The California gubernatorial race has been a chaotic spectacle, and with it comes a familiar refrain from establishment-adjacent “progressive” organizations: this is the most important election of our lifetime. Again. As always. Forever and ever, amen. The California Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has now deployed this well-worn script to justify one of the most ideologically fraught endorsements in recent memory. California DSA is urging their members and sympathizers to vote for Tom Steyer, a billionaire with a profitable record on fossil fuels, private prisons, and Israel, while simultaneously discouraging votes for Dr. Butch Ware, a candidate who represents precisely the kind of platform DSA claims to stand for.

California’s jungle primary system sends the top two vote-getters to the general election, regardless of party. This structure creates a perennial anxiety among Democratic-aligned organizations: what if two Republicans advance? In a state as reliably blue as California, this scenario has occurred before, but treating it as a near-inevitable catastrophe in a statewide governor’s race requires a significant stretch of political imagination. California has not elected a Republican governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger over two decades ago. The Republican base in California is fractured, underfunded, and deeply unpopular outside of a shrinking geographic footprint. Even if a Republican was elected governor, could we expect any worse from them?

Yet California DSA leans into this fear-mongering with enthusiasm, warning voters that “the chance of the top two candidates both being Republicans is still very real.” Socialist organizers do not concern themselves with a red vs. blue capitalist governor. It is the same rhetorical maneuver that has been used for decades to funnel left-wing energy into the Democratic Party’s waiting arms, election cycle after election cycle, producing precious little in the way of material gains for working people. When socialists adopt the logic of lesser-evilism wholesale, they become indistinguishable from the centrists they claim to oppose.

To California DSA’s credit, their voter guide does not pretend the Democratic field is healthy. The guide accurately catalogs a depressing roster of establishment candidates. Eric Swalwell, once a frontrunner, exited after credible accusations of sexual assault and misconduct. Xavier Becerra was quickly adopted by the establishment after Swalwell’s collapse, and he brings decades of public office experience and a platform that DSA rightly describes as “milquetoast,” more of the same corporate Democratic non-governance Californians have endured for years. Antonio Villaraigosa is flush with oil lobby money and carries the endorsement of the scandal-ridden Karen Bass; he is perhaps best remembered for accelerating the privatization of Los Angeles public schools. Katie Porter, despite her firebrand reputation, has refused to support the DSA-endorsed billionaire tax, has a documented history of supporting genocidal Israel, including praising Benjamin Netanyahu, and has faced her own staff abuse scandal.

The picture California DSA paints of the Democratic field is, frankly, damning, and it raises an obvious question. If the Democratic Party’s bench in the most “progressive” large state in the country has produced this field, why is the solution to hand a billionaire the socialist seal of approval?

Who Is Tom Steyer, Really?

Let us be clear about who California DSA is asking you to trust. Tom Steyer is a billionaire. Not a millionaire. Not a successful small business owner. A billionaire. He built his fortune at Farallon Capital Management, a hedge fund with documented investments in private prisons and coal mining; these are industries that have caused immeasurable harm to working-class communities, communities of color, and the planet. California DSA’s own voter guide acknowledges this directly, noting that “his wealth was earned through the exploitation of the working class” and was “accumulated by the same things he now decries.”

And yet they endorse him anyway. Because he supports the billionaire tax. Because he has endorsed state-level Medicare for All; a reversal of his previous position. Because he has called ICE a “violent extremist group” and outlined prosecutorial strategies against ICE agents as governor. Because he has been endorsed by politically powerful labor unions including the California Teachers Association, the California Federation of Teachers, AFSCME 3299, Unite HERE, the California Nurses Association, and the California Labor Federation. These seem like something, but further buying out already-bought-out unions, which lack working class consciousness is not enough. These reasons must be weighed against the totality of who Steyer is and where his wealth came from, and that weighing is one California DSA performs too quickly.

The guide’s own language is telling. Steyer is described as “somehow running the most progressive campaign.” The word “somehow” is doing enormous work there and concludes with the caveat that “time will tell whether he’s truly a class traitor.” This is the bar DSA has set: not that Steyer is a class traitor, but that he might eventually become one. The DSA is crossing their fingers as an endorsement.

