I HATE the News

I have a confession to make. For most of my life, I have not closely followed the day-to-day news despite being a communications professional. I needed to experience the media environment more like a swing voter to see what breaks through. Turns out, I was right. For the last two months or so I have been scanning the news from six+ major sources every day. The results? I was less able to talk to people who were not following those stories closely and less able to sense what mattered to them. Plus, my anxiety level shot through the roof!

Trying to write a newsletter or column about what is happening in the news on a daily basis sucks, which is largely why I totally failed to do it. You sit at a computer, you read, you analyze, you produce. Your mental “inputs” are second-hand, limited to what is happening online and what qualifies as “legit” news. To meaningfully reach persuadable voters and motivate our own people, you need to be able to connect with what is happening in their lives. Being stuck at a desk keeps you away from observing, experiencing, and learning about the real world and - it puts you in front of the firehose.

Just this week, I tried to process stories about the record national debt, Trump’s crypto bank, Florida primary results, Amazon drone deliveries, firefighter staffing shortages, Europe’s rivers drying up, our reservoirs drying up, Trump’s threat to bomb Oman, Trump’s cozying up to North Korea, record gas prices, sailors in inhumane conditions, detainees in inhumane conditions, Blanche and Patel violating the Hatch Act, the West Bank, Trump’s killing off the federal anti-money laundering program and deleting all the data, just as we found out that he was chucked out of his own bank for money laundering, and on Fox News, seven days of “trans people in the WNBA” and “up-to-birth abortions” even though neither exist.

The Real World

Fortunately, I have people in my life who drag me away from my desk. Here is what the people in my real world are dealing with. A couple with four jobs can’t afford childcare and don’t have the bandwidth to seek out financial help. Retired people get stuck in A.I. customer service hell when they try to cancel subscriptions or find a health provider in their network. Young adults just entering the workforce have to choose between dead-end retail jobs and entry-level “professional” jobs that pay less. Many of these jobs have part-time hours and unpredictable schedules. Adults live with their parents because they can’t afford rent. Parents can’t afford to have their kids in school sports. Some don’t have cars. Others pay through the nose for cars that break down. Nobody can afford college. Everybody is nostalgic for summers when you could comfortably spend time outside. Maybe one in ten of these people have time to follow the news.

The best advice I am able to provide comes from the insights I collect from the real world, including focus groups which are always fascinating.

Much of what’s in the news is important; it impacts people’s lives. The problem is that news is now custom-designed to capture your attention and feed your anxiety. It compels you to react to what Trump and Republicans are doing and saying, which lets them control the agenda. It defines as radical any economic perspective that does not conform to free-market conservatism. It is a negative and alarmist. You get sucked into this vortex of details and consumed by the horse-race. When you talk to voters, you think, “If they only knew what I know, they would vote the right way,” so you end up trying to educate them instead of listening to them, or just giving up because the effort feels futile.

So - I quit. I will still read the news, just not quite as thoroughly. I will double down on plugging myself into the real world: travel, observe candidates, talk to voters and volunteers, maybe give a little advice. Out there on the campaign trail are the people who give me food for thought and, more importantly, hope for humanity.

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving how we communicate! Use this link to subscribe or upgrade! Thank you!

The Frogs Are Hopping Mad

What did I learn from this experience? It made me realize that following the news too closely makes us focus on what changes every day and ignore what happens slowly over time. That’s a problem because, right now, the voters are all about what has been happening slowly over time.

We all know the metaphor. If you put a frog into already boiling water, it will jump out, but if you put a frog in water and raise the temperature slowly, it will boil to death before noticing the change. Well, the frogs are hopping mad and out of the pot. People have been slowly squeezed by corporate America and the decrease in the real buying power of wages over decades. Until just recently, public figures have dismissed their concerns as “vibes.” Many still do. What is different now is that the blatant corruption and sheer arrogance of Trump, Musk, and others have pushed voters over the edge. The American people have moved very quickly from being mad about the cost of living, to believing that the whole system is broken, to being livid that Big Money has corrupted our government to rig the system in their favor.

I wrote all about that in my recent piece:

People do not see these real concerns reflected in the mainstream news and public debate, but they are responding very positively to economic populist messaging whether it comes from Democratic Socialists, “regular” Democrats, Independents, or even the occasional Republican.

How to Signal Your Priorities

Talk about what matters to voters. Not about Republicans and Trump.

We all remember the Donald Trump signs that said, “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.” This slogan worked, but maybe not for the reason you think (appealing to anti-trans hate). It wasn’t so much her positions as her priorities. It made the case that Kamala Harris wasn’t focused on the things that were important to most people. BTW - I do not recommend trying to flip this message and use it against Republicans. In voters’ minds, it would trigger the memory of a message that worked very well against us. They would dismiss it as “he said, she said.”1 This year, voters do not want to hear us talk about Trump.2

Talking about Trump and Republicans tells the American voters that we are focused on Trump and Republicans, not them. The way we convince voters that we are focused on what matters to them is to talk exclusively to them about what matters to them. Here is what I have heard loud and clear from American voters this year, and the feeling is pretty much unanimous:

We are sick to death of hearing about Trump and watching Democrats and Republicans fight. Stop fighting against each other and start fighting for us, and that means standing up to the moneyed interests that have corrupted our government and broken our economic system. We need you to be leaders, not politicians. We have lost hope. We cannot see the way out of this mess. Speak to us, not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans. Tell us how you are going to make our lives better. Help us visualize what a better future for America looks like.

One Example: Setting the Agenda in Iowa

Democratic candidate Josh Turek is doing better than Democrats usually do in the Iowa Senate race. He’s talking about the abnormally high cancer rates in Iowa, particularly among people who have been exposed to heavy levels of pesticides.3 Does “Big Ag” want the election to be about cancer rates? Hell no. Is it something people in Iowa care deeply about? Yes. Was that a story in the news? It wasn’t, but it is now. He made it a story by making it a pillar of his campaign and talking about it all the time. Taking on “Big Ag” shows the people of Iowa that Turek will stand up and fight for them.

It’s called “following” the news and the political debate for a reason. We get stuck in a cycle of reaction, when we should be setting the agenda. A leader focuses on what matters to people and makes it the news. Right now, that is corruption and economic fairness, but we can use specific or local issues to illustrate how they impact people’s lives. We might find those issues in the news. But we’ll definitely find them out there in the real world.

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism!

In solidarity, always,

BTW - Apparently I was #100 in U.S. Politics yesterday! Just for one day though. It was nice while it lasted! :-)

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It has been a busy week!

Here in the Chicago area, I have spent a lot of time watching the radar and listening for the tornado sirens. We’re still here!

There has been a LOT of news since I last wrote a “What to Say” piece. Still, so much of it does not feel terribly new. I have to admit that I am finding the process of tracking the news this closely to be potentially counterproductive. I don’t know if it is giving me a better sense of how to talk to voters or if it is making it harder for me to perceive things the way voters do, given that most of the people we’re trying to reach probably do not read the news regularly, if at all. I will keep pondering that. Meanwhile, here is my take on some of the important stories of the last week.

As always, everything below is free to use without attribution, as is, or translated into your own voice. The goal is to get the ideas out there! And remember: Don’t assume people already know stuff, try to use words that would be natural to say to a neighbor over the fence, and as always, don’t talk about things together that you don’t want associated with each other!

August 13, 2026

The Elections

• Hong’s Defeat in Wisconsin Sparks New Disagreements Within Democratic Party | The New York Times | Aug 12, 2026

• Democratic voters are making clear they just want change | AP News | Aug 12, 2026

• A Black Democrat aims for a US Senate upset in Mississippi | AP News | Aug 7, 2026

• Some US progressive goals win support of independent voters, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds | Reuters | Aug 7, 2026

What to Say: So - Francesca Hong Lost in Wisconsin by a hair, Abdul El Sayed won in Michigan by a hair, and Peggy Flanagan won in MN by a lot. What does this tell us? Mostly that the national news judges elections the same way they judge corporate earnings, comparing with their predictions instead of on the actual results, which is dumb, since primary polls are notoriously bad. The actual results tell us that the Democratic Party is generally moving in a more economic populist direction, as are the voters in general. To those who still argue that populists are less electable in general elections, tell them to look at the candidates that are way overperforming their states, like Jon Ossoff and James Talarico. Democrats are competitive in places we have not been in a long time.

NOTE: The more we can normalize the use of the terms “populist” and “economic populist” when referring to the Left, the more chance we have of winning the swing voters who might still have issues with the “socialist” label. Even though the term '“socialist” itself is slowly becoming normalized, it is still a net negative with voters. On the other hand, the term “populist” is still popular with voters who think it means pretty much the same thing as what we mean when we say “socialist.” They do not buy the negative spin put on the word by academics who can’t tell the difference between actual populists and pseudo-populist demagogues.

The Cost of Living

• A 4.1% jobless rate, but 264,000 left the workforce as payrolls fell 23,000 | AP News | Aug 7, 2026

• Credit card debt surges in U.S. as high interest rates make it harder to pay off | PBS News | Aug 11, 2026

• Global food prices at three-year high as heatwaves and wars push up crop costs | Food & drink industry | The Guardian | Aug 7, 2026

What to Say: People are really struggling to make ends meet, using their credit cards to pay for basic living expenses. Hundreds of thousands of people are leaving the workforce because they have given up on finding jobs. Food prices are at a three-year high, due to high oil and fertilizer prices and the heat and droughts caused by global warming. It’s worse than incompetence. Between the illegal tariffs, the war we should never have started, and trying to crush cheaper renewable energy on behalf of the oil industry, it seems like this administration is actively trying to make this economy worse.

Corruption

• Trump has amassed staggering wealth in ‘most openly corrupt’ presidency | Donald Trump | The Guardian | 8/13/2026

• Lawsuit seeks to ban Trump Media from charging for early access to president’s posts on US policy | AP News | 8/13/2026

• Trump Crypto Took $100 Million From a Businessman With Red Flags - The New York Times | 8/11/2026

• Exclusive | Inside Trump’s Unprecedented Fundraising Operation Run by Meredith O’Rourke, the ‘Princess of Darkness’ - WSJ | 8/7/2026

NOTE: While Trump’s corruption is getting a lot of news coverage, it might serve us better to leave the Trump bashing to the media. They are perceived as, if not neutral, more neutral than we are. I have seen recent message tests that show that our attacking Trump backfires with rural and working-class voters who agree with what we are saying about corruption and the economy, but get defensive if reminded of their support for Trump in the past. In these cases, the best strategy is to repost or share the original stories without adding comments, or to talk about going after corruption in government without mentioning Trump by name. Terms like “Republicans in Congress” or “this administration” are less likely to spur backlash.

What to Say: I’m sick and tired of people taking advantage of their positions in government to get rich. There has always been corruption, but this administration is the most corrupt I have ever seen, and the Republicans who control Congress aren’t doing anything to stop them. Our government and our economy only serve those who can afford to pay elected officials to rig the economy on their behalf (like Big Oil and Big Tech.) We need people in office who will stand up for us and put an end to this corruption, so regular people can earn enough to support their families again.

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving how we communicate!
Use this link to subscribe or upgrade! Thank you!

Abuse of Power

• Trump administration accused of ‘bullying’ union leader at consumer protection agency | Trump administration | The Guardian | 8/13/2026

• Trump’s justice department arrests expert on far right as part of SPLC crackdown | Far right (US) | The Guardian | 8/12/2026

• FCC lifts the cap limiting the size of TV broadcasting companies | The Washington Post | 8/6/2026

• How a Counterintelligence Inquiry Into Trump’s Russia Ties Was Derailed - The New York Times | 8/10/2026

What to Say: This country was founded on the radical idea that a government answers to the people, that whatever power government has, it gets from the people, and that power must be applied to everyone equally and neutrally. Abusing the power of government and law enforcement to fire employees for standing up for their union rights, to arrest people for fighting hate groups, to override laws against consolidation of ownership in the media, and to suppress investigations into potential hostile foreign influence on our government, all of these things violate the foundational American values of equality, freedom, and fairness.

ICE

• ICE plans to give officers gloves that can deliver electric shocks | AP News | 8/13/2026

• New Jersey opens civil rights probe of privately run ICE detention center in Newark | Reuters | 8/8/2026

• ICE will release body camera video only when in agency’s ‘best interests’ | AP News | 8/7/2026

• Homeland Security Paid $464 Million for Airplanes. Then It Parked Them. - The New York Times | 8/13/2026

What to Say: ICE is a total disaster. How can we trust people to enforce the law when we can’t even trust them to obey the law? They are under investigation for putting people - including small children - in detention centers with horrible conditions where people are dying. They say they will wear body cameras but only release the video if it’s in their “best interest.” That defeats the whole purpose! And we’re supposed to trust these people with gloves that deliver painful electric shocks? That, and they are wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on planes they don’t use and overpaying for private prisons. I don’t know if ICE is reformable. We may need to start over from scratch and create something much more professional and accountable.

Do Not Associate!

• Trump Stokes Islamophobia by Calling Democratic Candidates ‘Jihadists’ - The New York Times 8/10/2026

Nope. Do not repeat this claim, not even to criticize it, or any claim involving the words jihadists or communists.

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism! Please let me know what you think of this format in the comments below!

In solidarity, always,

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OOPS: At some point I consolidated from 7 myths to 6 and forgot to change the title! I fixed it. Thanks for being nice about it!

What do I mean by “reframe” the debate? Human beings can only process information by unconsciously attaching it to a frame of reference that already exists in their brains. That frame then dictates to our conscious minds how to reason about the situation: what seems logical, who is right or wrong, what to think about and sometimes, even more critically, what not to think about. To take back this debate, we have to become aware of the bad frames we’re currently using and start using the right frames. The following is only the start!

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving how we communicate! Use this link to subscribe or upgrade! Thank you!

Flipping the Script on Climate

Friends in the green movement ask me questions like, “What can we say to motivate people to make sacrifices, like perhaps taking one less flight each year?” or “How do we get people to support a carbon tax?” We now know that the whole idea of a “carbon footprint” was created by the oil industry to deflect blame and focus us on individual behavior over collective action. If you take a close look at the messaging of the environmental movement as a whole, it shows that much of our thinking has become limited by unconscious assumptions:

1. The solutions are many, small and complicated.

2. Fear is the best motivator.

3. People will need to sacrifice.

4. Our role is that of an individual consumer in an economy.

5. We have to act within the limits of our current political situation.

6. The best way to drive change is to motivate the private sector.

What if we flip these assumptions on their heads? What could our strategy and message be?

1. The solution is simple.

It is easier to communicate and promote one big clear thing. When it comes to the climate, we first have to ask what must be done. To achieve what we need to achieve, there is only one viable answer: a swift and total conversion from fossil fuels to electricity generated by solar and wind. The power is available. The costs are competitive. What we need is a big drive by governments to build the infrastructure and remove logistical and financial obstacles to mass conversion. It is the only solution that would actually work. It is ambitious, but so was going to the moon and creating Obamacare.

2. Hope is the most effective strategy to motivate action.

But to give people hope, proposed solutions must be credible, and that means BIG.

We don’t need to scare people. They already know the situation is dire. Without hope, people don’t act, they shut down. This problem is huge. For any proposed solution to sound credible, it must also be huge. People talk about the things we can do as individuals. Even though they know this isn’t enough, they say, “but it gives people a sense of agency.” If the world was going to end unless we emptied Lake Tahoe, it wouldn’t give me a sense of agency if you handed me a spoon and said “here’s what you can do.” Going for big solutions that could actually work gives people more hope than offering small solutions that won’t.

3. The solution will make our lives better.

Why do we assume this will require sacrifice? Naomi Klein and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have the right approach in this wonderful video, which is one of the best pieces of political communication I have ever seen! They want us to imagine the world that we will create. No more air pollution. Fast electric cars. Rooftop solar and lower bills. Good union jobs. You can’t outsource infrastructure construction or rooftop solar installation. People’s lives will be better in the electric future and in the transition.

4. Our relevant role is that of member of a larger society.

As individuals, we have limited power. People will not be able to envision themselves capable of doing big things unless we remind them to think of themselves as members of a larger community. The thing we can do is cooperate, using the tools of democratic government, to do what we can’t do one person at a time. That’s what we have government for.

5. Political situations can be changed.

Conservatives talk emotionally about their vision and then generate the political will to make it happen. We talk about what we can do given the confines of our political “reality”. This projects the message that we don’t expect to have power any time soon, a self-fulfilling prophecy, and mighty uninspiring. We have to talk like the majority that we actually are. We need to put all our efforts toward motivating people to take political action and put people in office who will do the right thing.

