It's not hard to minimize today's national coming-out party for the Democratic Socialists of America. Yes, the DSA caucus in the House of Representatives is poised to quadruple in size. But growing from just two members (New York's Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Michigan's Rashida Tlaib) to around eight will only achieve the socialists' numerical parity with the Congressional Ski and Snowboard Caucus.

But that's an overly DSA-centric view of the socialistic left. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I—Vt.), the universally acknowledged godfather of the movement, is not technically a member of the DSA. Neither is the candidate who today is setting the most red hearts aflutter, Michigan's Abdul El-Sayed, a "socialist in all but name," as Reason's Robby Soave has pointed out. You will never run out of hairs to split when assessing who is or is not a member, or national endorsee, or local-only endorsee, or a former member who nonetheless got endorsed by New York Mayor and DSA kingmaker Zohran Mamdani, or a former endorsee who got excommunicated because he didn't sign onto the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

The forest surrounding these trees is a rapidly growing bloc of elected officials who oppose American wars, softball the human rights crimes of American adversaries, and seek Medicare for All. They want to tax the rich, blunt the growth of data centers, abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), drive corporate money out of politics, and sever U.S. bonds with Israel.

"The DSA, the energy and the desire for bold change, not incremental change, is very much going to be…dominant," Gavin Newsom, the California governor and potential 2028 presidential candidate,  predicted last month. "I mean, that is going to be the mainstream Democratic movement. Absolutely. No question in my mind."

With new Democratic majorities predicted for the House and increasingly the U.S. Senate, all eyes will be on the size of the socialistic rump and whether it exceeds the margins of partisan control.

"I would rather the Republicans keep the House by five [seats] than the Democrats win by five, because if that happens, they're hostage to the DSA," longtime Democratic strategist James Carville groused last month. "Like, [incoming House Speaker] Hakeem [Jefferies] cannot move. There's no place for him to go."

Such a scenario will be familiar to those who followed the rise and fall of the Tea Party movement within the GOP. After sweeping into office via a series of insurgent primary challenges against establishment opponents, the Tea Party bloc, which graduated into the House Freedom Caucus, leveraged its numbers to torture and eventually oust a series of speakers, from John Boehner to Paul Ryan to Kevin McCarthy. In the 2011–12 and 2013–14 sessions especially, the cantankerous caucus harassed the opposing-party president and shaped national politics in a material way, culminating in the sequestration budget cuts of 2013.

Being the loudest minority within a majority that stands in legislative opposition to an unpopular president means that DSA and DSA-adjacent members of Congress are going to be getting a lot of screen time over the next two-plus years, abetted by their comparative youth and good looks. Here are a few of the new specifically DSA faces to follow.

Darializa Avila Chevalier

New York's 13th Congressional District (Harlem/Bronx)

An anti-Israel activist at Columbia University who Mamdani boosted to a shock primary victory over a five-term incumbent who was chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the 32-year-old DAC is a prison abolitionist who last month was pushed to the ground by cops at an anti-ICE protest and then called on Mamdani's police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, to resign. She marched in solidarity with Palestinians on October 8, 2023, named Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump as the most detestable humans alive, and has a social media past that includes opposing interracial relationships, calling Joe Biden a "rapist," and supporting the nationalization of industry. The Washington Monthly, a decidedly left-of-center publication, named her as one of the "10 worst midterm candidates running for Congress" in 2026. Prediction markets put her odds of winning at north of 97 percent.

Claire Valdez

New York's 7th Congressional District (North Brooklyn/Queens)

Another establishment-smiting Mamdani pick, the 37-year-old Valdez is an artist-turned-union-activist-turned-state-lawmaker who last year was arrested outside the offices of Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand during a protest against their opposition to halting arms sales to Israel. She believes in single-payer healthcare, universal rent control, nationalizing airlines, and a federal jobs guarantee. One of her campaign ads features her smacking a Starbucks coffee out of some stranger's hand, in protest of the company's policies toward unions. Prediction markets have Valdez at around 97 percent.

