A Manifesto for Dismantling Bad Laws, Breaking Concentrated Power, and Building a Country That Actually Works for Its People
America does not suffer from a shortage of political promises.
We have heard the promises.
Lower costs. Better jobs. Safer communities. Affordable housing. Accessible healthcare. A government that works for the people. A fair shot at the American Dream.
Every election, the promises arrive dressed in fresh slogans, polished advertisements, patriotic backdrops, and carefully rehearsed declarations of concern for the average American.
Then the election ends.
The donors still have access. The corporations still have lobbyists. The laws that punish poverty remain on the books. The wealthy retain their advantages. Workers continue fighting for a livable wage. Families struggle to afford healthcare, housing, and childcare. And politicians congratulate themselves for making incremental progress toward problems that have been allowed to compound for generations.
At some point, we have to ask an uncomfortable question:
What is the point of winning political power if you are unwilling to change the structures that make people's lives unnecessarily difficult?
Not just the personalities occupying government offices.
Not just the executive orders that can be reversed by the next administration.
Not just the latest outrage, scandal, or political circus demanding our attention.
The structures.
The statutes.
The loopholes.
The economic arrangements.
The legal protections for powerful interests.
The policies that make basic necessities expensive, political participation unnecessarily difficult, and accountability optional for those with enough money to hire an army of lawyers.
If America wants a government that genuinely serves its people, we need more than a change in leadership.
We need a change in what government is willing to do with power.
And when leaders who claim to represent working people finally have the opportunity to govern, they should arrive with a plan—not a collection of aspirations, not a press conference, and certainly not another promise to study the problem.
A plan to dismantle what is demonstrably harmful.
A plan to build what people actually need.
A plan to make concentrated power answerable to the public.
And a plan to ensure that the next generation inherits a country with more freedom, more opportunity, and less institutionalized cruelty than the one we inherited.
That is the conversation I want to have.
I. Stop Confusing the Law With Justice
One of the most important ideas in Elie Mystal's Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America is also one of the easiest to forget: laws are human choices.
They are written by people, passed by political institutions, interpreted by courts, and enforced by governments. They are not laws of nature. They do not descend from the heavens with an official stamp declaring that the arrangement they establish is morally correct.
We make them.
And because we make them, we can change them.
Mystal examines laws he argues cause substantial harm, including restrictions on voting, punitive immigration rules, protections for gun manufacturers, the Hyde Amendment, and laws governing issues such as reproductive freedom and criminal justice. His broader argument is that some laws are so fundamentally harmful that simply adjusting their edges is not enough. They should be repealed. The New Press, Bad Law.
That is an important distinction.
Sometimes a policy is poorly designed and needs improvement.
Sometimes an institution needs better oversight.
Sometimes a law contains a loophole that should be closed.
And sometimes the fundamental premise of a law is the problem.
You cannot repair a structure designed to produce an unjust outcome merely by repainting the walls.
You cannot fix a voting system designed around unnecessary barriers by making the barriers marginally less inconvenient.
You cannot claim to protect workers while preserving rules that leave them with little bargaining power.
You cannot claim to support families while making healthcare, housing, and childcare financially punishing.
And you cannot claim to believe in equal citizenship while tolerating legal arrangements that systematically make some people's rights harder to exercise than others.
Reform is not automatically progress. Sometimes reform is the language institutions use when they want to appear responsive without surrendering the power that created the problem.
We need the intellectual honesty to distinguish between laws that need repair and laws that need to go.
We also need the courage to recognize that a law can be popular, longstanding, and perfectly legal—and still deserve to be abolished.
Tradition is not a moral defense.
Popularity is not proof of justice.
And legality is not the same thing as legitimacy.
II. Democracy Should Not Be Something Wealthy People Can Afford More Of
Let's begin with the foundation of every other reform: political power.
We can debate tax policy, healthcare, labor rights, environmental regulation, and education until the end of time. But if the political system disproportionately rewards those who can finance campaigns, employ lobbyists, and exert sustained pressure on elected officials, we must confront the machinery that determines whose interests receive attention in the first place.
America's campaign finance system deserves serious structural reform.
The Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC helped establish the modern legal landscape for unlimited independent political expenditures by corporations and unions. Subsequent decisions and organizational structures enabled super PACs to raise enormous sums, while certain nonprofit arrangements allow political spending without public disclosure of donors.
That does not mean every political contribution is corrupt or every wealthy donor is acting improperly. It does mean that the ability to influence elections is profoundly unequal—and that the public often cannot easily determine who is financing political messages.
If we want a government accountable to ordinary citizens, campaign finance reform cannot remain a convenient talking point.
We need stronger transparency requirements, meaningful enforcement, and a serious public debate about ways to reduce the dependence of candidates on large private donors.
We should explore public financing systems that help viable candidates compete without spending their lives fundraising. We should strengthen disclosure rules and enforcement against unlawful coordination or evasion. We should close genuine loopholes while respecting constitutional protections for political expression.
And we should stop pretending that formal equality at the ballot box automatically creates equality in the political process.
A nurse and a billionaire may each cast one vote.
But one can finance an entire political operation, while the other may struggle to find the time to vote between shifts.
That imbalance matters.
One person, one vote is a democratic principle. One wealthy donor, disproportionate access is a democratic problem.
The point is not to silence anyone.
It is to build a political system in which public decisions are not disproportionately shaped by the people most capable of purchasing access and influence.
If progressives gain power, campaign finance reform should be an early priority—not a promise saved for a convenient election year.
And any government claiming to serve the public should be willing to explain exactly what it is doing to reduce the influence of concentrated wealth.
III. Make Economic Security a Public Priority, Not a Luxury Product
We have normalized an extraordinary contradiction.
America possesses enormous wealth, sophisticated technology, productive workers, advanced research institutions, and the capacity to produce goods and services on a staggering scale.
Yet millions of people experience ordinary life as a financial emergency.
A medical problem can become a financial crisis.
A rent increase can threaten a family's stability.
Childcare can consume an absurd share of household income.
A layoff can mean losing not only wages but health insurance.
A person can work full-time and still struggle to afford the necessities that work is supposed to provide.
We have become so accustomed to these contradictions that we sometimes treat them as inevitable features of adult life.
They are not inevitable.
They are shaped by policy.
Bernie Sanders's October 2026 message identifies several connected priorities: reducing extreme wealth inequality, expanding healthcare access, making childcare and public higher education more affordable, increasing wages, strengthening labor rights, and investing in affordable housing. His argument is that government should address the material conditions of working families rather than allow concentrated wealth to dictate the political agenda.
The broader principle is straightforward:
An economy should be judged by how people live in it—not merely by how much wealth it generates at the top.
That means treating economic security as a serious public objective.
Housing
We need a national housing strategy that expands the supply of affordable homes, supports public and nonprofit housing development, and addresses the conditions that make housing inaccessible to working people.
That includes building more homes where people need them, investing in affordable and social housing, supporting responsible local planning, and improving protections against abusive housing practices.
Housing policy must recognize that homes are not merely financial assets.
They are where people sleep, raise children, recover from illness, and build their lives.
A society that treats shelter primarily as an investment opportunity should not be surprised when ordinary people struggle to afford a place to live.
Healthcare
Healthcare should not depend on whether a person's employer offers a good insurance plan, whether their income falls into the right category, or whether they can afford to pay thousands of dollars before receiving meaningful care.
America should pursue universal coverage that guarantees access to necessary medical services, with serious consideration of a Medicare for All, single-payer model.
Any transition must be carefully designed, adequately funded, and transparent about costs and implementation. But the destination should be clear: people should not have to choose between their health and their financial survival.
Childcare and education
Accessible childcare is economic infrastructure.
It enables parents to work, supports children's development, and reduces the financial penalty imposed on families who need care.
Public education—from well-funded K–12 schools through affordable public colleges and universities—should be treated as a public investment rather than a luxury reserved for households that can afford rising costs.
That also means paying educators fairly, strengthening public institutions, and ensuring that access to education is not determined primarily by family wealth.
Wages and labor rights
People who work full-time should be able to afford the basics.
That requires a living-wage strategy that accounts for regional costs, strengthens collective bargaining, protects workers against retaliation, and makes it easier for employees to organize.