On Palestine, California DSA deserves genuine credit for not looking away. Their voter guide directly addresses Steyer’s refusal to call Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, and his claim that he “honestly does not know what genocide means.” The guide calls this “pulled from the same Zionist playbook that motivates genocide denial across the political spectrum” and states plainly that “playing dumb about the daily horrors and atrocities Israel commits is not ‘progressive’ in any way.”

This is the right analysis. And it is precisely why the endorsement that follows it is so logically jarring. California DSA correctly identifies Steyer’s genocide denial as ideologically disqualifying by any honest standard, and then tells you to vote for him anyway. The guide notes that Steyer has “disavowed AIPAC’s influence on Democratic primaries,” but also points out that AIPAC does not involve itself in non-federal races, making this disavowal cost him nothing. For socialists, for organizers, for the communities directly impacted by U.S. complicity in genocide, this should register as more than a footnote.

The Charges Against Ware Don’t Hold Up

California DSA cites specific criticisms of Butch Ware to justify their illogical endorsement. Even though Ware blocked me and many other communists on x.com for questioning his stance on the “Uyghur genocide,” we will examine the criticisms honestly because DSA does not.

DSA cites a MoveOn piece regarding abortion, attacking Ware for saying, “Of course, there have to be limitations.” This is presented as evidence of an “anti-abortion” position. Read in full context, Ware was responding to a broad question, and DSA dishonestly frames him.

DSA cites Ware saying “I don’t think that biological males should play in female sports.” This may be a legitimate point of criticism. However, DSA’s cited source also includes Ware’s position when asked specifically whether he as governor would ban transgender student athletes: “The governing bodies of sports should make those decisions. Why would I, as the governor, be involved in a conversation about who gets to play which sport? There are people whose job that is.” Calling this a “doubling down” strains credulity when the candidate explicitly declined to support any government-level ban.

On the "house slave" comment directed at Shirley Weber: Butch Ware is a Black man invoking the language of racial betrayal to describe a Black official he believes is doing the bidding of a capitalist political establishment. That is his prerogative. The history of such a critique is long, legitimate, and has been made by Black thinkers and activists across generations. [Editor's note: This article's editor is Black and agrees that the good Lady Weber's behavior around freezing out another Black candidate in service to the likes of Gavin Newsom rise to the level of house slave behavior.] California DSA's framing emphasizes that Weber is "a Black woman" as though that fact settles the moral question, while omitting that she is also the Secretary of State whose office is currently the subject of a lawsuit filed by Ware's campaign over what his team describes as a politically motivated disqualification. The DSA is silent on the substance and loud on the packaging.

The Ballot Suppression That DSA Won’t Mention

Here is what California DSA’s voter guide does not tell you. Butch Ware did not simply “fail to qualify for the ballot.” His campaign was notified of a disqualification challenge with ten minutes remaining before the close of business on a Friday afternoon which marked the deadline for submissions. The reason stated was an unredacted phone number on a tax document; a redaction that, under California law, is the legal responsibility of the Secretary of State’s office, not the candidate. The Secretary of State is Shirley Weber; that “house slave” Ware mentioned.

The campaign responded with two separate legal actions within 24 hours, represented in part by the same attorney who successfully defeated Weber’s office on a nearly identical challenge in the 2021 recall election. Dr. Jill Stein, Ware’s former running mate, called it “the kind of lies and treachery the Democrats have used for decades to silence the opposition they’re terrified of.”

California DSA’s voter guide describes Ware as someone who “failed to qualify for the ballot” and “has lashed out against Californian Left,” without a single word about the procedural circumstances of his removal. Their omission is not neutrality; it is used to uplift a genocide-denying billionaire.

The DSA Is Not an Honest Actor

Let’s dispense with the charitable reading. California DSA’s voter guide contains all the information needed to reach a damning conclusion about Tom Steyer. DSA recognizes his billions extracted from private prisons and fossil fuels, his genocide denial dressed up as philosophical uncertainty, his class position that no amount of policy positioning can dissolve — and then they endorse him anyway? They possess the analysis and abandon it at the moment it matters. Meanwhile, Ware’s rhetorical choices apparently warrant explicit voter warnings, while the circumstances of his ballot removal (a ten-minute Friday afternoon deadline, a legal obligation the Secretary of State’s office failed to meet, and two lawsuits filed within 24 hours) warrant no mention at all?

