Four and one-half months into Donald Trump's second presidency, two of his prominent critics on the left — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), both self-described "democratic socialists" — are touring the United States together and bringing their anti-MAGA agenda to large audiences.

The fact that they come from different generations is no coincidence. Sanders, at 83, is a member of the Silent Generation, while the 35-year-old AOC is a Millennial. And Sanders views her as important to his multi-generation outreach.

During an interview with The Guardian's Zoe Williams published on June 4, Sanders laid out his recommendations for an anti-Trump game plan. And he believes that Democrats need to be much more aggressive in pushing an economic message.

READ MORE: The truth behind Trump's 'big beautiful bill' — and its impact on Obamacare

"Their weakness is, I think, that their credibility is now quite low," Sanders said of Democrats during the interview. "And they don't have much of a message for working people, other than to say Trump is dangerous. I think that's just not enough… What the Democrats have to absolutely make clear is this: We're going to take on the billionaire class. They're going to start paying their fair share of taxes."

Sanders continued, "We're going to have healthcare for all people as a human right. We're going to have a strong childcare system that every American can afford. We're going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free. We're going to create millions of jobs transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel. We're going to build housing — boy, housing is, like it is here, just a huge crisis. We're going to build millions of units of low-income and affordable housing. Do Democrats say that? No."

The Vermont senator warned that Trump is even more extreme during his second presidency than he was during his first.

"We don't usually have presidents suing the media, threatening the media if they write bad stories about them," Sanders told The Guardian. "We don't usually have presidents threatening to impeach judges. We don't have presidents suing law firms. You add all that together, it is a movement for authoritarianism. …. First time around, Trump was not as well-organized."

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Sanders continued, "They've had four years to get their act together, so to speak. And that’s what this Project 2025 document was about…. One of the frightening aspects of what's going on is the degree to which the establishment-type folks have caved in, and so quickly. That was much less the case during Trump's first term."

READ MORE: 'Even Elon is disgusted': Trump brutally mocked after avalanche of overnight rants

Read The Guardian's full interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders at this link.

Before the end of the year, the Trump administration is planning to eliminate up to 35,000 healthcare jobs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, a chronically understaffed agency that has already lost tens of thousands of employees to the White House’s sweeping assault on the federal workforce.

The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the targeted positions—many of which are unfilled—include doctors, nurses, and support staff. A spokesperson for the VA, led by former Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), described the jobs as “mostly Covid-era roles that are no longer necessary.”

VA workers, veterans advocates, and a union representing hundreds of thousands of department employees disputed that characterization as the agency faces staff shortages across the country.

“We are all doing the work of others to compensate,” one VA employee told the Post. “The idea that relief isn’t coming is really, really disappointing.”

Thomas Dargon Jr., deputy general counsel of the American Federation of Government Employees, said remaining VA employees “are obviously going to be facing the brunt of any further job cuts or reorganization that results in employees having to do more work with less.”

The advocacy organization VoteVets cast the job cuts as another step toward the longstanding GOP goal of privatizing the VA.

“This is outrageous,” the group wrote on social media. “It is abundantly clear that Republicans and the Trump administration want to strangle the VA until it all gets privatized.”

“We must expand the VA, not hollow it out.”

News of the impending job cuts came months after the Trump administration moved to gut collective bargaining protections for many VA employees and as recent staffing cuts continued to hamper veterans’ services nationwide.

“Wait times for new mental health appointments have increased sharply since January in my home state, Connecticut,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said during a Senate hearing earlier this month. “For example, the most recent data shows the current wait time for a new patient mental health appointment at the Orange VA Clinic in Connecticut—an outpatient facility specializing in mental health—is 208 days.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said in a statement Sunday that “it is unacceptable that the US Department of Veterans Affairs plans to eliminate as many as 35,000 healthcare positions this month.”

“This is especially outrageous given the reality that VA facilities in Vermont and across the country already face severe staffing challenges,” said Sanders. “When someone puts their life on the line to defend this country in uniform, we in turn must provide them with the best quality healthcare available. These layoffs are unacceptable and must be reversed. We must expand the VA, not hollow it out. And I will do everything I can to make that happen.”

Democratic and Independent lawmakers on Thursday reacted with alarm and scorn on Thursday after President Donald Trump called for a handful of Democrats to be tried and executed for sedition after they called on active duty US soldiers and intelligence officials to uphold their constitutional duty not to obey unlawful orders.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) posted a video denouncing the president’s social media posts on the matter, saying Trump’s call for the execution “is not normal” and that “we cannot allow this to feel normal.”

“As far as I know,” Murphy said, a president saying such a thing “has never happened before in the history of the country,” adding that “every Democratic member of the House and Senate, their life is in jeopardy right now” in the context of those threats.

