This week, the House Ways and Means Committee, in conjunction with Trump officials, have subpoenaed The Peoples Forum, BreakThrough News, and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research for financial records, internal communications, and organizational records. The National Lawyers Guild (NLG), CODEPINK, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the Venceremos Brigade, and IFCO/Pastors for Peace are also under intense scrutiny. These organizations have been active participants in the fight against the unspeakable genocidal assault on Gaza since 2023, the holocaust of the 21st century. This subpoena shows a dangerous escalation of the tactics by Trump and the right wing to dismantle the antiwar left. My Congressional campaign stands in solidarity with all the organizations under attack.
When Trump took office in 2025, one of his first acts with ICE was to round up all the protesters who played key roles in the student encampments against the genocide in Gaza. This subpoena is designed to have a similarly chilling effect on the antiwar movement, by targeting organizations that have been active in the fight against the genocide in Gaza, the horrific blockade and sanctions against the Cuban people, and against the terror campaign by ICE.
My campaign, and my organizations Workers Strike Back and Revolutionary Workers, stand in solidarity with these groups.
The Democratic Party is doing little to fight Trump and the right wing and against attacks like this subpoena. That is because the Democratic Party’s leadership is in lock step with Trump and the Republicans on many of these issues like support for Israel and the ongoing genocide and brutal occupation, funding for ICE, and the blockade of Cuba. The genocide started under President Biden. Both parties are antiworker, warmongering parties of the billionaires and multimillionaires down to their bones and we need an independent fightback. It was the peaceful civil disobedience and shutdown of major airports, like the shutdown of SeaTac International Airport led by my Seattle City Council office, that forced Trump to retract his odious Muslim Travel Ban in January 2017. We need mass civil disobedience of that kind, and mass strike actions including a general strike, in order to bring down the Trump agenda. That means our movements need to fight against the Democratic Party in addition to the Republican Party.
We also need a reckoning in the labor movement, where the vast majority of leaders have given cover to the parties of the bosses.
Defeating Trump’s attacks on working people and the antiwar movement will also mean fighting the Democratic Party, which represents the interests of the same billionaires and multimillionaires that fuel Trump and the right wing.
My opponent, genocidal Democrat Adam Smith, is being bankrolled by AIPAC and other pro-genocide Zionist lobby groups as well as top weapons CEOs and PACs for companies like Palentir, Anduril, Lockheed Martin, Space X, and General Dynamics. Many of Smith’s campaign funders are the same corporations that have given large donations to Trump to carry out his vicious right-wing agenda. Smith has voted repeatedly to fund the genocide in Gaza, to create and fund ICE, for imperialist wars in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and Libya. Just last December, Smith cosponsored the $906 billion war budget that gave free rein to Trump’s war on Iran that has left a trail of blood. Both of these parties have blood all over their hands. Their representatives like Trump, Marco Rubio, and Adam Smith need to go.
In contrast, my independent socialist campaign for Congress is fighting for a complete and permanent arms embargo on Israel and to stop all imperialist wars by cutting off all weapons and tech. My campaign is also fighting to shut down ICE and the detention centers and for a new party for the working class. We are fighting for free healthcare for all funded by taxing the rich and we are fighting to bring down Trump, the billionaires, and both their parties.