Melat Kiros

Colorado's 1st Congressional District (Denver)

The 29-year-old Ethiopian immigrant and budding lawyer defeated a 30-year incumbent in the shock primary, on a platform of Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, federalizing rent control, opposing data centers, and an arms embargo on Israel, which she accuses of being an ethnostate engaged in genocide. Kiros has "made Zionism a defining issue in Denver's congressional election," reports Denverite, by doing things like going on Hasan Piker's podcast in May to call the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks "an inevitable consequence of apartheid, of occupation, decades of occupation," and refusing to characterize a deadly Boulder bombing attack on release-the-Israeli-hostages demonstrators as antisemitic. She is prediction-marketing at around 99 percent.

Donavan McKinney

Michigan's 13th Congressional District (Detroit)

A political organizer and state representative, the 34-year-old McKinney narrowly toppled in the Democratic primary a one-term, pro-Israel incumbent backed by House Leader Jeffries. McKinney has focused on affordability issues, such as insurance premiums and childcare, in addition to Medicare for All and abolishing ICE. His odds are at around 98 percent.

Angela Gonzalez-Torres

California's 34th Congressional District (Los Angeles)

California's top-two primary/runoff system means that the battles that otherwise get decided at the initial primary level can carry on into November. Such is the case with this 31-year-old DSA activist seeking to unseat a 51-year-old Democratic incumbent, on a platform of the usual DSA-pol positions, with an extra dab of affordability and anti-AIPAC. Gonzales-Torres cares so much about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that she introduced a resolution supporting Gaza while serving as president of the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council, then derided her successor in that post as a "very Zionist gentrifier man, a white man" and a "threat to my community." AGT's prediction markets are closer to 80 percent.

Chris Rabb

Pennsylvania's 3rd Congressional District (Philadelphia)

The graybeard of the DSA group at age 56, Rabb is a politico, an academic, and an amateur comedian who focused on criminal justice reform, climate activism, and conscious capitalism before competing for this open congressional seat against some establishment-favored opponents. In addition to the usual Medicare for All/abolish ICE/data center moratorium/staunch criticism of Israel, Rabb has plumped for Mamdani-style government-run grocery stores. He's a 99 percenter.

There are plenty of more DSA-adjacent pols, such as my (odious) next representative, Brad Lander, who are poised to join the out-and-out DSAers in the 120th Congress. Whether their ranks will cohere enough without infighting, let alone outnumber the margin of Democrats over Republicans, is anyone's guess. The much tighter projected margin in the Senate means that even a DSA-friendly caucus of two (Sanders and El-Sayed), or even three (in case the much-less-ballyhooed Angie Nixon squeaks one out in Florida), could impose Carville's math over the neck of potential Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

And even if the numbers don't add up yet to Tea Party–style influence, the DSA pulse-quickening among younger Democrats everywhere will exert at least some pull over the most centrist and establishmentarian of Dems. Almost 12 years since Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders upended American politics, the populist moment is far from over.

The post The DSA's Coming-Out Party appeared first on Reason Magazine.

