Photo: NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JULY 27: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks at a food distribution center on July 27, 2026 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Mamdani announced that the five upcoming city-owned grocery stores will offer a 30 percent discount on produce, meat, bread, and milk when they begin to open next year. The discount on essential items will potentially save shoppers an estimated $90 a month, or roughly $1,000 a year, as prices for food and other items continue to rise throughout the country. The mayor has pledged one community grocery store for each borough. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
As they experience newfound success across the United States in Democratic primaries, the Democratic Socialists of America have gone on a media blitz to share their vision for America. That vision includes radical changes to the American political system, like abolishing the senate, heavily restricting private markets, and abolishing police and prisons.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) rode a wave of dissatisfaction with the status quo to unprecedented electoral success this year. DSA affiliated candidates and fellow travelers lead New York City and are poised to dominate its congressional delegation. In other areas of the country, DSA candidates are campaigning on a radical platform once unthinkable.
Beyond New York, DSA candidates have won in Colorado, Michigan, and in down-ballot races in Oregon, California, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Utah and Maryland.
Dismantling the entire American system of government
On Tuesday, a DSA member is leading in the polls for the Democratic Party nomination for governor in Wisconsin, testing the viability of the far-left political and economic messaging in a state that President Donald Trump won in 2024. Controversy has followed Francesca Hong. Like many other DSA affiliates, her past social media posts, including arguing to defund the police and calling to cancel Thanksgiving, are at the center of it.
In an interview last month on Fox News, DSA’s national co-chair, Megan Romer, answered that, “yes,” the DSA’s platform includes “abolishing the Senate,” “[replacing] the presidency and Supreme Court as we now know them,” and "absolutely" abolishing immigration enforcement, defunding the military, and, eventually, abolishing police and prisons.
“Yes,” “true,” and “yep,” said Romer in response to the host’s questions.
The relentless media tour by senior DSA leaders focused scrutiny on the organization's official platform. Republicans sensed an opening and traditional Democrats are worried the group’s radical proposals might sink the party’s midterm chances.
Indeed, many of the Democratic Socialist leaders are self-professed communists, Just the News previously reported. Many of the DSA’s leaders belong to internal party caucuses that explicitly define themselves as Marxist and advocate for achieving communism. This includes Romer, who is a member of the Red Star caucus of the DSA, which explicitly pronounces its ultimate aim: the overthrow of capitalism in the U.S. and, eventually, communism.
Last month, the DSA released a new “program,” or platform, that outlined its priorities. Here are some of the most striking in the group’s own words:
‘End Mass Incarceration and Police Immunity’
The DSA’s platform includes radical proposals to defund, and eventually abolish, the “police and prison system,” which the organization argues is slanted for the benefit of the rich. Similar comments made by DSA-backed candidates have stirred controversy.
“Demilitarize police departments, disempower police unions, and redirect funding to public services as steps towards fully abolishing the police and prison system which protects the rich and jails the poor,” the DSA’s program reads.
Francesca Hong, the DSA member vying for the gubernatorial nomination in Wisconsin, has worked to distance herself from prior social media posts from years ago in which she argued for abolishing police. “I support defunding the police as a first step towards abolishing the police,” Hong posted in 2020, echoing the modern DSA policy platform.
Other DSA-tied candidates have come under fire for holding similar views. For example, Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York City faced scrutiny for a series of deleted posts to social media expressing support for abolishing police, prisons and borders, seizing private property, and nationalizing industries, Just the News previously reported.
“A world without borders—just like a world without prisons or police—is possible, necessary, and the only moral way forward,” Chevalier posted to Twitter, now X, in September 2021.
‘Abolish ICE’ and ‘Amnesty for All’
The DSA’s program also calls for completely ending immigration enforcement, including ICE detentions and deportations.
DSA organizers have been at the center of nationwide protests against the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies, cooperating with a coalition of left-wing organizations, some of which received funding from China-based billionaire Neville Roy Singham.
“End ICE detention and deportations and punish federal agents' brutality. Legalize migration, grant amnesty for all immigrants regardless of status, provide a path to citizenship for all permanent residents, and end visa caps and quotas,” DSA’s program reads.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is a member of the DSA, has called repeatedly for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be abolished.
“As [New York’s] mayor, I firmly believe that ICE should be abolished,” Mamdani said. “I will not sit here beside you and proclaim the only way to respond to [immigration] is an agency that I'm older than.”
Hong, who will face Wisconsin Democratic voters on Tuesday, has also called for abolishing the agency. “Abolishing ICE isn’t radical — it’s good policy,” she posted to social media in January.
‘Abolish the Senate’ and ‘Replace the President and Supreme Court’
The DSA’s proposals for reforming the United States government are also nothing short of radical. The organization envisions completely remaking the three separate branches of power in Washington and replacing the current system with a single legislature that directly appoints the other branches.
For example, rather than reform the Senate, as some Democratic politicians have argued for many years, the DSA wants to do away with the upper legislative chamber completely, vesting all congressional power in an expanded and more proportional House of Representatives. The organization's leaders argue that doing so would make the country more democratic and representative.
“The Senate is a very undemocratic institution,” DSA co-chairman Ashik Siddiqu said in an interview on C-SPAN. “I talked a bit about democracy, a ‘small d’ democracy, and that’s really important to us. We want democratic representation of all people who live in this country.”
“Public Ownership” of “Corporations”
The DSA calls for the “public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries.” This program of nationalization would be “to ensure democratic control and accountability to the people.” To this end, the organization’s program calls for “the end of capitalism” as the system of economic organization.
In some way, New York City Mayor Mamdani is piloting aspects of this broader plan in a place where the DSA actually holds levers of power. His city-run grocery store experiment intends to create a system of stores that will offer a 30% discount compared to private competitors. The plan has some in the city warning that the stores will cost taxpayers and may force private stores to close.
More easily said than done
The platform also argues for replacing the presidency and the Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary panel “chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”
All of these reforms would require major constitutional changes. Abolishing the Senate would likely require the approval of all the states because of the special constitutional provision requiring each state to have “equal Suffrage in the Senate.”
Reprinted with permission from Just The News by Steven Richards.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
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