The goal should not be to preserve an economy in which workers are grateful for any wage while employers and investors capture most of the gains from increased productivity.
If an economy depends on workers but refuses to provide workers with a fair share of its prosperity, the problem is not that workers expect too much. The problem is how the economy distributes its rewards.
IV. Stop Treating Billionaire Wealth as Untouchable
We are often told that taxing the wealthiest Americans more fairly would somehow punish success, destroy innovation, or undermine the entire economy.
That argument deserves scrutiny rather than automatic acceptance.
The question is not whether people should be rewarded for building successful businesses, inventing useful products, or taking entrepreneurial risks.
The question is whether the accumulation of extraordinary wealth should grant a person extraordinary freedom from contributing to the society and public infrastructure that made that wealth possible.
Businesses rely on educated workers, public roads, courts, research, utilities, public safety, and a stable legal system. Wealth does not materialize in a vacuum.
Nor does economic success establish an entitlement to disproportionate political power.
A progressive tax system should ensure that the people with the greatest ability to contribute pay a fair share. That includes serious consideration of wealth taxation, stronger enforcement against tax evasion, closing unjustified loopholes, and addressing the treatment of income and gains that allows some extremely wealthy households to face lower effective tax rates than many ordinary workers.
Any major tax proposal should be evaluated for its design, revenue, administrative feasibility, economic effects, and opportunities for avoidance. Those are reasons to do the work carefully—not reasons to declare the question off-limits.
Revenue should be connected to visible public benefits: housing, healthcare, education, childcare, infrastructure, scientific research, and the services that help communities thrive.
And we need to reject the notion that a person who has accumulated billions of dollars has somehow graduated from the social contract.
Wealth is not a citizenship exemption.
Nor should it buy a private lane through the democratic process.
V. Repeal Laws That Punish People for Being Poor, Marginalized, or Politically Inconvenient
This is where Mystal's Bad Law offers a particularly useful challenge.
Rather than treating every existing statute as a reasonable starting point that requires a few adjustments, Mystal asks readers to examine laws whose effects are so damaging that repeal is the appropriate remedy.
His examples span voting, immigration, criminal justice, firearms, reproductive healthcare, and the role of religion in law. The common thread is that legal arrangements can encode old prejudices and unequal power into rules that continue to shape people's lives long after their political origins have faded from public memory.
That is a framework worth applying far beyond any one book.
Consider voting.
Eligible citizens should not face unnecessary administrative obstacles to exercising their right to participate in democracy. Automatic voter registration, accurate voter rolls, accessible polling locations, and reliable early and mail voting options are among the reforms worth pursuing, with appropriate safeguards for election integrity.
Consider criminal justice.
We should scrutinize laws and practices that impose extreme punishment without advancing public safety, perpetuate racial disparities, or make rehabilitation and reintegration unnecessarily difficult. That includes reviewing excessive sentencing, addressing unjust fines and fees, improving access to effective legal representation, and reducing the use of incarceration where less harmful interventions can protect the public.
Consider immigration.
A serious immigration system should be orderly, enforceable, and humane. It should provide workable legal pathways, protect due process, treat families with dignity, and recognize the economic and social realities of migration. We should examine whether particular criminal penalties and enforcement practices actually advance legitimate public goals—or merely create lasting harm.
Consider reproductive healthcare.
Government should not force people into dangerous or medically unnecessary situations through policies that deny them essential care. Federal funding restrictions, healthcare access rules, and other legal barriers deserve scrutiny for their real-world effects, particularly on low-income patients who have the fewest alternatives.
Consider gun policy.
Public safety should not be subordinated to the interests of powerful industries. Laws that create unusual barriers to accountability for manufacturers and sellers deserve serious review, alongside evidence-based measures designed to reduce violence while respecting constitutional rights.
The details differ across these areas. Each requires careful legal analysis and a serious assessment of evidence.
But the underlying question is the same:
Does this law solve a legitimate public problem—or does it perpetuate harm that we have simply learned to tolerate?
If a law produces demonstrable harm without delivering a compelling public benefit, lawmakers should not assume that preserving it is the responsible choice.