6. The best way to drive change is through government action.

We have reached the point where drastic and large-scale action is required precisely because, even though solar and wind are becoming economically competitive faster than we had predicted, the so-called “free market” still cannot solve the solve the problem without cooperation from governments and major infrastructure investment. Our current government is actively blocking advancement on behalf of the oil and gas industry. The flipside is that, in places like Spain where solar is plentiful enough to bring prices down for consumers, investors are backing out because their profit margins aren’t high enough! We need pro-transition government that serves the needs of people over profits.

The problem is now massive. The only possible solution is also massive, and the only way we will be able to do it is through collective action carried out through cooperative government. We need scale, speed and universal adoption. Only government can do that. Conservatives won’t like it, but this may be the ultimate winning argument for big government action.

Conservatives believe in a competition-based society, that if everyone seeks their own self-interest, the result will be what’s best for everyone, and that relying on others is immoral. This theory has proven not just wrong, but disastrously wrong.

We progressives recognize the undeniable fact that people are interdependent, and that cooperation is both necessary and morally good. We believe that the role of government is to manage that cooperation for the benefit of all, to do things together that we cannot do on our own, like taking bold and necessary action to change the course of our future.

These new frames will help us turn the tide on the climate debate. By giving us opportunities to talk openly about our core values and beliefs, they will also help the Left gain back lost ground in the public debate as a whole.

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism!

In solidarity, always,

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NOTES:

My previous posts on framing climate stabilization and the energy transition.

Everything below is free to use without attribution, as is, or translated into your own voice. The goal is to get the ideas out there! And remember: Don’t assume people already know stuff, try to use words that would be natural to say to a neighbor over the fence, and as always, don’t talk about things together that you don’t want associated with each other!

August 4, 2026

Todd Blanche

• Live updates: Blanche’s path to AG confirmation is cleared | AP News

• ‘Completely hollow’: critics denounce Blanche deal to halt Trump slush fund | US news | The Guardian | Aug 3, 2026

What to Say: Trump’s personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, should never even been nominated for Attorney General. Two Republican Senators may have forced Blanche to claim that he will not pursue the slush fund that Trump wants to use to reward people for breaking the law on his behalf, but they caved on Trump’s immunity from prosecution over his many, many cases of tax fraud.

The Attorney General is supposed to be loyal to the people of the United States, not the President. This is just one more case of Trump appointing people to run the country based on how obedient they are to his every whim and how willing they are to bend or break the law on his behalf, rather than whether they will run their department competently and legally for the American people.

Iran

• Trump administration claims Hormuz deal is close as Iran denies negotiations | The Washington Post | Aug 4, 2026

• EXCLUSIVE: US has used ‘virtually all’ of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war, sources say | Reuters | Aug 4, 2026

• As Exxon and Chevron report windfall profits, lawmakers take aim - The Washington Post | July 31, 2026

What to Say: The war in Iran is total chaos. Nobody can believe a word that Trump says. Trump announces that there’s a deal, Iran says there isn’t one, and then Trump says he’s going to bomb them or blockade them or something, which he can’t actually do because somehow we are out of missiles. Meanwhile the oil companies are raking it in and prices on everything are going up.

There’s really no way this war in Iran ends well for us, and what’s worse, there was no reason to start it in the first place. We had a perfectly good deal before. Iran was behaving. The strait was open. Trump ran for office on ending forever wars, and then started one for no reason at all, except perhaps to push the Epstein files off the front page.

Cyberattacks

• Hackers targeted municipal water systems in 7 states this week, FBI says | NBC News | Aug 3

• Trump blames Minnesota, not Iran, for cyberattack on water systems - The Washington Post | July 31, 2026

• Video: Energy Chris Wright responds to President Trump cutting key cybersecurity funding - ABC News | July 19, 2026

• Our Water Infrastructure is Vulnerable & the Industry’s Own Report Says We’re Not Ready | Erin Brockovich (@erinbrockovich) | Aug 4, 2026

What to Say: The number one job of the President of the United States is to keep us safe. Trump has completely failed to do that. Iran has now attacked the vulnerable water systems of 7 states. Trump started a war with Iran which is known for cyberattacks, but he had already gutted our cyber-defense program and is proposing to cut its budget by $700 million. Instead of admitting that he screwed up, and holding Iran responsible, he blamed Minnesota and Tim Walz. Trump is obsessed with Minnesota and Tim Walz for standing up to him. This just shows that everything Trump says about them is nonsense!

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving how we communicate!
Use this link to subscribe or upgrade! Thank you!

Trump Lawsuits

• Trump accounts at Capital One were closed in 2021 over money laundering concerns | AP News | Aug 3, 2026

• Pirro brought box of evidence to show Trump what caused Reflecting Pool damage | CBS News | Aug 4, 2026

• How the BBC turned the litigation table on Trump | Aug 3, 2026

What to Say: Trump keeps abusing his power as President to sue people for personal and political reasons, and he keeps losing because the reasons for these lawsuits exist only in his delusional fantasies. The problem is that, when you sue people, they have the right to investigate your case and see your evidence. It’s called “discovery,” and unfortunately for Trump, the evidence is revealing that the lawsuits are baseless and vindictive.

Trump attacked Capital One bank, forcing them to reveal that his accounts were shut down because they showed legitimate evidence of money laundering. Now he’s attacking Judge Pirro, who he appointed, because she had to drop the case about the reflecting pool because the evidence showed that the damage was actually caused by faulty repairs. Trump claimed that a BBC documentary caused him severe economic harm. Now U.S. Courts are upholding the BBC’s right to see Trump’s financial records. This is not going to go well for Trump.

US Cities Safer than Ever

Amplify this to over-ride Trump attacks on “blue” cities without repeating his claims.

• Murders and shootings hit record lows in NYC for first 7 months of year, NYPD says | CBS New York | Aug 3, 2026

• Baltimore homicide decline stands out in new crime report | WBAL | July 23, 2026

What to Say: Our big cities are safer than ever, thanks to progressive Democrats’ investing in crime prevention and building safe communities in cities like New York and Baltimore. The best law enforcement is preventing crime from happening in the first place. Accountable policing builds trust, trust leads to crimes being solved, and knowing that you will be caught is the best crime deterrent. That, and making sure every kid has real access to a better path in life than a life of crime.

Immigration and ICE

• They immigrated legally. Under Trump, 1.8 million have been ‘de-legalized.’ | MSNOW | July 30, 2026

• Mass layoffs hit Haitian workers at airports, nursing homes, schools as protected status ends - The Washington Post | July 31, 2026

• Ending protections for Afghan refugees threatens them — and us | MSNOW | Aug 2, 2026

What to Say: Almost two million people who came to this country legally, have had their status changed by this administration. We told these people they were welcome here and now they are being hunted down, arrested and deported. That’s just wrong. Now they are deporting the people from Afghanistan who risked their lives to help us during the war. It’s not just that this threatens our national security, because why should anybody ever trust or help us again. It’s a sick, f-ed up thing to do to people who we should be treating as heroes. Where the heck is our sense of loyalty? America used to be trusted. Not anymore.

• Inside the New York court where children face deportation without access to attorneys | US immigration | The Guardian | July 31, 2026

• Even Republicans in Congress can see how unpopular Trump’s immigration agenda is | Strength in Numbers | G. Elliot Morris | Aug 2, 2026

What to Say: The cruelty never ends. There was a contract to provide immigrant children with legal representation, and Trump just let it expire. Everyone deserves a fair hearing. What’s fair about forcing 20,000 children to face deportation hearings all alone? No wonder Trump’s approval on immigration is tanking, even among his own supporters.

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism! Please let me know what you think of this format in the comments below!

In solidarity, always,

Like this post, but not ready to become a paying subscriber? Leave me a tip of any amount you like at my tip jar! Thank you!

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Everything below is free to use without attribution, as is, or translated into your own voice. The goal is to get the ideas out there! And remember: Don’t assume people already know stuff, try to use words that would be natural to say to a neighbor over the fence, and as always, don’t talk about things together that you don’t want associated with each other!

July 29, 2026

Comey and Fauci

Do Not Associate: Do not associate Jim Comey with the idea of threats against the President. Do not repeat Rand Paul’s question, “Did his (Dr. Fauci’s) actions lead to the largest man-made plague in history?”

What to Say: Trump is desperate to distract people from his failures in Iran and on the economy. Attacking former public servants that he imagines to be his political enemies is un-American. It is abuse of power and a threat to the principle that the law should be applied neutrally and equally to all, and based on facts, not wild accusations.

Saudi Arabia, Oil Profits, Truth Social Probe

What to Say: Trump’s pointless War in Iran is spreading to other countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, and Yemen. What makes no sense to me is that if we’re supposed to be helping liberate the people of Iran, this is only making it worse for them. Meanwhile we’re partnering up with Saudi Arabia whose human rights record is even worse than Iran’s.

What to Say: This war is total chaos. It’s spreading across the Middle East with no sign of stopping. It did not have to happen at all, and we’re going to end up worse off than we were when it started. Trump has given Iran leverage over the entire global economy. The only people benefitting from this are the oil companies that are raking in the profits from higher prices, and the insider traders that ride the stock market up and down based on their paid advance access to Trump’s social media pronouncements.

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving how we communicate!
Use this link to subscribe or upgrade! Thank you!

AI BS and Meta-Newsmax Partnership

Re: The Impending, Inescapable Deluge of A.I. | The New York Times

Do Not Associate: Tech companies are still trying to push the idea that AI is inevitable. Do not help them. Why this was a front page story today, I will never know. Oh yeah. Money!

Re: Newsmax and Meta Enter AI Content Partnership | Media Matters

What to Say: Training Meta’s AI on the kind of junk propaganda put out by Newsmax is just one more reason to bail out on Facebook entirely. It’s already mostly garbage. This just means you won’t be able to trust anything Meta’s AI assistant tells you.

Cost of Retirement

Re: The elder care costs erasing the inheritance you expected | The Washington Post

What to Do: Amplify. Keep the story alive as long as possible.

What to Say: We need to talk about the fact that almost nobody in this country has actual security in their retirement. Even those who have substantial savings risk having them completely wiped out by the cost of long-term care. “The median cost of assisted living has risen 44 percent in five years, nearly double the rate of inflation.” Only the very richest people in the U.S. have anything to hand down to the next generation, and for many, long-term care will wipe out their adult children’s savings too, leaving them nothing for their own retirement. This is unsustainable and unfair - a spiral of downward economic mobility that reaches all the way to the top of the middle class. It’s just not right.

Cost of Healthcare, Medicare Privatization

Re: The Trump administration is halting a Medicare drug subsidy. Will premiums rise? | The Washington Post

Re: Senate stands by Medicare prior authorization model | Politico | July 17, 2026

What to Do: Amplify. Keep the story alive and use it to bring up these other attacks on Medicare.

What to Say: The whole point of Medicare and Medicaid is that we should get what our doctors say we need, without going broke. Due to President Trump, people on Medicare will have to pay even more for their prescription drug coverage next year. Trump also started a pilot project to require prior authorizations for people on Medicare and gave private companies a financial reward for rejecting those prior authorizations. Democrats in Congress recently tried to repeal the program because it used highly faulty AI to deny people care that they actually needed. Republicans voted to keep the program. Why? This program is part of their ongoing effort to put all of Medicare into private for-profit hands, despite the fact that privately run Medicare “Advantage” programs have already defrauded the American people by more than $50 billion dollars.

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism! Please let me know what you think in the comments below!

In solidarity, always,

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Everything below is free to use without attribution, as is, or translated into your own voice. The goal is to get the ideas out there! And remember: Don’t assume people already know stuff, try to use words that would be natural to say to a neighbor over the fence, and as always, don’t talk about things together that you don’t want associated with each other!

July 28, 2026

FIRES, SMOKE and HEAT

What to Say: Big parts of Spain and France are on fire. So are big parts of Oregon and Washington. And there are more heat waves to come. Millions of people are going to have to stay indoors and/or wear masks in order to protect themselves from the smoke. Meanwhile the costs of fuel and electricity keep going up. This is what happens when you let Big Oil get control over our government and block the inevitable transition to unlimited clean energy. We’ve got to get our weather system back in balance before things get any worse. We need a government willing to stand up to Big Oil, so we can relaunch the efforts started by Obama and Biden to build a safe and affordable energy future.

What to Say: The Trump administration has admitted that it has cancelled almost $8 billion in energy projects just because they were in states he did not win. Equality before the law is a cherished American value. People in government serve the American public, not just the people who voted for them. Trump regularly abuses the power of his office to attack his political opponents, in this case, killing jobs and punishing people just for living in a state he doesn’t like.

TRUMP’S VOTER LIST

What to Say: The Trump administration has been threatening states to limit voting by mail to a voter verification list that has been found to be massively inaccurate. The use of this list has already been blocked by US appeals courts because it would deprive millions of eligible American citizens of their right to vote and because the President does not have the right to tell the states how to run elections. Now Trump wants to take the case before his six pet Supreme Court Justices in the hopes that they will once again override established constitutional principles to favor his wishes over the interest of the American people. Trump is terrified that Democrats will win control of the House and the Senate this November due to massive dissatisfaction with his incompetence and blatant corruption, so he is doing everything in his power to prevent people from voting.

IRAN WAR

What to Say: Trump has totally lost control of the situation he created in Iran. He has no goals and no plan. The war is threatening to expand to Yemen and Saudi Arabia and close another critical shipping lane. After 13 days of heavy bombing, Trump says he wants to give Iran some “space,” but really the U.S. is running out of critical defensive missiles. Now he’s desperately scrambling to avoid responsibility for deaths and injuries of American troops. He should be ashamed of himself.

What to Say: Trump started a war for no reason and now he’s lying his way through it. By law, Trump is required to get Congress’ approval before ninety days are up. Trump not only thinks he can reset the clock just by having a cease fire for a few days, he is claiming that the latest round of bombing is a totally different war. Even worse, he is now claiming that American troops killed during this latest round of fighting don’t count as being killed in the Iran War. This war is illegal, and Trump’s behavior is dishonest and disgraceful.

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving how we communicate!
Use this link to subscribe or upgrade! Thank you!

NEW TARIFFS

What to Say: Trump visited Michigan to try to sell his unpopular new tariffs to the state that has probably experienced the most damage from his disruptive and irrational trade war with Canada. Trump’s tariffs were overturned by his own Supreme Court, so he’s trying to do them all over again, this time with a completely different justification. Nobody knows why Trump is imposing what amounts to a fifty percent tax on imports from Canada, our biggest trading partner, which American consumers will pay.

TODD BLANCHE and EPSTEIN

What to Say: Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Todd Blanche met with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s human trafficking operation, and they came away convinced that, if confirmed as Attorney General, he would continue his pattern of obstructing justice, protecting Trump, refusing to disclose documents, and making sure that the predators are never brought to justice. It is astonishing that Trump would even nominate someone with such a track record, especially considering that Blanche is currently being ordered to provide unredacted emails and documents from the Epstein files that he has been withholding by the judge in a lawsuit by journalist Katie Phang.

IN OTHER NEWS

What to Say: Trump’s 67 illegal boat strikes have killed 221 people without a trial or a shred of evidence, and have apparently had no effect on cocaine traffic to the U.S. Perhaps that’s because they were just innocent fishmen after all. Killing people in international waters without a trial is an international war crime. Add it to the Trump’s growing list.

What to Say: People may not even realize that we are engaging in yet another war that Trump has started for no reason. Blockading a country is an act of war, and we have been conducting an oil blockade of Cuba for six months, causing a massive crisis in fuel, electricity, food and healthcare. What gives us the right to - all by ourselves - decide to change the leadership of another country by punishing the people who live there? How is that supposed to help? We attacked Venezuela, took their oil, and left their people under the same oppressive regime with no elections. The Trump administration is turning America into a rogue aggressor nation. This is both wildly incompetent and morally wrong.

What to Say: This is not a free country if your government can arrest you without a warrant and deport you without a fair trial. A mass hearing is not a fair trial. How can a trial be fair if fifty or a hundred cases are being heard at the same time and you are not given the chance to plead your case? And that is if they even tell you when your trial is taking place? When we mass deport law-abiding long-term residents who are contributing to our communities without a fair trial, we risk losing what it means to be an American.

What to Say: The people of Maine have been looking for a real champion who understands the struggles of working people, and now they have one in Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger from northern Maine and former President of the State Senate. I have heard it said that Troy Jackson is what Graham Platner was trying to be.

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism! Please let me know what you think of this format in the comments below!

