve established that Trump is incredibly unpopular, and it’s weighing down Republicans. You might be thinking, why does this matter?

It matters because anyone with an understanding of history knows that authoritarians cannot consolidate power with this level of unpopularity. This is something historians like and have often talked about. When you overreach before you’ve taken over all the institutions necessary to maintain control, you will lose the people, and lose power. Look at Viktor Orban in Hungary.

And as I’ve reported, when it comes to Trump’s clear attempts to lay the groundwork to interfere in the midterm elections, those efforts have no basis in law or fact. They will be struck down just like they were in 2020. Also, when it comes to redistricting, Republicans can redraw districts all they want, but if all demographics are increasingly opposing you, you’re just reconfiguring your demise.

These gerrymandering efforts will only give them a handful of seats this year, and will not save Republicans in the midterms. In 2028, it will have a larger impact, but again, Trump and Republicans are so unpopular, and have lost so much ground with the Latino voters many of these redrawn maps rely on, they could end up diluting more of their districts than they anticipate. While this is a historic assault on Black political power, as I’ve reported before, many of their efforts could backfire.

How this all plays out moving forward is up to how the pro-democracy coalition organizes. But overall, I remain hopeful that the vast majority of American people have woken up to the most self-serving, corrupt president in American history. Trump is not invincible. He never was. The numbers prove it.

If you liked this video, smash that like button, follow me, and share. And I hope you consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News. With right-wing consolidation of mainstream media accelerating, independent media is more important than ever. Thank you for watching. See you around.

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Thank you for watching! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value pro-democracy journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference.

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There are weeks on Across the Pond where James and I get to debate ideas and explore the nuances of transatlantic politics with some distance from the immediate moment. This was not one of those weeks. James and I came into this live angry about the violence targeting immigrants in Ireland.

What happened in Belfast over the last 48 hours is not a protest. It is organized mob violence targeting immigrant communities because of the actions of one Sudanese man who attacked someone in the street. The victim survived. The attacker was arrested. And then masked men coordinated to identify the addresses of residents they thought were immigrants, kick in their front doors while their families were inside, and set fire to their homes.

Watching the footage, I thought of American history. The Jim Crow South. The Tulsa massacre. The logic of collective punishment where the crime of one person becomes the justification for violence against everyone who looks like them. James, who grew up learning about the civil rights movement in a high school in Northern England, said something that stopped me: he never understood how a community could organize a lynching until he watched Belfast last night. That is the weight of what we are dealing with.

The throughline from Nigel Farage’s “rage” rhetoric after Henry Nowak’s murder to Elon Musk amplifying calls for millions to leave to masked men kicking in immigrant families’ front doors is not a coincidence. It is a far-right network. And James and I spent this live mapping it with as much clarity as we could manage while both of us were genuinely furious.

You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below.

What’s Happening In Belfast: Lynch Mob Violence In 2026

The facts of what happened in Belfast need to be stated clearly before anything else. Because the people inciting this violence are counting on the outrage being louder than the facts, and the facts tell the real story.

• A Sudanese man attacked Steven Ogilvy in Northern Ireland. Ogilvy survived. Community members intervened. James was clear about this from the start: the attacker was stopped, the victim did not die, and the response of the community in the moment was to protect the victim. We do not yet know the attacker’s motive, whether it was mental health related or otherwise. What we do know is that justice is being done. The attacker was arrested. There is no miscarriage of justice here. There is nothing to protest. And yet.

• What followed was organized, targeted mob violence that James called the most terrifying thing he has ever seen in Britain. Community groups were monitoring Facebook in real time as the violence was being coordinated. According to James, the posts were explicit: wear a mask, leave your phone at home, we are going to target every Black and brown person on this street, we will kick in the front doors and set fire to their homes. James noted that a journalist reporting from Belfast was threatened with being kneecapped and had to leave. These were not people venting anger. This was a coordinated pogrom.

• James’s Vietnamese friend’s father, a man in his 70s who fled Vietnam after the war and built his life in Northern Ireland, was told by his children not to leave the house. His family settled in Northern Ireland in the late 1970s and early 1980s as part of a resettlement program after the Americans left Vietnam. They have already lived through the complexities of the Troubles. And now, because a Sudanese man they have never met attacked someone in the street, this elderly man cannot safely walk outside. That is the human cost of what the far right’s rhetoric produces.

• Rows of houses that survived the Troubles were burnt to the ground overnight. James made this point with real force: the IRA at the height of its violence did not burn these houses. These were communities that lived through one of the most sustained periods of political violence in modern British history and kept their physical homes intact. Last night, masked men with Facebook coordination did what decades of the Troubles did not. James described it plainly: it is Tulsa. It is Kristallnacht. These are not hyperbolic comparisons. They are the accurate historical frame for what organized racist mob violence looks like.

• The victim’s own family called for peace and was completely ignored. Steven Ogilvy’s family, the actual victims of the actual attack, publicly said they did not want this violence and encouraged calm. Henry Nowak’s father did the same thing after his son’s murder. Both families were ignored entirely. Because this was never about the victims. It was never about justice. The families of the people whose tragedies are being exploited are begging the people exploiting those tragedies to stop, and nobody is listening.

The Global Far-Right Network: Musk, Farage, Vance & The Architecture Of Incitement

What happened in Belfast did not emerge from nowhere. It was built, brick by brick, over weeks of deliberate rhetoric from people with platforms and power. James and I have covered this network on this show before. We are watching it produce its intended results in real time.

• Elon Musk was able to influence a riot in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in real time. Musk has been amplifying Rupert Lowe, founder of the Restore Party, which sits further right than Reform UK, calling for millions to leave Britain. He reposted White Lives Matter imagery. He reposted content framing the attack as evidence of an invasion. I checked his feed live during the conversation, and he was still posting about it positively that morning. One tech billionaire on the other side of the world, with no democratic accountability in Britain, helped organize violence in a British city. The idea that social media is just speech and words do not have real consequences is a foolish notion.

• Nigel Farage’s “pure cold rage” rhetoric after Henry Nowak’s murder was the match that lit the flame. We covered this on this show in detail. Farage called on white people to respond with “pure cold rage.” That baseline of organized far-right anger was already in place when the Belfast stabbing happened. It did not take much to redirect it. I made this point directly: if Farage had not spent the weeks since Nowak’s murder ginning up that anger, there might not have been the groundwork for this to pop off from. Words from leaders produce consequences. That is not a figure of speech.

• JD Vance directly tied Henry Nowak’s killing to immigrants in his post about the case, laying the political groundwork from Washington. Vance was not reacting to Belfast specifically. He was doing something more insidious: pre-loading the narrative that immigrants are responsible for violence against white people in the UK, so that when the next incident happened, the connection was already in the public mind.

• The far-right tapped into Northern Ireland’s existing paramilitary infrastructure with devastating efficiency. James explained the specific danger of Belfast: Northern Ireland has a decades-long tradition of community groups organizing quickly for collective action, including violent collective action. The loyalist and unionist networks that once mobilized against the IRA still exist, even if the IRA itself no longer functions in the same way. Many of those organizations have now transitioned into crime entities. The far right found them and redirected their organizing capacity toward immigrants. James said it is a tradition of putting on a balaclava and going out to defend your community, and the far right has been able to redefine what the community means and who the enemy is.

• The global far-right collaborative network is not a theory. It is producing burning homes. We have talked on this show about the connection between Farage, Musk, the American far right, the great replacement theory, the white genocide narrative, and the anti-DEI push. Belfast is where the abstract becomes concrete. One network. One set of narratives. Deployed simultaneously across multiple countries by people with massive platforms and zero accountability. The architecture of incitement is now visible to anyone willing to look at it honestly.

Collective Punishment, Avoided Accountability, & What Governments Must Do

The conversation did not end in despair. It ended in demands. James and I both made arguments about what accountability should look like and what governments have the power to do if they choose to exercise it.

• The logic of these riots, followed to its conclusion, exposes how indefensible it is. I made this argument directly: statistically, mass shootings in the United States are predominantly carried out by young white men. By the logic being applied in Belfast, the correct response to every school shooting would be for hundreds of people to run into the streets and target homes where young white boys live. Nobody would accept that. Nobody would call it an understandable reaction. The logic is identical. The difference is who is being targeted. Collective punishment of an entire demographic for the actions of one individual is not justice. It is not grief. It is racism. It is a lynch mob, and the only honest thing to call it is what it is.

• These men were not out there protesting the hundreds of other stabbings that happened in Britain this week. James made this point with clarity: stabbings happen every single day in Britain, just as shootings happen every day in America. The far right is not outside every hospital where a stabbing victim is being treated. They are not in the streets every time someone is killed with a knife. They showed up in Belfast because someone told them to show up, because this particular stabbing had been loaded with racial and political meaning by people with agendas.

• There is a two-tier accountability system running in plain sight. I made this case directly: if any CEO of a major company retweeted a fraction of what Elon Musk retweets, they would be removed from their board by the end of the day. If any politician said a fraction of what Donald Trump has said and done, they would not be able to run a local ice cream shop, let alone the country. The rules that govern ordinary people’s professional and civic lives do not apply to wealthy right-wing men. And it is what produces Elon Musk waking up every morning and amplifying calls for racist violence with no consequence.

• Adjust the incentives, and you change the outcomes. My own argument built on Charlie Munger’s observation: “show me the incentive, and I will show you the outcome.” The current incentive structure rewards Musk for exactly what he is doing. His platform grows, his influence grows, his government contracts continue. What changes behavior is changing incentives. Government contracts should come with conduct requirements. Platforms that organize violence should face regulatory consequences. These companies need government contracts. That is leverage. Use it.

• James’s closing socialist argument: this was always the endgame of the unregulated free market. Reagan and Thatcher told us the market would regulate itself. It did not. What an unregulated free market produces, given enough time and enough power concentrated in enough hands, is Elon Musk. It is Donald Trump. It is men who have won the capitalist game entirely and then spent their winnings on making the world worse because nothing can fill the emptiness. James said it simply: he bought a social media platform and turned it into a porn site of violence and racism. That is what he chose to do with everything. Governments exist precisely to prevent this outcome. It is long past time they acted like it.

Bottom Line

What happened in Belfast is not complicated to describe. Masked men coordinated on Facebook to burn immigrant families out of their homes because a Sudanese man attacked someone in the street. The victim survived. The attacker was arrested. There was no miscarriage of justice to protest. There was only a far-right network that needed an excuse and found one, backed by the richest man on earth, amplified by American politicians, and built on weeks of deliberate incitement by people who knew exactly what they were doing. The families of the actual victims begged for peace. Nobody listened. That is the world Farage and Musk and Vance are building. We have to call it what it is.

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Uneducated by James Matthewson

Before he was a broadcaster and writer, James Matthewson was a high-school drop out who accidentally became a political adviser. Naming this substack after being criticised for being 'uneducated', James gives his weekly updates on the world of Politics.

Thank you for watching! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value pro-democracy journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference.

Subscribe now

Jamaal Bowman and I first met on MS NOW, and I knew immediately I needed to get him on for a longer conversation. He is someone whose ideas deserve more time than short cable news segments allow for. So today, he joined me for a Substack Live conversation. He was in Dublin, Ireland, where he had just delivered a keynote at a workers' rights and human rights festival. What followed was one of my favorite Substack Lives I’ve ever hosted.

Jamaal Bowman came to this conversation with a substantive perspective. Bowman represented New York’s 16th congressional district from 2021 to 2025. An educator at heart, he was a former Bronx middle school principal and founder of the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action. Now, he’s been helping progressive candidates across the country and is the author of an upcoming memoir called Unpolished, out this November.

We covered an enormous amount of ground. We talked about where the Democratic Party is heading and why Bowman believes the progressive wing is on its way to becoming the mainstream wing. We got into the fact that Bowman was primaried in one of the most expensive congressional races in history for holding positions that are now being openly argued in the pages of The New York Times by a mainstream Democratic senator.

We discussed Trump’s Iran War, the Tupac quote Bowman delivered in Dublin that perfectly encapsulates this moment, and the economic case for investing in working people rather than endless military spending. We went deep on education in a way I almost never get to on this show, and it was probably my favorite part of this conversation.

From there, we talked about who has what it takes to win in 2028, why stances on Gaza could be a litmus test, and what is actually happening inside the Republican Party right now. And we ended with Bowman’s upcoming memoir Unpolished, his remarkable life story, and what it means to be a Black man in America trying to set a good example for generations of Black boys to come.

I appreciate those of you who tuned in live, made Jamaal feel welcome by showing love, and who contributed so much to the conversation. This is truly the best community on Substack. If you’re just catching it now, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

This conversation was top-notch. I promise it will leave you feeling smarter and more empowered to keep fighting for a prosperous and inclusive democracy. You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below. Like, share, and, as always, thank you for supporting independent media.

The Progressive Wing Is Becoming The Mainstream Wing

Bowman came out of the gate with a clear argument: the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is not a fringe. The American people are ahead of party leadership on issue after issue, and leadership needs to catch up.

• The working-class-first orientation is becoming the dominant force in Democratic politics. Bowman made this case with conviction: from the very beginning, the progressive wing has been centering politics in the needs of working people, making sure affordability is at the top of the agenda, that housing is treated as a human right, that healthcare is a human right, that public schools are fully funded with real post-secondary opportunities behind them. He has been saying this since before it was popular, and the results in primary after primary this cycle are proving the point. The energy is with the candidates who lead with working-class economics first.

• Bowman’s specific policy vision aims to push the Democratic Party further toward the people. His agenda includes a federal jobs guarantee, ending mass incarceration, ending poverty in America, and a foreign policy rooted in diplomacy and cooperation that pushes back against genocide, apartheid, and occupation. These are not positions the whole party has embraced, though they increasingly are. But the broader working-class economic orientation, the affordability message, the anti-war instinct, is gaining ground rapidly in ways that would have seemed unlikely just a few years ago.

• The American people are aligned with the progressive wing. Party leadership is not. Bowman made this distinction explicitly: poll after poll shows the majority of the American people want to get big money out of politics, want healthcare accessible to everyone, want an end to policies that make affordability impossible. It is not the voters who are out of step. It is the people who lead the party, in Bowman’s view. And if leadership does not get on board, Bowman warned, the party is going to continue to struggle in the biggest elections, including the presidential in 2028. The grassroots will stay home if Palestine and affordability are not front and center, Bowman says.

Bowman Was Primaried For What Is Now Mainstream Dem Politics

One of the most telling moments of this conversation was watching Bowman describe what it feels like to watch the Democratic Party shift toward positions he was primaried for holding. The shift is real. It is documented. Bowman was calling out the Netanyahu government when it was genuinely costly to do so politically. Now, it seems to be the mainstream Democratic position.

• Senator Chris Van Hollen argued for policies in The New York Times that were similar to what got Bowman primaried. In an op-ed published two weeks ago, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) wrote, “The Democratic Party has provided reflexive and unconditional support to Israeli governments, even as their actions have increasingly undermined American interests and values.” He went on to call out the “brutality” of Netanyahu’s government, the violent settlers in the West Bank, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. He also called for conditioning aid to Israel, which was seen as controversial not too long ago. That ran in The New York Times. Van Hollen is not a far-left firebrand. He is a mainstream Democratic senator. The Overton window has moved, and it moved in the direction Bowman was pointing out years ago.

• Bowman’s response was grounded in policy and moral clarity, not grievance. He did not spend the moment gloating. He looked forward. He said what we need is for Israel, as an ally, to end the occupation in the West Bank, address what the United Nations and Human Rights Watch have called apartheid, and have a genuine conversation about a two-state solution.

• Criticizing the Israeli government is not antisemitism, and Bowman has always been clear about that. He said it directly: we fight antisemitism exactly the same way we fight anti-Black racism, sexism, homophobia, and all other forms of hate. Criticism of a government is not criticism of a people. I added from my own experience that as someone married into a progressive Jewish family and has Jewish friends, plenty of Jews, from progressive to moderate, have acknowledged that Netanyahu has gone too far. Bowman gave a shout-out to IfNotNow and Jewish Voices for Peace, organizations that have been saying the same thing for years and whose work makes the fight against antisemitism stronger, not weaker.

Money For Wars, Can’t Feed The Poor: The Need For Rising Tide Economics

Bowman delivered a keynote in Dublin where he quoted Tupac’s “Keep Ya Head Up,” saying “we got money for wars but can’t feed the poor.” That line has been increasingly relevant since Trump’s Iran War began, and it opened one of the sharpest economic exchanges of this live.

• Trump’s Iran War costs are a concrete illustration of Democratic economic priorities. I laid this out directly: what has already been spent on the Iran war could fund the Enhanced Affordable Care Act premium subsidies multiple times over. It could fund a year of subsidized college. When people ask where the pay-fors are for working class policies, this is the answer. The money exists. The political will has been lacking.

• Build Back Better proved the policy and the pay-fors already exist. Bowman made a point that does not get made enough: Build Back Better was not written by the Squad. It was President Biden’s bill. Chairman Richard Neal of the Ways and Means Committee, not a progressive, ensured it was paid for and supported it. It was killed in the Senate by Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. The infrastructure for transformative working-class policy has already been built. Anyone running in 2028 needs to run on it.

• Rising tide economics versus trickle down. I called it plainly: we are still in the Reagan era. Trickle down does not work. You cut taxes for corporations, and you get stock buybacks, not wages. You cut taxes for billionaires, and you get Elon Musk. Bowman said that what we need is rising tide economics where everyone contributes their fair share and the investment comes back through the community. I made the Keynesian economics point: you invest in the economy through the people, and they invest back. It is FDR. It is what built America into the global power it became and then got systematically dismantled through decades of Reaganite mythology.

• Bowman’s moral and economic case for investing in communities is the same argument. He made this with real force: when you pour love and resources into neglected communities, those communities thrive. Education, healthcare, innovation. GDP goes up. Costs for mass incarceration and militarism go down. He cited the robber baron parallel and pointed out that this concentration of wealth at the top, the rest of us working class, is America from the beginning. The difference now is that the people heading toward trillionaire status are doing it while data centers make the climate worse and they pay nothing for any of it.

The Revolutionary Education System We Need

This was my favorite section of the entire conversation and one of the best discussions I have had on this platform. Bowman isn’t just a former Congressman with opinions about education. He is a doctor of education leadership who founded a public middle school in the Bronx, took it to number one combined growth scores in New York City in 2016, and has done the primary research on what actually works. Everything he said here was backed by evidence.

• The Lost Einsteins study is one of the most important pieces of research in American policy, and almost nobody talks about it. Bowman brought this up, and I want everyone to look it up. The study examined third and fourth-grade academic achievement across the board and found that gifted kids from poor Black and brown communities are just as gifted as kids from wealthy suburbs at that age. The suburban kids go on to file patents, become inventors, build companies. The kids from underinvested communities do not get those opportunities. The study’s conclusion: if those kids had equal access, American GDP would increase by 33 percent. That is not just a social justice argument. That is an economic argument. And it is hiding in plain sight.

• Universal childcare is the single most important education policy we could pass. Bowman said this plainly and backed it with his own doctoral research: from birth to age three, the brain develops 90 percent of its growth. When a child experiences trauma during that window, the development of the prefrontal cortex, the reasoning and decision-making center, is stagnated. That child enters kindergarten already behind. Without intervention, they are more likely to be placed in special education, more likely to enter the school-to-prison pipeline, more likely to be suspended. Universal childcare is not a nice-to-have. It is the foundational fix that every other education reform depends on.

• No Child Left Behind was an educational catastrophe, and the effects are still with us. Bowman laid out the mechanism: by tying everything to English and math test scores from grades three through eight, the policy caused school districts nationwide to eliminate gym teachers, arts teachers, and music teachers. There are kids who struggle in English and math because of dyslexia or learning differences but who are maestros on an instrument. That was taken away from them. A holistic education that includes sports, music, drama, and the arts is not a luxury. It develops transferable skills and keeps America healthy, innovative, and competitive.

• Socratic seminar is AI-proof. Bowman trained his teachers in it. Cornerstone Academy became number one in New York City using it. The method: students read a high-level text, annotate it with their questions and connections, and then the teacher facilitates a real discussion about what they read. That is it. When Bowman describes this method to teachers in certain schools, they say that is just how you teach. But the majority of schools do not do this. I made the point that everything I know about politics I learned by forcing myself to write about it and explain it in articles. When you are required to debate and argue something with a pen in your hand, you actually have to understand it. That cannot be outsourced to AI. Bowman held up his journal as evidence. Write by hand. It still matters.