Sometimes the responsible choice is repeal.
VI. Stop Letting Corporations Write the Rules They Are Supposed to Follow
A government cannot serve the public effectively if it allows the entities it regulates to exert overwhelming influence over the regulatory process.
That does not mean corporations are inherently bad, that business interests should never participate in policymaking, or that regulation is automatically wise.
It means the public interest must remain the governing priority.
We need stronger protections against conflicts of interest, transparent lobbying records, meaningful ethics rules, and effective limits on the revolving door between public office and private industries seeking government influence.
We need regulators with adequate staffing, expertise, independence, and enforcement authority.
We need rules that can keep pace with industries whose products and business models evolve faster than legislative processes.
And we need to evaluate regulation by asking two questions at once:
What harm is this rule intended to prevent?
And what evidence shows that it is working?
That is particularly important in artificial intelligence.
AI has the potential to improve medicine, education, scientific research, accessibility, and productivity. It also raises serious questions about employment, privacy, discrimination, political manipulation, safety, and the concentration of technological power.
Neither blind enthusiasm nor reflexive panic is an adequate policy.
We need meaningful safeguards, independent research, clear accountability when systems cause harm, and rules proportionate to actual risks. Workers need a voice in how AI changes their jobs. Students and families need protections against exploitative uses of technology. The public needs transparency about how powerful systems are deployed in consequential settings.
And decisions about advanced AI should not be left exclusively to the companies that stand to profit from it.
Innovation is not a moral exemption from accountability.
If a technology is powerful enough to reshape society, then the public has a legitimate interest in how it is developed and used.
VII. Climate Policy Should Build a Better Future, Not Protect Yesterday's Profits
Climate change is not an abstract disagreement about political identity.
It is a long-term challenge involving energy, infrastructure, agriculture, public health, insurance, housing, and economic stability.
A serious response requires reducing greenhouse gas emissions, expanding cleaner energy, improving energy efficiency, modernizing infrastructure, and preparing communities for climate-related risks that are already affecting people and local economies.
It also requires attention to workers and communities whose livelihoods depend on industries that will change.
A responsible transition should create pathways into good-paying jobs, invest in affected communities, support research and deployment of cleaner technologies, and make sure lower-income households are not asked to carry disproportionate costs.
The choice is not between protecting the environment and protecting working people.
A well-designed transition should do both.
The question is whether government will plan for the future or continue allowing short-term financial interests to dictate the pace of change.
We cannot claim to care about future generations while treating the conditions necessary for their survival as negotiable.
VIII. Government Power Must Come With Guardrails—Even When Our Side Holds It
Here is where I want to be particularly clear.
The answer to concentrated right-wing power is not to create an unchecked progressive government.
The answer to corruption under one administration is not to give another administration permission to operate without oversight.
And the answer to laws that harm vulnerable communities is not to replace them with laws that harm a different group.
The principles we defend must survive the moment our preferred political faction loses power.
That means strong ethics rules, transparent decision-making, independent oversight, enforceable civil rights protections, and meaningful limits on executive authority.
It means protecting free expression, due process, and the right to challenge government decisions.
It means building public institutions capable of acting effectively without becoming instruments of personal loyalty or partisan retaliation.
And it means being honest about the difference between having the legal authority to do something and having a compelling public justification for doing it.
Progressive policy should not be judged solely by whether it produces outcomes progressives prefer.
It should also be judged by whether it protects democratic participation, respects fundamental rights, relies on evidence, and remains accountable to the public.
That is not a concession to the opposition.
It is what makes democratic government worth defending.
IX. Winning Power Is Not the Same as Using It Well
This is the part that political parties should find uncomfortable.
Winning an election does not automatically make a party courageous.
It does not guarantee competence.
It does not mean elected officials will challenge the donors, industries, institutions, and economic arrangements that helped them reach office.
And it does not guarantee that campaign promises will survive contact with political convenience.
A government can win power promising change and then spend years explaining why change is too complicated, too expensive, too politically difficult, or best postponed until after the next election.
There will always be reasons to delay.
There will always be lobbyists warning of disaster.
