Weekly Member Update - August 10, 2026

Written By Indivisible Albany Team

AP Photo/Tierney L. Cross

We start with the most important thing in the World According to Donald Trump, his precious, precious, opaquely funded, gilded ballroom. A three-judge panel of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals decided this past week that Trump’s destruction of the East Wing of the White House was illegal and that “the President has no—and claims no—constitutionally assigned authority over [the White House] property.” After all, the Court reasoned, “[e]ach President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence,” and “the Constitution assigns Congress—not the Executive—the responsibility to decide whether proposed changes to the physical design of the White House may proceed, even where those changes are said to serve security interests. . . Whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help.” Trump, of course, was apoplectic and promised to appeal the decision to his friends on the United States Supreme Court.

The thing about the big beautiful ballroom is not just how it is emblematic of Trump’s callous disregard for the actual needs of the American People, or even that it is the most glaring manifestation of Trump’s insatiable desire for self-glorification. The ruination of the People’s House is most importantly a blatant avatar for the unprecedented levels of corruption and self-dealing that the American People have had to endure since day one of Trump 2.0. Not only is the ballroom going to require Trump’s misappropriation of at least $800 million in taxpayer dollars, it’s also the locus of private donor payoffs by corporations like Palantir, Meta and Amazon, who are then rewarded for their largesse with more of our tax money in the form of government contracts. So, when you look upon the gaping hole where the East Wing used to be, you can mourn the loss of a hallowed public space and symbol, but you should also see it as proof for the whole world to see of Trump’s criminality and the theft of our money to satisfy unlimited corporate greed.

Michigan’s Democratic candidate for Senate, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, embraces defeated candidate Congresswoman Haley Stevens at an event at Southfield, Michigan, on August 6, 2026. (Haley Stevens via X)

Speaking of unlimited corporate greed, this past week, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated Representative Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary for US Senator from Michigan, and he did it with a consistent call and response, “Money out of politics! Money in your pocket! Medicare for all!” Of course, Trump and the right-wing think they’ve found their perfect brown bogeyman for the midterms in El-Sayed, with Trump calling him a “man of hate” who “hates Jews” and “hates Israel.” It’s the same cynical playbook the Republicans have been playing for decades, of course, but we think it unlikely to work this time around. Some are even postulating that El-Sayed’s progressive and populist message, with a hint of nationalism and a whole lot of demonization of corporate politics, can be a template for Democrats everywhere. Don’t tell the centrists, however, they are still fighting against the left way harder than they ever do against the right; this time, El-Sayed’s victory has prompted some “moderates” to promise a $15 million “war” against Democratic Socialists and other elements of the ascendant left. Why do centrists hate actual Democratic voters so much?

El-Sayed is not a Democratic Socialist, but Donavan McKinney is, and, on Tuesday, McKinney defeated Congressman Shri Thanedar for the right to represent a deep-blue Detroit-area District. Also in Michigan, a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, Will Lawrence, won the Democratic primary in the battleground 7th District.

It wasn’t just the primary wins this past week that gave us joy, there were also some losses which made us giddy. In Tennessee, virulent racist and Trump toady Andy Ogles lost his primary, despite Trump’s full and complete endorsement. And in Michigan, Trump threw his support behind a born-again Christian with an extensive military and law enforcement background in the race for MI-8. The only problem? Trump’s actual voters won’t support a Black man whose parents named him “Amir Hassan;” Hassan lost the primary by almost 20 points to the much more Caucasian Tom Smith, who had actually dropped out of the race in mid-July to support a third candidate. Lol.

This coming week, Socialism Summer may keep rolling, with the DSA’s Francesca Hong looking to overcome the chaotic efforts of establishment types and secure the Democratic nod to become the next Governor of Wisconsin. And there’s also a lot to watch in Minnesota, where there’s yet another progressive vs. centrist tilt in the Democratic race for US Senate; Bernie Sanders-backed Peggy Flanagan is the former, Representative Angie Craig is the latter. The Flanagan/Craig winner will be favored over whoever comes out of the crowded GOP primary, which includes Royce White, who is the subject of a 50-year order of protection in favor of his former wife and who also recently declared himself eligible for the WNBA draft after claiming to be “transgender [for the] purpose of basketball.”

The National Week of Action Against ALPRs is only a week away and we’ve got a lot going on. Here in Albany, we want to emphasize three specific dates that week. First, we'll be addressing the Albany Common Council on Monday the 17th; you don’t need to be resident of Albany in order to tell the Common Council how you feel about 24/7 surveillance in our Capital City, so if you have something to say about Flocks and the surveillance state, come join us. Two days later, on Wednesday, August 19, we’ll be having a Flock Safari in Washington Park which will be followed with a social hour at Lark Tavern. And, the next night, on August 20, we’ll be doing the latest installment of our What the Flock? presentation at the Guilderland Public Library. We’re still looking for volunteers — particularly for the Flock Safari — so if you want to pitch in, let us know.

The Week in Flock:

  • With Mayor Mantello’s arbitrary “public emergency” over Flock funding now in its fifth month, the third and final public hearing on the City of Troy’s proposed redefinition of what constitutes an “emergency” in the City was held last Thursday. We don’t need to tell you that Carmella and the City Council are not in agreement over this issue.

  • With shades of the Collar City, the Binghamton City Council and Binghamton’s Mayor are at odds over Flock.

  • The Town Council of Glocester, Rhode Island has voted to remove the Flocks that have plagued that Town since 2023.

  • Wisconsin cops have used Flock data to establish probable cause to search a man’s vehicle , suspecting his frequent trips across state lines to Minnesota were to buy weed, which is still somehow illegal in Wisconsin.

