Politics

This is the new progressive strategy for warring with Trump

Published

2 years ago

November 25, 2024

Progressive Democrats wrestling with how to navigate a second Donald Trump presidency are settling on a new approach: Take his populist, working-class proposals at his word — or at least pretend to.

If he succeeds, they can take some credit for bringing him to the table. If he doesn’t, they can bash him for it.

It’s a change in strategy, emerging in private conversations among some liberal elected officials and operatives, that comes after years of resisting Trump ended with him returning to the White House.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in an interview that she would likely work with Trump if he pursues antitrust promises he made on the campaign trail. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said he sees himself partnering with Trump to tackle “large corporate consolidations,” while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) posted on X that he “looked forward” to Trump “fulfilling his promise” to cap credit card interest rates.

Even Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the resistance icon who popularized the motto “nevertheless, she persisted” while skewering a Trump cabinet pick in 2017, is finding common cause with the president-elect.

“President Trump announced during his campaign that he intended to put a 10 percent interest rate cap on consumer credit,” Warren told Blue Light News. “Bring it on.”

But, she added, “if he refuses to follow through on the campaign promises that would help working people, then he should be held accountable.”

An aide to a progressive member of Congress, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy, stated the obvious: Liberal Democrats will continue to oppose most of what Trump does “tooth and nail.”

However, the person said, “For the few policy proposals that we think will help the working class, capping credit card interest rates being one of them, we’ll say, ‘Put up or shut up.’ Because if he does, it’s a great win for millions of people across this country. And if he doesn’t, it exposes him as a fraud that he is.”

Progressives are not suddenly buying MAGA hats, and with Trump not yet in office, the range of ways they may engage him — or oppose him — remains a work in progress. They are still appalled by Trump’s behavior and policies, including his plans to create the largest deportation program in history, cut taxes for the wealthy and roll back transgender rights. And many of them fear that Trump is an aspiring dictator who threatens democracy itself (which Trump allies have said is unfounded).

But some of Trump’s populist campaign promises fall in line with progressives’ own aspirations. Those include making in vitro fertilization treatments free, ending taxes on tips and capping credit card interest rates. He has also promised for years to protect the popular programs of Social Security and Medicare. At times, he has promoted directing Medicare to negotiate drug prices.

When asked for comment, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said, “President Trump’s America First policies will help uplift all Americans and Democrats know voters are now firmly behind him, as opposed to their failed and tired policies that have devastated this country for the last four years.”

And some of Trump’s allies have also backed a handful of other ideas that progressives support, from slashing the Pentagon to strictly enforcing antitrust laws.

Billionaire Elon Musk, who has been charged by Trump with downsizing the federal government, appeared to agree with progressive Rep. Ro Khanna in a recent thread on X that the Department of Defense spends too much money on contractors.

Sen. Bernie Sanders posted on X that he “looked forward” to Trump “fulfilling his promise” to cap credit card interest rates.

Top Trump ally Matt Gaetz, whom the president-elect tapped for attorney general but has since withdrawn, has praised Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan. Khan is revered on the left for infuriating Wall Street and aggressively busting up monopolies. Though Khan is not expected to stay on under Trump, and Musk said she would be “fired soon,” Vice President-elect JD Vance has also spoken positively about her and called for breaking up Big Tech.

Last week, Khan returned the favor at an FTC meeting, saying that she is “so grateful and appreciative of the bipartisan support” for her work, “including from Vice President-elect Vance and formerly Congressman Gaetz.”

Progressives are clear-eyed that with a Republican-controlled House and Senate, many, if not most, of Trump’s populist campaign promises will not happen — if he were ever serious about them to begin with. But they believe that his voters want him to follow through. They also lack any power in Congress and are desperate for even an outside chance to influence policy.

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Institute, said that his group conducted polling in the critical battleground states of Pennsylvania and Michigan during the final week of the election. He said the surveys, done in conjunction with the liberal firm Data for Progress, found that the majority of Trump’s voters want him to crack down on price gouging, raise taxes on billionaires, and strengthen anti-monopoly laws.

“Trump actually made promises to people, like helping those on Social Security, ending taxes on tips, and capping credit card interest at 10 percent,” he said. “His own voters believe he has a mandate on that, plus higher taxes on billionaires and big corporations. So let’s hold a mirror up to him and ask, are you going to be a hypocrite or not?”

Not all progressives agree with that strategy. Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), a member of the so-called Squad, said of Trump, “I’ve never gotten the impression that he’s been accountable to anything in his life.” But, she said, “I don’t fault anybody for trying.”

Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said that holding Trump’s feet to the fire in Congress is “a little bit unrealistic — we don’t have the votes.” But he said there is room to advocate for liberal policies.