In solidarity, always,

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Hurry Up and Lead

“There go my people, I must find out where they are going so I can lead them.”
~ Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin

We who think about politics all the time rarely have a good handle on what’s going on in the lives and minds of those who do not. That’s what makes focus groups so fascinating. I usually see voters holding on to conventional thinking and subconsciously absorbed conservative talking points, and I have to figure out how to communicate with them in ways that open their minds to the possibility of bigger change. This year, I walked in hoping to find a little more awareness of the system-wide nature of our economic dysfunction, and not only were voters already there, they had continued on to the wholesale corruption of government. As a lifelong campaign finance reform advocate, I had resigned myself to the idea that voters weren’t ready to “go there” when it came to money in politics, but much to my absolute delight, they have arrived! And they are waiting for candidates, consultants and Party officials to catch up.

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving how we communicate!
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Not “Affordability.” Economic Fairness

The American Dream is fundamental to our society. In 2024, people in my focus groups responded extremely positively to language about economic fairness, particularly the idea that we were promised a certain quality of life in exchange for our willingness to work hard and that while we held up our end of that deal, our economic system has skipped out on its end of the deal.

How do we talk effectively about rising costs? Are you only talking about helping people pay for things? Or are you also talking about the system being fundamentally broken and making the economy work the way people were promised it would work? People do not just want handouts. They want fairness.

From Farmers backed Trump. Now some say they’re losing patience. The Washington Post, June 19, 2026

“Farmers don’t want government handouts, which Trump is proposing to give money back to people,” Cooke said. “They want stable marketplaces to be able to sell their goods to the world.”

When I came back to voters in 2026, they had fully adopted the position that our economic system was fundamentally broken and they were thoroughly pissed about being lied to and betrayed. But they had also worked out why it was broken, and had turned their anger on politicians of both parties.

From Economic Fairness to Corruption

According to a recent poll by the Brennan Center for Justice,

“More than 9 in 10 voters (92 percent) — including supermajorities of Republicans (90 percent), Democrats (93 percent), and independents (93 percent) — believe corruption is a big problem in politics and government.”

When I first saw that corruption was rising in importance to voters, I thought, “Great! This is awesome for Democrats. We can spend all day talking about how Trump is abusing his office to line his pockets.” Then I saw polling saying that voters thought Democrats were just as corrupt as Republicans, if not more so. I needed to find out why.

When the voters in my focus groups talked about “corruption,” they defined it more broadly. They also meant that our economic system works for wealthy elites, not the American people, because our government is under the influence of, if not the control of, wealthy elites. Those who have accumulated extreme wealth have used it to “rig” the economy to their advantage. And my focus group voters were not alone. According to the same poll, while 97% of voters understand “corruption” in the usual sense of “officials using their position for personal gain,” 94% also defined it more broadly as “prioritizing the interests of billionaires and big corporations over those of the public.”

How do we talk effectively about corruption? Don’t shy away from the broader definition, the idea that prices keep rising and wages don’t keep up because the whole system is rigged - working for the rich and not the people.

From Jon Ossoff:

“The Mar-a-Lago mafia has taken American corruption to spectacular new heights. But corruption in America runs a lot deeper than Donald Trump. American politics is coin-operated. Money goes in, favors come out. And that’s why spectacular wealth buys an ever-greater share of power over our national affairs while the “mere citizen” is treated with contempt.”

Language like that is why Jon Ossoff is taking off.

What do data centers and A.I. have to do with corruption?

CANDIDATES: You know that more than 70% of Americans oppose the building of data centers in their communities. People may state all sorts of reasons, but on a deeper level, they are using your position on data centers as a litmus test, because it is the clearest available indicator of whose side you are on.

How do we talk effectively about data centers? Voters don’t just want to know that you will prevent their electricity and water bills from spiking. They want to know whether you will be using government to serve big corporations or the American people. American voters are not entirely opposed to AI. They are opposed to the private sector being allowed to unleash something into the world that could permanently damage the balance of power between workers and employers, and they are mad at our government for not making us all slow down and think first about the damage this could do to people.

This is about the role of government.

We know “takers are gonna take.” We don’t have high expectations for the morality of the private sector. Here is what voters believe that they have not yet put into words: that our government is supposed to belong to us, it is supposed to be looking out for our interests. Government is supposed to be fighting the power of amassed private wealth on our behalf, because our collective power is the only thing big enough and strong enough to do so.

If you think this is a “progressive” or fringe lefty position, think again. According to research by Senator Chris Murphy, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents agree that the government isn’t doing enough to take on corporate power.

Net “strongly or somewhat agree” with the following statements:

The Bottom Line

You can get a good reaction from voters by talking about bringing prices down, making things like housing and healthcare more affordable, and opposing data centers because they use too much power and water. But if you want to catch fire with voters, if you want the kind of historic overperformance that wins mandates and puts the brakes on dictatorships, you need to talk about the feelings behind the positions, about the way things should be. This “right and wrong” talk is where you get agreement numbers in the 80 and 90 percent range. Ultimately, this is what voters need to hear from you:

~ Our government exists for the people and answers to the people, not just the rich.
~ Our economic system exists to meet the needs of people, to make it possible for people to support themselves and their families.
~ Innovation and technology are supposed to make people’s lives better, not worse.
~ It’s our government. We have every right to use it to make our economic system work as promised and to make technology serve our needs.

That is where voters are headed. If we hurry, we can lead them there.

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism!

In solidarity, always,

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NOTES:

The American people have been subjected to fifty years of gaslighting that “everything is working just fine,” implying that, if people are struggling to get by, it must be their own fault. For decades, economists have claimed that “household income has risen to meet or exceed the rate of inflation,” but sometimes they define their terms in ways that hide critically important information. This framing completely disguises the facts that it now takes two-and-a-half full-time jobs to make up a “household income” when it used to take just one, and that the way we measure inflation does not include the most expensive things in our lives, like housing, education and healthcare, all of which have gone up many times the rate of inflation. No wonder people are pissed.

Still working on getting the format and timing right! Your feedback is very helpful! Everything below is free to use without attribution, as is, or translated into your own voice. The goal is to get the ideas out there!

NOTES:

• Do not assume prior knowledge. The people we need to reach may not be news consumers and may not know the background of a story.

• Try to use words that would be natural to say to a neighbor over the fence.

• Never use acronyms.

• Don’t use words together that we don’t want to associate with each other.

July 14, 2026

1. Trump Slush Fund Blocked by Judge

What’s Happening: Trump, in a huge conflict of interest, sued the IRS and then settled the case in exchange for a $1.8 billion dollar slush fund (to pay off friends found guilty of crimes by past administrations) and immunity from prosecution for all past and future violations of tax laws. (Trump was facing potential liability for hundreds of millions in fines over previous tax evasion and fraud.) A judge not only threw out the case, but also referred Trump’s lawyers for professional ethics review. One of those lawyers is Todd Blanche, who Trump is trying to get confirmed as Attorney General. He is also the guy who got convicted Epstein partner and child trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell transferred to a cushy country club prison. Senate confirmation hearings start Wednesday.

What to Say: “This is a huge loss for Trump and a rebuke to his relentless abuse of power. Thank god we still have judges like Kathleen Williams willing to uphold the rule of law in this country.”

”With Trump pushing his lawyers to do wildly unethical things that benefit him financially and legally, it is good that this judge not only threw out this slush fund and revoked Trump’s free pass for tax fraud, she also made it clear that lawyers and prosecutors who try to abuse the power of the justice system will face consequences. This is embarrassing for Trump, who is trying to get his personal attorney Todd Blanche confirmed as attorney general. This guy should have gotten his license revoked when he got Epstein’s partner transferred to a country club prison. And Trump wants to make him Attorney General? (This guy is a total sleazeball.)”

What to Do: AMPLIFY. This is great news that makes a positive case for the rule of law while keeping Trump’s tax evasion and Todd Blanche’s Maxwell caper in the news.

2. ICE Shoots and Kills Another Man

What’s Happening: ICE agents shot and killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a Colombian man in Maine going through the legal asylum process, just days after killing Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas. In both cases, the ICE officers did not have their body cameras on, and they made the same claim that they make every time: that the people were supposedly trying to run over the officers with their cars. I believe that, in both cases, the man shot was not the man ICE was seeking to arrest.

What to Say: “ICE is out of control. This is on management. They put inexperienced and poorly trained young men in high pressure situations. Stephen Miller gave them quotas. Justice Kavanaugh told them they can chase people down because they appear to be Hispanic. When they panic and shoot people, ICE circles the wagons and covers it up. They should always have their body cameras on, but everyone should be held accountable, all the way up to Trump.”

“As if this were not bad enough, we are not hearing enough about the many people who are hidden away in concentration camps, without access to lawyers, without proper food and health care, in horrible conditions. People are dying in custody at an alarming rate. We’re not supposed to have extrajudicial killings and concentration camps in a supposedly free country. We need to expose this every chance we get and demand accountability.”

What to Do: AMPLIFY. Keep these out-of-control killings front and center, and use this opportunity to remind people about the people we’re not hearing about, the ones hidden away in private prison camps.

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving how we communicate! Use this link to subscribe or upgrade! Thank you!

3. U.S. Resumes Strikes on Iran, Ignores Congress, Says He Will Charge Tolls.

What’s Happening: Once again, Trump’s made-up deal with Iran collapses. We bomb Iran. They bomb our bases in the region. Trump claims that he doesn’t need to work with Congress on this, despite laws that require Congress’ approval, and says that he will charge a 20% fee on all goods going through the Strait of Hormuz.

What to Say: “Trump’s choice to attack Iran might be the worst foreign policy decision in American history. Everybody knew Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz, block oil tankers and seriously damage our economy, but he went and did it anyway. He keeps claiming that everything is fine, that we’re going to charge a 20% fee on all traffic going through the Strait. That’s nuts. Now gas prices are spiking all over again. Iran is still in control of the Strait and we’re running out of oil reserves (and defensive weapons.) He’s ruining the economy, and for what? We don’t even know. He did this all by himself, without even talking to Congress. so it’s all on him. He broke it. He owns it.”

“I have to wonder why he keeps telling us different things. The negotiators in Iran think that he’s senile. Some people say he’s manipulating the stock market, delivering bad news and good news and riding the stock market up and down. It’s a sad day for America when we can’t believe what our President says about a foreign war until we get it confirmed by the people we’re at war with.”

”I want a president I can trust to use American strength to bring our allies together to keep the peace and keep us out of wars.”

What to Do: AMPLIFY. Use to bring up the overall bad judgment and the impact on gas prices. The role of Congress should matter, but it doesn’t much outside the beltway. It’s probably more useful to emphasize that he did this for no reason and all by himself.

4. States sue to stop Paramount acquisition of Warner Bros, Discovery.

What’s Happening: The Trump administration allowed Paramount, owned by Trump backer David Ellison, to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, over the objections of professional staffers at the anti-trust division. They believed that the merger would give the company too much monopoly power over the entertainment business, especially the news, as it would give Ellison control of CBS News and CNN, Paramount Plus, HBO Max and more. Now, a coalition of 12 state Democratic administrations have filed a lawsuit to block the merger, and they may succeed.

What to Say: “Our government is supposed to block monopoly mergers that give these massive corporate conglomerates too much power over our lives, not over-ride the rules to do favors for wealthy friends.”

“I was really happy about the work the anti-trust people like Lina Khan were doing under the Biden administration, cracking down on wage theft and breaking up monopolies, but it seems like that is over now. The staffers are independent civil servants. They know that this deal is wrong, but Trump over-rode their recommendations and approved the merger anyway. Thank god these Democratic states are stepping up to fight it. At least someone is looking out for us. I hope they win.”

What to Do: AMPLIFY. Great opportunity to keep Trump’s corruption and corporate cronyism in the spotlight while highlighting the excellent anti-trust work of the Biden administration and now Democratic state leaders. Democrats believe that government should be on the side of the public, not roll over for big money.

5. Trump guts programs that protect our guts.

What’s Happening: Thousands are being sickened by a food parasite due to Trump cuts to food safety programs. There has been a serious outbreak of Cyclospora, a parasite found in fruits and vegetables that causes some nasty, but usually not lethal, intestinal distress. The CDC would normally track outbreaks like this to find the source, and they are trying to, but this program has been severely cut by this administration and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.

What to Say: “I don't want to have to worry if my food is safe! That's what government is FOR. Is it too much to ask to just have a government that's competent? That’s not corrupt?”

“I know food producers don’t always like having to abide by food safety rules and laws, but I feel like our elected officials used to say to them, “C’mon Bob. I don’t want my constituents to get sick. You can stand a few safety checks.” Now Trump and that roadkill-eating whack-a-doodle Kennedy have cut so much staff at the Center for Disease Control that they can’t do the basic minimum checks we need to keep our food safe. Why? I bet good old “Bob, the agribusiness tycoon” is slipping Trump a few million here and there or a freakin’ gold statue. Apparently, there IS such a thing as too little government. What we need is enough government to get the job done.”

What to Do: USE THE OPPORTUNITY. We don’t often get such cut and dry examples of why we need government, and how we use government to keep each other safe. The more we make the most of stories like these, the harder it is for Trump and Republicans to make the case for slashing government programs.

Also of Interest

The Epstein Files: AMPLIFY and demand answers. The Trump administration and his nominee for Attorney General Todd Blanche are still in violation of the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act which requires the full release of the Epstein files. What is Trump so desperate to hide? The Act’s authors, Rho Khanna and Thomas Massie, are pushing Blanche for more info before his confirmation hearing Wed. Journalist Katie Phang recently won a lawsuit requiring the administration to cough up redacted files. Also, journalist Allison Gill sued the FBI and forced them to reveal that they have videos that may have been used to train workers to redact mentions of Trump from the files. This story is still unfolding, so we want to keep it front and center, keep pushing and demanding answers.

The Housing Bill: AMPLIFY. A bipartisan housing bill passed even though Trump refused to sign it. It’s amazing how little Trump cares about what’s happening in people’s lives, especially since housing costs are at an all-time high. From 1965 to 1999, a house cost around 4 times a typical family yearly income, and now it costs more than 7 times. That’s worse than at the height of the housing market bubble.

Massive Favors for “Big Chicken” Donors: AMPLIFY. A Biden rule that would have required big chicken processors to stop manipulating the prices they pay to small farmers is being overturned by the Trump administration, after “Big Chicken” donates record $5 million to Trump inaugural fund.

Lindsay Graham Dies: COMMENT but don’t quibble. Say something civil or dance on his grave, whatever works for you. But nothing is served by criticizing which path others choose to take, and doing so makes us look like we are incapable of getting along.

Mitch McConnell Missing: UTILIZE. Speculation and conspiracies are pointless. We’ll know more soon enough. But we can use this to remind people that he stole two Supreme Court nominations from Democratic administrations and handed them to Trump, leading to the complete collapse in the integrity of the Supreme Court. Use this to continue to normalize the idea of major Supreme Court reform, which we need if it to ever again credibly stand for the U.S. Constitution.

EV Drivers Save Big Dough: AMPLIFY. This fun interactive shows how much money people would be saving if they drove electric and hybrid vehicles, compared with current gas prices.

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism! Please let me know what you think of this format in the comments below!

In solidarity, always,

Like this post, but not ready to become a paying subscriber? Leave me a tip of any amount you like at my tip jar! Thank you!

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

Still working on getting the format and timing right! Your feedback is very helpful!

NOTE: Everything below is free to use without attribution, as is, or translated into your own voice. The goal is to get the ideas out there! I am trying to write in words that would be natural to say to a neighbor over the fence. Remember: never use acronyms and don’t use words together that we don’t want to associate with each other.

July 6, 2026

1. Venezuela Earthquake and Oil Heist

What’s Happening: Venezuela is in desperate need of help after a devastating double earthquake, with more than 3,300 reported dead so far. Meanwhile, the U.S. has taken over their oil market pocketing 8 billion in revenue and offering $300 million of it back in “aid” - far less than the $3b provided to Haiti in 2010.

What to Say: “I don’t understand what we’re doing in Venezuela. We toppled their leader, but we left the same administration in place, and the people there are just as oppressed as they were before. Now we have apparently pocketed billions of dollars in profits from selling Venezuela’s oil, but nobody knows where the money went or who is controlling it. Trump basically used the U.S. military to pull off an armed robbery and skip out with the money. That money belonged to the people of Venezuela. We took it, and now we’re giving them back a fraction of it in in earthquake aid? Isn’t America supposed to be the good guy? The least we should do is give them their own money back.”

What to Do: AMPLIFY. The story of the Trump administration’s unprovoked attack on Venezuela, the failure to institute any real political change, and the $8b we have apparently stolen so far and hid somewhere, has dropped out of the news. The people of Venezuela deserve our sympathy and support at this time of crisis, but also, they should get their $8b back. Share this story every chance you get and use it to bring this travesty back into the spotlight.

2. Trump interferes with the World Cup

What’s Happening: Trump pressured World Cup officials to overturn a penalty on a U.S. player that would have required him sitting out a game.