• The Green New Deal for public schools is a comprehensive vision. Bowman introduced this legislation while in Congress: rebuild the physical infrastructure of public schools in alignment with the climate emergency, bring interdisciplinary project-based STEM and STEAM into classrooms, restore the humanities and Socratic practice, ensure every child who wants to has access to a sport, an instrument, and the arts. He made the point that this is bipartisan in practice. When Trump and Musk tried to cut the Department of Education, rural Republican communities in Arkansas who voted for Trump spoke out, because Title I funding is what keeps their schools running. The issue is bigger than party.

Will Gaza Be The 2028 Litmus Test? And The State Of MAGA

With ideas for the 2028 primary field beginning to take shape, Bowman had clear opinions about who is positioned well, who is not, and why Gaza is going to be a defining issue whether candidates want it to be or not. He also had a sharp read on where the Republican Party actually is right now.

• Gaza could be the moral litmus test of the 2028 primary. Bowman said this directly and without hedging: if you are not on the right side of that issue, you are going to struggle. The grassroots will not show up for candidates who continue to enable or ignore what is happening. He was clear that he does not even require the word genocide. Just acknowledge the reality. Just say we should not be supporting this. Just come with a policy that reflects what the American people, particularly people under 45, actually believe. Candidates who are AIPAC-supported and unwilling to risk that relationship are going to find themselves on the wrong side of history and on the wrong side of the primary electorate, Bowman said.

• Rep. Ro Khanna and Senator Chris Van Hollen are two names Bowman mentioned as positioned well. Khanna has had an extraordinary year, leading on the Epstein files and being consistently right on Gaza, and Bowman said his name comes up everywhere when he travels the country. Van Hollen has already put his position in The New York Times. AOC, if she runs, has a real chance, Bowman feels. Ossoff has the riz and the swag, Bowman’s words, but needs to make his stance clear on Gaza. Wes Moore has not said enough, Bowman says. And the candidate who runs on the policies that were contained in Build Back Better, affordability, and a free Palestine, according to Bowman, wins in a landslide if they have the charisma and communication skills to go with it.

• MAGA is weakening as Trump weakens, and the Republican Party does not have a new playbook. Bowman made this case clearly: MAGA and America First were one and the same for a while, and that gave Trump enormous power. Now they are diverging. Marjorie Taylor Greene is pulling away and doing her own thing. The convergence Bowman finds interesting is between America First and progressive positions, because affordability, anti-war, and childcare are all America First policies if you actually mean putting American people first. His prediction: JD Vance will run, Marco Rubio will run, they will rebrand and claim they told Trump not to do this, and a lot of Republican voters will fall for it. He would not be surprised if MTG is being considered as a vice presidential candidate for Vance right now.

• The political establishment is underwater on both sides. Bowman made this point with data: the last congressional approval rating he saw was under 30 percent, Republicans and Democrats combined. When the whole establishment is that unpopular, what voters want is new voices and fresh ideas. He does not see that coming from the Republican side. He does see it on the Democratic side, and the primary results this cycle are beginning to reflect it.

Unpolished: Jamaal Bowman’s Remarkable Life Story & An Example For Black Boys

Bowman started writing his memoir in early December 2025, four weeks after the Mamdani win, after a run of keynotes in Philadelphia and Chicago that left him in a reflective place. He sat down and just started writing. Four weeks later, he had 83,000 words.

• The story goes from the crack epidemic to the classroom to Congress. Bowman describes it as the story of a Black boy raised by a single mom in New York, no private schools, no HBCU, no Divine Nine, no trust fund. A kid who barely survived shootouts on the streets of New York in the early 90s, got a chance to move out of the city to finish high school, became the first in his family to go to college, started teaching, opened his own school at 33, took it to number one in New York City, won a historic congressional race against a 16-term incumbent, served in Congress with the Squad, lost a historic primary, and is still here doing the work.

• Every chapter is named after a hip hop song, because hip hop has been the soundtrack of his life. The first chapter is Run’s House. The second is Windows. The third is Know the Ledge. Each track is a thematic lens on the chapter it opens. Bowman said hip hop is almost a religion for him, and the way he structured the book reflects that. I told him it reminded me of what Tupac did as a storyteller, bringing the world inside the community to people who had never seen it from the inside.

• The central framework of the book is the hunger versus the healing. Bowman named the evils that continue to plague us - racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, antisemitism, colonialism - and gave them a collective name: the hunger. The book argues that the only thing that defeats the hunger is the healing. That framework runs through every chapter and connects his personal story to the broader political argument he has been making his whole career.

• Survivor’s responsibility over survivor’s guilt. Bowman made this distinction, and it landed hard. He said he feels a responsibility to go as far as he can go so that young kids can see him and think they could do that. I told him about one of my best childhood friends who was shot and killed at 23, tattooed on my chest. Bowman said what I described is something uniquely particular to Black men in America: you can meet any random Black man from certain communities anywhere in this country and go down a list of five to ten people he grew up with who were killed. That is not okay. It is a trauma that should not be normalized. And it is exactly what Unpolished is trying to make visible.

• Unpolished means decolonize. It means uniqueness. It means consistent growth. Bowman explained the title directly: it means not needing to fit into any box, not needing to perform a version of yourself that someone else designed for you. It means recognizing that we are not finished products. We will learn and grow for the rest of our lives. Therefore, we will be unpolished for the rest of our lives. He said he takes a lot of pride in being a regular dude, not Obama-level exceptional, not Harvard and Columbia, but someone who came from the same place a lot of these kids come from and made it to Congress anyway. That is a model that he wants Black boys to see.

Bottom Line

My conversation with former Rep. Jamaal Bowman was one of the most substantive I’ve had on this platform. We covered a lot. The progressive wing is becoming the mainstream wing. The Van Hollen op-ed is proof that the party is catching up to positions Bowman paid a real price for holding. The economic argument, invest in people and they invest back, is not radical. It is Keynesian. It is FDR. And the education conversation we had was a reminder that the answers to America’s biggest problems are hiding in plain sight in underinvested communities across this country.

Unpolished drops in November. Follow/subscribe to here on Substack.

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Thank you for watching! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value pro-democracy journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference.

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Charles Douglas just got back from Tennessee and California, leading teams of door-knockers. We had a lot of ground to cover. Six states held primaries Tuesday, and the results give us some insights into where the Democratic Party is heading, where it is still stuck, and what the midterm map actually looks like heading into November. We covered all of it.

The California results were messy, but we had some interesting takeaways. The Iowa results confirmed something else: Trump’s grip on his own party is not as iron-clad as the press keeps treating it. And New Jersey is quietly setting up one of the most important House flips on the board.

Then we got into Graham Platner. The live chat wanted to hear our takes. What followed was one of the most honest conversations I have had on this show about the impossible moral mathematics of electoral politics in an existential moment. Charles spoke from a place I cannot fully speak from: he is an organizer who has to make real decisions about where to deploy real people, sometimes in spite of his personal feelings. I spoke from my own perspective: someone who believes in redemption, but has my own hard moral lines, and my own frustrations with a candidate who I believe knew what was in his background and ran anyway. If you are looking for a nuanced discussion on the Graham Platner situation, you will find it here.

You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below.

Primary Night Takeaways: California, Iowa & New Jersey

Six states voted Tuesday. Here are our takeaways:

• California races were hit or miss. The catastrophic scenario of two Republicans in the top two did not happen. Becerra holds the second slot behind Hilton as votes are being counted. But the way it happened tells the real story: Swalwell dropping out and a Democratic Party that could not consolidate around one or two alternatives. When it comes to the LA Mayor race, the votes are still being counted, but how well Spencer Pratt is doing is more a referendum on Karen Bass’s leadership than a broad rebuke of the Democratic Party. The Randy Villegas result in Bakersfield is the bright spot nobody is talking about enough. He is outperforming the DCCC-backed candidate with AOC behind him, growing up in the city he is running in, and talking a Trump voter around at the door in 90-degree heat. That is the model California’s governor race was missing entirely.

• Iowa was the real story of the night, and Trump lost it. Randy Feenstra, Trump’s endorsed pick for Iowa governor, lost to businessman Zach Lahn, making him the first statewide Trump endorsee to lose a primary in 2026. On the Democratic side, Josh Turek, a Paralympian with a remarkable biographical story, won the Senate primary and moved the race from likely Republican to leaning Republican. Rob Sand on the governor side gives Democrats two strong candidates in a state they had written off. Charles made the point that Chuck Schumer’s strategic read on red states is correct: moderate enough in Iowa, working class first everywhere, and let the further left energy live in the blue cities where it can pull the Overton window and give battleground candidates room to run as the reasonable alternative.

• New Jersey’s Tom Kean Jr. is a ghost, and Democrats are taking that seat. He has missed over 100 votes, ran unopposed, and barely won last time in a state that is moving left. The Democratic candidate coming up is another populist challenger, a regular person giving voters something to vote for in addition to something to vote against. In a narrow House majority, this is one of the most important races on the board, and it is not getting the attention it deserves.

Graham Platner: Putting Dems In A Terrible Situation

The chat wanted us to talk about this. And we gave it the time it deserved: an honest conversation between two people who care about democracy and came at this from genuinely different places.

What we know about the controversies: The New York Times interviewed women who had been romantically involved with Platner, some of whom spoke highly of him. Others called his behavior “unsettling” and described their time with him as “toxic” or volatile. One woman, Lyndsey Fifield, a right-wing operative who worked at the Heritage Foundation, said Platner got rough with her physically. You can read the full New York Times piece for yourself in a gift link here.

This follows earlier controversies, including deleted Reddit posts and a tattoo on his chest that has a Nazi association. The most recent controversy stems from reports that he exchanged sexually explicit messages with multiple women during his marriage, an issue that campaign aides were reportedly aware of as his Senate bid was taking shape.

• Charles has a hard line on violence, and he stated it clearly. Charles said violence is a philosophical non-starter for him. He believes people should be talked to and reasoned with. That is where he stands. He said it without hedging.

• The operational reality is what it is, and Charles had to say that out loud too. Charles runs an organization that is charged with participating in this electoral moment and getting others to do the same. The math on the Senate is the math. There are a handful of viable seats that can flip the chamber, and Maine is one of them. Janet Mills halted her campaign in April, and much of the party establishment has consolidated behind Platner. You do not get to choose based purely on your feelings when the alternative is someone who will vote with an authoritarian administration most of the time. Charles said that plainly: it is a shitty reality, it is so messed up, but the people of Maine get to make their decision and then you push the better person over the line.

• My personal reaction was different, and I want to be honest about where it comes from. I have talked on this show about struggling with alcoholism in high school and being sober for over a decade. I believe in redemption. I believe people can change. I have made arguments on this very show about giving people a pathway back after they have done terrible things. But the accumulation of what keeps coming out about Platner makes me wonder what else is still coming. And my personal take, separate from any political calculation, is that it was incredibly selfish of him to have run when he knew this stuff was in his background. I had to say it.

• Republicans do not get to have this conversation, and I will not let them. This is a point I want to make clearly because I am going to be on national TV panels again soon, and this will come up. Democrats are struggling publicly with the moral side of a flawed candidate because we have moral standards and we are trying to reconcile them with existential political stakes. That is not hypocrisy. That is what people of conscience do. Republicans, on the other hand, do not deserve to be part of this conversation. They have no room to talk. They enthusiastically backed Trump after he was found liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll among his mountain of depraved activity. They backed Roy Moore, a credibly accused child abuser. They back Ken Paxton, a man impeached by his own party. None of them apologized. None of them grappled with their conduct. This is an internal debate for the Democratic Party to have about who they are, what they will tolerate, and what winning actually costs.

• The community found its own nuanced conclusion. The chat throughout this conversation was measured, thoughtful, and genuinely engaged. People came in with strong feelings and stayed with the complexity. That is what this show is for. The primary is Tuesday in Maine. The voters there will decide. Whatever they decide, that decision will come with real costs either way, and the people of Maine are the ones who get to make it.

Thank you all for sticking around for a nuanced conversation like this. It means a lot that you show up for each conversation with an open mind and assuming good faith from the guests I have on this platform. Thank you all and have a great weekend!

If this conversation mattered to you, I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! Independent pro-democracy journalism only works if people back it. And if you’d like to get involved and knock doors this election year, I also highly recommend checking out Common Power.

Ahmed Baba News

Independent pro-democracy journalism, analysis, and commentary. Delivered to your inbox 2 to 4 times a week. Become a free or paid subscriber.

Thank you for watching! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value pro-democracy journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference.

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Scott Pelley walked into an all-hands meeting with Bari Weiss’s hand-picked 60 Minutes executive producer, Nick Bilton, and spoke truth to power. He was fired for speaking that truth. That is the only way to describe what happened at CBS.

I couldn’t think of a better person to talk about this with than Don Lemon. When I sat down for our latest Substack Live conversation, what emerged was more than media commentary. It was a firsthand account from someone who has been in similar rooms, heard similar lies, and lived through a similar playbook, now being run at CBS News, when Chris Licht took over CNN, and led to Don’s ousting.

Don called Pelley a hero. And rightfully so. Pelley has effectively acted as a whistleblower. In that now-famous all-hands meeting, Pelley reportedly said that Bari Weiss is “murdering 60 Minutes. She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.”

After he was fired, he released a statement, accusing CBS’s new management, the Trump-allied Ellisons and their chosen Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, of asking him to “inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story.” He said politicians were being “invited to choose their own correspondents for interviews.” He said the Ellisons were trying to curry favor with the Trump Administration.

This is CBS News. The network of Walter Cronkite. And Don’s response when he watched it unfold was not surprise. It was recognition of a familiar playbook.

This isn’t just a story about executives making bad business decisions. This is about the erosion of America’s democratic infrastructure, our information ecosystem. The media is called the Fourth Estate for a reason.

Journalism is supposed to function as democracy’s immune system. And what is happening at CBS, what happened at CNN under Chris Licht and could happen again if the Ellisons complete their takeover of the network, and what is happening across the American media landscape as corporate owners seek favor with the White House, is an autoimmune disease. The body is attacking itself in order to seek favor with a regime hell-bent on eroding the foundations of democracy that uphold the Fourth Estate.

Don and I spent ten sharp minutes on exactly that.

You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below. And, as always, thank you for supporting independent media.

Scott Pelley Is A Hero & The Attack On The Truth That Led To His Ousting Should Be A Five Alarm Fire

Don did not mince words. Neither did I. What Pelley did was an act of courage that should be a wake-up call for everyone in this industry and everyone who depends on it.

• Don called it immediately: this should be a five-alarm fire, a break-the-glass moment, and he does not see that response from enough people. He said watching what these companies are doing to appease the Trump administration should be frightening to everyone in the business. The media world is small. People know each other. And when a CBS News anchor says he was instructed to inject falsehoods into a story, the correct response should be industry-wide alarm.

• Don knew the script before it played out because he lived it. As Pelley was sharing his account of those management meetings, Don said he was reading it thinking: I know they are going to lie about the last meeting. I know they are going to say he was not cooperative. I know how this goes because I have been in those rooms. That is not analysis. That is testimony. And it matters because it confirms that what happened to Pelley is not an isolated incident at one broken company. It is a pattern.

• Nicole Wallace told Don it was triggering for her too. When he appeared on MS NOW yesterday, she confided that watching what is happening at CBS is deeply unsettling for anyone who believes in journalism. Don noted she is not just a television host. She is a former White House communications director under a Republican president. When that person is alarmed by what is happening to the press, that is a signal worth paying attention to.

• In a world of Bari Weisses, be a Scott Pelley. Don said it plainly, and it deserves to be repeated. Pelley did not just defend himself. He defended his colleagues. He defended 60 Minutes. He defended the principle that a news organization exists to inform the public, not to curry regulatory favor for a corporate owner trying to close a merger. That is what a journalist does. That is what the fourth estate is for.

• This is not a story about executives making bad decisions. I made this point directly, and I want to be clear about it: what is happening at CBS is not a management story. It is not a business story. It is a story about the erosion of America’s democratic information infrastructure. Journalism is called the fourth estate for a reason. It is not just another for-profit pursuit. It exists to uphold public trust and to hold power accountable. When the owners of CBS decide that White House approval matters more than that function, they are not making a bad business decision. They are making a choice about what kind of country we live in.

The Access Game & What News Organizations Should Actually Do

Don pulled back the curtain on something the public rarely sees: the quiet negotiations over access that have been eroding editorial independence at news organizations long before the Ellisons arrived at CBS.

• Politicians demanding to choose their interviewers is not new, and news organizations enabling it is the real problem. Don was clear that what Pelley described, politicians being invited to select their own correspondents, has been happening at other organizations for years, including CNN. Politicians learn they can make these demands because they have been accommodated before. The correct response, Don said, is to expose it publicly. Tell the audience: we offered this person an interview, they wanted to pick the correspondent, we do not do that here, so they are not coming on. That transparency would end the behavior immediately because no politician wants that story told about them.

• The people getting the most access are usually the ones softballing the interviews. Don did not hedge on this. Some news organizations pull their punches because they want access, and the way you keep access is by not making powerful people uncomfortable. The result is that the journalists with the most face time with power are often the ones doing the least to hold it accountable. That is a transaction. And it is why independent journalists and those willing to lose access by doing their jobs are more valuable to the public than ever.

• Short-term access always destroys long-term credibility. I made this case directly: every time a news organization accommodates a demand from a politician or an administration to protect its access, it is making a trade it cannot win. The audience notices. Trust erodes. And then when you need that trust, when a real story breaks, and you need people to believe you, it is gone. What Scott Pelley did by going public is the opposite of that trade. He chose credibility over access, permanently. That should be the model for good journalism.

Advice To Journalists & What Is At Stake Amid Right-Wing Media Consolidation

Don’s advice to journalists watching this was direct, specific, and grounded in what he has personally lived through. And the picture he painted of where the Ellisons are taking CBS makes the stakes undeniable.

• If someone gives you an illegal order, you do not have to carry it out. Don drew an explicit parallel to what Democratic leaders told military personnel: if you are given an order that requires you to compromise your journalistic integrity, do not comply, and document it. Go to HR. Put it in writing that you refused and explain why, that what was being asked of you violates company policy, journalistic standards, and potentially the law. Don said as long as you stand on that ground, you will be fine. But you have to start standing up to the corporations. You have to.

• Courage is contagious, and Pelley may have just changed the temperature. Don echoed what Jim Acosta said on MS NOW with him: courage is contagious. Don said he hopes what Pelley did inspires other journalists to be more courageous, the same way what he did after CNN, and what Acosta did, encouraged others. Nicole Wallace told him she often finds herself following the editorial lead of independent journalists now rather than the other way around. This signals that the center of gravity in journalism may be shifting toward those willing to take more risks.

• CBS Evening News is cratering, and 60 Minutes was the one thing that was growing. Don made the business case as clearly as the democratic one: CBS Evening News is suffering under the new regime. The Morning Show is suffering. The one program that was not suffering, that was actually growing its audience both in linear television and in digital, was 60 Minutes. The Ellisons took the one thing that was working and decided to break it. That is not a business decision. That is an ideological one. And it tells you everything you need to know about what they are actually trying to accomplish.

• If the Ellisons get CNN, we will already know what happens because we are watching it happen at CBS. I raised this directly, and Don’s answer was unambiguous: look at CBS. That is your preview. The international reporting, the institutional credibility, the journalists who have spent careers building trust with sources around the world, all of it becomes a negotiating chip for corporate owners who need something from the White House. Journalism as a public service does not survive that transaction. And right now, the Ellisons are showing us exactly what they do when they own a newsroom.

Bottom Line

Scott Pelley stood up in the middle of an all-hands meeting and told the truth about what was being done to his newsroom. Don Lemon recognized every beat because he lived through the same script. The pattern is clear. Corporate owners seek right-wing audiences or need regulatory favors. The White House has demands. Journalists get told to inject falsehoods, accommodate right-wing pressure, and pull their punches. The ones who refuse get fired. The ones who go public become heroes. As Don said, in a world of Bari Weisses, be a Scott Pelley.

This is why Independent media is so important. If this conversation mattered to you, I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News and also consider supporting Don Lemon. And if you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! It truly means a lot. Independent media runs on the people who back it.

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This episode of Across the Pond sparked the kind of discussion this moment demands.

James Matthewson and I sat down to talk through the most charged and emotionally loaded story in the UK right now: the murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak. What emerged was one of the most nuanced, intellectually honest conversations I think we have had on this show. The chat agreed. Some in the chat came in angry at the top and left with nuance and clarity. That arc is the whole point of what we are building here.

Let me give you the facts of the Henry Nowak case upfront because they matter and because Nigel Farage is deliberately exploiting them. Henry Nowak was an 18-year-old student who was stabbed and killed by Vikram Digwa, a 23-year-old Sikh. When police arrived, Digwa and his brother had already called 999 and lied, claiming they were the victims of a racist attack by a drunk white man. The police arrived and, responding to that false account, handcuffed Henry Nowak as he lay dying.