“If there’s areas we agree, let’s work together and get them done: credit card fees, cap on interest rates, prescription drug reference pricing,” he said. “I’m all about working on things that are going to help working-class people.”

Either way, it’s not 2017 anymore. And Resistance 2.0 won’t look exactly the same as its first era.

“There’ll be places where resistance is appropriate,” said Warren. “For example, if Trump follows his V.P. JD Vance in trying to ban access to abortion nationwide through the FDA, there will be massive resistance. If Trump follows through on his promises for more tax cuts for billionaires and billionaire corporations, we’re going to be in that fight all the way.”

At the same time, she said, “if Trump is going to lower interest rates on all consumer loans to 10 percent, count me in.”

Politics

The clock is ticking on an Iran talks. Here’s what still has to get done.

Published

3 hours ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

As talks loom between the U.S. and Iran, negotiators face a simple and daunting task: turning a 14-point memorandum of understanding into a comprehensive nuclear deal within 60 days.

The ticking clock was set in motion on Thursday, according to Vice President JD Vance, following the signing of the MOU one day earlier. That signing brought an official end to military hostilities. What it did not do is resolve the conflict that caused them.

Some agreements took effect immediately upon signing: a cessation of hostilities, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of the U.S. naval blockade, the issuing of oil waivers and initial steps to unfreeze billions of dollars in Iranian assets.

But those were the easy parts.

What remains are the metaphorical landmines — the unresolved questions the MOU largely deferred rather than decided, each with the potential to blow up any prospect for a nuclear deal. On Thursday evening, the White House announced that Vice President JD Vance will not attend talks in Switzerland that had been planned for Friday — a decision that may well be read as a signal of just how far apart the two sides are. A White House spokesperson acknowledged in a statement that while the U.S. delegation has been prepared to depart at the first available opportunity, “the logistics of these negotiations have never been simple or predictable.”

Here is what the negotiators will actually have to solve:

The future of the Strait of Hormuz

The MOU ensures safe passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz “with no charge for 60 days only,” and outsources the negotiating responsibility for ensuring long-term toll-free passage to Gulf allies — ceding responsibility for a key outstanding issue.

“We don’t ever want this to happen again — that’s not about tolling, that’s about ensuring that the Straits are never used as a choke point for the global economy ever again,” Vance said at the White House on Thursday. “If that’s not reflected in the final deal, there’s not going to be a final deal.”

Recognizing the Iranians will “assert their rights as aggressively as they can,” a senior U.S. official was confident Gulf states would preserve their own self-interests and press Iran to allow toll-free passage.

There’s also the matter of demining the waterway. Iran has 30 days for “removing the technical and military obstacles and demining,” but mine removal could take weeks or even months — potentially testing U.S. patience if ship traffic doesn’t recover quickly.

In a joint statement following this week’s G7 summit in France, leaders said a defensive initiative led by France and the UK could help by “protecting merchant vessels, reassuring commercial shipping operators, and supporting verification that all mines are removed.”

Sanctions and frozen assets

Senior U.S. officials have said sanctions relief for Iran would be tied to its performance — but haven’t yet indicated what those benchmarks will be.

“As they dial up their good behavior, we can dial up the economic relief,” Vance said in broad terms on Thursday at the White House. “If they dial down their good behavior, we can turn it off.”

The MOU commits the U.S. to ending all Iranian sanctions — including those imposed by the U.N. Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency — “in an agreed-upon schedule as part of the final deal.” How quickly the U.S. is willing to provide this economic relief could become a sticking point.

Complicating matters further: whether lifting of sanctions would require congressional action, and how the State Department’s designation of Iran as a State Sponsor of Terrorism factors in.

Then there’s the unfreezing of billions of dollars of Iranian assets. Though the Trump administration insists any release would be tied to Iran’s performance, the MOU’s own text undercuts that: Paragraph 13 says the process of releasing assets must begin before negotiations even start, handing Iran an upfront incentive rather than one to earn.

“It’s clearly a huge loophole and a potential for disagreement,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East advisor and negotiator for the State Department, calling the text’s language “destructive ambiguity.”

The Lebanon front

The MOU calls for “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.”

“We expect Hezbollah is not going to be firing rockets and firing drones at the Israelis, and we also expect that the Israelis are not going to be going wild in Lebanon, right? Both sides have to honor their end of the deal,” Vance said at the White House on Thursday.

Yet Israel did not sign the aforementioned “deal.”

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said it’s “unnecessary” for Lebanon to have been included in an agreement between the U.S. and Iran, pouring cold water on the idea that Israel would cease its offensive against Hezbollah and occupation of southern Lebanon — even if Iran says that’s a dealbreaker for negotiations.