What to Say: “This World Cup. It’s a nice thing. Good sports. People from all over the world getting along, enjoying America. Why does Trump have to go and mess with it? Is there really not one thing in the whole world that can just happen without him having to throw his weight around and get his way? Now, the whole rest of the world is going to be pissed at us, again. I’m tired of people seeing America as the a**hole that has to get special treatment and can’t just play fair. This is embarrassing.”

What to Do: NEUTRAL. It’s up to you. It’s all over the news. If people bring it up, it’s fine to point out how typical it is of Trump to need to control everything. But it’s not important. If you are initiating a story or post, spend your time talking about real priorities.

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving how we communicate! Use this link to subscribe or upgrade! Thank you!

3. Ukraine, Russia and Trump

What’s Happening: Ukraine hits Russia’s machinery of war, causing a major fuel crisis in Russia. Russia bombs apartment buildings. Ukraine is unable to defend itself because of a shortage of interceptor missiles, in part due to the Iran war. Meanwhile, Ex-CIA Director John Brennan sues Trump to block the destruction of evidence in Trump’s attempt to vindictively prosecute Brennan over Russia investigation.

What to Say: “I’m really impressed with how the people of Ukraine have kept the moral high ground by only attacking the facilities that Russia uses to wage war on them, like oil refineries and military sites. Now Russia is having a fuel crisis and Ukraine is becoming a world leader in drone technology. Meanwhile, Russia is bombing apartment buildings full of civilians and kids. It’s just tragic that we can’t give the people of Ukraine the missiles they need to intercept those bombs because we wasted them all on Iran. Let’s face it. We’d be better off if we had never attacked Iran in the first place. What I can’t figure is why Trump seems so determined to side with Putin when he’s clearly so morally in the wrong. It just makes you wonder why.”

What to Do: AMPLIFY. This war and the Brennan/Russia election interference case should never leave the front burner. Ukraine’s heroism and ingenuity is inspiring. Their conduct here is admirable. There should be no question that Russia and Putin are the bad guys and the losers, and we should never stop reminding people that Trump is way too cozy with them.

4. Labor is mad at Trump over wind energy jobs.

What’s Happening: Trump is wasting billions in public dollars, paying $129b to Duke Energy to cancel wind energy projects that we really need. Union workers are pissed that they are losing those good jobs. Meanwhile Southern Europe is evacuating due to wildfires and China is cleaning our clock in the most important industry of the future.

What to Say: “Trump ought to be creating jobs, not killing them. Why should we be giving more than $2 billion dollars of taxpayer money to energy companies to cancel wind power projects that would have created thousands of good union jobs? Besides, it’s not like we don’t need the clean energy. The weather is messed up. We had heatwaves. Now it’s wildfire time. Clean energy is the biggest economy of the future and we’re falling further behind China every day.”

What to Do: AMPLIFY. Everything about this story is good for us. Trump killing good jobs and wasting our money. Losing competition with China. Heat waves and fires give us the news hook to talk about it. We can also bring up Biden’s bipartisan Infrastructure Act that would have helped us build up our clean energy industry.

Also of Interest

Big Tech is apparently trying to walk back its claims of massive job reductions due to AI replacing workers. Hmm. Better to BYPASS that and AMPLIFY stories about how AI costs more than the people it replaces and how Microsoft is cutting 4,800 jobs at Xbox to focus on AI.

AMPLIFY that ICE arrests are increasing dramatically while spread out more and done more quietly. Share or repost every ICE story you see, every time.

DO NOT ASSOCIATE: White House accuses Smithsonian of “political activism.” This story doesn’t tell us anything new about Trump. It’s just more distraction, and discussing it only amplifies Trump’s accusation and plants doubts about Smithsonian leadership.

MUTE anything having to do with Charlie Kirk or Prince Harry.

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism! Please let me know what you think of this format in the comments below!

In solidarity, always,

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The Big Picture

Voters are pissed at everybody in Washington. They have finally figured out that the lack of economic fairness that causes their cost of living to far outstrip their income is not due to natural market forces, but to corruption, which they define as, not just self-enrichment, but the total capture of our government by “Big Money,” especially “Big Tech.” Corruption is system-wide, but this administration is doing it out in the open and taking it to unprecedented levels. At this point, virtually all their attempts to demonize immigrants and trans people and their attacks on voting should be seen as desperate attempts to avoid being held accountable for soliciting and taking bribes in exchange for government actions, insider trading and even culpability in a massive child sex trafficking ring.

NOTES: Everything below is free to use without attribution, as is, or translated into your own voice. The goal is to get the ideas out there! I am trying to write in words that would be natural to say to a neighbor over the fence. Remember: never use acronyms and don’t use words together that we don’t want associated with each other.

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving how we communicate! Use this link to subscribe or upgrade! Thank you!

1. Trump’s $2 billion haul.

What’s Happening: Trump’s financial disclosure forms, released Tuesday, show that he has raked in more than $2 billion since he retook office, mostly in cryptocurrency dealings.

What to Say:

They say the only use for cryptocurrency is hiding payments for crimes. Looks like the President has been using his crypto business to get paid off for selling pardons, dropping fraud investigations, approving monopoly mergers, and basically selling every Presidential decision to the highest bidder, even if it puts our national security at risk. The mega-rich have always used their wealth to get preferential treatment, but this is on a scale we have never seen before. When the Supreme Court gave Trump total immunity for crimes committed in office, they opened the floodgates. There’s nothing left of our government but swamp!

What to Do: AMPLIFY IT. Every time you see any story on this topic, don’t just like it. Restack it, share it, do whatever you can to drive it up to the top of the algorithms. Wherever possible, connect this to the bigger picture perception of corruption as making our government serve the rich instead of us, which is why the economy has become so completely broken.

Where to Read More:

• Trump’s income topped $2 billion in 2025, boosted by crypto, coin ventures, The Washington Post, June 30, 2026

• Trump Pulled In at Least $2 Billion After Returning to the White House, The New York Times, June 30, 2026

2. Supreme Court “Slaughters” federal agency independence.

What’s Happening: The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Trump in Trump v. Slaughter. Now he can fire the heads of formerly independent agencies at will.

What to Say:

The heads of federal agencies used to be able to say “no” to the President or anyone else without risking being fired. Federal agencies are supposed to keep us safe, to make decisions based on science, and treat everyone equally. Now, thanks to this Supreme Court decision, they can be fired if they don’t do political favors for the rich and powerful. From now on, we won’t know if our food and drugs are safe, or if we can hold a bank responsible for defrauding us, or if someone is being prosecuted for political reasons, because the decisions are being made, not based on the facts, but on who is bribing Trump or just whatever fool idea he has got in his head today. This Supreme Court is corrupt as hell and needs reforming, big time.

What to Do: AMPLIFY AND FRAME IT. Share this story as widely as possible, but be aware that the typical reader may not already know that Presidents don’t have total authority over executive branch agency heads, and they may not know why that matters. Use this opportunity to let people know how federal agency independence is critical to keeping us safe and maintaining the principle of equal treatment by our government, and to normalize the idea of Supreme Court reform.

Where to Read More:

• Outcry over supreme court decision to grant Trump power to fire agency chiefs, By Michael Sainato, The Guardian, June 29, 2026

• Paul Krugman, Substack, July 1, 2026

“The Court’s decision effectively eliminates government by professional civil servants who do their best to implement the law with government by henchmen and lackeys who will do whatever Dear Leader wants.”

3. Record-breaking heat wave shows the cost of oil dependence.

What’s Happening: A record shattering heat wave is moving over the Midwest and East Coast all this week, and experts say it would not be possible without global warming. Meanwhile, Iran continues to assert authority over the Strait of Hormuz.

What to Say:

This heat is f*ing ridiculous. This never happened when I was a kid, at least not like this. The weather is, like, “Yo-Yo-ing” up and down and it’s freaking me out. We need to switch to unlimited clean energy as fast as possible and get the weather back in some kind of balance.

Besides, if Iran can jack up the prices of gas and everything else in this country just by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, we’re being held hostage by our own dependence on oil! I heard that Spain has so much solar power that they’re literally paying people to take it off their hands. My friend bought a plug-in electric car and he says he can drive the equivalent of a full tank of gas for $2. Two freakin’ dollars’ worth of electricity!

What to Do: AMPLIFY AND FRAME IT. It’s our job to put the destabilization of our climate at the top of the news cycle. We should like and share every story that associates extreme and dangerous weather with the increasingly unstable climate, and frame the costs associated with it as a form of climate disaster tax. Also, with Iran, we have an excellent opportunity to reframe renewable energy as the only path to energy independence and energy security and highlight the threat that fossil fuel dependence poses to our national security and to prices across every sector of the economy, including the cost of food increasing due to drought.

Where to Read More:

• Europe’s Heatwave is Political, By Grace Blakely, Substack, Jun 27, 2026

• Dangerous combination: Over 175 million facing record heat into the weekend, By Jennifer Gray, Miriam Guthrie and Jonathan Erdman, The Weather Channel, July 1, 2026

• Iran Just Taught the World a Dangerous Lesson, By Edward Fishman, The New York Times, June 19, 2026

• Too much of a good thing? Spain’s green energy can exceed demand By Guy Hedgecoe, BBC News, June 2024 (There are more recent articles complaining that the cost of electricity has become so low in Spain that investors are pissed off, but they are largely behind paywalls.)

4. Judge says Epstein files’ records of 13-year-old Trump victim must be released by July 2.

What’s Happening: Journalist Katie Phang won her lawsuit and now Todd Blanche has to cough up the Epstein files that they have been hiding, specifically the records of the interviews of the 13-year-old who credibly accused Trump of sexual assault. Meanwhile Todd Blanche is trying to get confirmed as the Attorney General.

What to Say:

I seem to remember that a bill was passed in Congress and signed by the President requiring them to release all the Epstein files, unredacted, by December 19^th of last year. Now we find out that they have been hiding records, and lots of them, including the records of four interviews of a 13-year-girl who credibly accused Trump of sexual assault. If there is nothing to hide, why do they keep hiding them? No wonder Trump is trying so hard to keep us all distracted. Now he wants his personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, the same guy who got Gislaine Maxwell a spot in a country club prison in exchange for who knows what, confirmed as Attorney General. This is disgusting. I want it all out in the open and I want people put in prison. (Real prison, not this country club sh*t.)

What to Do: AMPLIFY IT. Every time you see any story on this topic, don’t just like it. Restack it, share it, do whatever you can to drive it up to the top of the algorithms. Wherever possible, connect this to the bigger picture that Trump us trying to distract us with spectacles and attacks, to avoid being held accountable.

Where to Read More:

• Judge orders DOJ to turn over some unredacted Epstein files, By James Hill and Peter Charalambous, ABC News, June 25, 2026

• Judge Corners DOJ for Covering Up Files on Trump’s 13-Year-Old Accuser, By Erkki Foster, the Daily Beast, June 26, 2026

• Todd Blanche Should Not Be Confirmed, By Sheldon Whitehouse, The Contrarian, June 29, 2026

5. Challengers win some Democratic primaries.

What’s Happening: Candidates running on economic populism and fighting corruption (some of which are running under the Democratic Socialists of America label) have won primaries in New York and Colorado, leading some older centrist Democrats to freak out.

What to Say:

It seems pretty clear that voters want people in office who will fight corruption in our government, stand up for working people, make our lives more affordable, and make government actually work again (like Mamdani is doing in New York). It doesn’t really matter how they are labelled.

Republicans are the boy who cried wolf. They have been calling us all socialists for decades. Nobody cares. They just want someone who will look out for them, not just the rich.

What to Do: MUTE IT. This is “inside pool” and is framed as evidence of “Democrats in disarray.” In in-community discussions, you can use this as an opportunity to emphasize that voters are responding positively to economic populist candidates, but avoid blanket criticism of other Democratic elected officials. We still need them elected or re-elected and many of them are progressives! Wherever possible, do not associate the term “Democrats” with the term “Socialists.” We’re not against it, but now is the time for persuasion, so downplay it where possible. We can educate people after November.

Where to Read More:

• Voters are angry with Washington, and other takeaways from the Colorado primaries, The Washington Post, July 1, 2026

• Keith Ellison, Substack note

“My advice to Democrats upset about Mamdani’s win is simple: stop worrying about labels and start worrying about people’s bills. If we become the party that can look a working family in the eye and say, “Yes, your rent will go down, your wages will go up, and your debt burden will shrink,” we will earn back their trust. If we don’t, they will keep looking for leaders who will — no matter what name those leaders run under. James, it’s still — perhaps more than ever — the economy, stupid.”

• It’s the Next America, By Robert Reich, July 1, 2026

“These new young Democrats have also won because they inspired armies of young activists to knock on doors and work the phones for them. They didn’t rely on big money; they relied on big excitement.”

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism! Please let me know what you think of this format in the comments below!

In solidarity, always,

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The Moral Case

In March, Washington State passed a “Millionaire’s Tax.” In California, a one-time “Billionaire Tax” initiative will be on the ballot in November. And Elon Musk just became the world’s first trillionaire. Most Americans tell pollsters that they support the idea of “taxing the rich,” but taking back a tiny bit more of what the excessively wealthy have extracted from us is not good enough. We need to make the case that there was something morally wrong with their accumulating that much wealth in the first place. We need to change how our economy operates such that no-one is ever again able to amass enough wealth to warp entire markets and corrupt our political system.

Feel free to skip the following “Critique of Current Messaging” and jump ahead to “Reframing the Debate” and “What to Say” below!

Critique of Current Messaging

The current messaging around why we should tax the rich falls into roughly three types: “because they have it,” “because we need it,” and “they should pay their fair share.”

“Because they have it.”

From the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy press release, Historic Millionaires’ Tax in Washington Will Make State’s Tax Code Fairer, Raise Critical Revenue:

Today Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson signed into law the state’s new millionaires’ tax, propelling the Evergreen State forward toward a fairer economy with a tax code more based on the ability to pay.

From Billionaire Tax Now, the organization behind the California Billionaire Tax Act initiative:

The wealth of U.S. and California billionaires has grown enormously over the past decades — much faster than overall economic growth. In 1982, the wealth of the top .0002% Americans was about 2% of the country’s GDP (gross domestic product). In 2025, it has increased to 20% of GDP. From 1982 to 2025 the annual growth of billionaire’s wealth has been 7.5% per year, five times the growth of average incomes over the same period (1.5% per year).

With the attention given to the skyrocketing accumulation of wealth and the enormous tax breaks for the wealthy in the Trump budget, this argument has plenty of support, but it does not challenge the long-standing myth that the wealth of the rich is earned and well-deserved.

“Because we need it.”

Also from Billionaire Tax Now:

Stop the California Healthcare Collapse & Protect Education and Food Assistance. We’re calling on California’s billionaires to pay a one-time, 5% emergency billionaire tax to prevent the collapse of California healthcare and ensure our state’s families can get the care we need. The billionaire tax is a commonsense1 solution to a looming crisis and will help our state build a strong middle class.

The messaging around this state initiative seems to suggest that billionaires could be the heroes that “save” California’s health care system, because “we need the money more than they do.” This messaging sounds like it was designed by consultants who were tasked with not hurting billionaires’ feelings. The “yacht” graphic above is as hard-hitting as this campaign gets, and even that was the only one of its kind.

This “the money could be used for better things” argument is being used a lot right now in reference to tax cuts for the rich and also to draw comparisons between Trump’s crippling program cuts and his more lavish personal spending and gratuitous pocket-lining.

“Their fair share.”

From It’s Time to Tax the Billionaires by Gabriel Zucman in The New York Times:

Why do the world’s most fortunate people pay among the least in taxes, relative to the amount of money they make? The simple answer is that while most of us live off our salaries, tycoons like Jeff Bezos live off their wealth…

The idea that billionaires should pay a minimum amount of income tax is not a radical idea. What is radical is continuing to allow the wealthiest people in the world to pay a smaller percentage in income tax than nearly everybody else.

This well constructed piece with great infographics defines, “not paying their fair share” as paying a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than the non-wealthy. The “buy, borrow, die,” explanation, that they essentially live by borrowing against “unrealized” earnings, makes sense and is growing better understood. But this argument also fails to challenge the idea that it’s perfectly fine that they amassed such disproportionate wealth in the first place, so long as they don’t get any special treatment when it comes to paying their taxes on it.