There will always be entrenched interests explaining why the rules that benefit them are essential to the national interest.
There will always be political consultants advising leaders to avoid controversial reforms.
And there will always be another election approaching.
But if the objective is to improve people's lives, government must be willing to distinguish between obstacles that genuinely require patience and obstacles that exist because powerful people benefit from the status quo.
This is where a serious progressive agenda needs discipline.
Identify the laws that should be repealed.
Identify the policies that should be replaced.
Identify the institutions that need new safeguards.
Identify the investments that will make people's lives materially better.
Develop legislation.
Build coalitions.
Establish measurable goals.
Fund implementation.
Create oversight.
Report progress honestly.
And when a policy fails, fix it rather than pretending that good intentions are a substitute for results.
The measure of a political movement is not the intensity of its promises. It is what changes in people's lives when that movement has the power to govern.
X. What Should Happen on Day One?
Not every reform can be enacted immediately. Congress has to legislate, agencies need time to implement policy, courts review legal challenges, and governments must work within constitutional limits.
But the first days of a new administration can establish priorities, direct lawful executive action, begin rulemaking where authorized, strengthen enforcement of existing laws, and put concrete legislative proposals before Congress.
A serious governing agenda should arrive prepared to act.
Here are the priorities I would put on the table:
Democracy and political accountability. Advance campaign finance transparency, strengthen enforcement, reduce unnecessary barriers to voting, and pursue public financing reforms that make political participation less dependent on private wealth.
Healthcare and economic security. Pursue universal healthcare coverage, improve access to essential services, and protect families from financial ruin caused by illness.
Housing and family support. Expand affordable housing, invest in childcare, strengthen public education, and reduce the financial pressures that prevent families from building stable lives.
Workers and wages. Raise wage standards, strengthen collective bargaining, enforce labor protections, and ensure workers have a meaningful voice in the economic changes affecting them.
Fair taxation. Close unjustified loopholes, improve enforcement, evaluate wealth-tax proposals, and ensure that public investment is supported by a sustainable and equitable revenue system.
Civil rights and justice. Review laws that create unnecessary barriers to voting, perpetuate unjust punishment, deny essential healthcare, or produce disproportionate harm without sufficient public benefit. Repeal those that cannot be justified.
Corporate and technological accountability. Strengthen conflict-of-interest safeguards, improve regulatory capacity, and establish proportionate protections for the public as AI and other powerful technologies reshape society.
Climate and infrastructure. Accelerate cleaner energy, modernize infrastructure, prepare communities for climate risks, and create viable economic pathways for workers affected by the transition.
Peace and responsible public spending. Demand transparent justification for military spending and overseas commitments, strengthen congressional oversight of decisions involving war, and evaluate national priorities against urgent needs at home and abroad.
Accountable government. Strengthen ethics requirements, protect independent oversight, respect constitutional rights, and make government decisions more transparent to the people affected by them.
This is not a claim that every proposal can be passed by executive action or that every policy has one obvious design. Each requires legislative drafting, cost analysis, constitutional review, and a realistic implementation plan.
But the priorities should not be mysterious.
We have the capacity to identify problems.
We have decades of research on many of them.
We have examples of alternative policy approaches.
What we need is the political willingness to turn that knowledge into durable law.
XI. We Need a Bill of Rights for Ordinary People—and a Bill of Wrongs for the Laws That Fail Them
One of the most powerful implications of Mystal's work is the need to examine laws not simply by what their supporters claim they will accomplish, but by what they actually do.
A law can be defended as promoting public safety while producing disproportionate punishment.
It can be defended as protecting elections while placing unnecessary burdens on eligible voters.
It can be defended as respecting religious beliefs while imposing one group's beliefs on people who do not share them.
It can be defended as encouraging economic efficiency while transferring risk and cost onto workers and consumers.
It can be defended as protecting liberty while leaving powerful institutions with extraordinary freedom and ordinary people with few practical choices.
The language used to justify a law is not the same as evidence of its consequences.
That is why every major law should face serious scrutiny.
Who benefits?
Who bears the cost?
What problem does it solve?
What evidence demonstrates success?
What unintended consequences does it create?