  • 404 Media has a lengthy interview with a former Flock employee and now-candidate for Congress in Massachusetts. Spoiler alert; Flock lies.

  • 404 Media also has gotten its hands on Flock’s training manual which encourages local cops to “own the narrative” in order to convince cities to buy and keep Flock’s technology, even when there is widespread public opposition to it.

  • The Electronic Frontier Foundation has established an “Atlas of Surveillance” to tell you what surveillance tech is used by which cops in which communities across the Country.

  • Finally, if you need even more DeFlocking during the National Week of Action Against ALPRs, our comrades in Georgia — including DeFlock Founder Will Freeman and the esteemed Benn Jordan — will be doing a four-hour DeFlock Further 2026 event on Tuesday, August 18. The event will be held in Marietta, Georgia, but it will be live-streamed, with details coming available later this week.

Rankled by Rank Choice Voting (Still)

Officials with the Capital District Working Families Party published an editorial in the Times Union this past week which was ostensibly about ranked-choice voting, but was really a call for the preservation of the closed primary system and maintaining party hegemony over the conduct of elections in the City of Albany. The main argument from our friends in the WFP seems to be that RCV Albany’s ranked-choice voting and unified election proposal would “dismantle an institution crucial for democracy — namely, political parties — that enables ordinary people to organize and act collectively.” The editorial points to the recent elections of Gabriella Romero — whose seat would not be subject to RCV Albany’s proposal, fwiw — and Dorcey Applyrs as diversity success stories and implies that those electoral victories could not have been possible without a closed party primary system. Now, mind you, the argument is wholly conclusory and is akin to, “Romero and Applyrs got elected, so closed primaries good.” But the argument also gives Gabriella Romero and Dorcey Applyrs no credit whatsoever for their own successes and dramatically overestimates the role that WFP support played in getting them elected.

Applyrs beat her GOP opponent in the general election by 70 fricken points; Romero won her general election in a real squeaker by 45 points over her Republican opponent. Without “fusion voting” and the added votes that the WFP afforded them in the general, Applyrs and Romero would still have won their general elections by 56 and 36 points, respectively. So give us a break with the claim that it was “coalition-building” and community organizing by WFP that put Romero and Applyrs over the top; Applyrs and Romero won their general election contests because they were the Democratic Party nominees, pure and simple. That’s what always happens in Albany, which is exactly the point. In Albany County general elections, if you are the Democratic nominee, you win, so the “real election” in Albany County is always the Democratic Party primary, and nobody can vote in that primary — including registered Working Families Party voters!!! — if they are not an Albany Democrat. So, our friends in the WFP are essentially lobbying for a system that disenfranchises their own members from participating in the process when it really matters, just so the Party itself can piggyback on the Democratic nominee in the end?

As we previously illustrated with regard to Applyrs, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that talented retail politicians like Dorcey and Gabriella Romero would not have been just as successful in a unified single election with ranked choice voting. Throw Republican Alicia Purdy into the mix in a unified election with Romero along with Common Council Members Jack Flynn, Owusu Anane and Ginny Farrell, and County Legislators Dustin Reidy and Andrew Joyce, and tell us how the result comes out after a ranked choice election. How exactly would Purdy’s inclusion in that race imperil Romero, or any Democrat for that matter? Unless you really think that Purdy-first voters are actually somehow going to be a majority of the electorate in Albany County, which other candidate’s voters are ranking Purdy as their second, third or fourth choice, precisely? Reidy’s? Flynn’s? Farrell’s? Moreover, with registered WFP voters actually able to participate in a unified single election, wouldn’t those 4,000+ voters who voted for Romero in the general naturally benefit her in a unified election too? Once again, the doomsday arguments just don’t hold any water upon even cursory inspection.

Two other points about the WFP editorial. First, the authors elevate the NYC closed-primary model which elected Zohran Mamdani as the paragon. While we concede that the result of that particular election was favorable from our perspective, let’s not forget that there is a movement to nonetheless create an open primary, ranked choice system in NYC going forward in which the top three vote getters — regardless of party affiliation — would advance to a ranked-choice general. That proposal is now the subject of litigation after the NYC Board of Elections rejected the ballot petition in a bid to maintain the status quo. Second, and most fundamentally, we’ve just about had it with the argument that “parties provide a crucial signal to voters: They tell us, imperfectly but still importantly, who stands for what.” Really? Are Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and John Fetterman the same? Because they both carry the mantle of Democratic Party support, we’re supposed to divine from that imprimatur that AOC and Fetterman “stand for” the same things? And even putting aside that the argument is just factually wrong, it also is extraordinarily paternalistic. It pictures voters as brain-dead sheeple that need to see a “D” or an “R” or a “W” next to the name on the ballot in order to know who to vote for. Sure, some voters may be like that, but it’s only because the closed primary system has trained them to be that way. In our view, the fact that some people have been indoctrinated to vote-blue-no-matter-who doesn’t justify preservation of a system that disenfranchises a vast portion of the electorate from having a meaningful say, particularly because party endorsements would still play a role in a unified election model. Would it not be better to have all candidates compete for the vote of every single voter in a campaign of ideas, nuance and persuasion instead of perpetual internecine warfare between a D champion and an R champion? Seriously, we can do better than what we have now.

On Tuesday, August 25, we’re joining with RCV Albany and the 9:01 Albany Democratic Club in another ranked-choice voting, unified election presentation. It’s open to the public at the Argus Hotel at 6pm and even skeptical party apparatchiks are welcome.

Odds & Ends:

Indivisible Albany Team
Next

Weekly Member Update - August 3, 2026