The body cam footage, released as part of the sentencing process, is genuinely horrific to watch. Digwa has since been sentenced to life in prison. This is a disgusting, individualized tragedy. A depraved man murdered an 18-year-old kid and then tried to exploit the justice system to cover it up. Henry Nowak deserved better. His family deserves justice. Full stop.

What James and I spent this conversation doing is separating that legitimate grief and anger from what Nigel Farage is doing with it, which is something else entirely. Farage is exploiting a family’s worst nightmare to push an “anti-white prejudice” narrative, incite anger, and take a wrecking ball to the UK’s anti-racism policing commitments. We called it out directly, and we did not flinch from the nuance.

Yes, there are legitimate questions about how these officers were trained to respond to the scene. No, that does not validate the two-tier policing narrative. Yes, what happened to Henry Nowak was horrific. No, it does not make Vikram Digwa representative of the Sikh community, any more than a school shooter represents all young white men.

We ended somewhere I want to carry forward: a conversation about the kind of media we actually want to build. Not outrage bait. Not viral dunks. Not simplistic packaging of complex issues for the algorithm. Thoughtful, nuanced, persuasion-driven journalism that makes people smarter rather than angrier. James put it perfectly near the end. He wants to hear people believe what they are saying. He wants more time and more space to actually develop ideas. That is what this show is for.

You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below. And, as always, thank you for supporting independent media.

Henry Nowak: What Actually Happened & Why It Matters

Before the politics, the exploitation, and the riots, there is a murdered 18-year-old kid and a family in mourning. The facts of this case deserve to be stated clearly and without distortion.

• Vikram Digwa is a murderer who lied to cover it up. James made this point directly, and it is the right starting point. From all accounts that emerged in the trial, Digwa had been showing off his knife, threatening people with it, and using it as a prop for intimidation before the night he killed Henry Nowak. He then called police and lied, claiming he was the victim of a racist attack, to cover his tracks. He is a thug and a sociopath. He has been rightly sentenced to life in prison.

• The body cam footage is genuinely horrific and the police mishandled the scene. James watched the footage and described it carefully: Henry Nowak is on the ground saying he has been stabbed. The officer does not believe him. Digwa and his brother had already called 999 claiming they were victims of a racist attack, that the white man was drunk, that there were no weapons. The police arrived responding to that false account and handcuffed a dying young man. I watched it too and was viscerally angry. It was disgusting. I would have been just as angry watching it happen to a Black person or any other person. The mishandling is real and deserves a full inquiry.

• We do not have evidence that the attack was racially motivated against Henry Nowak because he was white. James made this point plainly, and it needs to be repeated: nothing in the evidence gathered in the trial indicates Digwa attacked Henry Nowak because he was white. The claim that this was a racially motivated hate crime against a white person is not supported by the facts of the case. That matters enormously when Farage is building an entire political argument on the premise that it was.

• Nigel Farage has not been in touch with Henry Nowak’s family. James said this, and it says everything. Farage gave an address to the nation about a murdered boy to further his own political agenda. He has not been down to see the family. He has not said, let us remember Henry and look into his life. He took a family’s worst nightmare and used it as a prop. That is the context in which everything that follows has to be understood.

Nigel Farage’s Playbook: Anecdote Extrapolation & The White Genocide Narrative

The far right has a playbook. It runs on both sides of the Atlantic. Take a single incident, extrapolate it as if it represents the dominant behavior of an entire group, use it to push a pre-existing narrative, and farm the outrage before the facts are fully understood. James and I have seen this before. We are seeing it again.

• Farage is echoing Enoch Powell and pushing a white genocide narrative. James laid this out with precision: Farage has said in a national address that white people now have fewer rights than minorities in Britain. That is echoing the language of Enoch Powell, the historic conservative figure whose Rivers of Blood speech warned that one day the black man would hold the whip hand over the white man. Farage is now transplanting that framing onto the Henry Nowak case. James noted that the more Farage strays into that language, the more he loses credibility with the mainstream of politics and mainstream media, because even the most aggrieved white people in Britain know deep down they are not at risk of racist attack in any way comparable to what people of color experience.

• “Pure cold rage” is incitement dressed in plausible deniability. James called it out directly: Farage told white people in Britain to respond to this case with pure cold rage. That sounds like incitement to violence. What followed was far-right riots in which over 100 police officers and two police dogs were injured. Farage is giving himself just enough room to say he meant rage at the ballot box, the same way Donald Trump told people to march on the Capitol and later said he meant march down there and protest. James made that comparison explicitly. Keir Starmer condemned the violence in the House of Commons and called for Farage to do the same. He will not.

• Farage is trying to make this the UK’s George Floyd moment for white people. I made this argument live: Farage has specifically invoked George Floyd in framing the Henry Nowak case because Henry Nowak says “I can’t breathe” in the body cam footage as he is dying. Farage is using that parallel deliberately. But the comparison collapses immediately under scrutiny. George Floyd was killed by a police officer. There is systemic racism in American policing with decades of documented evidence. What happened to Henry Nowak was a murderer lying to police. Completely different structural realities. The anger in the moment may feel similar, but the causes are categorically different. Farage knows this. He does not care.

• This is a globally coordinated far-right narrative and Elon Musk is amplifying it. I connected the dots on the live: the Henry Nowak story is being amplified by Elon Musk on Twitter, and it connects directly to the great replacement theory, the white genocide narrative, the anti-DEI push in the US, and even Samuel Alito’s language in the Callais decision claiming it is racist to draw majority-Black districts. These are not separate stories. The global far right is collaborative, and they are all using the same playbook. It’s all trying to build a narrative that white people are being systemically oppressed. James added that he would not be surprised if Farage is being actively advised on how to farm the outrage and utilize these opportunities, because we see Trump and the people around him doing the exact same thing every single time a tragedy occurs.

• The Sikh community is speaking out in repulsion, and that matters. I raised this on the live: I am seeing Sikhs going on television, speaking out against Digwa in the strongest possible terms. The Sikh community did not do this. Vikram Digwa did this. James said it plainly: Sikhs especially, as much as anyone in Britain, are out feeding the homeless, hosting events at their temples, contributing to communities everywhere. The fabricated tension between Sikh communities and white communities does not reflect the reality of how people actually live together in Britain.

The Two-Tier Policing Argument: What Is Real & What Is Not

Farage’s argument shifted when the white lives matter framing started losing traction. He moved to the House of Commons and started claiming there is a “two-tier policing” system that favors minorities over white people. James and I took this apart piece by piece, including the parts where legitimate critique is possible.

• The actual anti-racism policing commitment says nothing like what Farage claims. I read the relevant section on the live: the commitment is to producing equality of policing outcomes for people from different ethnic groups by responding to individuals and communities according to their specific needs, circumstances, and experiences. That is not discriminating against white people. That is trying to ensure policing outcomes are fair regardless of race. Farage is taking one line of a genuine anti-racism commitment and telling people it means white people are being treated worse. It is the same flip-the-script tactic he and Trump use on DEI, claiming something designed to make things more accessible for everyone is actually discriminating against white people.

• Two-tier policing is a catchy phrase built on cherry-picked incidents. James explained this carefully: the phrase catches on because there is genuine historical context people can point to, the grooming gang cover-ups in Rochdale and Rotherham, where predominantly Pakistani perpetrators went uninvestigated for years and police were reportedly worried about being accused of racism. James gave the full picture, though: Pakistani communities did not trust police understandably, because in the 1960s and 70s those same police forces included neo-fascist groups throwing firebombs at their businesses. The mistrust is rooted in real history. The grooming gang failures came from a complete breakdown of community trust, not from police being soft on minorities. Farage ignores all of that context and presents the outcome as evidence of systematic anti-white bias.

• There is a legitimate critique of these specific officers, and it deserves a full inquiry. James and I both agreed on this, and it is important. The officers who arrived at the scene did not do their jobs properly. They took the 999 call at face value, failed to assess the scene independently, and handcuffed a dying young man. James said the failure is on those officers as individuals and he does not see the systematic markers that would indicate a force-wide issue. I said there are legitimate questions about how officers are trained to respond to calls alleging racist attacks, whether they are being trained to do independent fact-finding rather than taking the account of the caller at face value. That is a real conversation worth having. Throwing out the entire anti-racism commitment because of those officers is not.

• The Jussie Smollett parallel tells us exactly how this playbook works. I made this comparison live: Smollett faked a hate crime in 2019, and the right immediately used it to claim all hate crimes are fake, even as real hate crimes were rising across the US during Trump's first term. Vikram Digwa lied about a racist attack to cover his murder, and now the right is seeking to claim that there is broadly anti-white bias in policing. Both cases involve a bad actor exploiting systems that exist to protect marginalized people. James’s point: that should prove that awful people, regardless of skin color, will always use whatever is current and topical to their advantage. It does not invalidate the systems. It validates the need for careful independent investigation. But Farage does not want careful independent investigation. He just wants to exploit this moment for political gain.

Don’t Let The Right Bait You Into Defending Stupid Stuff

This is the section I most want people to read. Farage’s strategy is not just about the Henry Nowak case. It is about setting a trap. And the progressive side has fallen into it before.

• Farage is trying to entrench liberals into defending the indefensible. I said this directly on the live: Farage is trying to get people on the liberal and pro-democracy side so angry and so reactive that they end up defending positions they should not be defending just to oppose him. When you are in that mode, when you are just reacting to the outrage, you stop thinking clearly. And then he gets to say, look at them, they are defending this. The antidote is exactly what we tried to do in this conversation: separate the legitimate anger at a genuine tragedy from the political exploitation of it, and be willing to say yes, the police mishandled this, and no, Farage is still wrong.

• Defund the police is what happens when progressives get baited into bad messaging. I raised this, and it sparked real conversation in the chat. In 2020, there was enormous moral and political energy behind the Black Lives Matter movement. The right framing would have been reform the police. What became the dominant slogan was defund the police, which handed the right a gift and became an anchor on the Democratic Party for years. Shannon in the chat made the important point that it was not mainstream Democrats saying defund, it was a handful of voices who got amplified. But the point stands: when you are angry and reactive, and you let the moment dictate your messaging, you end up fighting on the wrong terrain. Farage is trying to do the same thing here: bait the progressive side into positions that sound defensive or extreme.

• Always keep the third person in the room in mind. James made this point, and I want to highlight it because it is the core of persuasion-driven media. When you are in a debate or a conversation, you are not just talking to the person in front of you. You are talking to the person watching who has not yet made up their mind. James said he watches me do this on MS NOW, always thinking about that third person, always calibrating not to score points but to inform. That is what we try to do on this show. That is what wins over time.

• These tests are designed to be on progressive home turf. James made this point with clarity: the reason cases like this are so challenging is precisely because they implicate things progressives care deeply about: anti-racism commitments, police reform, community trust. Farage picks these moments deliberately because he knows that when progressives feel their values are being attacked they can get reactionary, loud, and imprecise. The right counts on that. The answer is not to stop caring about those values. It is to be disciplined, precise, and calm in how you defend them.

The Kind Of Media We Want To Build

We did not plan to end with a declaration of the kind of media ecosystem we want to build, but you can always count on James and I to end the pod with big picture thoughts. It emerged naturally from the conversation and from the community in the chat. James and I have been doing this long enough now that the why of what we are doing is clear to both of us.

• We are not here for outrage bait, and we are not here for clout. I said this directly near the end: I do not do this work to chase a segment or a viral moment. I am here to inform and persuade people so they can make good decisions about their democracy. That means being willing to say things that are complicated. It means being willing to disagree with the easy take. It means building a space where people can come in angry at the top of a live and leave with nuance because the conversation actually moved somewhere. That is a harder path than dunking on the next headline. I have been on it since 2016 when I was 23, documenting Trump’s first term. It is the only path worth being on.

• Nuance is not weakness. It is the work. I have been thinking a lot about the kind of content I want to contribute to the media landscape. When you can demonstrate flexibility, intellectual curiosity, and the willingness to say yes to a point you did not expect to agree with, you open people’s Overton windows. You give people a permission structure to change their minds. You show that there are thoughtful people on the progressive side. James pointed to this in how he describes our conversations: when people see us genuinely working through something rather than just presenting talking points, it models something they can do themselves. That is the whole project.

• The far right’s outrage machine wants you burnt out and reactive. James and I both named this at the end. The greatest victory Farage and Trump can win is not a policy win. It is getting you to give yourself over to constant outrage, to feel like every development is the end of the world, to lose the ability to think clearly because you are running on fear and anger. James said it simply: we want you to come away from these conversations feeling good. Not naive. Not uninformed. But equipped. Capable. Nourished rather than depleted. That is the intention behind every episode of this show.

• James’s Dead Poets Society close. He ended on this, and it is worth preserving: engineering, politics, law, all noble pursuits. But art, music, human connection, these are what we live for. Come from that place. If you put that at the center of everything, you will not burn yourself out. You will not give yourself over to them. You will have something left at the end of the week that is yours, and that is worth protecting. We do this work from that place. And we will keep doing it.

Bottom Line

Henry Nowak was an 18-year-old kid who was murdered by a sociopath, mishandled by officers who failed to properly assess a scene, and then had his death weaponized by a politician who never even contacted his family. The legitimate anger at what happened to Henry deserves a full inquiry into the officers’ training and conduct.

But it does not validate the white genocide narrative, the two-tier policing claim, or the incitement to outrage Farage dressed up as an address to the nation. The playbook is the same on both sides of the Atlantic: take a single tragedy, extrapolate it onto an entire group, farm the outrage, and watch the far-right movement grow. The answer is not to stop being angry. It is to be precise about how to channel your outrage productively, and never let your critical thinking skills fall to the wayside. Stay sane, everyone.

Ahmed Baba News

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Thank you for watching! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value pro-democracy journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference.

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Some conversations leave you smarter. Some leave you inspired. This one did both. I was joined by two of the most brilliant and passionate historians working today, and I left the live feeling exactly what I always hope our audience feels when they tune in: that understanding history does not make the current moment more hopeless. It makes progress seem more possible.

I re-immerse myself in this history whenever I need to be reminded that we have overcome seismic challenges before. Every time I talk to Dr. Scott and Dr. Williams, I leave revitalized. I hope this conversation does the same for you.

Dr. Terry Anne Scott is an award-winning historian, author, and speaker, the Director of the Institute for Common Power, and former Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Hood College. Dr. Yohuru Williams is Distinguished University Chair and Professor of History and founding director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. They are both going to be live on the ground in Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, this Sunday, June 7th at noon Eastern Time for a national Zoom teach-in with Mr. Charles Mauldin, who was sixth in line on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday. Ahead of that, I was happy to have this conversation to glean their insights and get a glimpse of what they’ll be covering in the teach-in.

We covered an enormous amount of ground. We started with the Callais ruling and what gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act actually means in practical terms. We traced the through line from the Confederacy to MAGA, the progress-backlash cycle that has defined American history, and the coded language that has been used across generations to erode Black political power.

We dug into the legal architecture behind what Dr. Williams called a new “Roberts Crow” era and what the Supreme Court has been doing quietly for decades. We talked about what previous generations of civil rights activists understood about power that the modern movement sometimes forgets. And we ended with concrete tools, from a story about Diane Nash, a new way to view “WOKE,” the Ella Baker model of leadership, and why cynicism is the one thing that will absolutely guarantee failure.

This was genuinely one of my favorite Substack Lives. It’s exactly the kind of content I want to contribute to the media landscape. Informative, deep, and contextualized in a way that leaves you feeling empowered.

You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below.

The Callais Ruling At America’s 250th: What Just Happened And Why It Matters

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has now been gutted by the Supreme Court. On the eve of America’s 250th birthday, the conversation about what this country actually stands for has never been more urgent.

• Section 2 ensured fair and non-discriminatory political representation, and it is now gone. Dr. Scott explained it plainly: Section 2 made sure political representation was proportional and non-discriminatory. The Callais case came out of Louisiana, where 30% of the population is African American, and their representation was 30%. With Callais, that representation now threatens to be zero. That is a direct reversion to a political landscape this country fought and bled to move beyond.

• In Montgomery, the first Black representative since 1871 could now be the last. Dr. Scott pointed to Shomari Figures, who represents Montgomery through Mobile and is the first Black representative in Montgomery since 1871, 150 years. With the Callais ruling, he could be the last for however many more years. That is the concrete human consequence of what the Supreme Court just did, and it lands with full weight when you situate it against America approaching its 250th anniversary.

• The ruling sits on a continuum of cementing white supremacy, and that context is the source of optimism, not despair. Dr. Scott offered two paths for how to receive this history: deep distress because it is so pernicious, or optimism because we know people fought against it and won. She chose optimism. People like Mr. Charles Mauldin, who will be with them in Selma this weekend, are the reason. We owe it to them to continue the fight because a just and inclusive democracy is winnable.

• Dr. Williams grounded this moment in the Lewis doctrine. Dr. Williams wrote about this concept in 2021 following John Lewis’s death. Lewis said that together we can redeem the soul of America by getting into good trouble, necessary trouble. Everyone quotes that line, Dr. Williams noted, but they miss the part where Lewis talked about the need to study history honestly and engage it in a way that creates meaningful change. Lewis also talked about the right to vote as an instrument of empowerment in communities of color specifically. That framework is what the teach-in this Sunday is designed to activate.

The Backlash Cycle: From Reconstruction To MAGA

American history is defined by cycles of progress and backlash. Understanding that cycle is not a reason to despair. It is the map. And the map also shows that every backlash has been followed by more progress, because of what people chose to do next.

• Every period of Black progress in American history has been met with a systematic backlash designed to roll it back. The Civil War was a backlash to the expansion of non-slave states and the growing threat to the slave economy. After Reconstruction produced nearly 2,000 Black elected officials, there was a violent backlash that gave us Jim Crow, the KKK, and the systematic erasure of Black political power. After the civil rights movement of the 1960s, there was a backlash: assassinations, the war on drugs, the Southern strategy. After Barack Obama became president and it became undeniable how fundamentally Black culture is American culture, there was a backlash, and that backlash is MAGA. We are still in that cycle. The erosion of voting rights is not a new story. It is the same story, repackaged.

• The erosion of voting rights is not just part of the backlash. It is the hallmark of it. Dr. Scott made this distinction precisely. During Reconstruction, nearly 2,000 Black elected officials served, from sheriffs to aldermen to representatives, so many that white Southerners called it an era of Negro domination or Negro rule in deeply pejorative terms. When Reconstruction ended and federal troops protecting Black voting rights were removed, the first thing they chanted was no more Negro domination. What followed was literacy tests, poll taxes, lynching, and people being murdered on the courthouse lawn for attempting to register. Undermining Black political power was the hallmark of restoring a white power structure. We are seeing that again.

• Tennessee right now is a direct historical parallel to Southern Redemption. Dr. Scott drew this line explicitly: the Tennessee legislature recently removed all African American and Democratic lawmakers from any position of power within the legislature. That is precisely what happened in the moments of Southern Redemption following the Civil War, when Black people were stripped of representation systematically and violently. In Georgia alone, 25% of Black elected officials were killed after Reconstruction. The parallel is chilling.

• Dr. Williams on the South losing the war but winning the peace. Dr. Williams cited David Blight’s Race and Reunion: even going into the 1960s and beyond, there was fertile ground where someone like Donald Trump could create a narrative about a mythical America, making America great again, hearkening back to a “Lost Cause” period that gave rise to Jim Crow segregation and was completely hostile to women’s rights, immigration, and racial minorities of all stripes. The Confederate monuments went up between 1890 and 1910, Dr. Williams noted, when those same sentiments were being institutionalized. They came down in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, and that removal became the opportunity to operationalize a playbook that had been in existence for decades. John Roberts and others had been working toward this quietly. Trump simply became their vocal champion, willing to say the quiet parts out loud.

Coded Language & The Southern Strategy: How The Con Works

The language changes across generations. The con does not. Understanding the coded language that has been used to pit working-class white Americans against Black and brown Americans is essential to dismantling it.

• The Southern strategy is the Republican Party’s operating manual for decades. I laid this out directly: LBJ pushed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the party switch happened, Southern Democrats disaffected to the Republicans, and Richard Nixon accelerated it. Lee Atwater and Reagan deployed welfare queens and other code words, language designed to appeal to the economic anxiety of Southern whites while governing for the rich. The message was: Black people are to blame for your problems. Not the people giving tax cuts to the rich and robbing you blind. The brown people. That has been the Republican Party’s model for decades.

• Trump ripped the mask off. What was new about Trump was not the ideology. It was the willingness to dispense with the coded language entirely. He came down the escalator and said Mexicans are rapists. He called for a Muslim ban. He stopped pretending to be a business party in a suit and just played directly to bigotries without the euphemisms. Dr. Scott made the point that “Make America Great Again” was also Reagan’s slogan. This is nothing but a continuation of the same ideological effort to ensure white supremacy governs and to suppress progress among Black and BIPOC people, she argued.