“The president of the United States just called for members of Congress to be executed,” said Murphy, visibly angry. “If you are a person of influence in this country, maybe it’s time to pick a f------- side.”

“If you are a Republican in Congress, if you are a Republican governor,” he continued, “maybe it’s time to draw a line in the sand and say that under no circumstances should the President of the United States be calling on his political opposition to be hanged.”

Murphy said the nation “is at a very dangerous moment right now,” with President Trump “engaged in the wholesale incitement, endorsement, and rationalization of political violence in this country. This is a very slippery slope that we are on.”

The senator added that now is “a moment for people to step up,” especially those in positions of power or influence, to denounce a president who would call for the “murder of his political opposition.”

Murphy was far from alone in condemning the president’s remarks.

“Clearly, Trump has learned something from his good friend MbS: If you don’t like what your political opponents say, execute them,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), referencing the president’s meeting this week with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “Unfortunately for Mr. Trump, that’s not what we do in America.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) asked the question: “Will the FBI investigate President Trump’s call for the deaths of sitting Democratic lawmakers?”

More than 10,000 people turned out for a rally with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt), in Warren as part of his national “Fighting Oligarchy” tour.

The audience filled the main event space – the gym at Lincoln High School – and two overflow rooms, and still left hundreds more outside.

Wayne County Health Director Abdul El-Sayed, who ran for governor in 2018 and is exploring a run for U.S. Senate in 2026, said the size of the crowd is a sign of progressives’ resilience.

“They want us to step back, and today, all of you have said that we are not stepping back, we are stepping forward,” El-Sayed said. “We are recognizing that in one another, we have all we need to build that government for the people and by the people.”

Sanders compared the current political moment to various movements throughout history, including the American Revolution and the abolition movement.

“The change that we have experienced over hundreds of years of our nationhood only occurs when ordinary people stand up against oppression and injustice and fight back,” Sanders said.

But he said that the current landscape is unlike anything the country has experienced before because voters can no longer agree on a shared set of facts, which he said hampers the country’s ability to debate important issues.

“We’re up against a phenomenon that we have never seen, and that is the Big Lie,” Sanders said. “The Big Lie is not just stretching the truth; the Big Lie is not just fibbing. The Big Lie is creating a parallel universe, a set of ideas that have no basis in reality.”

Sanders said the tour is focused on areas where Republicans narrowly won seats in Congress. He called on U.S. Rep. John James (R-Shelby Twp.), to hold an in-person town hall with constituents.

“He has the right to make his case, to speak, you have the right to ask him questions,” Sanders said.

Sanders started his speech warning that “we have an administration that is leading us to oligarchy, an administration that is leading us to an authoritarian form of society, an administration that is leading us towards kleptocracy.”

He pointed to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg being seated in the front row at Trump’s inauguration as evidence.

“Instead of a government of the people, by the people and for the people, we have now become a government of the billionaire class, for the billionaire class,” Sanders said.

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain spoke at the rally wearing a shirt that read “eat the rich,” which he said he had not worn since the Big Three automakers went on strike in 2023.

“Billionaires don’t have a right to exist,” Fain told the crowd.

El-Sayed said that the administration of President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance “want to move fast and break things.”

“But what they’re breaking is the government that our hard earned tax dollars have been funding,” El-Sayed said. “And we’re here to say that that is our money, that is our government, take your damn billionaire hands off of it.”

Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor for questions: info@michiganadvance.com.

Editor's note: This headline has been updated.

A social media exchange between Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and conservative activist Riley Gaines ignited a firestorm among MAGA Republicans on Monday.

Gaines, a former collegiate swimmer and vocal critic of transgender women in women's sports, shared a photo on the social platform X of Ocasio-Cortez with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani (D) at a rally in New York held Sunday.

Gaines wrote, "We're being destroyed from within."

Ocasio-Cortez reacted to her post and wrote, "Maybe if you channeled all this anger into swimming faster you wouldn’t have come in fifth."

The remark referenced Gaines's fifth-place finish at the 2022 NCAA Swimming Championships, where she tied with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), a staunch ally of Gaines' and advocate for legislation aimed at restricting transgender women from competing in women's sports, criticized Ocasio-Cortez's comment.

In a post reacting to Ocasio-Cortez's remarks, Tuberville wrote, "What happened to 'support all women' @AOC? @Riley_Gaines_ is a 5x SEC Champion and 12x NCAA All-American. Not to mention she’s a patriot who has fought every day for women and girls. Meanwhile, AOC thinks 'women’s rights' just means abortion."

Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, energized nearly 13,000 supporters at a rally in Forest Hills, Queens, on Sunday. The event, under the slogan “New York Is Not For Sale,” featured prominent endorsements from Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez.

Mamdani, who is leading in the polls, emphasized his platform focused on rent freezes, universal childcare, affordable housing and expanded education.