All of the Above Plus

From the Research Collaborative based on the “Race, Class Narrative” model:

No matter our background, faith or color, most of us would move heaven and earth for our families. But as our work has made America prosper, a greedy few have rigged the rules to redirect resources from our communities to their country clubs, from our classrooms to their ballrooms, and from our public parks to their private jets. They keep us strapped, stressed, and separated so we won’t join together to demand the programs, schools and supports our families need. Together, we can make billionaires pay what they owe in wages and taxes, and make our leaders spend public money for public good.2

This messaging suggests moral judgment with the terms “greedy,” “rigged the rules,” and “pay what they owe,” especially with the addition of “in wages.” I particularly like the framing about “public money for public good.” This is headed down the right path, but we need to support messaging like this with better explanatory narratives about how our entire economy works.

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving how we communicate! Use this link to subscribe or upgrade! Thank you!

Reframing the Debate

This is where we challenge the myth that the rich get rich because they are “better than” other people, not just smarter or more creative or hard working, but somehow more virtuous, more morally deserving. If you actually create something that makes everyone’s lives better? Great. Be a multi-millionaire. Buy a big house and a fancy car. But mostly, being a billionaire or trillionaire means you either inherited it or took advantage of a whole heck of a lot of people along the way!

NOTE: Instead of trying to debunk myths like “we need to give tax cuts to the rich because they are the ones who create the jobs,” we need to bypass, which means skip the debunking and go straight to talking about what is true, which is that “the mega-rich get rich by cutting jobs” and other bad behavior.

“Taxing the rich” is morally right for three reasons:
1. They owe it to us. We invested in their success. They need to pay us back.
2. They obtained their excessive wealth through immoral means: exploitation and corruption.
3. Accumulation of wealth is bad for job growth, economic stability, and democracy.

How do the excessively rich get that way?

By taking advantage of public investment. First of all, government is us. It’s the tool we use to make and carry out group decisions, to take care of each other and improve our quality of life. We invest in each other and in our common future by providing resources that are supposed to benefit everybody, like our infrastructure, education, scientific research, and technological advancements like the Internet and GPS, without which companies like Amazon and Google would not even exist.

Through exploitation. The mega-rich extract more than their fair share of the wealth created by investors, workers, suppliers, taxpayers and consumers. They use monopoly power and collusion to crush competition, raise prices and suppress wages. They engage in massive scale wage theft. They strip assets from companies and dump their pension obligations.

Through corruption. They use the power of concentrated wealth to influence our government, to gain lucrative government contracts and subsidies, to externalize environmental and health costs, to externalize risks and get bailed out, to acquire tax breaks and to get away with tax evasion, ALL OF WHICH WE PAY FOR.

Why is excessive wealth accumulation bad for the economy?

When we allow wealth to accumulate at the top, it encourages the incredibly risky speculative investment behavior that causes economic crashes. It funds the replacement of workers with outsourcing, robotics and now A.I. It funds buyouts and mergers that increase monopoly power. And it increases corruption: the influence of concentrated wealth on our political system.

Our economy is the means to an end: the well-being of people. When it fails to serve our needs, we have every right to change it. When you think of it from this perspective it would be morally wrong NOT to tax the rich.

What to Say

“Why tax the wealthy? Because they owe it to us. We invested in their success, as taxpayers, workers and consumers. They got their excessive wealth by taking more than their fair share at every step of the way and buying their way our of being held responsible. Besides, hoarding wealth is bad for job growth, economic stability, and democracy.”

“Generations of Americans invested in things like interstate highways, the Internet, GPS, and medical research, without which huge corporations like Amazon and Google could not exist! They owe us dividends on our investments!”

“Mega-corporations use monopoly power and illegal collusion to suppress wages, raise prices and squeeze out small businesses.”

“The mega-rich make their money by cutting jobs, not creating them. That’s why Wall Street celebrates when unemployment goes up.”

“Too much hoarded wealth at the top has changed our economy. We used to be about producing real things. Now it’s all speculation, creating bubbles that make people trillionaires on paper, then crash the whole economy, hurting people but allowing big corporations to swallow up small businesses (like family farms) at fire-sale prices.”

“Hoarding massive amounts of wealth has made it possible for the mega-rich to corrupt our government, to get subsidies, tax breaks, and bailouts, as well as get-out-of-jail-free cards from the laws that apply to everyone else.”

“It’s not enough to tax the mega-wealthy at the same rate as workers. Taxes on hoarded wealth should be high enough to discourage them from taking advantage of people and corrupting our government.”

“It takes millions of people to create wealth. We used to make sure that everyone got their fair share. Now investors take it all. We need to use our government to make the system fair again. Taxing hoarded wealth is a great place to start.”

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism!

In solidarity, always,

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The Last Mile Delivery Problem

In 2014, I was talking to my mentor George Lakoff and he said, “Lots of people have read the book (Don’t Think of an Elephant), so why don’t people do what I told them to do?” My response was, “Because it’s HARD. I have read 14 of your books, and I still don’t know how to do what you are telling us to do.”

After twenty years of working in campaigns and communications, I had become frustrated with our community’s inability to express our beliefs to American voters. In 2011, I spent three months at UC Berkeley with Lakoff just to learn the neuroscience behind framing. I went back in 2014 to work with him for a full year in an attempt to close the gap between the wisdom in his discoveries and the ability of political communicators to apply it in their day-to-day work.

I figured out what it is about framing that communicators need to know and created a training program that would help people learn it easily and intuitively. That took me more than four years. Thousands of people have taken that training. I have spent more than four years writing Reframing America here on Substack about how brains work, how the public debate works, how to frame issues, and sometimes just what words to say. The greatest response by far has been to the posts where I just give people the words to say.

Figuring out how to frame what is happening in real time is hard. It’s very hard. Republicans can do it because they have invested billions and built entire industries around the sole purpose of manipulating how people see the world. I teach people how to frame in the hopes that they can figure out how to apply it in real time, but truth be told, I don’t even know if I can do it. And If I can’t do it with all of my training, how can I expect anyone else to?

I don’t know if I can handle trying to make sense of the firehose of news in any semblance of real time. If I try, I might not be able to do much other work which means that I will need a whole lot more paying subscribers. That’s not easy given that people are now being asked to subscribe separately to every columnist, author, podcaster and TV channel.

I want to use the time I have in the most effective way possible. I need to know how I can best close that gap, solve that “last-mile delivery problem,” between the window into the human mind provided by Lakoff and the field of cognitive linguistics and the never-ending problems of “what should I say right now” and “how can we get the American public to pay attention to what we believe to be important and to see it from our perspective?

So here is what I ask of you: tell me what you need.

Reader Survey

Which of the following would you find most useful?

1. How framing works. (Most of what you get now.) Cognitive science tells us important things about how language influences what people think and believe.

2. Taming the news. I divide the firehose into noise and news and sort the news into major through lines we can track and manage without being overwhelmed.

3. What to say. If I had one idea to plant into the public psyche or my neighbor’s ear today or this week, what would it be?

4. Framing the news. Everybody is talking about X. How do I talk about X to get people to think about X from our perspective so they will conclude that we are right about X?

5. Agenda setting. Given what is in the headlines, what should I respond to or boost and what should I ignore? What should I amplify because it isn’t in the headlines but should be?

Apparently only subscribers can take the surveys. You can subscribe here if you like!

Thank you so much! I will let you know how this all works out and what I decide to do. The Substack survey tool is very limited, so please feel free to elaborate in the comments!

Leave a comment

In solidarity, always,

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving how we communicate! Use this link to subscribe or upgrade!

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Intro

A.I. could benefit humanity in many ways IF tightly regulated and narrowly applied, but as it stands, there are serious concerns. Erosion of trust in the public sphere. The spike in energy and water use. Mass plagiarism. Mass surveillance. Weapons without accountability, and more. But right now, A.I. is creating an economic bubble that could crash the economy and it could cause a massive rupture in the relationship between work and wages. Despite all of this, it is being forced on us.

Voters aren’t asking us to stop A.I. entirely. They just want us to slow it down so we can all think before we act. Big Tech knows that opposition is building and regulation is coming. They want full speed ahead: to become too embedded to remove and too big to fail. That’s why they are trying to buy political power. Democrats have to pick a side. The candidates who are winning are the ones talking about prioritizing workers over big corporations.

A.I. Anthropologist calls it A.I. populism:

NAFTA and the Great Recession

Why don’t voters already know that we are on their side? We need to look at what people were experiencing when Democrats were in the White House.

When I say, “A.I. is the new NAFTA,” people in rural America know exactly what I mean. To millions of Americans, it is not just a trade agreement. NAFTA represents the entire shift from a single wage-earner being able to support a family to two wage-earners not being able to support a family.

1992: The North American Free Trade Agreement will forever be associated with President Bill Clinton. It may have been negotiated before he took office, but he made the case to the American people. Economic “experts” told us that, while there might be some adjustment, a rising tide would lift all boats. We now know that more than 50,000 factories have closed in the U.S. since 1992. When factories close, communities collapse, and addiction and suicide rise.

Some argue that this transition was due more to robotics than trade, but that only makes the parallels to A.I. even stronger. In either case, something moved millions of people from solid middle-class jobs to service jobs at a fraction of the wages, while political leaders told them everything was just fine. Whether accurate or not, many people in rural communities attribute the devastation to NAFTA and hold President Clinton responsible.

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving how we communicate! Use this link to subscribe or upgrade! Thank you!

2008: People placed a lot of hope in President Obama. They thought he would stand up to the corporate world after it crashed the housing market and the economy. Despite his many other wonderful qualities and achievements, Obama did put Wall Street insiders in positions of power, and while millions lost their homes, banks got bailed out. People have not forgotten that nobody went to jail. The economy as a whole recovered, but wages continued to stagnate as corporations consolidated and inequality grew.

2016: To too many Americans, the Clinton name was associated with economic devastation and gaslighting. Hillary Clinton's campaign strategy was more gaslighting: telling people that, despite what they might be experiencing, the economy was actually going great. Meanwhile, what was our Democratic president up to? Obama was on the road trying to sell the American people on another trade agreement: the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP may have been a good thing. The reality is that any trade agreement would have been politically toxic.

2020-2024: Our data guru friend G. Elliot Morris points out that Kamala Harris’ loss in 2024 can be attributed to two things: global inflation and the sitting President’s approval rating. Democrats could have influenced at least one of those. They could have told the story of Biden’s incredible performance on the economy while it was happening. He and his team rapidly restored the economy from the pandemic shutdown and engineered a “soft landing” from post-pandemic global inflation. He also took big steps toward changing the balance of power between owners and workers: bringing back anti-trust enforcement, supporting organizing rights, prosecuting wage theft, outlawing non-compete agreements, and making massive investments in infrastructure, manufacturing, and supply chains for technology and renewable energy.

Under Biden, Democrats actually were fighting for working people and against the power of concentrated wealth. Why didn’t they tell anyone? Big corporate donors did not want to be portrayed as the bad guys, so political advisors decided that the White House should not frame Biden’s actions as siding with workers against bad corporate actors. Later, during the campaign, Kamala Harris did the same thing Hillary Clinton did in 2016: she tried to convince people that, despite what they might be experiencing, the economy was actually going great. It’s never a good idea to try to win votes by telling people that they are wrong about what is happening in their own lives. Instead, they should have acknowledged the long-term erosion of wages and buying power, told people what they were actually doing to make things better, and asked voters to give the plan time to work by keeping Democrats in power.

Will A.I. be NAFTA or 2008, or both?

The NAFTA route: A.I. can continue to steamroller our lives. It can improve to the point where it allows the investor class to make astronomical profits while laying off many millions of people. We would have to completely re-evaluate the relationship between labor and wages and turn toward Universal Basic Income or some mechanism for moving wage-earning toward the kind of work that only humans can do.

The 2008 route: It looks more and more like the A.I. bubble will burst, and sooner rather than later. The stock market has been artificially propped up by data center construction and tech companies padding their profits. Now, it looks like A.I. companies have been subsidizing the cost of their products and when they start charging what it really costs, the demand is going to plummet and these heavily indebted companies are going to fail. The upcoming series of A.I. company IPOs is starting to look more and more like a “pump and dump” scheme where the retirees of America are forced to buy A.I. companies through their stock market index funds at wildly inflated prices so the current owners can cash out and run for the hills.

Moving Forward

People know when they are getting screwed and being lied to, and when it comes to A.I., all of their bullshit detectors are going off at once. Voters most fear the NAFTA scenario. They assume we will abandon millions of Americans to economic devastation and deaths of despair, because that’s what we did before. The more likely scenario is that the companies fail and the stock market plummets. In that case, voters assume we will bail out Big Tech without punishing anyone or requiring any meaningful change in behavior, because that’s what we did before. They need to hear that we will not do what we have done in the past.

When Trump talked about “Making America Great Again,” he was (falsely) promising a return to the days when a single wage earner, a factory worker or a mail carrier, could buy a house and a car, send the kids to college and retire with a pension. The least we can do is acknowledge the cost families have paid in needing two adults working full-time jobs (and side hustles) in order to support a family, and still not being able to afford healthcare, college and retirement. We can talk about what happened to people when we transitioned from a manufacturing to a service economy and what that might tell us about the impact of A.I. We can talk about why we need government to do more to prevent companies from crashing the economy and to hold people accountable when they do.

There are many discussions about what to do about A.I. to alter the economic impacts and regulate or even outlaw many of the worst societal impacts. All of these options would require strong action by political leaders, including exerting a lot of control over A.I. companies. Voters doubt that we have the spine for the job. It is up to us to convince them that we do.

We can and must make the case for slowing the f*** down and thinking before we act. We can stop the building of new data centers. We can make it perfectly clear that we see what this might do to workers and their role in the economy and society, and that, even if we don’t have all the answers, our guiding star is making sure this and any new technology makes their lives better, not worse.

See the NOTES below for more on how to talk about economic populism to American voters.

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism!

In solidarity, always,

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NOTES:

How to talk about economic populism to American voters:

Fifty Ways

Volunteers can help people get elected by facilitating outreach to voters, creating visibility, providing intelligence, amplifying messaging, or by playing a “staff” or support role in the campaign itself.

All of these activities are doable. (I have either done them myself or seen them done.) But you don’t have to do ALL of them. Different activities work in different situations. The key is to have a big menu to pick from! Volunteers: choose what brings you joy. Campaigns: figure out what would work in your district, find out what your volunteers can do, and plan accordingly.

This is an incomplete list! Please add your own in the comments!

1. Adopt your block or apartment building.

A precinct is a long-term goal. Start with your own block. Something easy like making sure their registration is up to date. Apartment buildings and gated developments are helpful as campaigns often can’t get access.

2. Host a house party.

It doesn’t have to be big. Research shows that a house party with just ten attendees will, on average, generate 280 valuable in-person word-of-mouth conversations.

3. Organize a speech, debate or town hall.

Work with your sorority, fraternity, professional or service association. Even if your group is non-partisan, you get to choose the questions that reflect your values. If your group endorses, go all-in!

4. Hold signs on a freeway overpass.

Visibility brigades are popping up all over the country! Join one here or start your own.

5. Host a community service activity.

Organize campaign volunteers to do a clean-up or food drive or other community service activity.

6. Organize a parade presence.

Build a big crowd. Get a banner. Hand painted signs are awesome (but mind your message discipline.) A paper mâché parade float or giant balloon is even better. Hand out freeze-pops. Go nuts.

7. Table a farmers’ market or fair.

Or if you can’t get a table or booth…

8. “Street team” an area with heavy foot traffic.

Organize 2 to 16 people to hold signs, distribute materials and interact with people in public, high traffic areas, to generate both visibility and personal conversations. Wear your matching t-shirts!

9. Host a picnic, BBQ, spaghetti dinner, pancake breakfast, ice cream social…

Food is a great way to draw non-political people and expose them to your campaign as they eat. It helps if you also have a local “catering” team.

10. Unleash your inner chef.

Start a “kitchen crew.” Anything from a loose group that feeds volunteers or caters fundraisers to a team that can put on a “whole hog” BBQ.

Why build teams?

Volunteers may have a lot of time and expertise, but decline because they can’t always guarantee their availability. They key is to build a team that can take collective responsibility. For example, in a kitchen crew of 15-20 people, a candidate who needs food for an event can submit a request and then maybe 8 people commit to bringing 3 appetizers each. Teams can support each other in developing skills and building institutional knowledge, while letting each member drop in and out as their other priorities allow.

11. Unleash your inner wedding planner.

I see you, Pinterest people! Let people putting on local events focus on the community outreach, audience building and programming, while you ace the logistics.

12. Help provide audio/visual tech for campaign events.

Whether you own the gear or just know where to get it and how to use it, it’s one job that needs to be done right, that you can take off the campaign’s to-do list (and budget).

13. Put on a performance.

Deejay or have your funk band or string quartet perform at an event. Busk the village square. Do stand-up or cabaret at a campaign talent-show fundraiser. Have your band march in a parade. Entertainment always makes things better!