• The opportunity now is to show white working-class voters they have been lied to the entire time. I made this argument directly: Trump is the perfect embodiment of the con becoming visible. He is literally enriching himself while actively raising prices on the people who voted for him. The through line of history, the Southern strategy, the coded language, the Lost Cause, it all points to the same conclusion. The modern Republican Party has never been legislating for white working-class voters. It has been using their racial grievances as a distraction while governing for the top. Now that Trump has stripped the mask off entirely, the teaching of this history can wake people up to that truth in a way that coded language made much harder.

“Roberts Crow” & The Legal Architecture Of Suppression

The Supreme Court has been the instrument of voting rights suppression for over 150 years. Dr. Williams and Dr. Scott gave the legal and historical receipts that everybody should have ready.

• A hostile Supreme Court was the original instrument of undermining Reconstruction. Dr. Williams laid this out with precision: the Supreme Court rendered most civil rights legislation from the Reconstruction era nugatory, eviscerating key sections of the Enforcement Act of 1870 and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. In one case, U.S. v. Reese, the justices literally employed the language of magic words, ruling that because an election examiner did not use the explicit language of race, there was no way to determine if discrimination had occurred. That reasoning is the ancestor of the intent requirement Alito used in the Callais decision. The genealogy is unbroken.

• “Roberts Crow” is not a metaphor. It is a documented project. Dr. Williams explained that in 2013, after Shelby County v. Holder, he and other historians wrote a piece naming what they called “Roberts Crow.” John Roberts’s history is known. His path to gutting the Voting Rights Act was a career-long project. Callais is its fruition. The face of the laws do not say Black people cannot vote, Dr. Williams noted, but the outcomes will be racist by design. That is “Roberts Crow.”

• Facially neutral laws are still discriminatory laws. Dr. Scott gave the receipts. In Georgia, it is now criminalized to give water or food to people standing in line to vote. The law does not mention race. But in the 2020 election, when Georgia went blue, it was Black people standing in the long lines in Black districts. If you criminalize giving people food and water, you are trying to cause people to go home. That is facially neutral and functionally discriminatory. Dr. Scott said they are going to walk through a slew of these laws at the teach-in this weekend.

• The Alito intent requirement guts the 1982 amendment Congress specifically passed to fix this. I made this point directly: the 1982 amendment to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed explicitly to shift the standard from intent to outcomes, because Congress recognized that proving intent was nearly impossible by design. Alito’s ruling reverses that. Effectively, to prove racism now, you would need a Signal chat of people saying “I am being racist so right now,” even though we know precisely what the targeted outcomes are. Dr. Williams connected this to the same pattern going back to Reconstruction, and called for people to memorize the 14th and 15th Amendments and to be able to cite the case law, not to become junior attorneys, but to recognize the signs and fight back effectively.

What Previous Generations Understood About Power That We Sometimes Forget

The civil rights movement was not just a moral movement. It was a strategic one. The lessons about power, economic leverage, organizing versus mobilizing, and the Ella Baker model of leadership are as applicable today as they were in 1965. I asked Dr. Scott and Dr. Williams what we can learn from the movements of the past.

• Economic boycotts are one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal. Dr. Scott made this point with historical precision: the Montgomery bus boycott, the Nashville sit-ins, and the 1953 Baton Rouge bus boycott were all economic boycotts. Black people withheld their money to put pressure on a white power business structure to create change. That same power exists today. When Black people say we are not going to Target because of how they dropped their DEI commitments, when people support Costco and other organizations that held the line, that is the same mechanism. Voices raised in unison work too. Alex Haley’s Roots being removed from a banned book list after vocal outrage. The $1.776 billion slush fund being blocked because of public and court pressure. Never underestimate the power you have as an individual.

• Ella Baker taught us that the best leaders empower others to lead. Dr. Scott brought up Ella Baker as the model she tries to adopt. Baker was a youth organizer in the NAACP, a key figure in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the person who organized voter registration across Atlanta. When the students from the sit-ins were ready to organize, she helped them create the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. What Baker understood is that leadership is not about demanding deference. It is about making sure others around you understand their own power as leaders. That is the Ella Baker model, and it is the model the Institute for Common Power runs on.

• Stokely Carmichael had a moment of doubt too. Dr. Williams told this story with care: when Carmichael first encountered young people sitting in, he thought they were just trying to get on television. Then he went and witnessed the courage in person, and it transformed him. He went on to become one of the fiercest voices of the movement. Dr. Williams’s point is that it is okay to feel disconnected or doubtful in this moment. What matters is that the people we lionize always found a way to respond. Find your Stokely Carmichael moment. Walk in, witness the courage, and let it change you.

• The difference between mass mobilizing and mass organizing matters enormously. Dr. Williams raised this distinction, and I built on it. Mobilizing is powerful, getting 3,000 people in a square is meaningful, and the No Kings protests function as a funnel to get people into activism. But the real work is organizing, figuring out the levers of power and targeting them with precision. The Selma tactic was about imagery and moral force. The economic boycotts targeted financial pressure points. Minneapolis and what happened with George Floyd was about sustained attention forcing federal involvement. You need to understand which tool applies to which moment.

• Cynicism will get you absolutely nowhere. I said this directly, and I mean it. A solid portion of the far left operates from a place of nihilism, a belief that nothing can change, that all paths are closed. That is not what John Lewis modeled. It is not what Charles Mauldin modeled. The “I Have a Dream” speech was not a “There Is No Point” speech. It was an audacious act of optimism delivered in the middle of a moment where what King was describing seemed genuinely unimaginable. He was painting the future into existence. People with far less power, far fewer rights, and far fewer tools than we have today made changes many could not have foreseen. If they could do it, we can absolutely do this.

Education To Action: How We Fight From Here

Dr. Scott’s phrase is education to action. Learning without acting is a privilege. The teach-in this Sunday is built around exactly that principle, and this section is for everyone reading this who wants to know what to do next.

• Diane Nash showed up alone, and from that came an entire movement. Dr. Scott told this story, and it is the one I want everyone to carry with them. Diane Nash was a young student from Chicago who came to Fisk University in Nashville and started attending James Lawson’s nonviolent resistance workshops. Do you know how many people showed up with her? Zero. It was her and James Lawson, sitting in the basement of a church. She kept coming back. She brought more people. More people came. From that small beginning came John Lewis, Bernard Lafayette, and the entire Nashville movement that shaped the modern civil rights era. What if she had not kept showing up? Never let anyone tell you that you do not have the power to create a movement.

• Dr. Williams’s WOKE acronym is an interesting framework. Dr. Williams reclaimed the word deliberately, clarifying that he does not mean what Pete Hegseth loses sleep over. He means it as a concrete framework. W is the Willingness to confront difficult truths about ourselves, our institutions, and our history. O is Ownership of our role in creating and sustaining the conditions that shape outcomes. K is Keep, maintenance, what do you grow, what do you protect, how do you cover crop so that when headlines fade and the work becomes difficult, the fire stays lit. E is Extension, figuring out how to extend the work, extend the season, extend the streak, winning hearts and minds in spaces where metrics do not capture what is actually happening. Stay woke. That is the whole program.

• Dr. Scott’s historical empowerment framework is history as a self-help book. She named it precisely: historical empowerment. History is not just context. It is fuel. Every time you feel discouraged, you think about Diane Nash, Ella Baker, John Lewis, Charles Mauldin, and Joanne Bland, who was eleven years old and still walked the Edmund Pettus Bridge. If they could do that, if Charles Mauldin could get beaten on that bridge and get back up, surely we can do this from the relative comfort of our phones and computers. People in the chat during the live were saying their grandfathers and fathers faced much worse. Let that be guidance, not guilt.

• They cannot gerrymander the maps fast enough to win the midterms. I said this, and I believe it. The Supreme Court ruling is a serious setback. But if all demographics are increasingly rejecting Trump, you can move districts around all you want, you can’t save the GOP majority. Trump is approaching 30% approval. The work has worked. The American people are mobilizing. There have been real damages, the federal workforce erosion, the attack on Black unemployment, the ongoing assault on civil rights. But there is a backlash growing that is bigger than any map can contain. Donald Trump is not stronger than the American people. He never has been. And he is not going to be the thing that ends the American experiment. We should be embarrassed if he were.

• This Sunday, the teach-in goes live from Selma and Montgomery. Dr. Scott closed with the line that stayed with me: evil will always falter under the weight of good and righteousness. The teach-in this Sunday, June 7th at noon Eastern Time, will be live from Selma and Montgomery with Dr. Scott, Dr. Williams, and Mr. Charles Mauldin, the man who was sixth in line on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday. Four hours of learning, inspiration, and determination from the sacred sites that drove the most important piece of small-d democratic legislation in American history. Sign up here.

Bottom Line

The Voting Rights Act is under assault, the backlash cycle is real, and Roberts Crow is the Supreme Court’s long game finally realized. But every generation that faced something comparable found a way forward because they understood power, used economic leverage, organized rather than just mobilized, and refused to let cynicism win. Diane Nash showed up alone. Charles Mauldin stood sixth in line on a bridge knowing what was coming. Ella Baker built a movement by empowering others to lead. History is not just context. It is the map out of this.

Join the teach-in this Sunday, June 7th, at noon Eastern Time, live from Selma and Montgomery.

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Thank you for watching! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value pro-democracy journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference.

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Charles Douglas and I did something a little different this week. Instead of our usual Friday setup, we checked in live while Charles was on the ground in California on election day. And I mean literally on the ground.

As we were getting started, Saikat Chakrabarti, the candidate running to replace Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco, walked right past the camera with his team and Common Power staffers. That is the kind of view you only get when your co-host is out on these streets doing the work.

Charles had spent the day before in Bakersfield knocking 120 doors in 90 degree heat with Randy Villegas, and was now in San Francisco with Saikat’s operation, where hundreds of volunteers were up since 5 am putting sticky notes on 20,000 doors across the city. Jessica, a Common Power staffer and Bay Area native, joined us from the field to give her read on the ground. It was one of those lives where the movement of election day became the content.

The conversation also went big picture. California’s primaries are not just local races. They are a live test of the central argument Charles and I have been making all year: that what Democratic voters want is not a more moderate party, but a bolder one. The establishment versus anti-establishment battle playing out in San Francisco, Bakersfield, and the governor’s race is a preview of the fight that will define the party heading into 2026 and beyond.

You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below.

In California’s Primaries, A Battle To Define The Democratic Party’s Identity

Three races, one through line: establishment Democrats are facing an insurgent wave. Charles was on the ground to see how it plays out in real time.

• Saikat Chakrabarti’s ground game in San Francisco is one of the strongest Charles has ever seen. Five hundred volunteers were up at 5 am putting sticky notes on 20,000 doors across the city before round two of door-knocking even started. Jessica reported from the field that a significant portion of the volunteers they interviewed were first-timers, people who had never volunteered before but felt this race was different. Her read: San Francisco feels they’ve never had a real progressive in this seat, and people feel this is their shot. Saikat is a Silicon Valley coder who is talking about a Star Trek future, cutting the military budget, and policies to offset AI-driven job loss. That is a different kind of candidate.

• The governor’s race is a cautionary tale of what happens when establishment Dems fail to coalesce. Charles called it a slow-moving train wreck and placed the blame squarely on establishment Democrats not getting their act together behind a single candidate. The result was a near disaster where California, a deep blue state, almost ended up with no Democrat in the top two of its own governor’s race. Charles’s minimum acceptable outcome was at least one Democrat making the general. Jessica’s take from the ground: she landed on Tom Steyer in the last three weeks because he is genuinely progressive, focused on climate and single-payer healthcare.

Prosperity Politics & The Overton Window

The lesson some Democrats took from 2024 was that voters wanted something more conservative. Charles and I both think that is exactly wrong. What voters wanted was bold action. The candidates winning right now are the ones offering it.

• Our Overton window argument is the most strategically important point of the conversation. If Democrats want to move the country further toward working class policies, they cannot negotiate from the middle. You start at a point further out than where you want to end up, the same way you negotiate a car price. Blue cities in blue states, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, New York, Colorado, are the places where electing further left candidates pulls the Overton window in that direction. When people see these progressive policies can work (example: Mamdani), they’ll yearn for those policies at the national level.

• People do not want to just get by. They want to prosper. I have been thinking about this a lot and said it directly on the live: the framing of kitchen table politics as survival, people just want to put food on the table, pay their bills, get by, undersells what people actually want. People want to thrive. They want their kids to do better than them. They want prosperity. Charles connected it immediately to FDR, whose language was about prosperity and economic transformation, not survival. The candidates winning right now are speaking that language. I added the FDR detail: he solved the banking crisis in his first week by declaring a bank holiday, issuing a fireside chat, passing legislation, and reinstilling public confidence in banks. That is the kind of bold action people are hungry for, and it is catching on because we are in a slow-moving economic crisis that demands it.

• Randy Villegas talked a Trump voter into supporting him at the door in Bakersfield. Charles reported this directly from the ground. They knocked on a door, a Republican answered and said he had voted for Trump, and the message was: our candidates are not just for one party. They are for anyone who believes the system is not working for them. Charles called Randy over to finish the conversation, and the voter came around. That is the persuasion model working in real time. Charles noted that Randy’s flyer leads with both parties failing people, which wipes the slate clean and stops the party line reflex. Right now it is Republicans and independents looking for a new home, and talking about affordability and staying in your home and having a job is what moves them. I added that the contrast writes itself when Trump is out here saying he does not care about Americans’ financial situation while enriching himself.

• How you read tonight’s results matters as much as who wins. Charles closed with this, and it is the right frame: do not just look at which candidate advances. Look at what Republican and independent voters did with their vote. Look at young voter turnout and how they broke. That data tells you something about what is actually working in blue cities and blue states and how to replicate it for the fall. The system has to be changed, not iterated upon. Having policies that actually improve the lives of young people and disenfranchised communities is how you do it.

Bottom Line

California’s primaries are a live test of the central argument of this entire midterm cycle: bold beats cautious, prosperity beats survival, and the candidates with the ground games and the big ideas are the ones generating the energy. Charles was on the streets in 90-degree heat in Bakersfield and up at 5 a.m. in San Francisco because that is where the work happens. Watch the turnout numbers tonight as closely as you watch the results.

If this conversation mattered to you, I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! Independent pro-democracy journalism only works if people back it. And if you’d like to get involved and knock doors this election year, I also highly recommend checking out Common Power.

Ahmed Baba News

Independent pro-democracy journalism, analysis, and commentary. Delivered to your inbox 2 to 4 times a week. Become a free or paid subscriber.

Thank you for watching! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value pro-democracy journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference.

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Friday night on MS NOW’s The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle, I was grateful to be invited back for a full-hour Nightcap panel. I had the opportunity to make two arguments I’ve been building throughout this war.

The first is the one I think members of the media need to be tracking more diligently: the Iran War has been used as a pump and dump scheme, with insiders making millions. I laid this out in detail and in unmistakable terms.

Trump made 3,700 stock trades in Q1. He owns defense contractors while waging a war that benefits them. Reuters found $7 billion in oddly timed oil trades right before Trump’s fake “Iran deal” announcements. Insiders profit while Americans struggle. Stephanie Ruhle has been on this beat nightly, so I’m grateful to her and her team for their relentless coverage of this grift. More journalists should follow suit.

The second point I emphasized is the incompetence argument. If you run the madman theory but have no theory, you’re just left with a madman. Trump’s unpredictability has no strategy behind it. Now, the key objective of the Iran War negotiations is to solve a problem created by the war itself: reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Even if a deal is reached, experts warn of long-lasting global supply shocks. Iran emerges from this war stronger, with more leverage, and the US is left looking weak. Trump created this problem, and he’s failing to fix it.

, Anthony Fisher, and David Rhode were also on the Nightcap panel. What struck me was how well all of our analyses built on each other, and how their expertise validated and deepened the value of the conversation. Anthony broached Trump’s erratic decision-making. Ron laid out why even if a deal to open the Strait were to be struck tomorrow, it would not fix the supply shock already in motion. David closed with the geopolitical verdict: Iran emerges from this war stronger, with new leverage over the global economy, and the most powerful country on earth cannot stop them from using it.

This was a genuinely fantastic panel. You can watch a clip of some key moments above and read key takeaways below.

The Iran War Has Been Used As A Pump And Dump Scheme

All of these stories are tied together. The inflation numbers, Trump’s stock trades, the fake “deal” announcements, and the oil futures flooding the market on cue. Once you see the financial architecture underneath the chaos, it stops looking like incompetence and starts looking like a mechanism.

• The economic backdrop makes the grift more devastating. I laid this out directly on the panel: annualized inflation from the Consumer Price Index is at 3.8%, up from 2.9% when Trump walked into office. Americans have spent $450 more on energy since the war began. That is a family’s tax refund wiped out by a war being waged by a president who owns stock in the industries benefiting from it.

• Trump owns defense contractors while waging a war that benefits them. I said it plainly: Trump’s stock portfolio includes Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin while waging a war that requires the US to purchase more from defense contractors he has investments in. He owns NVIDIA while greenlighting NVIDIA chip sales to China. The conflicts of interest could not be more transparent.

• Reuters analyzed $7 billion in oddly timed trades right before Trump’s Iran announcements. Like clockwork, about 20 minutes before Trump makes these announcements that never come to anything, hundreds of millions of dollars in oil futures flood the market. We do not know exactly who is benefiting. But someone is. And the American people see right through it.

• If Republicans think this won’t come up in the midterms, they have another thing coming. I closed this section with the political consequence: the pump and dump framework connects the corruption to the kitchen table. Rising gas prices, rising energy costs, wiped out refunds, and a president making trades in the industries he is directly moving with his decisions. That is the midterm story that writes itself.

A War That Has Made America Weaker

The madman theory only works if there is a theory. There isn’t one, so we’re just left with a madman. We now have a negotiation trying to claw back to a status quo that existed the day before the war started, but it will be impossible to attain.

• If you run the madman theory with no theory, you are just left with a madman. I made this point on the panel: some of Trump’s allies have tried to frame his unpredictability as strategic, acting crazy to extract concessions. That is the madman theory. The problem is that there are no consistent goals and no theory of the case. The unpredictability is not a strategy. It is simply the result of the president’s unstable mind.

• The deal on the table is trying to solve a problem that the war itself created. I laid this out on the panel: the Strait of Hormuz was open on February 27th, the day before the strikes. The key objective of these negotiations is to reopen it. We are not even talking about nuclear capability or missile programs. We are negotiating to get back to where we started before Trump launched the war. But that’s not a status quo we can return to.

• Even if a deal is reached tomorrow, the supply shock is already in motion. Ron Insana extended the argument with the financial reality: oil company executives are warning that not only will it take time to get oil to its destination once the strait reopens, but supplies have been drawn down so severely across the US, Japan, China, and Europe that we could see a global supply crisis regardless. That is true for fertilizer and other materials passing through the Strait as well. Ron’s conclusion: we have no visibility on whether the Strait even reopens within 30 to 60 days of a deal being signed.

• Iran emerges from this war stronger, and the most powerful country on earth cannot stop them. David Rhode delivered the geopolitical verdict: there are 60 days of rough negotiations still to come on the nuclear program, and Iran is not budging. Iran can now take control of the Strait of Hormuz, shut it down, and the United States cannot stop them. My take: we’ve handed them a deterrent more effective than a nuclear weapon: the ability to short-circuit the global economy whenever they choose. Trump created this problem. He has no plan to fix it.

Bottom Line

The Iran War is a pump and dump scheme with $7 billion in oddly timed trades, a president who owns defense contractors while waging war, and fake announcements timed like clockwork to move oil markets. And after all of it, this new round of negotiations is trying to solve a problem that the war itself created. The Strait was open the day before the strikes. Now, Iran is stronger, the supply shock is already in motion, and Republicans will answer for this in November.

You can watch more from the A and B blocks of The 11th Hour panel on YouTube:

If this analysis mattered to you, I hope you consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News. And if you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! It truly means a lot. Independent media runs on the people who back it. You’ve helped empower my work as I get to bring my journalism to increasingly bigger stages. I couldn’t be more appreciative. We’re making an impact!

Ahmed Baba News

Independent pro-democracy journalism, analysis, and commentary. Delivered to your inbox 2 to 4 times a week. Become a free or paid subscriber.

Thank you for watching! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value pro-democracy journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference.

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I was set to record another conversation with Edwin Eisendrath for his weekly Chicago radio show on WCPT 820 AM, but Edwin suggested we do the recording live on Substack instead of Zoom. I was thrilled to do it, because I’ve been meaning to collaborate on a Substack with Edwin since our last conversation.

This turned into one of the more clarifying discussions I’ve had in a while. Edwin brings decades of experience in politics, education, and media to illuminate these.