US Sen. Bernie Sanders on Sunday implored his Democratic colleagues in Congress not to cave to President Donald Trump and Republicans in the ongoing government shutdown fight, warning that doing so would hasten the country’s descent into authoritarianism.

In an op-ed for The Guardian, Sanders (I-Vt.) called Trump a “schoolyard bully” and argued that “anyone who thinks surrendering to him now will lead to better outcomes and cooperation in the future does not understand how a power-hungry demagogue operates.”

“This is a man who threatens to arrest and jail his political opponents, deploys the US military into Democratic cities, and allows masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to pick people up off the streets and throw them into vans without due process,” Sanders wrote. “He has sued virtually every major media outlet because he does not tolerate criticism, has extorted funds from law firms and is withholding federal funding from states that voted against him.”

If Democrats capitulate, Sanders warned, Trump “will utilize his victory to accelerate his movement toward authoritarianism.”

“At a time when he already has no regard for our democratic system of checks and balances,” the senator wrote, “he will be emboldened to continue decimating programs that protect elderly people, children, the sick and the poor while giving more tax breaks and other benefits to his fellow oligarchs.”

Sanders’ op-ed came as the shutdown continued with no end in sight, with Democrats standing by their demand for an extension of Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits as a necessary condition for any government funding deal. Republicans have so far refused to negotiate on the ACA subsidies even as health insurance premiums skyrocket nationwide.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, is illegally withholding Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding from tens of millions of Americans—including millions of children—despite court rulings ordering him to release the money.

In a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday, Trump again urged Republicans to nuke the 60-vote filibuster in the Senate to remove the need for Democratic support to reopen the government and advance other elements of their agenda unilaterally. Under the status quo, Republicans need the support of at least seven Democratic senators to advance a government funding package.

“The Republicans have to get tougher,” Trump said. “If we end the filibuster, we can do exactly what we want. We’re not going to lose power.”

Congressional Democrats have faced some pressure from allies, most notably the head of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), to cut a deal with Republicans to end the shutdown and alleviate the suffering it has inflicted on federal workers and many others.

But Democrats appear unmoved by the AFGE president’s demand, and other labor leaders have since voiced support for the minority party’s effort to secure an extension of ACA subsidies.

“We’re urging our Democratic friends to hold the line,” said Jaime Contreras, executive vice president of the 185,000-member Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ.

In his op-ed on Sunday, Sanders asked, “Does anyone truly believe that caving in to Trump now will stop his unprecedented attacks on our democracy and working people?”

“If the Democrats cave now, it would be a betrayal of the millions of Americans who have fought and died for democracy and our Constitution,” the senator wrote. “It would be a sellout of a working class that is struggling to survive in very difficult economic times. Democrats in Congress are the last remaining opposition to Trump’s quest for absolute power. To surrender now would be an historic tragedy for our country, something that history will not look kindly upon.”

A leading economist and key congressional Democrat on Wednesday pointed to the Federal Reserve’s benchmark interest rate cut as just the latest evidence of the havoc that President Donald Trump is wreaking on the economy.

The US central bank has a dual mandate to promote price stability and maximum employment. The Federal Open Market Committee may raise the benchmark rate to reduce inflation, or cut it to spur economic growth, including hiring. However, the FOMC is currently contending with a cooling job market and soaring costs.

After the FOMC’s two-day monthly meeting, the divided committee announced a quarter-point reduction to 3.5-3.75%. It’s the third time the panel has cut the federal funds rate in recent months after a pause during the early part of Trump’s second term.

“Today’s decision shows that the Trump economy is in a sorry state and that the Federal Reserve is concerned about a weakening job market,” House Budget Committee Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) said in a statement. “On top of a flailing job market, the president’s tariffs—his national sales tax—continue to fuel inflation.”

“To make matters worse, extreme Republican policies, including Trump’s Big Ugly Law, are driving healthcare costs sharply higher,” he continued, pointing to the budget package that the president signed in July. “I will keep fighting to lower costs and for an economy that works for every American.”

Alex Jacquez, a former Obama administration official who is now chief of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, similarly said that “Trump’s reckless handling of the economy has backed the Fed into a corner—stuck between rising costs and a weakening job market, it has no choice but to try and offer what little relief they can to consumers via rate cuts.”

“But the Fed cannot undo the damage created by Trump’s chaos economy,” Jacquez added, “and working families are heading into the holidays feeling stretched, stressed, and far from jolly.”

Thanks to the historically long federal government shutdown, the FOMC didn’t have typical data—the consumer price index or jobs report—to inform Wednesday’s decision. Instead, its new statement and projections “relied on ‘available indicators,’ which Fed officials have said include their own internal surveys, community contacts, and private data,” Reuters reported.