14. Write your personal endorsement.

Your reasons for supporting this candidate may ring true for someone else too. Write down your thoughts and share them in a letter to the editor and on your social media. Here’s a great one. (Yours can be MUCH shorter.)

MurMur’s Substack

Why I'm Voting For Daniel Biss

For the first time in more than thirty years, my hometown district, IL-9, is holding an open-seat primary. The district has been represented by Jan Schakowsky for almost my entire life. After she announced her retirement, 16 candidates entered the race…

Read more

5 months ago · 9 likes · 5 comments · Brian Rolling

15. Join an amplification network.

Commit to getting text alerts, stopping whatever you are doing for a moment, clicking the link, and reposting that content to your socials.

16. Learn your talking points and use them.

Every volunteer should be prepared to spread the word and stay on message. Campaigns need a pipeline to distribute message guidance, including framing strategy. Even supporters who can’t volunteer should know what to say, every day, in conversation.

17. Be a social media ambassador.

Volunteer to be a campaign’s ambassador to Twitch or Pinterest or Reddit or whatever platform you live on. You know the unwritten rules and social protocols. Help them navigate and develop a plan that doesn’t make them look like a noob.

18. Set up volunteer coordinating platforms.

Volunteer coordinators often don’t know tools like Discord, Signal and Slack. If you do, you can set up the campaign or community volunteer teams and teach people how to use them. Even a Google group needs a good admin.

19. Start a postcard group

Postcards work best when they are local and personal. Maybe skip the mass national campaign and do something more individual.

20. Carry out a poster campaign.

In many big cities you can do wheat paste poster campaigns. In some places you can post on phone poles or notice boards. You can have people put posters in their windows anywhere, especially if they can’t do lawn signs or don’t have lawns.

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving how we communicate! Use this link to subscribe or upgrade! Thank you!

21. Stealth campaign your grade school pick up line.

Organize your fellow parents to “saturate-visibility” your school drop-off and pick-up lines with bumper stickers, t-shirts and buttons.

22. Stealth campaign your local sports events.

Organize your fellow parents to wear their t-shirts, hats and buttons to little league or high school football games. Sometimes, making this look unplanned makes it even more convincing.

23. Design a t-shirt.

Work with the campaign to design t-shirt graphics that people would like to wear even if they weren’t supporting the campaign.

24. Hand silk-screen t-shirts.

Wearable merch is advertising and endorsement. DIY screening allows you to produce and distribute widely for free or at cost. (My nieces learned how to do this in high school.)

25. Make other campaign merch.

Some people own embroidery or Cricut machines. A button press is not a huge investment. If this is your idea of a good time, make yourself a source for at-cost, volunteer-labor campaign merch.

26. Paint a mural or side of a barn.

This can be a blast, and is a great activity particularly for people who like to do things with their hands rather than talk to people. I once had a volunteer who painted signs and billboards for a living. You never know until you ask!

27. Organize a billboard project.

Just researching the options, costs, and deadlines can be a big help.

28. Build a lawn sign campaign.

Lawn signs are critical drivers of word-of-mouth, so don’t wait for people to request them. Map out high visibility streets and recruit supporters who live on them.

29. Drive and deliver.

Some people won’t talk to voters but will drive canvassers on their routes, deliver lawn signs, truck campaign materials across the state, or drive voters to the polls.

30. Monitor the media.

Help the campaign track stories about the candidate, the opponent, local and national news, so you can reframe (not debunk!) attacks, and find ways to insert your candidate into the story and create timely content.

31. Research local press opportunities.

Help the campaign build up-to-date press lists. Identify and research who is covering the campaign. Inquire about editorial meetings and Op-ed submissions.

32. Start a letter to the editor group.

LTEs are still one of the most read parts of news online or off. Here is a great resource you can use to write one or start a writing program. Women Forward: Write to Win.

33. Organize a video or “media corps.”

Only presidential campaigns have a dedicated press corps, but if the press won’t cover you, cover yourself. Recruit media savvy young people to “cover” the campaign and feed content to the campaign’s socials. You can even set up a project with a local journalism or media school.

34. Become a “staff” writer.

Many volunteers have professional experience in writing, marketing, and advertising. Deep-pocketed campaigns pay vendors to have their junior associates write crap email and content. Campaigns could have a volunteer “writer pool” write way better stuff.

35. Be a webmaster.

A good website manager could help create visually appealing websites that persuade voters and lure people in to the campaign, instead of just demanding money and listing policies.

36. “Map” your community.

Every community has many orgs and sub-communities. Tapping into them is way better than advertising to them. Query your volunteers and supporters. Map groups and find people to act as entry points and validators. Even supporters who can’t do stuff, know stuff or have stuff that could be useful. Ask them about their groups, visibility opportunities, who they know, or even if they have folding tables to spare.

37. Organize a pop-up campaign office.

No campaign can afford an office in every town or neighborhood. You can help organize a short-term “pop-up campaign office” in your community, with a launch party and volunteer events.

38. Help find office space.

Know local real-estate? Help the campaign find spaces for campaign offices, canvass launches, or pop-up-offices.

39. Help organize a speaker program.

Hunting down opportunities for appearances by candidates and surrogates is super helpful, especially if you can research locations, requirements and deadlines well in advance.

40. Become a surrogate speaker or listener.

Training and coordination are required to actually speak for the campaign, but you can also help the campaign have a presence by reading a letter from the candidate aloud or just being there to listen.

41. Help the campaign coordinate endorsements.

Campaigns need endorsements. Soliciting options, minding deadlines, helping to fill out questionnaires and assessing potential risks is an important volunteer job.

42. Organize a campaign constituency group.

Whether you are a woman, a veteran, a Hokie or a Trekkie, start a “So-and-sos for Candidate” group in whichever community you belong to. And get t-shirts.

43. Connect the candidate to your religious community.

Talk to your religious community leader and find out how to appropriately give your fellow adherents a chance to meet and evaluate the candidate.

44. Organize local business owners.

Help to recruit local small businesses that can donate services, put campaign posters in their windows, and otherwise validate the campaign to their customers and the community.

45. Organize a high school or college group.

Organize a “Huskies for Hamilton” or Young Dems group at your school. Organize a registration drive and/or pick from this list of activities!

46. Take photos.

It’s actually astounding how many candidates have terrible pictures on their websites and materials. A photographer who understands lighting could be a huge help!

47. Collect signatures.

Every campaign, candidate, or issue, needs ballot access, and that means signature gathering. They won’t need to pay a costly firm to do it if your community builds their own operation.

48. Register voters.

Register voters, but mind the local laws. In some places, it would be critical to have a program that helps people acquire the identification they need.

49. Provide legal support.

Campaigns need help adhering to campaign finance law, protecting voters’ rights, and making sure petitions are written, circulated and submitted correctly. If you’re an expert, volunteer. If you’re not, learn!

50. Learn how to “cut turf” for canvassers.

You would have to learn how, but it’s not that hard! Paid field staff create volunteer canvassing packets based on maybe one day’s training.

Bonus

51. Contact voters by phone or door to door.

52. Provide bookkeeping support.

53. Help protect voters and fight vote suppression.

54. Watch volunteers’ kids.

55. House campaign workers.

56. Host a canvassing outpost in your home.

57. Do data entry or online research.

58. Staff the campaign office.

59. Help “get out the vote” and staff the polls.

60. Help “cure” ballots.

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism!

In solidarity, always,

Like this post, but not ready to become a paying subscriber? Leave me a tip of any amount you like at my tip jar! Thank you!

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NOTES

If you are wondering why I am giving you this list or why it makes sense to build campaigns around volunteer outreach, here are the previous posts that put this post into context!

Intro

In my last newsletter, I described what it looks like for people to discover their own capacity to help win elections, in the context of a community that is already organizing its own political potential. Today, I talk about why this is the approach we need to take and why it will work. Next, I will write about the many, many ways people can help get candidates elected.

The Money v. The People

“All the money is on one side in this election, and all the people are on the other.”
~ overheard in DC

Campaign finance reform is what got me into politics more than thirty years ago. The influence of money has always stood in the way of government serving the needs of the people, but few people in office will voluntarily change the system that got them where they are. Also, you can’t keep the money out of politics without overturning Buckley v. Valeo, the ruling that decided that campaign spending was Constitutionally-protected speech. I decided a long time ago that the only sure way to defeat money in politics is to make it possible for people with less money to beat people with more money.

Why now? We no longer have any choice. Democrats are generally on the side of the people (certainly far more so than Republicans) but many of them have been constrained by the escalating cost of campaigns to limit themselves to what they can deliver to us without pissing off the big donors and risking being cut off, or worse, actively attacked with unlimited dark money. The problem is that the gulf between what the people need and what donors want is getting so wide that those still trying to straddle it are in grave danger of falling into the abyss. Whether you are talking about A.I., crypto, or monopolistic and exploitative business behavior, it is no longer possible to straddle that gulf. Candidates have to pick a side. It’s us or them. If we expect them to pick us and get cut off from big money, we have to find a way to deliver the votes they need with less of it. The good news is that we absolutely can do this.

The Power of Human Influence

“We’ve got more money, but they have more people. I’d rather have the people.”
~ focus group participant

I spent decades trying to convince party committees, candidates, and orgs to invest in expanding volunteer capacity. As part of that effort, I did a deep dive into what actually works. Not just all the campaign studies, but what works in persuasion overall. You know my work with neuroscience and messaging. That is the most effective way to persuade on the language side. On the delivery side, there is a clear winner by a mile, and it is – wait for it! – offline word-of-mouth.

Word-of-mouth has always been the most effective tool for persuasion. Research during the 1940 Presidential campaign established that nine out of ten voters make their decision based on the recommendation of a friend or neighbor. This influential one-in-ten theory has been verified by 85 years of additional research. In fact, a massive body of research conducted by the Wharton School of Business concluded that the only way all advertising actually works is by generating and sustaining word-of-mouth.

Authenticity and Credibility

The voters we most need to persuade are those who do not follow the news. These people are the least likely to believe campaign advertising or content. Dark money projects are maxing out the potential of online manipulation to influence the outcome of campaigns. Elon Musk recently spent $20 million failing to buy a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat. As A.I. generated slop multiplies exponentially online, the credibility of digital advertising and online “news” collapses. The recommendation of a friend or neighbor might be the ONLY way to win over the voters we actually need to reach.

We have people in communities. It is wildly inefficient to extract money from them to buy ads that are almost guaranteed to not generate word-of-mouth, when you could use a fraction of those resources to enlist those same people in a group effort to generate authentic word-of-mouth. That authenticity and credibility is what they can’t buy, not for any amount of money. It is this asymmetry that allows us to beat people who can outspend us 100:1 or even 1000:1.

Volunteer-driven doesn’t mean no money. Real-world word-of-mouth is also the best generator of low-dollar donations. In Maine, the “establishment” candidate Janet Mills just dropped out, claiming that she was being out-fundraised by insurgent candidate Graham Platner. Building your campaign around volunteer mobilization and word-of-mouth means that money is both raised more efficiently and spent more efficiently. It comes from more donors and real enthusiasm instead of wasting your campaign’s most valuable resource: the candidate’s time with voters. It is then spent on facilitating the real-world human interaction that gets, by far, the most bang for its buck of any campaign activity.

One in Ten: We have reached critical mass.

Demonstrations and strikes and calls to elected officials use our voices to influence the actions of people currently in power. This is about using our voices and skills to determine who gets put into power in the first place. If every volunteer generates (at least) ten votes, we could set as our goal the recruitment of enough volunteers to equal ten percent of our vote goal. Zorhan Mamdani had about 104,000 volunteers and received about 1,036,000 votes. That’s about one in ten.

We have had somewhere between 8 and 9 million participants in #NoKings rallies. The largest number of votes ever received by a presidential candidate was just over 81 million (Joe Biden in 2020). If every participant in a #NoKings rally generated 10 votes, we could win the biggest election in the country. I know that this doesn’t automatically translate to winning elections in particular states or districts, but it does give you a sense of the scale. We have reached critical mass. Now, we just have to develop our political capacity: the best way for each of us, individually and collectively, to help generate votes for the candidates we support.

Volunteers can do anything.

In 2018, I conducted a pilot project in a special election in Arizona. I worked with campaign staffers to identify the potential skills and interests of incoming volunteers. Of approximately 270 volunteers, we had fifty people interested in writing content, 27 of which had professional experience in writing, marketing or advertising. By unleashing the talent that literally walked in our door, we outperformed previous Democrats in the district by 20 points. This was done in three months. Imagine what you could do if you cultivated this kind of talent pool over years.

We don’t have to wait for permission. We don’t even have to wait for candidates. If we build the capacity to get people elected, new candidates will arise out of communities. We don’t need tools or apps or polls or expensive voter files. Campaigns existed long before email or the VAN. We could literally go to every door like Beto O’Rourke’s 2018 Senate campaign. And, while we certainly don’t have to, we technically could track our voter data on index cards in shoeboxes, like McGovern did when he won the 1968 Wisconsin presidential primary!

During Covid, all over America people created mutual-aid societies. And just look at the creativity of what the people of Minnesota did. They faced an unprecedented challenge. They built their own communication networks. They identified needs, from grocery delivery, to night watch at detention centers, to singing groups. They assigned themselves to the groups that best met their skills and interests, figured out what to do, and then taught others to do it.

We have it in us. Expanding your personal political capacity could be as simple as making a list of 10 people you know and making sure they vote for the person that you support. The magic number is one-in-ten. Influence the votes of a 100 people? That makes you a superhero. But you don’t have to do it by yourself. It’s way more fun to join a group of other people and find some creative way to generate votes together. If you can organize a book club, you can organize a campaign working group.

We don’t have to start from scratch. Many of us have worked for years or even decades coming up with ideas, plans and even guidebooks for what we could do. We just have to pool our ideas. Next time, I will share with you my training program on the many, many ways volunteers can help get people elected or win issue campaigns, from organizing direct voter outreach and visibility activities, to playing a role as skilled campaign staffer, to collecting information about the people and resources in your community, to being an active conduit in a word-of-mouth operation. What matters is that each and every person finds a way to participate that makes them feel like they are making a valuable contribution. Finding fun things to do (that are not on your phone) and communities of people who share your values? That’s the icing on the cake.

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism!

In solidarity, always,

My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission! USE THIS LINK to upgrade from the app!

Like this post, but not ready to become a paying subscriber? Leave me a tip of any amount you like at my tip jar!

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NOTES

You can find ALL of the research referenced in this issue at https://uprisecampaigns.org/research/.

Imagine

Since the #NoKings rally on March 28, I have been grappling with the question of how to convert all this human potential into real political power. Some of you may know that, in addition to studying framing and working in political communications, I have spent the bulk of my life working on campaigns in the field. My mission has been to figure out how to defeat the power of money in politics by harnessing the incredible potential of real people in communities. I have learned a ton from the many local groups and volunteers with whom I have had the honor of working. In a later newsletter, I will talk more about how to actually do it and why it will work. Hint: it doesn’t depend on any particular technology or the support of any particular organization. It’s something we can just do. For now, I would just like you to imagine…

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving how we communicate! Use this link to subscribe or upgrade!
Thank you!

The People

Meet Bob. For the first time in his life, Bob decided to do something political. He went to a #NoKings rally in his suburb and got really inspired. Someone made an announcement that if people wanted to learn about more opportunities to make a difference, they should scan the QR code that appears on many of the signs at the rally. Bob scans the code which takes him to something that looks like the homepage of a private “Reddit” style chat community. Bob finds and joins the chat group for people in his own real-world neighborhood. In this group, Bob sees a notice for a get together the next Friday at a local pub. He decides to go and bring his wife, Carol.

Bob also sees a list of activities and interests, and is surprised to find that “cooking” is one of the options. Bob never dreamed that he could help get people elected just by cooking. Bob has secretly dreamed of quitting his programming job and opening a catering business. He joins the local “kitchen club working group” that helps provide food, from catering fundraisers, to feeding volunteers, to making food for big community events. He jumps in with both feet, knowing that he can pick and choose which candidate or cause he wants to cook for. Bob also dives into the platform’s cooking activity wiki, where cooking groups all over the country collect and share favorite recipes and compile best practices about how to start and run a cooking group.

Bob’s wife Carol is an accountant. She goes with Bob to the local get-together, meets some new folks and sees someone she knows casually through her kid’s school. They bond over their horror of the local “Moms for Liberty” group. Carol joins the “neighborhood” and finds that there is a working group for accountants, which she joins. She decides to learn the fundamentals of campaign finance and FEC filing, and is able to draw on more experienced members of the national accounting working group for guidance.

Bob and Carol explore the neighborhood platform and find that each group is networked with other groups who, collectively, can manage pretty big campaign projects. Bob finds that the cooking group often coordinates with groups that do different aspects of event planning: from location scouting to audio-visual set up, entertainment, decorating, crowd-building, and so on.