“This is something that we simply can’t live with,” Leiter told NPR on Tuesday. “We can’t have jihadi terrorists on our border. … We’re not going to withdraw from South Lebanon, and the mad men of Tehran have no business poking their nose into Lebanon.”

A U.S. official confirmed that U.S.-brokered peace talks between Israel and Lebanon will continue as planned next week at the State Department. Whether the Lebanon provision holds will depend on Iran keeping Hezbollah in check and Trump keeping Netanyahu in line.

Iran’s reconstruction

The MOU promises that within 60 days, the U.S. would work “with regional partners” to develop a plan guaranteeing at least $300 billion for Iran’s “reconstruction and economic development.”

Trump has insisted that there “is no 300 Billion Dollar payment to Iran by the U.S.” using taxpayer money. That may technically be true, but the U.S. has still committed to delivering that sum in the form of investment. That means convincing private corporations and Gulf allies — many of which are dealing with economic disruption and rebuilding costs after facing strikes from Iran — to invest in a country the Trump administration is still threatening to attack again if Iran reneges on its end of the deal.

Vance said there is a “great desire from the Arab world and from outside the Arab world to actually get involved in Iran if they behave properly.” Pressed by MS NOW whether private money would be included, Vance said he assumes countries like the United Arab Emirates would be part of the picture.

But Gulf leaders expressed concern to MS NOW about the agreement’s financial provisions that could strengthen Iran economically at a time when many Gulf states believe pressure should have been maintained.

Iran’s highly enriched uranium and nuclear program

For the duration of negotiations, Iran will “maintain the current status quo of its nuclear program,” per the MOU. What happens after that is the central outstanding question — the one that led to war in the first place.

The MOU provides no consensus on what to do with Iran’s existing stockpile of enriched uranium, only an agreement to “resolve” the matter. It doesn’t distinguish between the roughly 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium — material close to bomb-grade — and the 11 tons enriched to various levels above the 3.67% threshold set by the JCPOA, which Trump withdrew from during his first term.

A senior U.S. official said downblending the stockpile would be the minimum standard, with Washington pushing for “more than that” during negotiations. Vance alluded to “gentlemen’s agreements,” noting that Iran has “promised that they would allow inspectors in to destroy that highly enriched stockpile, and then, of course, it’s not usable anymore, you take it somewhere else.” Iran has not formally agreed to anything beyond a general promise to resolve the issue.

Whether Iran will be permitted to enrich in the future, and to what extent, remains an open question. The MOU commits the two countries to discussing “the issue of enrichment and other mutually agreed matters,” promising a “satisfactory framework” related to Iran’s “nuclear needs” in a final deal.

Notably, the U.S. has already backed down from one of its previous red lines, dropping Trump’s earlier demand for zero enrichment forever in favor of allowing Iran to maintain a civilian nuclear program.

“We’re not bothered at all by the idea of civilian power plants in Iran,” a senior U.S. official said. “What we’re bothered by is the type of infrastructure that would allow them to jump from civilian power generation to nuclear weapons development. … We feel quite confident that if they meet their obligations under this agreement, they’re not going to have that infrastructure to build a nuclear weapon.”

A senior administration official insisted Iran has committed to dismantling its nuclear weapons program, including its nuclear site, noting that the countries would “figure out how to do that in the technical negotiations that will follow.” But abandoning its nuclear program will be a tough domestic sell for the Islamic Republic to make.

Inspections and implementation

Trump has repeatedly hammered the Obama-era JCPOA for not having a strong enough verification and inspections system. But his own MOU offers little clarity on what will replace it, only a vague commitment that “an executive mechanism will be established to monitor the successful implementation of this MOU and the future compliance of the final deal.”

Given that Iran blocked IAEA inspectors from accessing its nuclear facilities under the JCPOA, a stronger inspection system represents perhaps the most important potential U.S. win in final deal talks — if Washington can secure one.

“If we feel comfortable with the inspection and enforcement regime, that is when they will get some of the benefits of negotiation,” a senior administration official told reporters last week, without providing specifics of what that verification regime would entail nor confirming the role of the UN or IAEA.

Miller, the former State Department negotiator, compared the MOU to Trump’s 20-point Gaza plan — a document that pushed the conflict out of the headlines but left unsolved problems on the humanitarian, disarmament and reconstruction fronts.

“I see very little chance, without significant flexibility on the part of both sides, that 60 days is going to be enough” to bridge the “Grand Canyon-like gaps that separate Tehran and Washington,” Miller said.

And though the MOU’s 60-day deadline allows for extension “with mutual consent,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the military is “prepared to restart if we need to” if Iran does not show progress in complying with U.S. demands.

Trump, speaking at the G7, was blunter still.

“If it doesn’t get done in 60 days, that’s all right,” Trump said. “We go back to bombing.”