“The most recent official data on unemployment and inflation is for September, and showed the unemployment rate rising to 4.4% from 4.3%, while the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation also increased slightly to 2.8% from 2.7%,” the news agency noted. “The Fed has a 2% inflation target, but the pace of price increases has risen steadily from 2.3% in April, a fact at least partly attributable to the pass-through of rising import taxes to consumers and a driving force behind the central bank’s policy divide.”

The lack of government data has also shifted journalists’ attention to other sources, including the revelation from global payroll processing firm ADP that the US lost 32,000 jobs in November, as well as Gallup’s finding last week that Americans’ confidence in the economy has fallen by seven points over the past month and is now at its lowest level in over a year.

The Associated Press highlighted that the rate cut is “good news” for US job-seekers:

“Overall, we’ve seen a slowing demand for workers with employers not hiring the way they did a couple of years ago,” said Cory Stahle, senior economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “By lowering the interest rate, you make it a little more financially reasonable for employers to hire additional people. Especially in some areas—like startups, where companies lean pretty heavily on borrowed money—that’s the hope here.”Stahle acknowledged that it could take time for the rate cuts to filter down to employers and then to workers, but he said the signal of the reduction is also important.
“Beyond the size of the cut, it tells employers and job-seekers something about the Federal Reserve’s priorities and focus. That they’re concerned about the labor market and willing to step in and support the labor market. It’s an assurance of the reserve’s priorities.”

The Federal Reserve is now projecting only one rate cut next year. During a Wednesday press conference, Fed Chair Jerome Powell pointed to the three cuts since September and said that “we are well positioned to wait to see how the economy evolves.”

However, Powell is on his way out, with his term ending in May, and Trump signaled in a Tuesday interview with Politico that agreeing with immediate interest rate cuts is a litmus test for his next nominee to fill the role.

Trump—who embarked on a nationwide “affordability tour” this week after claiming last week that “the word ‘affordability’ is a Democrat scam”—also graded the US economy on his watch, giving it an A+++++.

US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) responded: “Really? 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. 800,000 are homeless. Food prices are at record highs. Wages lag behind inflation. God help us when we have a B+++++ economy.”

After Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk was fatally shot in Utah on September 10, a long list of Democrats wasted no time forcefully condemning his murder — from former President Joe Biden to ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York). AOC made it abundantly clear that while she had major disagreements with Kirk politically, that type of violence has no place in U.S. politics.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), an independent who caucuses with Democrats, spoke out as well — not unlike his quick response to the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) in 2017. The Vermont senator was quick to condemn the attack and wish Scalise a full recovery.

Regardless, MAGA Republicans ranging from Vice President JD Vance to Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisconsin) to Fox News' Jesse Watters blamed Democrats for Kirk's assassination. And MAGA websites, including the Charlie Kirk Data Foundation and Cancel The Hate, called for retaliation against anyone who criticized Kirk.

But according to Salon's Russell Payne, sites promising vengeance against Kirk's critics have either been discontinued or shifted their focus.

"Organized right-wing doxxing efforts have evaporated in the month since the killing of Charlie Kirk, the former head of Turning Point USA, leaving questions about where all the data went," Payne explains in an article published on October 23. "In the six weeks since Kirk's death, most of the right-wing efforts to avenge his death — except the ones in the federal government — have closed up shop. The biggest of these would-be organizations is the Charlie Kirk Data Foundation, an anonymously operated social media account and website that claims to have collected tens of thousands of entries on supposed critics of Kirk. Today, however, the site is down, and it has been for weeks."

Payne notes that the Charlie Kirk Data Foundation's "last update" was "on September 14," while Cancel the Hate has "shuttered."

"As these sites collapsed, other high-profile conservatives who had spent time reporting Kirk's critics returned to their normal activities, like attacking the LGBTQ+ community online and pushing to ban certain types of religious garb in the United States," Payne reports. "The only place where the effort to punish Kirk's critics lives is in the one place it matters most: the federal government. The Trump Administration has launched a widespread effort to attack its perceived political opponents while downplaying violence from right-wing groups and Trump's own supporters. These efforts have spanned multiple agencies, including the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the IRS, and have included the revocation of visas for those who criticized the far-right commentator, the firing of military personnel who criticized Kirk and attacks from the president himself."

Jacob Mchangama, founder of The Future of Free Speech, called out the campaign to silence or bully those who disagreed with Kirk politically as anti-First Amendment.

Mchangama told Salon, "If you are able to intimidate people, you can get away with pressuring people into self-censoring — even if the people who are the targets have the First Amendment on their side…. It's also true that a lot of conservative voices who were riled up about the Biden Administration and about censorious cancel culture coming from the left are now gleefully adopting the same tactics and are in favor of supercharging them against people on the left. And more broadly, being in favor of using state power and also purging cultural institutions of ideas they don’t like."

Russell Payne's full article for Salon is available at this link.