The Campaigns

The MAGA candidate, let’s call him “Smith,” spends all his time asking wealthy people for money. His campaign is like a plane that takes off from DC, carpet bombs his district with digital ads, text messages and attack mail, and flies back to DC without ever once touching the ground.

Our candidate, let’s call her “Jones” has been active in the community for years. She sees growing voter backlash against the super-rich and how they have killed off the American Dream. She knows she can no longer appease the donors and please the voters. She has to choose which side she is on. She has come to realize that all the money in the world can’t buy her the kind of high-value person-to-person outreach that these volunteers can. She decides to walk away from big-donor support, putting her faith in the local neighbor network instead.

Carol’s campaign finance group and others sign up, helping to reduce Jones’ campaign costs by providing professional services she would otherwise have to pay for. Bob and the events network organize community barbecues across the district so Thompson can meet voters face-to-face. Other volunteers introduce and vouch for Jones to their fellow members of social clubs, parents’ associations, sororities, and soccer teams. She benefits from those long-term relationships and volunteers’ knowledge of the unique ways information travels through their communities. There is also a visibility group that purchases lawn signs at cost and already has a list of willing households along high visibility streets. People wear their campaign tees and tote bags (silk screened by the local high-school campaign club) as they pick their kids up from school, spreading that word of mouth even further.

Jones knows she can depend on these neighbors, some of whom have decades of volunteer or even professional experience. The canvassing, calling, postcard writing and letter-to-the-editor groups operate year-round on behalf of various local issues. Now they turn their efforts toward Jones’ campaign. They don’t need to pay for the VAN: their data is way better. Since they have been contacting people regularly, the data in their database (managed in FileMaker by the volunteer data club) is squeaky clean. They pretty much know where everybody stands politically including who can be persuaded, and the people doing the voter contact are people those voters already know and trust.

Candidate Jones does need to raise money to support these local volunteer-driven efforts and pay for other campaign expenses, but she finds that she can do this relatively easily through low-dollar donors because people are now excited by and personally vested in her campaign. Plus she’s not wasting her money on useless polls or tactics (like attack ads) that the data says don’t work. Freed from the requirement to spend eight hours a day on “call time,” Jones spends most of her time talking to voters face to face (which happens to be the single most effective tool for voter persuasion.) She often films these encounters for her prolific video campaign, run by volunteers with video production, social media and marketing skills, and distributed by the neighborhood social media amplification network. Many of those videos are real conversations with voters about what kind of government we would have if the people in it really represented the values and priorities of the people in the district.

Without all the pressure from powerful donors, Jones is free to be herself, speak her mind, and provide the positive vision people are hungry for. Her opponent is filling the internet with negative slop, but in the real world, he barely exists. Meanwhile, between her personal appearances, videos with local people in recognizable places, and saturation-level visibility, her campaign feels incredibly real, present and alive. By election day, every voter has either been told about her by someone they know, seen her speak live, met her personally, or all of the above.

She wins her election despite being outspent by millions, and sees the volunteer network, not as a tool she owns, but as a community that she both belongs to and owes her election to. Now she is in office, and with their ongoing help, they can generate the political will to pass policies that deliver what the community needs.

Meanwhile, Bob and Carol have become, well, happy. They have fun. They have made friends. Their kids even occasionally join them in family-friendly volunteer activities. They have become part of a real-world community of people who share their values. They have each found a role in that community in which their personal skills are valued and contribute toward something meaningful. Best of all, they no longer go to bed every night feeling isolated and powerless over everything they see happening in the world. They used to just vote, but now they know the satisfaction that comes from learning how to exercise the power that each of us has within us.

To be continued…

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism!

In solidarity, always,

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Trapped by Oil Dependence

It is increasingly apparent that we are losing this war. We cannot bomb Iran into submission and we do not have the will for a lengthy ground war. What has Trump achieved for billions of dollars, thousands of lives and throwing the global economy into a tailspin? He has managed to get the Epstein files off the front page for a few weeks. Iran has always had the ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz. Now that we know they are willing to do it, Iran is the one holding all the good cards.

Since Ronald Reagan, we have been told that we could “drill baby drill” our way to “energy independence” or as Trump likes to call it, “energy dominance.” There’s just one little problem. Having our own supply might protect us from being held hostage over access to oil, but it cannot protect our economy from being held hostage to gas prices, which are set in global markets. Being a net oil exporter just means that domestic oil companies make out like bandits as limited global supply drives prices through the roof. It’s the people of America, and virtually everywhere else, who are going to suffer. We are starting to see oil shortages around the world, accompanied by price hikes for gas and thousands of products made of petroleum, like plastics, fertilizer and clothing. We will also see hikes in the price of virtually everything that needs to be moved from place to place by gas fueled truck, train or plane.

Democrats will jump on this opportunity to attack Trump over the impact of the Iran war on the price of gas and pretty much everything else. But the fossil fuel industry and the corporate think tanks have invested decades and billions in preaching the gospel of “energy freedom” and “energy dominance” because they know that people make decisions based on more than just what’s good for their wallet. People respond emotionally to ideas like patriotism, freedom, and national security.

Domestic production of oil and natural gas has manifestly failed to deliver the freedom to make the foreign policy choices that are in our best strategic interest. We can’t go back to where we were before. Iran will always be able to threaten the entire global economy. I’ll put it in terms that people like Trump and Hegseth can understand: It’s not just that the U.S. has obviously failed at energy “dominance.” It’s that our dependence on cheap oil makes us Iran’s bitch, and the only way we’re ever going to get free is for you all to stop being the lapdogs of the global oil industry.

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving how we communicate! Use this link to subscribe or upgrade! Thank you!

Renew, Baby, Renew

There is only one path to energy independence. It is renewable energy, and it’s time has come. This war has made it painfully clear that countries whose power grid relies heavily on renewable energy and whose residents drive electric or hybrid vehicles have a considerable advantage when it comes to oil price shocks.

In this piece from AP News, energy expert Pauline Heinrichs says, “In Europe, we learned the wrong lesson.” They freed themselves from dependence on Russian oil by becoming dependent on U.S. methane (a.k.a. “natural gas”) instead of investing in domestic renewable energy infrastructure. China is rapidly converting to renewables, but the shortage of cooking gas has people “rushing to buy induction cooktops.”

Even better, the more renewable power we can generate, and preferably own, locally, the more that people and communities can liberate themselves from price gouging by power companies. People in Alabama’s energy bills are topping $1000/month, because Alabama Power has bought control over state energy regulators. How awesome would it be for people to be able to turn to solar panels, solar farming and windmills to power their homes, and tell Alabama Power to f*ck right off.

Putting the Climate Back on the Front Page

The mission to stabilize the climate ought to be the top story in the news and the top of everyone’s policy agenda. We should be reading about unprecedented acts of global cooperation. Younger generations feel gaslighted by the fact that the world seems to be fiddling while their planet burns. The truth is that, while even the worst political and economic crises can be recovered from over time, we simply cannot afford to allow our climate to destabilize any further than it already has. (See NOTES below)

The Trump administration is fighting renewable energy on virtually every front and has dealt the movement to stabilize the climate some devastating blows. The increasing affordability of renewable power has helped a lot, but the massive power demands of AI generation threaten to reverse whatever gains we have been able to make. The choices we make right now and in the next few years will determine whether we sink or swim. So why isn’t it our number one issue? The lack of political will is the result of the lack of prominence in the public debate, and there are two reasons for that:

1. Fear and helplessness generate denial and avoidance. If people feel like the situation is scary and nothing can be done, there is a powerful psychological drive to avoid thinking about it. The solution is to frame the situation using language that contains the way to visualize the solution. I have an entire piece on how to do this, including talking points which you can read HERE. I use and recommend terms like the “mission to stabilize the climate” or “climate destabilization” to help people subconsciously imagine working to get our climate “back into balance.” We have to stop trying to scare people into action, start talking about the many ways in which progress is actually being made, and relentlessly point out how the solutions lie in political action that can be achieved if we elect the right leaders, which leads us to:

2. WE have to be the leading voices on this. We’re trapped in a cycle. Democrats don’t talk about the climate because we take polls that tell us that voters don’t think of the climate as a top issue. Voters don’t think of the climate as a top issue because they think that, since nobody is talking about it, it must not be that urgent and they must be imagining things. Corporate media and Republicans are not talking about it because they have a financial stake in gaslighting everybody into thinking that the whole thing is a hoax. So by following the voters who are following our opponents, we let our opponents control the agenda on what is arguably the single most important issue of our lifetimes. We need to stop following public opinion and start leading it. You know how A.I. corporations are trying to make A.I. seem inevitable so we stop resisting it? We could make the renewable energy future feel inevitable, because it is inevitable. It can become a top issue in the news, if WE make it so.

This is our opportunity. Let’s seize it.

This war never should have happened. Let’s use it to make something better. We can take the fight to Trump on both the cost of living and national security. We can make the case that Trump’s reckless choice to invade Iran has threatened the entire global economy and is responsible for price increases in every part of our lives. But we can also make the case that Trump’s attacks on renewable power generation projects and electric and hybrid vehicle programs have put our national security at risk, by increasing our dependence on global oil markets.

Our message: The time has come. This war in Iran shows us that renewable energy is the only path to economic and political freedom. It’s our sun and our wind, and nobody can take it away from us. The unlimited energy revolution is coming. If we want to stabilize our climate, we had better make it sooner rather than later. We can only do that by electing people who are not afraid to stand up to the oil industry. We can restore our economic health and re-take our place as a world leader by putting all of our ingenuity and vitality behind the real moonshot, converting to unlimited clean energy.

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism!

In solidarity, always,

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NOTES

Records shattered as summer heat hits Southwest in March; ‘This is what climate change looks like’
Seth Borenstein | AP News | March 20, 2026

Heat Wipes Out Western Snowpack, Raising Fears of Drought, Wildfire
Scott Dance, Sachi Kitajima Mulkey and Mira Rojanasakul | The New York Times | April 8, 2026

Critical Atlantic current significantly more likely to collapse than thought
Damian Carrington | The Guardian | April 15, 2026

How Fossil Fuels and Global Extreme Weather Increase Americans’ Food Prices
Jasia Smith, Kalina Gibson, Margaret Cooney | The Center for American Progress | December 22, 2025

Epic winter drought creates a bleak situation for farmers — and your food
Sarah Kaplan | The Washington Post | April 7, 2026

The Great Salt Lake is running out of water — and time
Shawn Regan | The Washington Post | March 24, 2026

Something Is Brewing in the Pacific That Nobody in Washington Wants to Talk About (Super El Nino)
Chris Gloninger | Weathering Climate Change | April 17, 2026

American Identity

Why We Need a Positive Vision

We can’t win people's votes just by increasing their negative opinions of Trump. Our negatives are just as high. When all people hear is us criticizing him and him criticizing us, they conclude that all politicians suck. While that may help us in the short term, the pendulum always swings back. The only way to break through is to make the positive case for what we believe in: to help people visualize how things are supposed to be. I am not suggesting that we can’t criticize Trump, only that the most effective way to do so is to remind people of how much they value that which Trump is destroying. People need to believe that we are better than this: that there is an alternative and that it is within our reach.

What does it mean to be an American?

If you asked anyone around the world how the USA defines itself, they would say that America is the land of:

1. The American dream: where anyone can earn a decent living if they are willing to work hard,

2. Freedom: where you have the right to vote, speak your mind and do what you want, where we overthrew our king, and government can’t “tread on you,” and

3. Equality: where everyone is “created equal” and nobody is “better than” anyone else. We might all be different, but we’re all still worth the same.

This is not what we are, but it is how we advertise ourselves, both to everyone growing up here and to everyone who risked everything to come here. By doing so, we obligated ourselves to deliver on the promises of economic fairness, freedom and equality.

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving how we communicate! Use this link to subscribe or upgrade! Thank you!

Economic Fairness and the American Deal

I have written previously about the narrative I call the American deal: a framework for talking about “affordability” in the more powerful terms of economic fairness and moral obligation. It’s about the unwritten contract between working people and the decision makers in our economic system, and the fact that our economic system is failing to hold up its end of that deal.

The narrative says that the American “dream” is actually a promise. Our whole lives, we have been told that hard work pays off, that anyone can make it here if they are willing to work hard, and that the “market” naturally rewards “merit.” Meanwhile, the true buying power of a full-time job has been cut in half. This dirty little secret has been hidden by defining “income” as “household income,” as if there were no cost to families of needing two full-time incomes to earn the quality of life that was previously earned by one. They keep gaslighting us that the economy is booming with the implication that, if things aren’t working out, we must be the problem. People are being forced to carry the burden of shame on top of their economic struggle. The American deal narrative lifts that burden and allows us to visualize a better way, by making three important points:

1. workers and owners have equal standing: both need each other and both have the right to benefit,

2. if workers are working hard but unable to support their families, they are not at fault: the owners are at fault for not holding up their end of the deal, and

3. we have the right to use our government to enforce this economic contract.

This last point brings up something we all believe but nobody ever voices: that our economic system was created and exists to serve the needs of people, not the other way around, and that we have every right to use our government to change it such that it does.

Freedom, Equality, Civil Rights and Liberties

Freedom and equality, like fairness, are powerful terms deeply rooted in our brains from early childhood. When we talk about ICE occupation, Trump’s attack on voting rights, and all the ways he abuses his power, including waging war without the consent of Congress, we need to connect them back to core themes about freedom and equality, such as:

▪ Freedom is about self-determination, being able to go about our lives free from coercion by physical force or the abuse of political or economic power.

▪ Government is how we exercise political self-determination. It is the tool that communities use to make and carry out collective decisions.

▪ The only authority government has is that which we freely give it. The power we grant to it is limited and conditional: it must only be used for specific purposes and in certain ways, as defined in our constitution and laws. The law must apply to everyone equally and impartially. Nobody should be above the law, not even the President.

▪ Those limits and conditions are what keep us free from abuse of power, from the arbitrary and unequal application of police, military, legal or financial force for one’s personal financial or political gain.

▪ It is only self-government if it is formed through free and fair elections that accurately reflect the will of the people. We voluntarily choose to live by rules to keep our society safe and fair, but we remain free if, and only if, we have an equal say in choosing the people who make those rules.

The best broader terms for their behavior are abuse of power, oppression and tyranny, or in the economic sphere, exploitation. “Elite impunity” is also a theme that covers a lot of ills, (e.g. that rich and powerfully connected pedophiles must be exposed and prosecuted, and nobody should be able to buy their way out of jail). Keep in mind that these phrases are most effective when talked about in terms of the core values that they violate: when we remind people that we are supposed to be free and we are supposed to be treated as equals.

Living up to America’s Promise

The term “promise” serves double duty, as it means both commitment and potential. What really makes America “exceptional” is that we are the first country founded around a set of ideals. Our founding fathers made a promise to the future that they knew they would not be able to live up to in their own time. American history is the very rocky path of working toward making good on that promise, striving to “form a more perfect union,” or “bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.”

When people say “We never lived up to those values,” they may be right, but they are missing something important: virtually every American believes that we SHOULD BE living up to those values. The nihilism of Trump, Miller, Voght, etc. isn’t the expression of American values. It’s an attempt to crush American values. Ultimately, they may only succeed in reminding us of who we are. The truest expression of American values is the behavior of the people of Minnesota and all those who put themselves on the line to help and protect their neighbors.

“The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force. No matter how many more armed men Trump sends to impose his will on the people of Minnesota, all he can do is accentuate their valor. No application of armed violence can make the men with guns as heroic as the people who choose to stand in their path with empty hands in defense of their neighbors.” ~ From Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong: The pushback against ICE exposed a series of mistaken assumptions, by Adam Serwer in The Atlantic, January 26, 2026

Like most Minnesotans, most Americans are fundamentally good. We are an idealistic and optimistic people, perhaps because most of us are the descendants of immigrants who have one thing in common: they took enormous risks for a chance at freedom and a better life for themselves and their families. Those who were already here or were brought here against their will, also have in common that they have persevered beyond unimaginable oppression and suffering. We are people who do not give up. We have to tap into that idealism and that will power, with sincerity and humility.

How we carry out this strategy:

1. We express our belief in the American values of freedom, equality and economic fairness.

2. We admit that they have always been ideals and that we have never lived up to them.

3. We emphasize how important it is that we keep trying.

4. We promise to fight like hell for the American people. We do not promise specific deliverables that we can’t keep, but we do promise to do everything in our power.

5. We make it absolutely clear to people that we understand that this is what is OWED TO THEM as Americans (and aspiring Americans,) that these are commitments that we have made to each other, that we will honor and enforce the terms of our contracts, both economic and political.