He is the host of “,” on . He was also former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a former Chicago alderman, a former HUD regional administrator, and a former Chicago public schools teacher. He has actually governed, actually run a newsroom, and actually sat in the rooms where the corruption that erodes public trust has happened. His brilliant perspective ran through everything we covered.

We started with Trump’s Memorial Day message insulting Democrats, and from there outlined something bigger: the gap between who America actually is and who Donald Trump is, and how that gap defines this entire moment. With the country’s 250th anniversary approaching, we went big picture, analyzing how Trump undermines America’s foundational principles.

From there, we moved through the right-wing assault on multiculturalism (Edwin accurately called it “American culture”), how the Iran war has left us weaker than it found us, and the corruption that Edwin argues functions as an extra tax on every American. We ended on optimism, the earned kind, grounded in where the numbers actually are and where this is heading.

This was an excellent conversation. You can watch it in full above and read key takeaways below. Also, this will air again on Saturday afternoon on WCPT 820 AM, so go support them if you’re able!

The Wrong Man For America’s 250th

Edwin opened with something that was still bothering him from the weekend: Trump’s Memorial Day message, which managed to insult Democrats on a day meant to honor the Americans who died serving the country, regardless of party. That set the frame for everything that followed.

• The Memorial Day post was another normalized desecration of the office. Edwin made this point directly: Americans who fought and died did not check a partisan box before they did it, and Trump generalized an entire group of people, many of whom died for this country. What struck me just as much was watching Fox News read the post on air as if it were a perfectly normal thing for a president to say. The president is supposed to be the best of us, not the absolute worst, and on a totally innocuous day where he could have risen above the fray, he leaned on his worst impulses instead. Edwin’s response cut to it: Does he even have other impulses?

• The 250th should have been a chance to take stock of real progress, and instead, it is a backlash. I said this is what makes it so depressing that he is the one helming it. The honest version of this anniversary would acknowledge that the founders did not abolish slavery at the founding, that we had a deeply flawed beginning, and that we have made enormous gains since. The founders created a framework to pursue freedom even though they were flawed men. Trump is marking the milestone by eroding the foundational principles that the framework was built to advance with his assault on fundamental civil rights.

• Trump cannot showcase the country we actually are. Edwin made the point that, beyond being the wrong man to narrate our history, Trump is incapable of celebrating the diverse, interesting, brilliant country America has become. That is why the artists who signed up for what they understood to be a nonpartisan celebration created by Congress are now pulling out as they realize it is a Trump party rather than a national one. They are saying no, and Edwin and I agreed that is the right call.

Multiculturalism IS American Culture

This was the intellectual heart of the conversation. Edwin pushed me on the language itself, and his reframe is one I am going to keep using, because it takes away the escape hatch that the word multiculturalism accidentally hands the other side.

• Edwin’s reframe from multiculturalism to American culture closes a loophole. He explained that he has stopped using the word multiculturalism, because when you call it that, the other side hears a buffet they can take three items from and leave the rest aside. That is not who we are. He reached for St. Paul, from a tradition he noted was not his own: if you get rid of the hands, what is the stomach going to do? We all have to be part of this for it to be the culture we are. I told him I was genuinely glad he framed it that way, because he is right. This is not just an attack on multiculturalism. It is an attack on American culture at its fundamental essence.

• The assault on this culture is fundamentally anti-American. I walked through how they are lying about the history of America, acting as if it has always been a white Christian nation, when in reality, this country was built by slaves, and the Black community went on to shape its music, its art, its literature, and its politics. Edwin added that it runs through every aspect of our lives. To diminish that and pretend it was not the foundation of America is to attack the country itself.

• The blood-and-soil rhetoric is a transnational project. I connected the dots on the ethno-nationalist language: Vance’s blood-and-soil framing, Trump talking about the British blood running through the room when King Charles visited, and the same eugenic, white-nationalist vocabulary showing up in the UK with the Reform party. This is a coordinated assault on the idea of a multicultural society, and they want the benefits of that society without the people in it. They will hold a rally about deporting immigrants and then go to a Mexican restaurant afterward.

• America was multicultural from the first European footfall. Edwin made the historical point cleanly: when the rest of us got here, there were already Native Americans here. America was multicultural from the moment someone from Europe set foot on the continent. I added that whiteness itself has expanded over time, that the Irish and Italians faced discrimination before being folded in, and that this is exactly why Democrats need to make the affirmative case for an immigrant-welcoming culture, including the fact that undocumented immigrants pay $100 billion in taxes annually without receiving the benefits.

The Iran War Has Made Us Weaker

Edwin has worked in that part of the world for years, and his read on the Iran war was unsparing. We both landed in the same place: there is no version of this where America comes out ahead.

• Trump is negotiating with the voices in his own head. Edwin described the whiplash perfectly, the peace, then the bombing, then the peace, then the Strait of Hormuz is open, then it is not, then he controls it, but Iran has to open it. He said that earlier in the presidency, people might have called this strategic ambiguity a genius, leaving himself room to move, but we are past that now. America looks at this and sees a man who has no idea what to do. I added that when they call it the madman theory, the problem is that without the theory, you are just left with a madman.

• The deal on the table solves a problem that the war itself created. I laid out the specifics: the Strait of Hormuz was open on February 27th, the day before the attacks, and Iran did not have a nuclear weapon. The deal being floated, from what I saw in Axios, is effectively a deal to return to the table to restart talks that were already happening when Trump launched the initial strikes. Scott Jennings and some Republicans are trying to claim victory, but even if the Strait reopens, economists say the damage is long-lasting. Gulf production that shut down will take time to ramp back up, and oil prices will stay elevated.

• We handed Iran a weapon stronger than a nuclear one. This is the part that should worry everyone. We are left with a more extreme Iran that has realized its leverage and now holds a deterrent more usable than a nuclear weapon: the ability to short-circuit the global economy whenever it chooses. Edwin put it starkly that there is no circumstance where the United States ends this better off than before, and no circumstance where the Iranian regime is not more entrenched. We lost whatever shot at regime change we might have had when the older Khamenei died, because killing him made him a martyr.

• A simpleton with no intellectual curiosity cannot win a war he does not understand. After Edwin called Trump a simpleton, I made the point that Trump lacks the curiosity required to understand the enemy, and you cannot negotiate or wage war against a regime whose mechanics you do not grasp. He thought he could go in and pull a Venezuela. Instead, he took out Khamenei and empowered the IRGC, whose decentralized structure means that taking out a few generals just elevates others. Edwin brought it home with Oman, the most beautiful and peaceful country in the Gulf, which Trump threatened to bomb this week. Edwin said he is sick of a president whose answer to every problem, high gas prices included, is to lock someone up, bomb someone, or shoot them. With the guardrails of the first term gone and only loyalists around him, this is Trump’s id fully unleashed.

Corruption Is A Tax, And America Is Starting To See It

Edwin’s framing here was one of the sharpest of the conversation, and it carries extra weight coming from a former alderman who watched colleagues go to prison over sums that would not cover a rounding error in Trump’s grift.

• Corruption is an extra tax on every American. Edwin made the argument that every overpriced no-bid contract to line a friend’s pocket, every slush fund skimmed from money handed to the Treasury, comes out of your pocket and mine. The corruption is not just disgusting on its own. It is a direct cost imposed on all of us. That reframe matters because it connects the abstract scandal to the kitchen-table squeeze people are already feeling.

• The $1,700 stop sign versus the billion-dollar grift. Edwin told the story of his time as a Chicago alderman, when colleagues went to jail for taking $1,700 to approve a stop sign, and people were rightly disgusted that a politician would line his pocket at the public’s expense. He asked the question directly: this guy has taken billions for himself and his friends, so where is America’s sense of outrage? I walked through the scale of it: the attempt to extract $10 billion from the IRS, settled down to a $1.776 billion slush fund for his cronies, the billions in crypto, the sovereign wealth funds investing in World Liberty Financial, the $620 million government loan to a Trump Jr. affiliated company, Trump’s 3,600 stock trades in Q1, and the NVIDIA and defense contractor holdings he profits from while greenlighting chip sales and waging war.

• The Justice Department has been turned into a personal enforcement mechanism. Edwin connected the economic pilfering to the destruction of the DOJ, which now exists to keep the boss in power, punish his enemies, and line his pocket. That, he said, is the playbook of dictatorships all over the world, and we are watching it run in our own government. We elected a man through a democratic process he does not believe in, and he told us in advance, through Project 2025, that he would use the power we gave him to make sure we could never use it against him again.

• It is starting to pierce through, and that is the source of real optimism. I told Edwin I am seeing the grift finally break through, with MAGA media figures as a lagging indicator who only move once their audience already has. The optimism here is earned, not wishful. Trump’s approval has collapsed into the 20s with independents, he has erased his gains with Hispanic and Black voters, and he is historically unpopular with young people. I cited Ezra Klein’s point that Trump’s obsession with Republican primaries shows he cares more about controlling the party after he is gone than about the midterm outcome itself. Edwin closed where we began, that beating Trumpism is not the whole goal. The goal is returning to a truer vision of who we are and proving that Americans can face down threats to democracy at home as well as abroad.

Bottom Line

The throughline of this entire conversation was the gap between who America is and who Donald Trump is. He insulted the war dead on Memorial Day. He is the wrong man to helm a 250th anniversary that he does not understand. He is assaulting the American culture that is the country’s actual foundation. He waged a war that left us weaker and handed Iran new leverage. And, he has turned the government into a machine for self-enrichment and retribution. But the country is starting to see it clearly, the numbers are moving, and the way out runs through a more honest and more healing vision of what America can be together.

Support independent journalism and analysis that fearlessly tells the truth. Subscribe to Edwin Eisendrath. If you have not yet become a paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News, you can do that below. And if you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! It truly means a lot. Independent media runs on the people who back it.

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It's the democracy, stupid

A view from a Midwestern get-things-done kind of Democrat on politics, policies, organizing & saving democracy.

By Edwin Eisendrath

Thank you for watching! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value pro-democracy journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference.

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This was a special episode of Across the Pond. James Matthewson jumped straight from a live TV hit, and we jumped right in.

We started where the news demanded, with the Iran war whiplash cycle that just keeps running in circles, and moved quickly to the financial architecture underneath it. Who is profiting from the chaos? The answer led us directly to the oligarchy enabling it, and that led us to the broken psychology driving it. By the end of the pod, we were asking what we owe the next generation of young men being sold the worst possible model of what manhood looks like, and what national healing actually requires after this era ends.

James coined the phrase of the episode: Trump is a “weapon of mass consumption.” A vacuous abyss you cannot fill, no matter how much you pour into it. That framing unlocked a conversation that ranged from the $7 billion in oddly timed Iran war trades to the toxic manosphere pipeline, from the myth that wealthy people in power won’t be corrupt to why progressive politics needs to focus on the art of persuasion.

Pope Leo said the world is being “ravaged by a handful of tyrants.” I went further, and said that throughout history, the world has been repeatedly held hostage by the giant fragile egos of small depraved men. James and I spent an hour tracing exactly why that keeps happening, what it costs, and what we should do about it.

This was yet another amazing live stream. Thank you to the hundreds of people who tuned in and engaged in the chat live. You helped mold the conversation and made it better. And if you’re just now catching this, welcome! Feel free to chat in the comments, and let’s get more discussions going. I never paywall our live chats or comment sections because I want to hear from you!

You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below.

The Iran War Is Going In Circles

The Iran War cycle keeps running: ceasefire, deal announcement, Iran denial, new strikes.

• The only real objective on the table is solving a problem that the war itself created. I made this case directly: the key objective of these negotiations is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. That is it. The missile capability negotiations, the enriched uranium discussions, all of it is getting pushed down the line. And even if Iran agreed to give up their enriched uranium, which they deny, there isn’t any agreed inspection system like the JCPOA had in place to prevent future enrichment. This war has backfired in every way. Trump has left us with a more extreme Iranian regime that has realized the leverage they have over the global economy. The world would be a safer place if Trump hadn’t torn up the JCPOA because he hated Obama.

• The people sitting happiest right now are inside the Iranian regime. James laid this out clearly: there are individuals, particularly in the IRGC, who have climbed the ladder because their internal rivals were eliminated in the strikes. They are closer to the top of the government. They have a bargaining chip they did not have before. They are probably thinking they could negotiate a better deal for Iran than existed previously and hold onto power for the next twenty years in a more radical, more dangerous regime. The only other people benefiting, James noted, are the people around Donald Trump who are making absolute bank off the back of it.

• The most clarifying moment of the week happened behind the scenes at the BBC. James was in the studios when a colleague floated that a deal would be big news. Someone else agreed that Trump would get something out of it. Then after a beat of silence, somebody said: Didn’t they have a deal before? James said, there it is right there. If all of this was to get back to a worse deal than Obama had with Iran, and all that has happened in between is the Trump family making megabucks off the back of it, that is as transparent as corruption gets. BBC foreign correspondents are just as confused as everyone watching this show.

The Pump And Dump War

The whiplash is not just confusing. It is profitable. Once you see the financial architecture underneath the chaos, it starts to look less like incompetence and more like a mechanism.

• Reuters reported over $7 billion in oddly timed trades right before Trump’s policy announcements. Oil futures flood the markets minutes before his announcements. Fake deals get announced, Iran denies them, strikes happen, and in the margins of all that speculation, money is being made. I said it plainly on the live: the Iran War has become a pump and dump scheme. James agreed.

• Trump owns stock in the companies that benefit most directly from his decisions. I walked through the portfolio on the live: NVIDIA while greenlighting chip sales to China. Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman, while waging a war that requires the US to purchase more from defense contractors in which he has investments. 3,600 stock trades in Q1 alone. This is not a blind trust. And it is not just Trump. It is his likely family, probably people in the White House, and very likely members of Congress whose trades will eventually come to light. There is a reason Trump tried to bar future audits as part of his DOJ settlement terms.

• What started as worry about hotel emoluments now looks like child’s play. The scale of the grift has grown by an order of magnitude, and the mechanisms have become more untraceable. Billions in crypto funneling to Trump and his allies. A $1.8 billion DOJ slush fund. Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds investing in World Liberty Financial. A plane from Qatar. A Democratic administration next term will need to open a full corruption investigation. The breadth of what we are going to discover, I think, will genuinely astound people.

Weapons Of Mass Consumption: The Oligarchy Has No Upper Limit

James coined the phrase of the episode, and it deserves its own section. You cannot feed Donald Trump until he is full. He will never be full. And the political myth that enabled this needs to be buried permanently.

• The myth that wealthy people in power will not be corrupt because they already have money is finished. James demolished it directly: they have always told us it is good to have rich people like Trump and Musk in power because they already have money and do not need more. That is not true. There is no upper limit. You cannot feed Donald Trump until he is full. As James eloquently stated, Trump is a vacuous abyss of consumption, a weapon of mass consumption, and so is Elon Musk. They will never be satisfied. It is like a curse. The idea that we should be more cautious about a civil servant who has done the same job for thirty years than about someone from the private sector does not hold up to any scrutiny. Hopefully, people are starting to see through it.

• The contrast with UK political standards is staggering. James pointed out that Keir Starmer faced backlash for a free pair of glasses, a new suit, and Arsenal tickets from a donor. It still haunts him. That is the standard applied to a British Prime Minister. Meanwhile, Trump is bragging about the grift while executing it simultaneously. James said it staggers him. It staggers me, too.

• Trump and the Republican grift machine are the culmination of American capitalism hitting a focal point. I made this case: we have built a system in which not just wealth accumulation, but by any means wealth accumulation has been treated as its own moral category. People watch The Wolf of Wall Street and name it in their list of favorite entrepreneur movies. James noted that all the Dubai life coach culture, the hustle bros selling courses about making money, they only make it from selling the courses, they all have one king. Trump. He secured the highest seat of power in the Western world and is grifting from it. That is the template they are all following.

Petty Tyrants & The Crisis Of Masculinity

Pope Leo said the world is being “ravaged by a handful of tyrants.” James and I both sat with why that keeps happening across history and what it actually costs in the lives of young men being handed the worst possible models of what a man is supposed to be.

• The world has been repeatedly held hostage by the giant fragile egos of small depraved men. I said this directly: from Hitler to Putin, what you see over and over is insecure men with Napoleon complexes who need to slaughter people or accumulate endlessly to feel good about themselves. Trump specifically had a father who apparently did not really love him and grew up inheriting $413 million, which meant the people around him probably never loved him for him. He has a bottomless need to be loved that he fills with consumption and power. He came into the second term with over 50% approval, having survived an assassination attempt, and yet he could not sit still. He could not ride it. His broken nature could not be suppressed, and he immediately self-sabotaged, tore the government apart, put another man-child (Elon Musk) with unresolved daddy issues in charge of destroying the federal workforce, and here we are.

• The Andrew Tate pipeline is filling the void that better male role models should occupy. Young men are looking for purpose. Society puts enormous pressure on them to be providers, to be strong, to become someone. The self-help pipeline that used to point toward character now points toward grift, with people like Andrew Tate on YouTube telling young men they just have to get money, gain, and acquire." I went down the self-help rabbit hole myself at a younger age, but back then, the books I was led to were from the early 1900s and kept coming back to character as the focal point. That has been replaced by a by any means framework. I made the Obama point directly: when I was fourteen, Barack Obama had just become president. My formative years were shaped by seeing someone with a name like mine become the most powerful man on earth, not cheat on his wife, be a good man, and hold himself with composure and calm. That had a major impact on my life. Now imagine being a young white guy in high school with no strong male figure at home, and the most important male figure in the world is Donald Trump. You might go down that pipeline. James said the next Donald Trump is sitting in a bedroom right now watching right-wing content, getting furious, on a trajectory to damage everything we hold dear.

• “Height maxing” tells you everything about the message we are sending. James described it: young men setting up piles of books in their homes to stand on so they appear taller when they bring a woman home, because the entire pipeline tells them she could never possibly like you as you are. The message is that you are inherently disgusting and you need to change everything. James said positive masculinity does not require any of this. He knows gay men who are flamboyant and camp who represent more genuine strength, self-control, and composure than Donald Trump could ever comprehend. Be yourself. Be a good man.

Make The Case: Persuasion, Forgiveness & The Way Forward

The question at the end of all of this is not just how we diagnose what went wrong. It is what we do about it. James and I both landed in the same place: make the argument, stop ceding ground you do not have to cede, hold the door open for the people who were misled, and hold the leaders ruthlessly accountable.

• Mamdani won because he asked Trump supporters what mattered to them and built a universally appealing message around the answer. His very first video was a man-on-the-street interview. He asked Trump supporters about affordability, crafted his policies around what they actually needed, and won some 2024 Trump voters. That is the art of persuasion. You do not look at polls, find where people are afraid, and craft a carefully tested nothing in response. You make the positive case for what you believe and let it land.

• Stop ceding ground on trans rights, immigration, and universal healthcare. James said it plainly: if you believe in something and it is your values, make the case for it. Do not go quiet because a poll says people are scared. Trump did not poll-test calling Mexicans rapists in 2015. He came down the escalator and said it, and then spent years convincing people to fear immigrants. Democrats need the same conviction of persuasion, but with honesty and on the right side of history. On trans rights: show me the statistics of trans women assaulting people in bathrooms at scale. They do not exist. There are more white men assaulting people in bathrooms than any trans person. Make that case. On immigration: undocumented immigrants pay over $100 billion in taxes annually and commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens. Make that case. Stop retreating from arguments you can win.

• Condemn the leaders. Hold the door open for the voters. I said this as a Black man who gets the N-word in his DMs regularly from Trump supporters, so I want to be precise: there are genuine racists in Trump’s base who are not coming back and should not be coddled. Remnants of the Confederacy exist. But there are millions of others who were lied to, who voted on false promises about prices coming down, who are watching the chaos now and feeling guilt and looking for a pathway back. They need one. The approach that works at the door, as Charles Douglas has shown in Maine, Iowa, and Tennessee, is meeting people where they are. Acknowledging what they felt before. Making the case for something new. You swallow your pride in that moment because the goal is the W, not feeling righteous. Hold the corrupt leaders accountable without mercy. Potentially put them in jail for what the corruption warrants. But the voters who were misled deserve a message that says we are here to help you.

• The goal is to make politics boring again. James closed on this, and it is the right note. Get back to accountability, sensibility, and boring. I said I would love to just do a pop culture podcast, talk about hip hop, Star Wars, and the Knicks. We are doing this work because we want to rebuild a world where politics is not a corrosive force in our lives, where we elect people who are not psychopaths, where the weekly exercise of dissecting the whims of a man-child is replaced by something else. That is the project. That is why we keep going. And the way we get there is by keeping our side of the street clean, holding our hearts open even when it is hard, and refusing to become what we are fighting.