The Republicans-could-win panic deserves one final word before we let it go entirely: Republicans and Democrats are two management styles in service of the same capitalist order. The choice between a Republican governor and a billionaire Democrat who made his fortune on private prisons and coal is not a choice between harm and safety. Steyer has spent over $100 million on this race and remains behind the top two in recent polling. The working class of California has not been inspired by his money. They should not be manipulated into voting for him either.

Build Power Where It Lives

Electoral politics, at best, is one limited terrain among many. At worst, and California DSA’s performance here illustrates the worst, it becomes a mechanism for disciplining the left, absorbing its energy, and returning it to the Democratic Party on a four-year cycle with nothing to show for it. The answer is dual power: tenant unions, mutual aid networks, labor organizing, community defense, and the construction of institutions that serve working people regardless of who sits in Sacramento. The American Communist Party is working on all of the above.

The California governor’s race will resolve itself one way or another, and the working class will wake up the morning after in the same housing crisis, facing the same landlords, the same wage theft, the same food insecurity, the same genocide funded by their tax dollars. California DSA has shown you who they are. Maya Angelou said “believe them,” so let’s build something they cannot co-opt.

What do you think? Is there still a role for socialist electoral organizing in California, or has the DSA’s capture by Democratic Party logic made independent institution-building the only honest path forward? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.

On May 11, 2026, Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, California, was charged with acting as an agent of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and agreed to a plea deal in federal court. According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), she was accused of working as a foreign agent of the PRC. The specific conduct at issue was sharing articles deemed propaganda under the direction of an unnamed PRC official on a website called US News Center.1

According to the DOJ report, the articles were specifically related to the Xinjiang autonomous region in China. Xinjiang has long been a strategic area in China, from the Kuomintang’s use of Muslim and Kazakh forces against the People’s Liberation Army in the 1940s to the contemporary fomenting of Islamic terrorist groups culminating in the Urumqi attacks and of course the large oil and material resources in the region.2 Given that the Xinjiang genocide story has been thoroughly debunked at this point, with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation refusing to condemn China and even praising its treatment of Muslims and even the imperial US State Department lawyers stating they lacked evidence of genocide, this story reeks of the US media trying to blow up any single instance of PRC “influence” into a national story meant to justify absolute enmity.34

While it is obvious that any sovereign government will protect itself from foreign influence, mainstream foreign policy analysts have long noted that all governments engage each other through covert means. One of the “wise men” of US foreign policy past, George Kennan, described this explicitly in his 1948 text “The Inauguration of Organized Political Warfare” where he argues that nations utilize “all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives. Such operations are both overt and covert.”5

Given this context, Eileen Wang’s case is illustrative of larger US strategy. Even if we accept the official narrative that she was acting at the behest of a Chinese official, which is indeed a serious crime, the case appears minor compared with the scale of covert and overt influence operations that powerful states routinely conduct.

Wang’s case is among a number of other anti-China policies and domestic political actions aimed at portraying China as a uniquely dangerous foreign threat. While anti-China positions are nothing new among the US ruling class, indeed, we are already at war with China in the Clausewitzian sense, the desperation to elevate this story to national importance is one of a number of signals indicating that the US would prefer a confrontation with China sooner rather than later. This is likely because in the next few years China will definitely pull ahead of the US in every conceivable way and at that point be effectively untouchable.

The consequences of Wang’s case will likely be similar to those previous anti-China actions, namely a growing anti-Chinese paranoia amongst the populace to drum up support for more aggressive actions. Yet at the same time, some Americans are waking up to the various double standards and contradictions at play. The top comment on the FBI’s own facebook post states “Does this mean you're going after AIPAC?”. A number of other commentators also suggested that the DOJ should instead be looking into Israeli foreign agents in the Trump administration.6 These tendencies highlight a new developing perspective among Americans, one that is sympathetic to China and intensely hostile to our own ruling class. In other words, a perspective ripe for revolution.

A striking post has been circulating in leftist social media spaces that deserves serious attention from anyone invested in building a genuine revolutionary movement in America.

X.com user @jccfergie (Fergie Chambers), a wealthy self-described “Tankie shapeshifter” has published what he describes as firsthand knowledge of the organizational structure of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), including a hand-drawn diagram by PSL leaders Ben Becker and Vijay Prashad themselves. The diagram maps PSL’s relationship to a constellation of organizations including The People’s Forum (TPF), BreakThrough News (BTN), ANSWER Coalition, the International People’s Assembly (IPA), and Cuba solidarity and international project organizations. Beyond these “external” organizations are references to United Fronts that PSL leads, rather than participates within. For many on the left who have engaged with these spaces in good faith, this is not entirely surprising, but the specificity and the sourcing of these claims demands that we take them seriously.