We know that everything we strive for is possible. There is nothing holding us back except our political will, but political will is what we can create by reminding people that our government belongs to us and that it is in our hands to do with it what we believe needs to be done, both for ourselves and for each other.

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism!

In solidarity, always,

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How They Steal Elections

Back in the 1990’s, I worked on city council elections for progressive candidates running against the Chicago machine. Each ward (city council district) had an alderman who was like a king, with sole control over decisions on their turf, particularly about zoning and construction. This made life easy for real-estate developers: they had only one vote to win over (or buy). This particular race was for alderman of a ward that was ground-zero in the gentrification wars: a working-class Hispanic community doomed to become one of the trendiest neighborhoods in America. My then $350/month apartment on a sketchy block now lives in the shadow of a Mercedes-Benz dealership. We lost, despite polling at over 60% going into the election. So what happened?

My candidate was a community lawyer. Our opponent was the pawn of a soon-to-be-indicted Congressman. The total vote was only around 13,000, allowing organizers on both sides to contact virtually every voter, find out who they were supporting, and make sure they showed up. We ran an aggressive absentee ballot program and knew that more than a thousand of our votes had been mailed in. The Board of Elections (headed by allies of said Congressman) checks that the signature on the outside of the sealed ballot envelope matches the signature on the voter registration files. Somehow, our signatures must have been subjected to a higher standard, because nearly all of our voters’ ballots were rejected. I couldn't prove anything, but it was a very valuable lesson. If the people running the election want you to lose, there’s a lot they can do just by selectively applying laws that are otherwise perfectly legit.

Thank you for reading Reframing America! My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to become paying subscribers to help support this mission of improving our messaging! Use this link to subscribe or upgrade! Thank you!

Selective Application of the Law

Under the SAVE Act, to register to vote, people must show forms of identification that millions of Americans don’t have access to or can’t afford. This is bad enough in itself. A similar law was tried in Kansas with disastrous results:

“A federal judge struck down the law within a few years, after it was found to have blocked tens of thousands of eligible voters from registering while catching fewer than thirty noncitizens trying to do the same.”

Some have pointed out that Republican voters may be more impacted than Democratic voters, but that assumes that the law will be applied the same way to everyone.

The worst part of the SAVE Act is that it allows the Department of Homeland Security to determine who qualifies as a citizen. States have to send their voter data to the DHS who will compare it with other states, identify people who are supposedly unqualified and purge them from the rolls. There is no requirement to inform people. They will find out when they try to vote, far too late to provide or acquire the necessary proof. DHS will likely use the same wildly faulty A.I. riddled database that they are using to identify immigrants on ICE raids.

Geographic Targeting (like Florida in 2000)

This purge will undoubtedly disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of eligible American citizens. Worse, Trump and the DHS could easily choose to apply this process to Blue states only, or to Blue counties or precincts.

As I understand it, this is one of the ways they “won” the 2000 election in Florida. With punched paper ballots, every time you do a recount you find more votes, because with repeated handling, more of the little pieces of paper that are insufficiently punched through the punch cards (“hanging chads”) get dislodged, making those votes countable. Republicans pushed through additional recounts in counties that voted heavily for Bush and then sued to halt the counting. Had every county done the same number of recounts, Gore would have probably won.

Individual Targeting (with A.I. and NSPM-7)

Thanks to dangerous new technology, the Trump administration now has the capacity to identify politically opposed people as individuals. In addition to identifying people by party registration or whether they voted in Democratic primaries, they can now target people by what they say on social media or whether they protest ICE.

Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-7), called “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” defines as “domestic terrorists” anyone engaging in a wide range of actions many of which fall under constitutionally-protected speech. They have not said that they intend to use the data they are collecting under NSPM-7 to challenge people’s voter registration through the SAVE Act process. But they could. You prepare for what your opponent is capable of doing, not just what you think they are likely to do. (I can’t find the source of that saying. Sun Tzu? Jethro Gibbs?)

What to Do

Now that Trump has made the SAVE Act his top priority, it is possible that it may yet pass. Obviously, our elected officials must do everything they can to prevent that from happening. Meanwhile, election lawyers and States’ Attorneys General should prepare to sue to stop it from being enacted, or at absolute minimum, assure that if it is enacted, that it is applied equally and impartially to all. If the administration cannot agree to apply this law equally and impartially to all localities, and to ban its selective application based on personal data like voter registration or constitutionally protected speech, then we will take that as an admission that they plan to use it as a weapon against Blue states and voters. We should be prepared to monitor every step of the voter file purge process and scream bloody murder at the first sign of selective application.

How to Frame This

Republicans are attempting to sell this bill as a mere voter ID requirement. The fact that millions of Americans do not have access to the required proof of citizenship is still the number one message, but it becomes much more urgent when people know that even if they are currently registered, they may be purged and have to re-register AND that they may only discover this when they show up to vote. They also need to know that the purges will be done using extremely inaccurate databases, meaning that anyone, anywhere, could be thrown off the rolls. These messages take priority as they appeal to the concerns of every voter regardless of political leaning.

We must also make the case that Trump is obsessed with this bill because he is terrified that the Republicans are going to lose the midterm elections, which means that he believes that this bill will disproportionately impact Democrats, which suggests that he may be intending to use the SAVE Act to prevent millions of Democrats from voting. Why is this a credible argument?

We cannot trust Trump or ICE to decide who should be allowed to vote. Trump and DHS have a track record of abusing their authority: they cannot be trusted to apply the laws equally and without political bias.

They have made a series of statements that reveal their intentions. Former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said:

“When it gets to election day, we’ve been proactive to make sure we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country.”

Trump said that, if the bill passes, Democrats “probably won’t win an election for 50 years and maybe longer.” Trump also said that Republicans should “take over” and “nationalize elections” in 15 states.

We’ve all heard and talked about these statements, but we haven’t woven them into a coherent story for the American public about how these statements clearly suggest their intent to use the SAVE Act to suppress the Democratic vote. We should be asking Trump why he thinks Democrats won’t win another election for fifty years if it passes, why he said that Republicans should take over and nationalize elections (as opposed to the federal government) and which fifteen states he is talking about. We can safely assume they would be blue states, because Trump already has an extensive track record of selectively applying all sorts of law enforcement and spending/withholding decisions based on party affiliation, voting history or political speech.

A few small notes on messaging details:

It is okay to use “ICE” to represent DHS as a whole, to associate the SAVE Act with the parts of DHS being used to exercise power arbitrarily on Trump’s behalf. Also, when you do talk about DHS, use “Department of Homeland Security” or just “Homeland Security.” Acronyms do not activate negative associations like whole words do.

Do not use “federal government” takeover as an attack, because the federal government is not inherently bad. It’s who’s in charge that matters. This is a “Trump takeover” or a “Republican takeover” and that is bad because they cannot be trusted to not abuse their power for political advantage.

Election laws must be applied the same way everywhere. In our struggle against all forms of voter suppression, we should be doing more to ferret out and fight these disparities such as providing fewer voting machines and creating longer lines in minority precincts. Every eligible voter must be, not just able, but equally able to cast their vote and have their vote counted.

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism!

In solidarity, always,

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NOTES

See my recent post for more messaging on why our right to vote is essential to our freedom, as well as Trump’s voter suppression efforts and his mission to, among other things, distract from the Epstein files.

Protest Sign Strategy

If you have not already read them, here are some of my previous posts that explain what we are trying to achieve in our protests and why some signs work better than others!

Click on the image below to find a protest near you!

The Big List of Protest Signs for 3/28

You can also add, in many cases, “Democrats are for…” or “Tell Trump/Republicans to…” etc.

NO DICTATORS, NO KINGS

LOVE THY NEIGHBOR | WE ARE ALL NEIGHBORS
I AM MY BROTHER’S KEEPER
LOVE MELTS ICE | MINNESOTA DEFEATS ICE
WE STAND TOGETHER | ICE CAN’T BREAK US APART
HOPE IS REAL | WE CAN MAKE THIS BETTER
DON’T FORGET TO STOP AND SMELL THE FLOWERS | HUG YOUR KIDS
THE RESISTANCE IS A [TEAM EFFORT/RELAY RACE]: TAKE TURNS
SOLIDARITY IS POWER | AMERICANS UNITE TO SAVE OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS
LOVE THY NEIGHBOR | AMERICA IS ONE BIG NEIGHBORHOOD

PROTECT THE RIGHT TO VOTE | STOP THE “SAVE VOTER SUPPRESSION” ACT
THE ONLY THING THE “SAVE” ACT SAVES IS VOTER SUPPRESSION
THE ONLY THING THE “SAVE” ACT SAVES IS TRUMP’S A**
DON’T LET [ICE/DHS/TRUMP] DECIDE WHO GETS TO VOTE | STOP THE “SAVE” ACT
STOP THE [FEDERAL/TRUMP] TAKEOVER OF ELECTIONS | STOP THE “SAVE VOTER SUPPRESSION” ACT
SAVE VOTE-BY-MAIL | STOP THE “SAVE VOTER SUPPRESSION” ACT
DON’T OWN A PASSPORT? THE “SAVE” ACT WILL STEAL YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE.
CHANGED YOUR NAME WHEN YOU GOT MARRIED? THE “SAVE” ACT WILL STEAL YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE.

PROTECT the CHILDREN | RELEASE ALL the EPSTEIN FILES
RELEASE ALL the EPSTEIN FILES | JUSTICE FOR THE VICTIMS
STOP PROTECTING PEDOPHILES
WHO STOPPED THE DEA FROM INVESTIGATING EPSTEIN?
TRUMP, BONDI, WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO HIDE?
INVESTIGATE TRUMP ASSAULT OF 13 YR OLD | YOU CAN’T HIDE BEHIND WAR FOREVER
INVESTIGATE TRUMP ASSAULT OF 13 YR OLD | WE WILL NOT FORGET
RELEASE ALL the EPSTEIN FILES | WE WILL NOT BE DISTRACTED

NO KINGS, NO ILLEGAL WARS | ONLY CONGRESS CAN DECLARE WAR
NO IMMINENT THREAT | NO JUSTIFICATION FOR WAR
NO WARS OF CHOICE
NO LAND WAR IN IRAN
WAR IN IRAN = HIGH GAS PRICES
RENEWABLES ARE THE ONLY PATH TO ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
YOUR ILLEGAL WAR IS KILLING OUR ECONOMY
NO WAR IN IRAN | WE’RE BOMBING THE PEOPLE WE’RE TRYING TO SAVE
THE PEOPLE OF IRAN WANT FREEDOM, NOT BOMBS
THE PEOPLE OF IRAN WANT TO BREATHE THE AIR OF FREEDOM, NOT TOXIC SMOKE
BOMBING WATER SOURCES IS A WAR CRIME
DON’T LET A.I. DECIDE TARGETS | THAT’S HOW KIDS GET KILLED

REGULATE A.I. | A.I. IS THE NEW NAFTA
DON’T LET A.I. STEAL MY JOB | JOBS ARE FOR HUMANS
WANT TO BELIEVE YOUR OWN EYES? REGULATE A.I.
WANT KIDS THAT CAN THINK? REGULATE A.I.
STOP the AI DATA CENTERS | MY POWER BILL IS TOO DAMN HIGH
WATER is for HUMANS | STOP THE AI DATA CENTERS
NO TAXPAYER BAILOUTS FOR RECKLESS A.I. INVESTORS

FREEDOM FOR UKRAINE | END THE WAR OF RUSSIAN AGGRESSION
SUPPORT UKRAINE | UKRAINE FIGHTS RUSSIA SO WE DON’T HAVE TO

STABILIZE THE CLIMATE | SAVE THE HUMANS
STABILIZE THE CLIMATE | THE WEATHER IS FREAKING ME OUT!
INVEST IN OUR FUTURE | UNLIMITED CLEAN ENERGY
INVEST IN OUR FUTURE | SUPPORT SOLAR AND WIND
YOU TOO CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES | SUPPORT CLEAN ENERGY
INSTEAD OF PAYING FOR CLIMATE DISASTERS | LET’S REBUILD OUR ECONOMY WITH RENEWABLE ENERGY
OUR ECONOMY IS BEING HELD HOSTAGE BY GAS PRICES | ONLY RENEWABLE ENERGY WILL SET US FREE

NO CONCENTRATION CAMPS | NOT ON MY WATCH
DETENTION CENTERS NEED OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY
DETAINEES DESERVE HUMANE CONDITIONS | FOOD, WATER, MEDICINE
NO FAT CONTRACTS FOR UNACCOUNTABLE PRIVATE PRISONS
NO GESTAPO IN OUR STREETS | NO “PAPERS PLEASE”
NO SECRET POLICE | EVEN ICE HAS TO OBEY THE LAW
NO SECRET ARRESTS | EVERYBODY DESERVES THEIR DAY IN COURT
EVERYBODY DESERVES a FAIR HEARING | DUE PROCESS
NO ARRESTS WITHOUT WARRANTS | NO ARRESTS WITHOUT CAUSE
NO “SHOW ME YOUR PAPERS” STOPS | NO SEARCH WITHOUT CAUSE
IMMIGRANTS are ESSENTIAL | DON’T DEPORT OUR NEIGHBORS
NO ICE RACIAL PROFILING | 40+MILLION US CITIZENS ARE HISPANIC
NO SECRET ARRESTS | WHERE ARE THE ALLIGATOR ALCATRAZ PRISONERS?
The CONSTITUTION applies to EVERYONE | INCLUDING IMMIGRANTS

FREEDOM!
AMERICA: LAND OF THE FREE
IT’S (SUPPOSED TO BE) A FREE COUNTRY
STOP THE CORRUPTION | OUR GOVERNMENT IS NOT FOR SALE
STOP THE ABUSE OF POWER (Not “power grab”!)
STOP SELLING PARDONS | STOP PARDONING DRUG DEALERS
DEFEND the CONSTITUTION
I BELIEVE IN THE CONSTITUTION

Democrats are for FREEDOM OF SPEECH
FREE SPEECH for EVERYONE
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS
NO THOUGHT POLICE | NO CENSORSHIP
PROTESTING IS PROTECTED by the CONSTITUTION
PROTECT OUR PRIVACY | DON’T GIVE TECH LORDS OUR PRIVATE DATA
PROTECT OUR PRIVACY | NO SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS
PROSECUTE SOCIAL SECURITY DATA THEFT

DEMOCRATS are for ECONOMIC FAIRNESS
SAVE THE FARMS | REFUND the TARIFFS
REFUND ILLEGAL TARRIFS
HOUSES are for FAMILIES | PASS THE ROAD TO HOUSING ACT
EVERYBODY deserves a HOME
I CAN’T AFFORD TO BUY A HOUSE
The RENT IS TOO DAMNED HIGH
People WORK HARD. They deserve FAIR PAY.
Democrats are for HIGHER WAGES
GOOD JOBS FOR ALL | WAGES YOU CAN LIVE ON
TAX the BILLIONAIRES | MAKE THE RICH PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE
TAX EXPLOITERS, NOT WORKERS
SUPPORT LOCAL BUSINESSES
PROTECT SMALL BUSINESSES from MONOPOLY POWER
MONEY OUT OF POLITICS

IT’S OUR GOVERNMENT | THE GOVERNMENT BELONGS TO US
RESTORE FEDERAL EMPLOYEES’ UNION RIGHTS
KEEP OUR FOOD SAFE | WE NEED FOOD INSPECTORS
TORNADO/FLOOD/HURRICANE WARNINGS SAVE LIVES | SAVE the NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
COMPETENCE MATTERS | REHIRE FEDERAL WEATHER EXPERTS
COMPETENCE MATTERS | REHIRE MIDDLE EAST OIL EXPERTS
STOP CUTTING MENTAL HEALTH FOR VETERANS
NATIONAL PARKS belong to EVERYONE | Tell Republicans: STOP THE CUTS
AMERICA NEEDS HIGH SPEED TRAINS

MEDICARE FOR ALL | Get the GREED out of HEALTHCARE
SAVE MEDICARE | EVERYBODY deserves HEALTHCARE
DEMOCRATS believe in HEALTH CARE FOR ALL
SAVE OUR NURSING HOMES | Tell Republicans to STOP THE CUTS
SAVE RURAL HOSPITALS | Tell Republicans to STOP THE CUTS
GET VACCINATED | YOU TOO CAN PREVENT EPIDEMICS

I am sure I have missed important statements, if not whole categories! I will add more as I think of them and please contribute your ideas below!

See you in the streets on the 28th!

Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it is of use to you in your work and activism!

In solidarity, always,

My work is completely financed by subscribers like you! All content is free, but many people choose to upgrade to a paying subscription to help support this work!

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