Bottom Line

The Iran war is going in circles, and people are getting rich off the spinning. The men running the world are broken, insatiable, and incapable of being filled, no matter how much they consume. Young men are being handed the worst possible models of manhood. Progressive politics should never retreat from arguments it can win. The way out is not to go quiet. Make the case. Hold the door open to the voters, but hold the leaders to account. Refuse to let this era change who you are.

Support independent journalism and analysis that fearlessly tells the truth. Subscribe to James Matthewson. If you have not yet become a paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News, you can do that below. And if you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! It truly means a lot. Independent media runs on the people who back it.

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Uneducated by James Matthewson

Before he was a broadcaster and writer, James Matthewson was a high-school drop out who accidentally became a political adviser. Naming this substack after being criticised for being 'uneducated', James gives his weekly updates on the world of Politics.

Thank you for watching! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value pro-democracy journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference.

Subscribe now

Charles Douglas and I have been doing these Friday lives long enough that we’ve developed a rhythm: sharp political analysis, real on-the-ground reporting from Charles, and then an ending that goes completely off the rails in a way that the chat simultaneously loves and hates. This week did not disappoint on any front.

We started with a contrary take on the Republican primaries that I think the political press is getting wrong. Then Charles walked us through what he’s seeing on the ground in Maine and beyond. We dug into the Democratic primary wave and what it actually tells us about where the party is going. And we ended on the DNC autopsy.

The throughline of the whole conversation was a question Charles put simply at the top: Can people provide financially for themselves and their families? That’s how they choose their politicians. Everything else, the primary results, the messaging debates, the door-knocking strategy, flows from that one root cause. The economic anxiety that drove people to Trump in 2016 and 2024 is still there. The question is whether Democrats are building the infrastructure and the message to capture it. We think they are.

We closed with a conversation about the rapper Drake that became so unhinged it unraveled into another Ahmed roast session, and the chat started actively trying to end the live stream. As Charles said, at least you know we aren’t AI lol.

Thanks again to all of you for making these live streams some of the best moments of my week! I love that we can have these really complex, nuanced, and sometimes difficult conversations about where we stand as a democracy, but still find plenty of ways to laugh together. I hope you have a great holiday weekend!

You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below.

The Massie Race: Why Trump’s Primary Wins Actually Have Indications Of Weakness

The political press looked at Thomas Massie’s loss in Kentucky and declared Trump stronger than ever. I came to the opposite read, and I think the numbers back it up.

• Trump’s political apparatus spent tens of millions, deployed Hegseth to the district, and put his full weight behind ousting Massie — and still only won by 10 points. I made this case directly on the live: 45% of the electorate voted for Massie despite the most expensive primary in history being run against him. When you drop that kind of money, and that kind of apparatus, and the result is 55-45, that is not dominance. That is a warning sign. The incumbent president of the United States influencing his own party’s primaries is baseline. It should not be treated as remarkable.

• Massie is the first real test of the America First lane versus the MAGA lane. Charles and I have been talking about this division for weeks. Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Tucker Carlson represent something distinct from MAGA recently — a non-interventionist “America First” wing that is carving out its own niche. The fact that 45% of a Kentucky Republican primary electorate voted for that lane even after Trump’s full assault on it is a meaningful data point for 2028. Charles added the flip side: the replacement candidate is more MAGA, which moves the party further right and makes the general more winnable for Democrats.

• The Ken Paxton endorsement is the clearest evidence that Trump is thinking with his ego, not his interests. John Cornyn is not a Cassidy or a Tillis. He is a pretty staunch Trump loyalist who may have spoken out on very minor things here and there. Trump went out of his way to endorse Paxton, who is reviled within his own party with polls worse than Cornyn. I said it plainly: this is the same pattern as 2022, where ego-driven endorsements of extreme candidates backfired in the general. And it is good news for James Tallarico, who just got an easier race out of it.

• The low turnout numbers matter as much as the margin. Only about 100,000 people voted in Massie’s district primary. Charles made the point that turnout numbers reveal enthusiasm, and what those numbers show is a minority of people arguing with each other. MAGA is the establishment now, and establishments bleed enthusiasm. His lowest New York Times Siena poll this term has Trump at 37%, in the low 30s in other polls, and tanking with demographics he made gains with in 2024. Many in the media are calling that dominance. It is a shrinking pie, as I outlined in my recent appearance on MS NOW.

Democratic Primaries & The Anti-Establishment Wave

While Republicans are moving further into Trumpism, Democrats are moving toward candidates with a bias toward action and a working-class economic message. Charles and I both think these trends stack on top of each other in a way that bodes well for November.

• The Chris Rabb win in Pennsylvania is a marker of where Democratic voters are moving. Charles laid it out: Rabb is a Democratic Socialist backed by Bernie. His competitor had Cory Booker and the establishment behind him. The establishment got hammered. Charles was clear that this is not about the socialist label, people don’t vote on that. It is about trust, economic messaging, and whether a candidate sounds like they actually believe what they are saying. Rabb is a flip-the-tables reset politician, and his win is another indicator of the party moving toward that kind of leader.

• Charles’s theory on Michigan flips the conventional primary wisdom. The standard argument has been: choose the moderate candidate to win the general. Charles is arguing the opposite right now. The swing voters on the left are young people who didn’t show up for Kamala. Give them the candidate they want in the primary, and the older voters, who understand a Democrat needs to win, will fall in line for the general. He is leaning toward Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan because the progressive energy is real, the economic message is stronger, and the primary has been moving in his direction. Common Power is quietly making plans to go.

• The Mamdani model is the template. I said it, and Charles backed it: what is winning right now is not ideology, it is bias toward action. Mamdani had concrete things he wanted to do — grocery stores, buses, affordability — got into office, and started doing them. People who voted for Trump and then Mamdani are not ideologically confused. They are looking for someone who will actually help them. AOC works because you cannot forget she was a bartender. The candidates losing are the ones who have been driven around in black cars for too long and can no longer feel what regular people are living through.

• The anti-establishment energy has been the dominant political force for two decades. Obama, Trump, Trump again. The through line is not party. It is anti-establishment. I made the point that Trump can only win when he is out of power, because once he is in power, people recognize he has been lying to them. The consumer spending numbers look okay on paper, but buy now pay later, credit card debt, and economic uncertainty around AI tell a different story underneath. The message that writes itself is: he promised to lower your prices, he raised them. His biggest legislative accomplishment is the biggest wealth transfer to the rich in American history.

The Art of Persuasion: What Actually Works At The Door

Charles just came back from Maine and is heading to Iowa. The conversation about what actually moves voters at the door was one of the most practically useful things we’ve talked about on this show.

• Susan Collins is more entrenched than the polling suggests. Charles reported that everywhere he went in Maine, cafes, doors, and conversations, he kept running into people who had worked for Collins, were currently working for her, or were local politicians aligned with her machine. She has mastered the art of sending money back home. People at the doors were saying Collins isn’t that bad. That is what three decades of constituent service buys you. Common Power was knocking the hard persuasion doors intentionally, not the easy GOTV doors, and the Collins entrenchment is real.

• Cost, chaos, and corruption is the right messaging framework across the country. Charles endorsed this framework directly. Corruption works in red states because it is about leadership, not party voters. Chaos moves away from the immigration debate and toward something more universal, regardless of what you think about immigration, not like this, not killing people in the streets. Cost ties Trump’s actions directly to people’s lived experience. And I added the connective tissue: he is enriching himself while raising your prices. The $1.776 billion slush fund, the stock trades, the tariffs, the unnecessary war: it is all the same story.

• Condemn the behavior, not the voter. Someone named Paul M in the chat made this point, and Charles and I both built on it. A lot of Trump voters are working through guilt right now. They see the chaos. And the moment you say something they experience as an attack on them personally for voting for him, you lose them. The approach that works is meeting people where they are, then making the case that it is time for something new. Charles noted that at the door, you sometimes have to say things that pain you. The goal is the W, not feeling righteous in the moment.

The DNC Autopsy: A Final Nail In Ken Martin’s Chairmanship?

We saved the DNC autopsy for near the end, and Charles’s summary was definitive: this is the final nail in the coffin for people who think establishment Democrats know what they are doing.

• The report was not controversial. It was just poorly done. Charles laid it out plainly: no section on Gaza, nothing about Biden’s age, factual errors citing the wrong numbers for the wrong states. These are not things that were left out because they were too hot to handle. They were left out because the report was poorly done. Someone was put in charge who did not do the real work, did not cite sources properly, and did not talk to enough people. I added that rather than Ken Martin just acknowledging the report was bad and committing to redo it, he got weird and evasive about it for an extended period, which made the whole thing worse.

• Charles’s contrarian read: a weak DNC is actually good for the movement right now. His argument is that when the establishment body is visibly failing, voters and candidates stop looking to it for permission and start looking elsewhere. That accelerates the rise of anti-establishment voices who are winning primaries and appealing to working-class voters and independents. The DNC’s weakness creates the vacuum that Rabb, Abdul, Tallarico, and candidates like them are filling. Getting this exposed now is better than having it surface during the 2028 primary when the stakes are higher, and the distrust would be more damaging.

• Dan Pfeiffer and other major voices are calling for Ken Martin to step aside. I raised this on the live. When Pod Save America starts naming names, it signals that the conversation has moved beyond frustration. I said I do not know how much longer Martin will last, and that it is unfortunate but probably necessary. The DNC needs to regain trust before 2028, and that process cannot start until the people who mishandled this are no longer running it.

Bottom Line

Trump spent millions to win by 10 points in Kentucky while polling at 37% nationally and losing key demographics. Far too many in the media are calling that dominance. Meanwhile, Democratic primary voters are choosing candidates with a bias toward action and a working-class economic message. That is the actual story of this primary cycle.

If this conversation mattered to you, I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! Independent pro-democracy journalism only works if people back it. And if you’d like to get involved and knock doors this election year, I also highly recommend checking out Common Power.

Ahmed Baba News

Independent pro-democracy journalism, analysis, and commentary. Delivered to your inbox 2 to 4 times a week. Become a free or paid subscriber.

Thank you for watching! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value pro-democracy journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference.

Subscribe now

This week’s Substack Live with Don Lemon was short and to the point. The $1.776 billion “DOJ weaponization” fund dropped this week, and we went straight at it, from every angle we could find.

We started with the framing that more folks in mainstream media need to be stating clearly: this is not just a grift. It is a continuation of the January 6 plot. A payout for co-conspirators. A potential funding mechanism for future crimes. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s own admissions of who could apply confirmed it on national television.

Then we got into a question I had for Don, and he genuinely sat with it: should he apply? He was targeted by a weaponized DOJ. If this fund is really what they say it is, he has a case. And the exercise of applying and watching them deny him would expose the entire thing for what it is more effectively than any op-ed could.

And then we got into the can of worms nobody wants to open. If this DOJ weaponization fund exists for anyone to apply to, what about the crack epidemic? What about the war on drugs? What about the Black people still sitting in prison for weed offenses while cannabis millionaires profit? Don called it reparations for white people, and I couldn’t contest it. It’s very clear, at the very least, that it's reparations for MAGA.

We closed on Trump’s stock portfolio, and I’ll just say this: a president who owns NVIDIA while greenlighting chip sales to China, and owns Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics while waging an unnecessary war, is not running a blind trust. That is an insider trading risk on a scale we have never seen.

You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below.

The $1.776 Billion Slush Fund: A Continuation Of The January 6 Conspiracy

This should be framed as nothing other than a payout for the people who helped Trump attempt to overturn an election, and Todd Blanche’s own words confirmed that people who stormed the Capitol are eligible to apply.

• The fund should be framed as a continuation of the January 6 plot, not just a grift. I made this point directly on the live: it is a payout for co-conspirators who helped Trump with his crimes. Trump pardoned them. Now he is rewarding them financially. And because Todd Blanche would not deny that oath keepers could apply, it could also fund potential future crimes. This is not hyperbole. This is the logical extension of what Blanche himself said on camera.

• Todd Blanche’s admissions were damning and under-covered. When asked whether people convicted of hurting police officers would be eligible, Blanche said people who hurt police officers get money all the time. Don noted the identical response Blanche gave in a Senate hearing. The nation’s top law enforcement official casually dismissing violence against police as a disqualifier for a taxpayer-funded payout is not a gaffe. It is a policy position. And Don made the point that Blanche also claimed this is exactly what the American people want their money spent on, a claim that every piece of available polling directly contradicts.

• A Republican congressman in Pennsylvania called it bad news and said he would try to kill it. Don flagged this as the first time he could recall a Republican publicly dumping on one of Trump’s major priorities. I noted that if enough Republicans get on board, a discharge petition could force a vote on it, the same mechanism being used in other fights. The reason this congressman is speaking out, I argued, is because the fund is so transparently a grift that it is difficult even for loyal Republicans to defend it with a straight face.

Should Don Lemon Apply To The Weaponization Fund?

This is not a joke question. Don was targeted by Trump’s DOJ. If the fund is genuinely open to anyone who believes the DOJ was weaponized against them, Don Lemon has a case. And applying would be an effective piece of journalism.

• I made the argument that applying could be a legitimate journalistic exercise. The play is simple: apply, watch what happens, and use the outcome to expose the hypocrisy either way. If they approve Don, or James Comey, or Letitia James, that validates the argument that the DOJ was genuinely weaponized against Trump’s political opponents. If they deny those applications while approving January 6 defendants, that proves the fund is purely political. I said on the live that I think they would deny Don 100%, because approving him would validate the very argument they are trying to avoid.

• Don’s case is stronger than most people realize. I pointed out that they are using the KKK Act to target Black journalists. If that is not weaponization of the DOJ against a Black journalist, I do not know what is. Don weighed both sides honestly: applying risks legitimizing something illegitimate, but it also has the potential to expose the hypocrisy more powerfully than any commentary could. He landed on it being worth considering if the courts do not stop it first.

• The fund’s stated terms create an impossible contradiction. A Trump administration official told the New York Post that Hunter Biden’s team could apply if they believe the DOJ was used as a weapon against him. Blanche said similar things publicly. If that is true, then the fund is either genuinely open to Trump’s political enemies, which would be an extraordinary admission, or it is not, which proves it is a partisan slush fund. Don said it plainly: if they deny him, they are calling themselves incompetent. If they approve him, they are validating his entire argument. There is no good outcome for them.

Reparations For MAGA & The Can of Worms This Opens

Don called it reparations for white people, and I could not contest it. But the deeper argument is about the can of worms a fund like this opens once you accept the premise that DOJ weaponization deserves financial compensation.

• The crack epidemic and the war on drugs are the obvious starting points. I raised it directly: if the DOJ can be weaponized against people, what about the Black people who were targeted in the crack epidemic, while wealthy white people did cocaine without consequence? What about the people still sitting in prison for marijuana offenses while cannabis millionaires make profit? Don noted that some of those people are still incarcerated right now. If the standard is that DOJ weaponization deserves compensation, the case for those communities dwarfs anything January 6 defendants could claim.

• Don called it reparations for white people, and the framing is accurate. This is taxpayer money being funneled to 1,600 people who attacked police officers and laid siege to the Capitol on Trump’s behalf, while the communities most consistently targeted by DOJ overreach throughout American history have never seen a dime. The selective application of the weaponization argument is not an oversight. It is the point. I said it on the live: this is reparations for MAGA, paid for by the American people.

• The polling makes the political calculation even more insane. Americans already opposed pardoning the January 6 defendants. The idea that they want their tax dollars turned into a payout for those same people, while their prices are rising and their wages are stagnant, is a political miscalculation that Don and I both think will backfire badly heading into 2026. Don was direct: this is on the legislative branch for allowing it, and it is on the voters who put Trump back in office.

Trump’s Suspicious Stock Trades

The slush fund is brazen. What Trump is doing with his personal stock portfolio is part of the same self-dealing pattern. I walked Don through the details, and his reaction said everything.

• Trump owns NVIDIA while greenlighting chip sales to China and taking the NVIDIA CEO to Beijing. I laid out the portfolio on the live: NVIDIA stock, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman. These are not passive investments. These are the companies that benefit most directly from the policy decisions Trump is making in real time. Owning defense contractors while waging an unnecessary war is not a conflict of interest. It is insider trading. Don’s response was that at least Nixon had the decency to try to hide it.

• The 3,600 stock trades in Q1 alone suggest this is not a blind trust. I said on the live that I do not believe someone is making 3,600 trades without information being fed somewhere. The Polymarket angle adds another layer. The sheer volume of trading activity, combined with the policy decisions that directly move the value of those holdings, points to what I called potentially the most insane insider trading grift in American history. Don called it mob-level grifting and asked whether a RICO statute could apply. I agreed it fits the pattern.

• The IRS lawsuit settlement is the connective tissue that ties all of it together. Trump tried to take $10 billion from the IRS by suing his own government. When that became untenable, the DOJ settled it by creating the $1.776 billion weaponization fund, which funnels taxpayer money to his allies and co-conspirators. One robbery begat another. And in the middle of all of it, Trump is raising prices through tariffs and an unnecessary war, making stock trades in the companies that profit from that war, and asking the American public to be grateful for it. Don put it simply: this is the most brazen heist of the American people’s money we have ever seen. I think he’s right.

Bottom Line

The $1.776 billion fund is not a policy dispute. It is a payout for insurrectionists, a potential funding mechanism for future crimes, and the settlement of an attempted $10 billion robbery of the American taxpayer. Meanwhile, the president owns stock in the defense contractors benefiting from his war and the chip companies he is selling advanced technology to. Don called it mob-level grifting. I called it potentially the most insane insider trading operation in American history. Neither of us is exaggerating.

If this conversation mattered to you, I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News and also consider supporting Don Lemon. And if you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! It truly means a lot. Independent media runs on the people who back it.

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This was my favorite Across the Pond conversation we’ve had so far. James Matthewson and I have built something real with this show, and this episode is the best evidence of it.

We started with JD Vance encouraging far-right nationalist protesters in the UK from the White House briefing room and ended somewhere much deeper: a genuine conversation about multiculturalism, collective trauma, the exploitation of human pain, and how not to lose yourself in this fight for democracy. The live chat was also one of our most active ever, and for good reason.

We covered the transnational far-right network that Vance, Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson, and Nigel Farage are building across borders. We pulled apart the mythology underneath the blood and soil argument and showed it for what it is: historically illiterate nonsense designed to exploit economic grievance and channel it at the wrong targets.

We talked about how the boogeyman rotates, from Black people to Latino people to gay people to trans people, and why the playbook always collapses the second you actually meet the people being demonized. And then we got personal. We talked about the people being exploited on both ends of this grift. James talked about his nephew’s immigrant surgeon. I talked about the Republican veteran I met in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, who was crying at his door. Then, we both talked about what it costs to do this work and why we keep doing it anyway.

James is based in Edinburgh. He’s a BBC and Sky News contributor and a former Labour Party adviser. He disclosed in this pod that he’s also someone who grew up freestyle rapping to Nas on a farm, which tells you everything you need to know about why we get along.

This was genuinely such an awesome live stream. Thank you to the hundreds of people who tuned in and engaged in the chat live. You helped mold the conversation and made it better. And if you’re just now catching this, welcome! Feel free to chat in the comments, and let’s get more discussions going. I never paywall our live chats or comment sections because I want to hear from you!

You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below.

Vance, Robinson & The Transnational Far-Right Network

JD Vance stood at the White House podium and told far-right nationalist protesters in a foreign country to keep going. That was no accident. It fits a pattern that James and I have been tracking on this show for months.

• Vance’s comments were a direct endorsement of the Unite the Kingdom rally organized by Tommy Robinson. About 60,000 people attended, though organizers claimed millions. When asked about protesters who believe their culture is being replaced, Vance said that all over the West, there’s this idea that the way to generate prosperity is to bring in millions of unvetted people and drop them into your neighborhoods. I pointed out on the live that this is textbook white supremacist great replacement theory, and that the implication that immigrants are inherently unsafe is straight-up fear-mongering dressed up as common sense.

• This is not a coincidence or a series of isolated comments. The pattern is documented and deliberate. Vance met with AfD leadership in Germany at the Munich Security Conference, declined a meeting with the German chancellor, and told European leaders there is no room for firewalls against far-right parties. Elon Musk endorsed AfD and spoke at one of their rallies. Tommy Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was welcomed at the State Department by a senior adviser who praised him as a free speech warrior, and he had meetings with Republican congressman Randy Fine and former national security adviser Mike Flynn. I said it plainly: this is a globally collaborative far-right movement, and the Trump administration is one of its primary architects.

• James laid out what the rally actually looked like on the ground. Three French women wearing burqas were brought out to chants of get them off before being stripped to reveal sexualized outfits underneath, to cheering crowds supposedly concerned about the safety of women and girls. A prominent far-right influencer was filmed trying to get the phone number of a 15-year-old girl in front of her mother. A crowd of a thousand men chanted at a female counter-protester to expose herself. James noted the bizarre coalition on display: Israeli flags flown not out of solidarity but to counter Palestinian flags from the left, sitting alongside open anti-Semites. All of it, he said, came down to one thing: get them out, remigration, we need our country back.