The core claims from Fergie Chambers are pointed and specific. The People’s Forum, widely regarded as an independent radical cultural and organizing space in New York City, is described as being “WHOLLY funded, staffed, and controlled by PSL, whose office is in the same building upstairs.” The monthly rent for that building was reportedly $90,000 as of late 2023. BreakThrough News, a media outlet with a significant following among socialist and anti-imperialist audiences, is similarly described as staffed and controlled by PSL’s central committee from within the same building. ANSWER Coalition, one of the most visible anti-war coalitions in the country, is identified as part of PSL’s broader formation. The International People’s Assembly, which presents itself as a global grassroots convergence, is described as “fully under their control.”

These are serious structural claims, not interpersonal grievances. The poster is explicit about this distinction: *”I would not divulge all this based solely on ‘beef.’ I do it because I firmly believe they are counterinsurgency, and a danger to our movements; in terms of containment and co-optation, they are THE biggest danger.”*

What makes this thread particularly significant is Chambers’ account of being personally courted by PSL leadership. He describes having land in Massachusetts where he was running small agriculture, a gym program, housing, and political education. PSL reportedly proposed building a country-based project modeled on The People’s Forum using those spaces. He writes:

They misplayed their hand, and I think they thought that I was a little stupider than I am, and maybe a little less reckless than I am. Because of that they showed a lot of their cards to me really fast, because they were enthusiastic about me collaborating financially with them.

This account of PSL figures approaching high net worth individuals and proposing to incorporate their projects into the PSL network under the banner of collaborative left organizing fits a recognizable pattern. The organizations in the diagram are not presented to the public as PSL front groups. They are presented as independent spaces. That gap between presentation and structure is at the heart of the concern being raised.

The mention of Vijay Prashad, a prolific writer, director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, and one of the most widely-read figures in the international socialist left, is notable. Prashad is beloved in many circles for his anti-imperialist writing and his work connecting Global South movements. His alleged role in drawing up an organizational diagram meant to court financial and material support raises uncomfortable questions about the relationship between his public intellectual work and PSL’s organizational agenda.

@HakawatiSunbird commented simply: “Prashad is not to be trusted,” to which Chambers responded: “Prashad has never had a principle that wasn’t for sale.” These are sharp words, and they reflect a growing frustration among leftists who feel that high-profile intellectuals functioning within these networks lend them a credibility that obscures rather than illuminates their actual structure and funding.

One of the most clarifying comments comes from @samhusseini, who described repeatedly attempting to engage PSL-connected organizations around UN protest actions, specifically around using the “Uniting for Peace” mechanism to overcome the US veto, a campaign that Colombian President Gustavo Petro eventually pursued in September 2025. The response from PSL-aligned organizations was “always a brick wall.” Chambers’ reply is instructive:

100% and beyond these kinds of shady things, their insistence on gatekeeping or at least totally dominating anything they’re remotely involved in is part of what made me turn hard on them.

This is a crucial point. The problem is not simply one of organizational opacity or funding sources. It is a political method, one in which a centralized party apparatus presents itself through multiple seemingly independent faces, while systematically blocking, absorbing, or marginalizing any organizing efforts it does not control. This is not movement building. This is movement management.

@thestustustudio made a comment that is worth pausing on: “This picture is going to live rent-free in my head forever now. It’s honestly wild how closely it lines up with my own research on the Singham Network.” The Singham Network refers to the financial and organizational network connected to Neville Roy Singham, a tech millionaire whose funding connections to various left and socialist media and organizing projects have been a subject of significant investigative journalism. The alignment between PSL’s alleged organizational diagram and research into that network is a thread that independent press should continue pulling.

A separate but related post from @notXiangyu raises a pointed question directed at both PSL and The People’s Forum regarding their promotion of Kat Abughazaleh (D), a recently progressive candidate for Congress. The post asks why Abughazaleh is being “upheld as some fighter for socialism” given her stated position on “defending Taiwan,” which is code for the continued US use of Taiwan as a geopolitical wedge against the People’s Republic of China. Whether or not one agrees with that specific framing, the question illustrates a broader concern: if PSL-controlled organizations are platforming figures whose politics are inconsistent with anti-imperialism when it is inconvenient, that reveals something about how these PSL spaces function as political instruments rather than principled movement infrastructure.

