John,

Welcome to The Blue Wave Weekly!

Every week I’ll be sharing insights, updates, and ways for you to get involved and help us build the Blue Wave. This work takes serious resources, so if you’re able, please make a donation to support Blue Wave California today. Here’s this week’s edition:

Courage Is Contagious — And It’s How We Win

This past week has been a reminder of how disorienting this moment can feel. The news cycle moves fast, the stakes are high, and it’s easy to feel pulled in a dozen directions at once. We are all deeply disturbed by what’s happening on the world stage, frustrated with leaders who continue to capitulate to an unhinged Trump, and wondering where our leverage actually is.

Jess and I talked through a lot of this on this week’s Practivist Pod to focus on what actually matters: where pressure is working, where cracks are forming, and where everyday people still have the ability to shape what comes next. That lens is what I want to carry forward here, less about reacting to every headline, and more about understanding the forces at play and how we respond to them together.

The World Is Moving On Without Us — And That Should Terrify Everyone

A major theme this week was the shifting world order. Not because the world is suddenly “anti-American,” but because the world is being forced to make the sober calculation that the United States is no longer a reliable partner when our government can swing back into authoritarian chaos every four years.

That instability doesn’t just bruise our pride. It changes where investment goes. It changes how alliances are formed. It changes how the global economy routes around us. And it will hurt regular people here long after Trump is gone and in ways most Americans haven’t even begun to feel yet.

There’s nothing inevitable about this. Republicans in Congress have the power to stop it, and they’re choosing not to, even as an increasingly reckless and unpopular president makes decisions that damage the country and isolate us from the world.

The Crisis of Republican Cowardice

We haven’t seen capitulation like this in modern American history. The founders didn’t anticipate that a co-equal branch of government would just… give up. But that’s where we are.

Republicans in Congress have ceded the power of the purse, allowed agencies to be dismantled in plain view, and now act like potted plants while Trump weaponizes the military domestically and destabilizes international relationships with tariffs, threats, and tantrums.

Some people want to explain it away as fear. Some want to call it “strategy.” But at a certain point, it doesn’t matter what’s in their hearts. The effect is the same. Their cowardice is enabling authoritarianism.

DHS, ICE, and the Leverage Democrats Do Have

We’re heading toward a funding deadline, and the DHS appropriations fight has become a focal point because it’s one of the only real moments of leverage in a system where Republicans control the floor.

There’s confusion (and some hard truth) about what’s possible. A chunk of ICE funding is already locked in and has been handed over. That’s infuriating, and it limits the scope of what can be clawed back immediately. But it doesn’t mean there’s no leverage. As you are reading this it’s likely passed the House floor and it’s on its way to the Senate.

Here’s what matters right now:

Democrats should not cave for symbolic gestures (body cams, “retraining,” etc.) that won’t stop what’s happening.
The demand has to be real constraints: no masks, real oversight, meaningful accountability, and every funding concession that can possibly be extracted.
And we should be demanding that ICE be pulled out of places like Minnesota where communities are being treated like test subjects for a military state.

This isn’t immigration enforcement, it’s a taxpayer funded, unaccountable paramilitary force operating as a private Gestapo for the Trump regime. ICE agents are masking up, operating without identification, brutalizing civilians, and treating American cities like occupied territory. When a senior official like Greg Bovino can dress in SS-style regalia, deploy tear gas against peaceful protesters, and face no immediate consequences, it tells you exactly what this agency is: an instrument of intimidation, not law.

What to do this week:

Call your Democratic members and say: no blank checks for DHS without real ICE constraints.
Call your Republican members and make it clear: this is unacceptable, and you will not forget it.

Citizens United Is the Rot Under the Floorboards

As we marked the 16th anniversary of Citizens United this week, it was hard not to see how much of our current dysfunction traces back to that single Supreme Court decision — one that fused two toxic ideas into a national disaster:

money equals speech
corporations are people

Ever since that disastrous decision we’ve been swimming in billionaire cash, dark money, corporate PACs, and “independent” spending that is neither independent nor transparent. On the podcast this week I interviewed Tiffany Muller, the President of End Citizens United and she shared a statistic that should stop you in your tracks: In 2008 (before Citizens United) billionaires spent $16 million in elections. In 2024, they spent $2.6 billion.

That’s not politics. That’s an erosion of our democracy by the oligarchy. It explains why popular policies stall out, why gridlock is permanent, why Republicans can behave like this and still survive, and why voter suppression efforts like the SAVE Act keep coming back like a virus.

When you can choke democracy with money, you don’t need majority support — you just need control. It’s also why grassroots fundraising is so important and puts the power back with the people. (Not so subtle hint to support our work at Blue Wave California)

The SAVE Act Is Not About “Election Security” — It’s About Disenfranchisement

The SAVE Act is a solution in search of a problem. Voter fraud is exceedingly rare. Safeguards already exist. This is not about “protecting elections.” It’s about making voting harder for people Republicans believe won’t vote for them, especially young voters and voters of color. And yes, it would also hit married women hard, particularly women whose legal name doesn’t match their birth certificate.

This is the Republican playbook: when you can’t win fairly, try to shrink the electorate.

What to do this week:

Call your member of Congress and tell them: oppose the SAVE Act.
Treat it like what it is: voter suppression dressed up as “integrity.”

Reasons for Hope

Tiffany said something that’s the heartbeat of this moment: Courage is contagious.

You don’t know who you’re inspiring by showing up today and who you’re giving permission to show up tomorrow. Jess shared on our show that she almost skipped a local protest because she was tired, but she went anyway and found joy, noise, drums, kids, grandmas, neighbors, electeds, and a community that refused to be silent. That’s not a small thing. That’s the antidote to despair.

My reason for hope is the same: people. Local people. Global people. Regular people who are done pretending this is normal, and in the face of intimidation from this regime, are showing up anyway.

When you’ve been to a protest like that, you know what it does. It’s like pouring Miracle-Gro on your patriotism.

What We Need Now

Pick one thing and do it this week:

Call Congress about DHS: no ICE funding increases without real constraints
Call about the SAVE Act: stop voter suppression
Keep amplifying the truth: share the videos, share the reporting, refuse normalization
Show up locally: protests, town halls, vigils, mutual aid — whatever you can sustain

And if you’re tired? Good. That means you’re paying attention. Don’t let that tiredness turn into silence. Hope is not a feeling. Hope is an action.

— Steve