On Election Day, the X account AGHamilton29 drew attention to a New York Times report headlined "Jewish Leaders in Michigan Urge Support for El-Sayed’s Senate Bid." There was something funny -- literally funny -- about the signatories to the letter from Michigan Jews for Democracy. Bayliss Wagner began their report on September 17: A group of Jewish voters in Michigan is urging support for Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the state’s Democratic nominee for Senate, in an open letter that acknowledges concerns among some Jewish voters about his candidacy and his criticism of Israel.The letter, signed by more than 500 people who identify as Jewish leaders or voters in the state, says that the election of Dr. El-Sayed, a staunch critic of Israel, is “clearly the better choice for Jews” compared with his Republican opponent, former Representative Mike Rogers.AG noted a quick skim of this list of signatories not only has a pile of people who don't use their last name -- instead you just get "Jaime B." and "Janie P." -- but it includes the name "Jack Mehoff" of East Lansing, home to Michigan State University.AG pointed out: "I happen to know that one of the names is someone deceased. A majority of the signatories don’t even use their full names, just a last initial, so it’s impossible to confirm these are even real people or Jewish. Why would they publish a story about a completely unreliable list with random names on a google sheet? Because the point was the narrative."Yesterday the NYT published a list of what was alleged to be over 500 Michigan “Jewish leaders” supporting El-Sayed. The point of doing so was to paint a narrative that he has strong Jewish support in MI. But did the NYT do any vetting to the list? A quick skim and you notice it includes names like “Jack Mehoff”. I happen to know that one of the names is someone deceased. A majority of the signatories don’t even use their full names, just a last initial, so it’s impossible to confirm these are even real people or Jewish. Why would they publish a story about a completely unreliable list with random names on a google sheet? Because the point was the narrative.— AG (@AGHamilton29) November 3, 2026“The New York Times will openly and without shame publish a list of ‘Jews for Abdul,’ which includes the name ‘Jack Mehoff’ and then completely ignore that this fatally compromises the whole story and just power through it,” Jon Levine of the Washington Free Beacon wrote on X.Many people enjoyed the controversy, with bartender Moe from The Simpsons asking for a "Jack Mehoff," just like Bart Simpson crank-called and caused Moe to say "I need Amanda Huggenkiss!" Twitchy found this one: "Was Haywood Jablowmy on there too?"There was also the inevitable Jeffrey Toobin masturbation gag:  Image Screenshot from X Thomas English at the New York Post put some meat on the funny bones: A university spokesman told The Post he could “confirm that MSU does not have a record (past or present) of that particular individual attending the university.”...The clergy who signed the letter have also had their credentials called into question.One, Rabbi Chava Bahle, made history in 2014 as the first rabbi to lead a Unitarian Universalist church.Another, Rabbi Alana Alpert, leads a Reconstructionist congregation whose adherents insist Judaism is defined by culture and social values rather than traditions or rituals such as keeping kosher.The Post couldn't get a response form the El-Sayed campaign, but the Times did issue a reply: …. “This story from September is one of several looking at Dr. El-Sayed’s relationship with Jewish and Democratic voters,” Times spokesman Charlie Stadtlander said. “We found this letter newsworthy because of a number of the notable individuals who signed on and we confirmed that the people specifically mentioned in the story did in fact add their name. The story also highlights a letter from Jewish Democrats and Independents who came out in support of Mike Rogers.”

This is today’s cartoon by Ben Jennings in the Guardian:

If you can’t see the cartoon, it shows a man and a woman in what looks like a TV studio set up for a Sunday morning political interview. The man, a toffee-nosed member of the upper classes, is saying, “Britain has already paid reparations for slavery to all those poor slave-owning families who lost out when it was abolished…”. The woman – presumably the interviewer – looks nonplussed.

The cartoon is clearly meant to suggest that the British government of the 1830s paying the slaveowners the then vast sum of twenty million pounds to free their slaves after the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act was a bad thing.

It was indeed regrettable that those who had done evil were rewarded rather than punished. But paying off the masters worked. After half a century of effort, and with a thousand caveats and complications, it freed the slaves.

I ask Mr Jennings, as I ask everyone who sneers at the fact that the British government paid off the slaveowners, what strategy they think the government should have followed to free the slaves instead?

Just telling the owners to get on and do it because Parliament said so ran the risk that, without any incentive to obey a law that would impoverish them, they would simply refuse. Then what – war? The slaves were held in the colonies, not in Britain itself. Sending multiple fleets across thousands of miles to subdue each rebellious island and territory would have been beyond the capacities of any government in the world at that time. Civil wars, as this would have been, are particularly terrible. The war the United States fought to end slavery in that country killed a higher proportion of the people involved than almost any other war in history.

Another thing: the outcome of war can never be certain. The slaveowners might very well have fought off the overstretched government forces, establishing independent slaveowning states in which slavery might have lasted for generations more than it did in real life.

All in all, if you were a slave circa 1833 and you somehow heard about this proposal to bring freedom to you and your family at the cost of unjustly rewarding your oppressor, would you want it to go ahead?

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Boy, has King Trump got egg on his face this time. Seeing all of the people going to vote, he realized he forgot to cancel the election. What an idiot!

This doesn't sound like confidence to me. Nicholas Fondacaro @NickFondacaro ABC's "bona fide news program" The View brings on Hillary Clinton and Kara Swisher to push a slew of conspiracy theories about how the midterms could be stolen. They predict:...