The word “counterinsurgency” is used deliberately by Chambers, and it deserves to be taken seriously rather than dismissed as hyperbole. Counterinsurgency in the domestic political context does not require government direction. Co-optation, containment, and the management of radical energy within controlled channels are functions that can be performed by well-funded private organizations operating within social movements. The history of the US left is full of examples — from foundation-funded nonprofits that absorbed energy from militant labor organizing, to sectarian formations that built impressive-looking infrastructure while ensuring that no independent radical force could consolidate outside their control.

The question Chambers is raising, and that many in response are affirming from their own experience, is whether PSL and its network of affiliated organizations serve the function of absorbing, directing, and ultimately containing left political energy rather than building toward any genuine rupture with the existing order. @ThatKid1871 captured the absurdity of the dynamic with dry clarity: “Ben Becker and Vijay Prashad pitching socialist organizations to a rotating pool of ultraleft venture capitalists is such a funny image.” Funny, yes, but also a serious description of how organizational infrastructure on the left gets built and who it ends up serving.

@rainer_shea quoted Lenin in response, and it is worth sitting with:

Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism.

The call for left unity is frequently weaponized to suppress exactly the kind of critical accountability being raised in this discussion. Genuine unity requires transparency about organizational structure, democratic accountability within organizations, and honest debate about political line. None of those things are served by a formation in which multiple organizations present themselves as independent while being controlled by a single party’s central committee.

The left does not need more managed spaces. It needs accountable ones.

This thread raises questions that cannot be answered by one post or one person’s account. They require collective investigation, honest conversation, and the willingness to follow evidence wherever it leads — even when it points at organizations and figures we have respected or relied upon.

Share your own experiences with PSL, …

… The People’s Forum, BreakThrough News, ANSWER Coalition, or any of the affiliated organizations described. Have you encountered the gate keeping dynamic described here? Have you seen these spaces function to absorb or redirect organizing energy? Have you been courted, pressured, or pushed out? Do you have information about the Singham Network connections or funding structures?

We cannot build what we need to build while navigating controlled infrastructure that we mistake for our own. The first step is naming what is in front of us clearly, specifically, and without flinching. Drop your thoughts, experiences, and research in the comments. This conversation is overdue.

All quotes in this article are drawn from the public X posts. Readers are encouraged to follow through to the original sources and assess the claims directly.

Recent reports have raised concerns about a potential Iranian threat to California. The Associated Press reports that the FBI circulated a warning to California law enforcement agencies stating that Iran had “aspired to conduct a surprise attack using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United States homeland, specifically against unspecified targets in California.”

The alert was posted on X on March 12th by an FBI spokesperson following a report by ABC News. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later said on X that the message to law enforcement was based on a tip drawn from “unverified intelligence.”

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Donald Trump also referenced the intelligence publicly. “It’s being investigated, but you have a lot of things happening. All we can do is take ’em as they come,” Trump said. California Governor Gavin Newsom responded as well, stating that California officials were aware of the report and were monitoring the situation while coordinating with federal law enforcement. On March 13th Karoline Leavitt further criticized the ABC News report, stating, “No such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did.”

The American public’s response to this flurry of claims has been sharp, noting the convenience of the report and how it could be a false flag operation to provide the pretense for a further escalatory response by the U.S. military. Even mainstream talk show host Jimmy Kimmel opined, “he [Donald Trump] might even bomb us himself and blame it on you [Iran]”. The response on X to Leavitt’s second statement has been even harsher with many users criticizing the government for confused messaging and walking back its claims.

The follow up statement also suggests the Trump administration may be testing public reaction to dramatic intelligence claims before deciding whether to stand by them or quietly retract them. Alternatively, the conflicting messages may reflect a broader communication strategy in which ambiguity itself becomes a tool for managing public perception. This affords officials the ability to float possible threats while retaining flexibility over future military actions, much like how the sudden January 2026 U.S. military operation in Venezuela surprised both the public and members of Congress.

In either case, the reaction to this news and broader opposition to the new conflict with Iran showcases a deep skepticism among many Americans toward intelligence claims used to justify military escalation. That distrust is shaped by earlier controversies, such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which helped escalate the Vietnam War, and Iraq War intelligence failures surrounding claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.