The White Nationalist Mythology They’re Selling

Underneath the great replacement theory and the remigration calls is a story about a white Christian homogenous Britain and America that never actually existed. James and I both took that mythology apart, and it didn’t take long.

• Britain has never been what these people claim to be defending. James traced it out: Romans conquered Britain two thousand years ago. Anglo-Saxons came from Northern Germany. The Geordie accent James speaks with is rooted in Scandinavian dialect because of Viking settlement. Normans came from France. The Beaker people crossed from mainland Europe. Every group that built what Britain is came from somewhere else. The idea that there is some pure white Christian heritage worth protecting, James said, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and everything Britain has ever done of any good has been done by immigrants and by people who came to the country.

• The same is true in America, and the hypocrisy runs even deeper. I pointed out that virtually everyone in this country is an immigrant unless you’re Native American, and if you’re Black with a long lineage, your ancestors were likely brought here against their will. Trump’s speech referencing Anglo-Saxon blood when King Charles visited was an attempt to build connective tissue for a transnational white nationalism. Elon Musk in Europe, Vance in Europe, all of it is the same project. I’ve been to the Smorgasburg in Prospect Park in Brooklyn on a Sunday, where every ethnicity you can imagine is sitting in the park eating together, and I’m told that is the rot of America. Now, it is the peak of civilization. They don’t believe their own arguments. They’re playing to fear to gather power.

• The NHS point James made was one of the sharpest versions of the self-defeating argument. The majority of the National Health Service is made up of immigrants. James’s nephew had a brain tumor at five years old. His surgeon was Italian. That surgeon was pushed out after Brexit. Every call for remigration is a call to hollow out the infrastructure that keeps people alive, and the people calling for it go home from the rally and stumble into the kebab shop. I said it on the live, and I’ll say it here: you can’t enjoy the benefits of multiculturalism while trying to deport the people it took to build it.

Divide & Conquer: The Playbook

James put it simply: they can’t do the conquer bit without dividing you first. And naturally, people don’t divide themselves. So the far right has to manufacture the division by finding a new boogeyman every time the last one stops working.

• The rotation of targets follows a consistent logic. I walked through it on the live. Black people became too omnipresent in culture for the mythology to hold. Latino people the same. Gay people: eventually, everyone knows one, and the lies fall apart. So they move to trans people, because at 1% of the population, you can build a boogeyman around a group small enough that most people haven’t met one yet. The second you have someone in your life who is trans, James said, it falls to pieces. The second your Black neighbor talks to you, and you become friends, it falls to pieces. Division only works if you can keep people from actually meeting each other.

• Trump has run this exact playbook across every front simultaneously. Mexicans are rapists. Muslims need a ban. Trans people are a threat to your children in bathrooms. DEI is an attack on your culture. Meanwhile, he inherited at least $413 million from his father, bankrupted casinos, needed The Apprentice to rehabilitate his brand, built his buildings with undocumented labor, and is now siphoning 1.776 billion dollars into a DOJ slush fund for his allies while signing executive orders that keep your prices up. The boogeymen are the distraction. While you’re looking at the trans person in the bathroom or the immigrant at the border, they are robbing you blind. That is the whole game.

Misdirected Anger & The Exploitation of Pain

James made a point that reframed the whole conversation: their feelings are real. The people in those crowds know their lives aren’t working. They know they’ve been left behind. That’s the truth. What gets exploited is the explanation they’re given for why.

• The far right can’t do the conquer bit without the divide, and the divide only works because the underlying pain is genuine. James said it directly: they feel that they’re being taken for granted, that nobody listens to them, that their life is hard. Guess what, he said. They’re right. Fox News, GB News, Trump, Farage — none of them created the pain. They just redirected it. That feeling you’ve got, they tell these people, it’s real. It’s because of him over there, or her over there, or them over there. And the second someone actually sits with these people, as I did knocking doors in Bucks County, you see what’s underneath.

• The veteran at the door in Bucks County is the story that unlocked this for me. I was knocking doors for Kamala Harris in 2024 and got the wrong door. The man was rabid, hurling abuse. I stayed and tried to de-escalate. Eventually, he started crying. He was a Vietnam veteran. He was lonely. He was in pain. He was watching Fox News, telling him where to aim it. We didn’t convince him to vote for Harris. But I walked away understanding that this was a man whose trauma was being exploited by a demagogue who didn’t give a damn about him. He was sent to war. A right-wing system failed him when he came home. And then Trump showed up and told him it was my fault.

• Nigel Farage is the clearest British example of the grift. James pointed out that Farage has spent his career talking about the damage immigrants do while simultaneously consulting for a firm that helps millionaires move to the UK. He recently received a gift of five million pounds from a tech crypto billionaire based in Thailand and bought a 1.4 million pound house in cash. Meanwhile, James noted, Trump will give you a gold card if you’ve got 14 million US dollars to exchange for it. Immigration is never the actual problem for these people. It is the tool they use while they rob you with the other hand.

How We Stay In The Fight

The last part of this conversation was the part I’ll remember most. James and I talked about what it costs to do this work, how to avoid becoming jaded, and why we both still fundamentally believe in people even after everything we’ve seen.

• The answer to all of this, James said, is connection. The mythology collapses every time two people actually meet. Go find a trans person. Have a conversation. Go meet your Muslim neighbor. The second the human being replaces the boogeyman, the whole thing falls apart. That is why they need the division. That is why they attack DEI education, sex and relationship education in schools, anything that might bring people into contact with the people they’ve been told to fear. Don’t let them divide you, James said. That’s the whole game.

• We both hold leaders accountable ruthlessly while refusing to collectively punish the people they misled. I said on the live that I know Republicans from growing up in Virginia. Some of the best people I’ve ever met. People fall down rabbit holes. People get held up during COVID and become conspiracy theorists. People leaving MAGA right now are getting viciously attacked in comments, and I understand the anger, especially as a Black person who has absorbed the damage this movement has caused. But the people trying to come back deserve a pathway. The leaders, the Marjorie Taylor Greenes angling for 2028, the ones who know exactly what they’re doing, those people are a different conversation. But regular voters misled by pain and fear, there’s a way back for them.

• Don’t let this change you. That’s where we landed. I have a wife. I have a son coming in about a month. James has his people. We all have our lives and our loved ones, and the most important thing we can do is refuse to become unkind because these far-right authoritarians are unkind. James said it best: the best people he knows are the ones who grow continually, change, adapt, and stay decent. That is not weakness. Blaming immigrants, trans people, and marginalized groups for your problems, James said, is the weak option. Looking inward, staying connected, refusing to let the misery merchants win the war for your character, that is the strength. We believe in people. That’s why we keep doing this. And that’s why you keep showing up.

Bottom Line

JD Vance encouraged far-right nationalist protesters from the White House. Tommy Robinson was welcomed at the State Department. Elon Musk spoke at AfD rallies. Nigel Farage is being handed millions by crypto billionaires. This is one movement, and it operates across borders. But underneath all of it is a simple play: find people in pain, tell them who to blame, and rob them blind with the other hand.

The answer to this is just as simple, even if it’s harder to execute. Stay connected. Stay decent. Believe in people. And do not let them make you into what they are.

Support independent journalism and analysis that fearlessly tells the truth. Subscribe to James Matthewson. If you have not yet become a paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News, you can do that below. And if you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! It truly means a lot. Independent media runs on the people who back it.

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Uneducated by James Matthewson

Before he was a broadcaster and writer, James Matthewson was a high-school drop out who accidentally became a political adviser. Naming this substack after being criticised for being 'uneducated', James gives his weekly updates on the world of Politics.

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I was back on MS NOW’s The Weekend Primetime on Sunday alongside brilliant hosts Ayman Mohyeldin, Antonia Hylton, Elise Jordan, Catherine Rampell, and co-panelist former Rep. Jamaal Bowman.

The segment started with the Louisiana primary fallout and Bill Cassidy’s loss, Trump’s effort to oust Rep. Thomas Massie, and what it all tells us about Trump’s grip on the Republican Party. It turned into something bigger. The Republican take has been that this proves Trump is stronger than ever. I came away with a different argument entirely.

Trump’s grip on Republican primaries is real. But his coalition is shrinking, and his primary picks have a track record of general election damage. And the party he has built around himself is a personality cult, not a governing majority. Lindsey Graham called it in 2016 and then spent the next decade proving his own point. I brought the receipts for all of it.

You can watch highlights from the segment above and read key takeaways below.

Lindsey Graham & The GOP’s Amoral Sycophancy

Lindsey Graham went on television after Cassidy’s loss and said that if you try to destroy Trump, you will lose, because this is the party of Trump. I had something to say about that.

• 2016 Lindsey Graham was right. He said if the GOP nominated Trump, it would destroy the party, and they would deserve it. He was right. What Trump has built in its place is a personality cult-driven atrocity designed specifically around his whims. The reason no one gives him honest advice anymore is that disagreement is now framed as destruction. Lindsey Graham helped build that dynamic and now benefits from enforcing it.

• The receipts on Graham are extensive and specific. He called Trump a “xenophobic religious bigot.” A “jackass.” A “kook.” “Unfit for office.” He said Trump didn’t represent the Republican Party. Now he says Trump is the Republican Party. Graham is the personification of the GOP’s descent into amoral sycophancy. Graham, like the other GOP lawmakers who flipped to back Trump, didn’t betray their principles. They proved they never had any to begin with.

100% Of A Shrinking Pie

Trump keeps touting that he has 100% support among MAGA Republicans. That number is real. What he leaves out is the context that makes it far less impressive than it sounds.

• That same NBC poll previously found that the number of Republicans who identify as MAGA is dropping. It fell seven points to 50% of Republicans. So, Trump has consolidated total control of a base that is actively contracting. Congratulations, Donald. You have 100% of a shrinking pie.

• Other polling tells the same story. Trump is in the 30s with Americans overall and in the 20s with independents. The intensity of his support among Republicans is decreasing even as his grip on primary outcomes holds. Those two things can be true simultaneously, and they are. Primary dominance and general election viability are different measurements, and too many pundits are conflating them.

• MAGA is now the establishment. That matters because the energy and the identity of a movement changes when it becomes the thing in power. The Massie race is the first early test of what comes next: America First versus MAGA, non-interventionists versus Trump loyalists. I said on the panel that we are watching the beginning of the 2028 primary play out right now. That fight is already underway.

The 2022 Warning Sign Republicans Are Ignoring

The argument that Trump’s primary influence represents strength ignores what happened the last time he did this. In 2022, Trump was hunkered down in Mar-a-Lago, effectively in post-January 6 exile, and he was still dominating Republican primaries. His endorsed candidates, many of them election deniers, won those primaries. Then November came.

• Election deniers lost the races that mattered most. Governor races. Secretary of state races. Key election administration positions across battleground states. These were not close losses in unwinnable territory. These were competitive races that Trump’s extreme picks turned into Democratic wins. The losses had lasting structural consequences for Republican electoral infrastructure in those states.

• Battleground states are now run by Democrats because of Trump’s 2022 primary picks. That is not a talking point. That is the direct result of Trump prioritizing personal loyalty tests over electability. Catherine Rampell said it on the panel, and it bears repeating: he doesn’t understand his own interests. He doesn’t.

• The same dynamic is setting up for 2026. Trump is running the same playbook. His most extreme picks are winning primaries in an electorate that has fundamentally shifted since 2024. Seventy-seven percent of Americans blame his policies for rising prices in their communities, according to a recent CNN poll. A majority of Republicans say the same. The Massie race will be an early indicator of whether Republican voters are starting to price in what Trump’s endorsement actually costs them in November.

Bottom Line

Trump has 100% of a shrinking pie, a track record of general election damage, and a party too captured by sycophancy to tell him the truth. Lindsey Graham had it right in 2016. The party nominated Trump, it is being destroyed, and they deserve it.

If this analysis mattered to you, I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News. And if you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! It truly means a lot. Independent media runs on the people who back it.

Ahmed Baba News

Independent pro-democracy journalism, analysis, and commentary. Delivered to your inbox 2 to 4 times a week. Become a free or paid subscriber.

Thank you for watching! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value pro-democracy journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference.

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Charles Douglas came to this week’s live show fresh off a plane from Tennessee. As Executive Director of Common Power, Charles didn’t just read about Justin Pearson’s district being erased by the state legislature. He flew down there to stand with him as Pearson announced he was running anyway. That’s the kind of on-the-ground presence that makes these conversations different, and it sets the tone for everything that follows.

We covered a lot of ground. The historical weight of Tennessee as a civil rights state. Why the Republican redistricting blitz is moving so fast, it may blow up in their own faces. What I’ve been calling Project 2049, China’s long game, and how Trump is accelerating it on every front. And what the Zohran Mamdani model tells us about where the Democratic Party needs to go. Oh, and Drake dropped three albums today. We got into that, too lol. You already know the end of these pods we let loose and have a little fun. So stick around for my hip hop takes at the end and some laughs.

The throughline of the conversation was optimism: grounded, pragmatic optimism. Charles made the case that Democrats are operating with more power than people feel right now. I made the case that Republicans are moving chairs around the Titanic. Both things are true at the same time, and that’s actually a reason to stay in the fight.

You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below.

Justin Pearson & The Tennessee Ground Report

Charles flew to Memphis after we spoke on Friday, deciding on the spot that Common Power needed to be there. What he found on the ground was resilience, historical resonance, and a candidate whose message is built to travel across racial lines.

• Memphis carries more civil rights history than almost any city in America. Charles laid it out: this is where B.B. King played, where Martin Luther King was assassinated, where the Ku Klux Klan was born, where Southern rap culture took root. Nashville is where John Lewis trained, where Diane Nash learned nonviolence before taking it to Alabama and beyond. Tennessee is not incidental to the voting rights story. It is central to it. Charles said going there was both an honoring of history and a continuation of it.

• Pearson is running on a message that cuts across the racial divide. Charles made this point clearly: Pearson is running on a message that highlights rural hospital closures, wealthy interests extracting resources from working communities, and AI data centers destroying local environments and economies. These are not Black district talking points. These are poor white people's talking points, too. I noted it’s almost as if poor white and poor Black communities have more in common than they’ve been told, and that the scapegoating of brown and Black people for economic problems was always a distraction from the class war being waged against all of them. Charles connected it directly to why MLK was assassinated when he pivoted to economic justice. That message was the bridge too far.

• The 30-year incumbent stepping aside is a bigger deal than it’s being treated as. Charles noted that the congressman Pearson was running against announced his retirement the same day we were recording. A three-decade incumbent clearing the field for a next-generation candidate running on affordability and civil rights is not a small thing. Charles said Common Power is planning a return trip to Tennessee as part of a full midterm ground operation that runs every weekend from mid-September through November. Our weekly live streams will be broadcasting their work on the ground in real-time.

The Dummymander: Why The GOP’s Redistricting Could Backfire

The press narrative on redistricting is that Democrats are losing. Charles and I both think that narrative isn’t the full picture. Republicans are moving so fast to please Trump that they are making structural errors that could cost them in 2026 and beyond.

• In Tennessee, Republicans literally voted on a picture. Charles reported that when the vote happened, lawmakers were asking each other if anyone had the document showing the actual district lines. Nobody did. They had a map, just a picture, and they voted on it. No detailed breakdown of where the lines fell, no supporting data. That is how fast they are moving, and that speed is producing errors that will compound.

• The dummymander is real, and it’s showing up in Florida and Texas. When you gerrymander, you have to spread your own voters thin to maximize district count. That means previously safe Republican seats become competitive. Charles pointed out that Democrats in Florida literally showed up to a press conference holding a sign that said “Florida Dummymander.” I made the case that the question isn’t just whether Republicans are creating more Republican districts — it’s whether they’re putting more Republicans within arm’s reach of a Democrat who can grab them. Looking at 20 and 30-point swings in some of these districts, the redistricting may end up being close to a non-factor in 2026.

• 2026 and 2028 are two very different conversations. I was clear about this distinction: for the midterms, the gerrymandering may reduce the Democratic margin slightly but is unlikely to determine who controls the House. 2028 is scarier. The maps will be smarter, they’ll have 2026 data, and they’ll have learned from the dummymander mistakes. But right now, Charles said it plainly: they’re moving so fast to please Trump that they voted on a picture. They don’t know what they’re doing and are relying on outdated voter data. And I said what I’ve been saying since week one of this administration: they’re overreaching, and it’s backfiring. And now, they’re putting wooden beams on the door as a blue tsunami approaches.

Project 2049 & Trump’s Gift To China

Fresh off my MS NOW appearance a couple of nights ago, Charles asked me to break down my take on US-China relations. I coined it Project 2049 on Stephanie Ruhle’s show: China’s explicit goal to become the global superpower by mid-century. Xi Jinping outlined it. It’s real. And Trump is helping their mission.

• Trump is validating every argument China makes about the United States. China’s core critique of America has always been that we are volatile, unreliable, that we claim ideals and do the opposite. Trump proves that case daily. On renewable energy, the scoreboard is not close: China manufactures 80% of the world’s solar panels, 75% of lithium-ion batteries, over 70% of electric vehicles, and 60% of wind turbines. We are clinging to fossil fuels while ceding the industries of the future.

• The chip authorization and the soft power collapse are compounding the damage. Trump authorized the sale of H200 chips to China: far more powerful than what they had before DeepSeek shocked the world. Meanwhile, the rollback of USAID and the broader soft power collapse are letting China build relationships across Africa that will take decades to undo.

• The Iran war has created a rare earth dependency on China that nobody is talking about enough. I raised this on the live because I didn’t get to it on the MS NOW panel: we are reportedly burning through Tomahawk missiles in Iran at ten times the annual rate at which we purchase them. The rare Earth minerals needed to replenish that stockpile are largely controlled by China. We are now dependent on the country we are supposedly competing with to rearm ourselves from a war that Trump started for no reason. Also, closing the Strait of Hormuz benefits Russian oil revenues directly. Trump’s moves benefit Russia, China, and Iran simultaneously. Whether that’s intentional on their part or just exploited opportunistically, the result is the same.

The New Democratic Playbook

Charles shifted the conversation to what’s working, anchored by Zohran Mamdani’s first major policy milestone as New York City Mayor. I said that the question isn’t left versus center. It’s who has a bias toward action and who doesn’t.

• Mamdani balanced the budget without cutting services for working people. Charles framed this as the first real proof of concept for the new Democratic model: taxing wealthy people, protecting working-class services, and getting it done. I added that he did it with Governor Hochul’s collaboration, and that the Mamdani-Hochul relationship is actually a model for what the Democratic tent should look like: room for a progressive mayor and a moderate governor to work together and get concrete things done. Child care. Potholes. I told Charles that the janky road I drove every day on the way back from dropping my wife off at work has been repaved. That’s how you make loyal voters for life.

• The argument isn’t left versus center — it’s action versus inaction. I made this point directly: what Mamdani represented wasn’t just an ideological victory, it was a bias toward getting specific things done. Grocery store prices. Bus routes. Concrete deliverables that people feel. Charles built on it: the ask from younger and more progressive Democrats isn’t to kick moderates out, it’s to be let in. When a progressive wins a primary, back them. Listen to the voters. Hochul could have tried to sabotage Mamdani. She read where the wind was blowing and worked with him instead. That’s the model.

• Common Power is going all in on the midterm ground game. Charles laid out the roadmap: a fundraiser in Seattle for James Tallarico, a return to Tennessee with Justin Pearson, and then every single weekend from mid-September through November, Common Power teams will be on the ground in three or four states each week, knocking doors. I noted that I built the app that helps Common Power’s volunteers find these opportunities, and that new features are coming for the summer. If you want to get involved, commonpower.org is where to go. I’ve knocked on doors with Common Power in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I led a team there. It’s worth it.

Bottom Line

Republicans are moving recklessly. They’re diluting their own seats. They’re running on 2024 data in a 2026 electorate that has fundamentally shifted. The blue tsunami is coming, and the GOP’s wooden beams aren’t going to hold it back. Meanwhile, Justin Pearson is running in a redrawn district on a message that resonates across racial lines, Mamdani just balanced a budget without touching working people, and Common Power is about to be in the field every weekend through November. Charles said it at the end: chin up.

If this conversation mattered to you, I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! Independent pro-democracy journalism only works if people back it. And if you’d like to get involved and knock doors this election year, I also highly recommend checking out Common Power.

Ahmed Baba News

Independent pro-democracy journalism, analysis, and commentary. Delivered to your inbox 2 to 4 times a week. Become a free or paid subscriber.

Thank you for watching! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value pro-democracy journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference.

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Don and I went deep this week on a question that neither of us can fully wrap our heads around: how does any Black person look at what Trump is doing right now and still ride with him?

Not just the politicians, not the influencers, but the everyday Black person? We talked about it from every angle. The grift. The self-hatred. The proximity to power. The complete absence of any material benefit. And we couldn’t land on a satisfying answer, which I think says something on its own.

This conversation came the morning after my appearance on MS NOW’s The 11th Hour, where I made the case that Trump is the most openly anti-Black president in modern history. Don had been sitting with the same question. So we just went in.

What came out of it was less a tidy analysis and more an honest reckoning: two Black men trying to make sense of something that, at its core, defies logic. The Black conservative grift is real, and it’s well-funded. But the politicians and influencers cashing in are one thing. The everyday Black person chanting four more years at the White House is something else entirely. That’s what we couldn’t shake.

You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below.

The Black Conservative Grift

The politicians and influencers backing Trump aren’t confused. They’re calculating. I made the case that Black conservatism, in its current MAGA form, is a business model first and an ideology second, and the receipts are everywhere.

• Tim Scott and Wesley Hunt are the clearest examples. Tim Scott has been making excuses for Trump’s racism for years. Wesley Hunt said Jim Crow is over, nothing to see here. I said it plainly: these people have sold what’s left of their souls for this party. Don asked how any Black lawmaker could look at what’s happening to voting rights and defend it. Neither of us had a satisfying answer.

• The money is on the right, and everyone knows it. I told Don I get more right-wing advertising requests than liberal ones because that’s where the funding is concentrated. Nicki Minaj’s numbers were slipping, she needed clout, and suddenly, she’s MAGA and on stage with Erika Kirk. Candace Owens built an entire career on it. I said it directly: if Don and I woke up tomorrow and said, ‘You know what, Trump’s got a point,’ we’d be flooded with right-wing cash and get recruited to run for office within a week. That’s the architecture.

• Byron Donalds in Selma was something I witnessed firsthand. I was there for the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Donalds had the nerve to stand at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge and attack Section 5 pre-clearance of the Voting Rights Act. I tried to ask him a question. Someone in the crowd yelled, “You not like us!” He ran off before anyone could get a real answer. Don noted the mutation point: white supremacy doesn’t survive by staying visible. It takes the laws built to protect Black people and weaponizes them in the other direction. That’s what facially neutral laws applied with systemic racism look like.

• Omarosa was an early case study, not a cautionary tale anyone heeded. I pointed out that she went ride or die for Trump and got cast aside like everyone else. Don noted he knew her before things soured. The pattern is consistent: Black conservatives do the groveling, get used as props, and get replaced by the most mediocre available alternative when the moment passes. Tim Scott did everything asked of him, and they chose JD Vance anyway.

The Reckoning Coming

Don asked me to take it as homework: figure out why every day Black people are still supporting what’s happening. I took the assignment. But I also made the case that the historical judgment is already forming, and the people who enabled this are going to have to live with it.

• For the everyday Black Trump supporter, there is no material benefit. I made this point directly: you can at least understand the politicians and influencers, they’re doing it for money and access. But the everyday Black person? Trump raised Black unemployment through federal purges that disproportionately targeted Black workers. He signed executive orders pressuring the private sector to end DEI. Prices are up. Political representation is being stripped. Don asked what they see in it and landed on proximity to whiteness, proximity to power. The faces at the Black History Month celebration said it all.

• Don laid out the full record, and it is damning. The racist Obama video. “My African American.” Shithole countries. The Central Park Five. Housing discrimination. Higher taxes on the poor. Fewer services for underserved communities. And now, Black voting representation is being systematically dismantled. Don said he kept waiting for one of those moments to break through. None of them did. He landed on self-hatred, naivety, and pick-me as the most honest descriptors he was willing to say out loud.

• The reckoning is coming, whether people are ready for it or not. I said it plainly: a decade or two from now, the people who enabled this are going to face a historical judgment. The comedians are already abandoning Trump. The polling is turning. And I think any Black people who backed this are going to have to reckon with the fact that they backed an openly anti-Black president who legislated against their own power. The question Don left me with, and the one I’m still sitting with, is how you get through to someone before that reckoning arrives.

• To be clear, the overwhelming majority of Black Americans have not gone MAGA. Black voters remain one of the most consistently anti-Trump demographics in the country. But the ones who have, whether for clout, proximity to power, or genuine belief, are visible enough to warrant the conversation Don and I had. Even a small percentage of a large community is real people making a real choice, and that choice deserves scrutiny, not dismissal.

Bottom Line

There’s a difference between the grifters and the true believers, but the result is the same: Black political and economic power gets eroded either way. Don and I couldn’t resolve the question of why an everyday Black person looks at all of this and still says four more years. As for the politicians and influencers, it’s very clear why they do what they do. What we did resolve is that the historical record is being written right now, and it will be unsparing.

If this conversation mattered to you, I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News and also consider supporting Don Lemon. And if you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! It truly means a lot. Independent media runs on the people who back it.

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Last night, I joined The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle once again for a full-hour powerhouse Nightcap panel alongside the brilliant Antonia Hylton, Basil Smikle, and Tim O’Brien. We covered three things I want to make sure don’t get lost in the noise: China’s long-game strategy and how Trump is accelerating it, the coordinated assault on Black political and economic power happening in real time across multiple fronts, and a $10 billion act of self-dealing that should be one of the top stories in the country.

Trump flew to Beijing this week, and the framing from the White House is that he’s there to make deals. What I see is a president walking into a summit with leverage he already surrendered, in a country that has spent decades preparing for exactly this moment.

Trump had Project 2025. But China has a Project 2049 to become the world's superpower, and Trump is playing into China's hands. He's eroded America's soft power. He's ceded the renewable energy industry to China. He's weakened US global leadership, and China will exploit that.

At home, the gerrymandering rulings, the federal layoffs, the DEI rollbacks, they are not separate stories. They are a coordinated plan playing out across multiple institutions simultaneously, hitting Black political power and Black economic power at the same time. And while that is happening, the White House is being treated as a line item on a family balance sheet.

You can watch key clips from my appearance above and read key takeaways below.

Project 2049: China’s Long Game

While everyone has been focused on Project 2025, I made the case last night that China is running its own blueprint, what I’m calling their Project 2049. China has explicitly stated its goal: global superpower status by mid-century. Trump is contributing to that vision on almost every front.

• China’s core argument against the United States has always been that we are volatile, unreliable, that we claim ideals and do the opposite. Trump validates that argument daily. He is unilaterally handing Beijing its most effective propaganda without them having to do a thing.

• The renewable energy scoreboard is not close. China manufactures 80% of the world’s solar panels, 75% of lithium-ion batteries, over 70% of electric vehicles, and 60% of wind turbines. Trump is clinging to fossil fuels, relics of the past, while we cede the industries of the future entirely.

• Trump also authorized the sale of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China. We already saw what they did with lesser chips when DeepSeek shocked the world. Now they are demonstrating they can do more with fewer transistors. Trump walked into that summit weakened. China walked in ready to exploit it.

• And what I didn’t get to mention on the panel is the fact that the Trump Admin needs China’s help with opening the Strait of Hormuz, and it needs China’s rare Earth minerals.

The Most Openly Anti-Black President in Modern History

Stephanie asked whether what we’re watching says more about America than it does about Trump. My answer: Trump has spent decades exploiting the moral rot at the center of the American psyche, appealing to the lower impulses of everyday Americans. But what he’s executing right now is something more specific than opportunism. It’s a plan.

• No clearer case has been made for the necessity of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 than how fast Southern states moved the moment SCOTUS gave them the green light. Within hours, DeSantis signed off on seats designed to dilute Black majority districts. Tennessee wiped out a Black majority district. Louisiana is set to do the same. Alabama just got greenlit. This is happening simultaneously, not incrementally.

• Nearly 20% of the federal workforce was Black before Trump walked into office. The mass layoffs that followed did not happen in a vacuum. They coincided directly with the DEI assault, not just in the federal government but in the private sector, with executive orders designed to pressure corporations to stop hiring Black people under the banner of anti-DEI policy. The Black unemployment spike is directly tied to this.

• Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society’s legal pipeline and the Heritage Foundation’s policy playbooks - They put this plan in place. What we are living through is the culmination of decades of institutional infrastructure built precisely for this moment. Trump is the delivery mechanism. The plan predates him.

The White House As An Asset On Trump’s Balance Sheet

Todd Blanche was never going to stand up and call any of this unethical. The White House has been treated as just another asset on the Trump family balance sheet from day one, and the grift has only gotten more brazen.

• Trump is pulling in untraceable crypto money at a scale we still don’t fully understand. He’s already made billions. The corruption is not hidden. It operates in the open because no one with the power to stop it is willing to.

• Breaking the night of the show: CNN and the New York Times reported the DOJ is interested in settling a lawsuit for $10 billion. Taxpayer dollars. Money Trump would, in his own words, pay himself, suing the IRS, the agency he oversees. If it goes through, it is the most transparently corrupt act of self-dealing in American history. And frankly, the single biggest robbery in American history.

Bottom Line

Trump is in Beijing trying to make deals. The question is who those deals are for. China has a plan and a timeline. Trump is handing them both the future economy and the propaganda to go with it. At home, Black political and economic power is being dismantled across multiple institutions at the same time, and the White House is being looted in broad daylight. These are not isolated stories. They are the same story, and it is moving fast.

If this analysis mattered to you, I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News. And if you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! It truly means a lot. Independent media runs on the people who back it.

Ahmed Baba News

Independent pro-democracy journalism, analysis, and commentary. Delivered to your inbox 2 to 4 times a week. Become a free or paid subscriber.

Thank you for watching! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value pro-democracy journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference.

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James Matthewson joined me this week for Across the Pond under circumstances that only he could pull off. He had just completed 39 hours of straight election coverage, driving back from Glasgow after doing BBC coverage overnight, and rather than call it off, he pulled his Land Rover Defender into the Pentland Hills outside Edinburgh and did the pod from the car. That kind of dedication tells you everything you need to know about how much this moment matters, and the conversation matched the energy.

The UK local elections delivered exactly the damage we predicted last week. Labour lost 1,400 council seats in England. Reform UK surged. The Greens and Lib Dems gained ground. And Keir Starmer is now what James called him on Sky News Australia at four in the morning: a zombie prime minister. We got into who Reform actually elected, what some of those councilors have said publicly, the three-way leadership question of Streeting versus Rayner versus Burnham, and the argument for what Labor’s best path forward actually looks like.

We also got into the bigger structural comparisons. The Starmer-Biden parallel. The written versus unwritten constitution question. And James’s argument, the one that I think deserves the most attention, that Nigel Farage and Reform in power could be more dangerous than Trump, not less, because Farage is smarter, more disciplined, and more strategic about where he draws the line.

Before we get into it, a quick orientation for anyone new to UK politics. Think of Labour as center-left, the Lib Dems as more centrist, the Greens as further left, the Tories as center-right, and Reform as what would happen if MAGA became its own party and ate the Republican Party from the inside. That is essentially what has happened. Reform has absorbed the Tory base, the two effective parties in Britain are now Labour and Reform, and Labour is bleeding from both sides, splintering the country into a multi-party system.

If you were watching live, thank you for being part of it. If you’re catching up now, the full conversation is above, and the key takeaways are below.

The Zombie Prime Minister

The election results confirmed what we expected and then some. Labour did not just lose ground. It lost the argument about whether Keir Starmer can lead the party into the next general election.

• Labour lost 1,400 council seats in England, with losses in Scotland and Wales too. James had been awake for nearly 40 hours covering it and came into this conversation with the clarity of someone who has processed the full picture. The results were not a protest. They were a verdict. Around 90 Labour MPs are now calling for Starmer to step down, while just over 100 have signed a letter of support. You need 81 MPs to mount a proper leadership challenge.

• Starmer went into a Cabinet meeting the morning after and refused to acknowledge reality. James described the Cabinet meeting: rather than opening the floor to an honest conversation about his position, Starmer told the room he was not going anywhere and that anyone who wanted to challenge him was welcome to try. Then he moved on to talk about Iran. James called it the bunker mentality, the belief that every critical voice is an attack rather than a warning.

• In Scotland and Wales, the biggest winners were the pro-independence parties. Plaid Cymru in Wales and the SNP in Scotland both gained ground. James made the point that this raises the real, if not imminent, prospect of the UK breaking up as a country, with Reform rising in England at the same time as the devolved nations pull toward independence. That is the full scope of the crisis Starmer is presiding over.

The Leadership Question: Streeting, Rayner, or Burnham?

Three names are circulating as potential replacements for Starmer. James had a clear view on all three, and the picture is more complicated than it looks.

• Wes Streeting would be more of the same, and James thinks he would be worse when dealing with Trump. Streeting is the Health Secretary, young, ambitious, and has been likened to Pete Buttigieg, a comparison James pushed back on hard. As I noted, Buttigieg would not throw trans people under the bus. James’s read is that Streeting is an opportunist without clear values who has already alienated LGBT communities despite being a gay man himself by undermining trans healthcare. He expects Streeting to resign and mount a challenge, but thinks if it comes down to just Streeting versus Starmer, Starmer wins and the challenge fails, leaving Labour in a worse position than before.

• Andy Burnham is the right answer, but is currently blocked from Parliament. James’s preferred candidate is the Mayor of Manchester, a broadly left but not hard-left figure who has rebranded himself around the city’s cultural identity and has real cross-spectrum appeal. The problem is that to become Labour leader you have to be an MP, and Starmer’s team blocked Burnham from standing in a by-election earlier this year through the NEC, the party’s governing body. Labour then lost that seat to the Greens. Two MPs have said they would resign and let Burnham take their seat, but there is no guarantee he would win it. There are no safe Labour seats anymore.

• The best strategy may be for Starmer to create a pathway for Burnham himself. This was the argument I made in the conversation, and James outlined it in more detail. Rather than a chaotic leadership challenge that probably fails, the better outcome would be Starmer acknowledging the writing on the wall, committing to step down at the Labour Party conference in September, and using the time between now and then to clear a route for Burnham to get into Parliament. Two MPs have already offered to stand aside. If Starmer endorsed that plan and backed Burnham publicly, it would give Labour a genuine transition rather than a messy civil war.

• Angela Rayner may be the most compelling candidate nobody is talking about enough. James made the case for her at length, and it is worth repeating here. Rayner was pregnant at 16, left school, became a carer for her disabled and bipolar mother, had a drinking problem, got into the trade union movement, rose through the ranks, became Deputy Prime Minister, never went to university. James said nobody has had a political journey like hers. She wears goth boots, keeps a vape in her mouth, and the political establishment refuses to take her seriously because of her accent and her class. James texted her the day before to say he wanted to be at the front of the queue if she runs. His read: she would not stand for Trump’s nonsense for a single second.

The Starmer-Biden Parallel

To better contextualize Starmer’s predicament for a US audience, I made the argument that where Starmer sits right now maps closely onto where Biden was in 2022, with one critical difference: the warning signs are louder for Starmer given his party got wiped out in a way Biden’s didn’t in the midterms, and there is still time to act on them.

• The parallel holds, but with an important distinction. I noted that Biden actually got a significant amount done, the Inflation Reduction Act, infrastructure investment, real progressive policy, but voters felt he failed on implementation and delivery. Starmer has not even cleared that bar. The comparison of being asked whether you can keep this person at the top of the ticket heading into the next general election is where both leaders ended up, and the answer in both cases appears to be a pretty loud no.

• The worst case is Starmer staying too long and then dropping out at the last minute. James identified this as the most likely outcome given Starmer’s bunker mentality. A failed leadership challenge from Streeting that Starmer survives. Continued drift. Then, close to the general election, Starmer finally accepts the reality and steps down. The next leader gets a fraction of the time needed to make a case to voters. Labour goes into the general wounded and fractured. Reform benefits. The US trajectory gets repeated.

• The better case requires Starmer to do what Biden ultimately did, read the room before it is too late. Biden’s late exit was painful. A graceful exit with a clear succession plan would have been better. The difference is that Starmer still has time to do it the right way. The Labour conference in September is the logical moment. The route to Burnham exists if Starmer chooses to take it. Whether he has the self-awareness to do that is the open question, and James does not think he does.

Who Reform Actually Elected

Reform’s surge in the council elections was not just a numbers story. The people who actually won seats tell you everything about what this movement is.

• One newly elected Reform councilor said the rape of a Sikh woman in Britain was a good thing. James named this directly. Another said that Nigerians should be melted down to fill potholes. A third, elected to Doncaster Council in Yorkshire, immediately submitted a request for the council to write to NASA asking whether UFOs are real. As I noted, some Republicans in the US do not even say things that openly deranged. This is the local government Reform has just populated.

• A Reform councilor said “shoot the Pakistanis” and has not been suspended. James confirmed he is under investigation by the party but remains in his seat. The party’s response has been investigation, not removal. That is the standard of accountability Reform is applying to its own elected officials.

• These are not political operatives. They are people who had a rant about immigrants at the pub and got nominated. James described it exactly that way. Experienced Labour, Lib Dem, and SNP councilors who had served their communities for ten and fifteen years lost their seats to people with no knowledge of local government whose only qualification was anger about immigration. That is what Reform has built at the local level.

• Former Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman has now defected to Reform. James had her on the media rounds during election night defending the party’s platform, including the detention center threats we covered last week. She held one of the most senior positions in British government. That is how far right the right of British politics has moved.

The Unwritten Constitution

A commenter in the chat asked about the no-confidence mechanism and whether Americans should be envious of it. That opened into one of the most interesting structural conversations we have had on the show.

• Britain’s unwritten constitution gives it flexibility that America’s written one does not. James made the point that no one who wrote the American Constitution in the 1700s could have predicted the world it would be applied to now. The right to bear arms, the executive powers interpretations, and the Dick Cheney-era expansions of presidential authority. Britain never froze its constitutional arrangements in the same way, which is why a parliamentary no-confidence mechanism exists and actually functions.

• I pushed back gently in defense of the American Constitution. My argument is that the founders actually did anticipate a figure like Trump. The Federalist Papers describe the dangers of demagogues in terms that read like a direct warning about what we are living through. The problem is not the document. The problem is that the guardrails the founders built depend on people willing to enforce them, and we have a Congress that will not.

• James acknowledged the trade-off: the parliamentary system limits the talent pool. To become Prime Minister, you have to have been an MP, risen through the party, and served as a minister. That professional political class is exactly what Farage and Trump have exploited by calling everyone in it the establishment. James’s point: the only real elite establishment is money, and Farage and Trump both have it while successfully pretending they don’t.

The Potential For Smarter Authoritarianism In The UK

This was James’s most alarming argument of the conversation, and the one I want to make sure lands with the people reading this.

• James’s position: our fascists are smarter than your fascists. He said it directly and meant it not as a boast but as a warning. Farage is more intelligent than Trump, more disciplined, and more strategic about where he draws the public line on his racism. He uses dog whistles where Trump uses a bullhorn. That makes him harder to counter and potentially more dangerous in power.

• Farage models himself on Enoch Powell, the author of the Rivers of Blood speech. James explained the reference for the American audience. Powell was a British politician who, in 1968, predicted that if Black immigration continued, Black people would “hold the whip hand over the white man.” That is the political tradition Farage has consciously positioned himself within. James called Powell a racist, a neo-fascist, and a religious maniac. Farage’s admiration for him tells you exactly where Reform’s ideological roots are.

• Reform in power would represent a more methodical dismantling of democratic norms than what we have seen from Trump. The combination of Farage’s intelligence, the party’s organizational discipline at the local level despite its chaotic councilors, and the crypto billionaire money flowing in from abroad makes this a serious threat. James said he is genuinely terrified by the prospect, and having covered British politics from the inside for fifteen years, his alarm is not rhetorical.

Bottom Line

Labour lost 1,400 council seats. Reform elected councilors who said things that would end careers even in MAGA America. Keir Starmer is in denial. And the man waiting to take over if Reform wins a general election is smarter, more disciplined, and could be more dangerous than Donald Trump, according to James.

James is out there in Edinburgh doing the work, literally pulling over on the side of a Scottish hill to make sure this conversation happened. I am here in Brooklyn doing the same. We do this every Wednesday at 11:30 am Eastern because the transatlantic view matters and because you deserve analysis that does not pull punches.

Support independent journalism and analysis that fearlessly tells the truth. Subscribe to James Matthewson. If you have not yet become a paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News, you can do that below. And if you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! It truly means a lot. Independent media runs on the people who back it.

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Uneducated by James Matthewson

Before he was a broadcaster and writer, James Matthewson was a high-school drop out who accidentally became a political adviser. Naming this substack after being criticised for being 'uneducated', James gives his weekly updates on the world of Politics.