Does it protect fundamental rights?
Does it create a disproportionate burden for particular communities?
Is there a less harmful way to achieve the same legitimate objective?
And if the law is failing, what is the evidence-based path forward?
We should not be afraid to create a systematic review of harmful laws—a public agenda for repeal, replacement, and accountability.
Not a list of laws we dislike because they were enacted by the opposing party.
A list of laws whose design and effects fail a serious test of justice, effectiveness, and democratic legitimacy.
That distinction matters.
The goal is not revenge.
The goal is a better country.
XII. The Point Is Not to Make Government Bigger. It Is to Make Government Worth Having.
There is a familiar argument that government should simply get out of the way.
Sometimes that is exactly right. Governments can be inefficient, intrusive, wasteful, discriminatory, or incompetent. Regulations can be poorly designed. Public programs can fail. Bureaucracies can become unresponsive.
But the opposite assumption—that less government automatically means more freedom—is equally simplistic.
What happens when government withdraws from protecting consumers, workers, voters, or the environment?
Power does not disappear.
It shifts.
A corporation may gain greater freedom to dictate terms to workers.
A landlord may gain greater leverage over tenants.
An industry may gain more influence over public policy.
A powerful private institution may exercise authority without the transparency and accountability expected of government.
The relevant question is not simply how much government exists.
It is who holds power, how that power is exercised, and whether the people affected have meaningful ways to challenge it.
A government that protects workers from exploitation can expand practical freedom.
A government that guarantees access to healthcare can expand people's ability to make choices without fear of financial ruin.
A government that protects voting rights can expand political participation.
A government that enforces civil rights can prevent private and public institutions from denying people equal treatment.
A government that safeguards the environment can protect the conditions necessary for people to live healthy lives.
But government must also be accountable for its own failures and abuses.
That is why good governance requires both capacity and restraint: the capacity to solve genuine public problems, and the restraint to exercise power lawfully, transparently, and fairly.
We do not need government for its own sake.
We need public institutions that do things people cannot reliably accomplish alone—and that remain accountable when they fail.
The Bottom Line: When You Get Power, Prove You Deserve It
America does not need another political movement that wins an election and then discovers that governing is difficult.
We already know governing is difficult.
We know powerful interests resist change.
We know laws are complicated.
We know institutions move slowly.
We know meaningful reform requires negotiation, expertise, money, time, and sustained public pressure.
The question is whether our political leaders are prepared to confront those realities or whether they will use them as excuses.
Bernie Sanders's economic message and Elie Mystal's critique of harmful laws point toward a shared challenge: a government cannot credibly claim to serve ordinary people while ignoring the economic arrangements and legal structures that make their lives harder.
The response should be more ambitious than reversing a handful of executive orders.
It should involve a sustained effort to change the rules.
Make political power more accountable.
Make economic opportunity more accessible.
Make essential services more affordable.
Make workers harder to exploit.
Make public institutions more transparent.
Make laws answerable to evidence.
And make it possible to repeal laws that cause more harm than good.
These principles should guide progressive leaders if they gain power. But they should also serve as standards by which we judge any administration, regardless of party.
No political faction deserves blind loyalty.
No institution deserves immunity from scrutiny.
No law deserves permanent protection simply because it has existed for decades.
And no elected official should be allowed to confuse the privilege of governing with the right to rule without accountability.
The purpose of political power is not to preserve the comfort of those who possess it.
It is to make collective life better for the people who live under it.
So when progressives win, I do not want them to spend their time congratulating themselves for winning.
I want them to repeal the laws that should never have survived.
I want them to build the policies that people have needed for generations.
I want them to challenge the concentration of wealth and influence that distorts democratic government.
I want them to protect the rights of people who have historically been excluded from power.
I want them to invest in a future that is healthier, fairer, more sustainable, and more economically secure.
And I want them to understand that the work is not complete when a bill is signed or a press conference ends.
The work is complete when the law changes people's lives for the better.
That is the standard.
Not party loyalty.
Not political theater.
Not the number of campaign promises fulfilled on paper.
Material improvements in people's lives—and institutions strong enough to protect those improvements long after the politicians who enacted them have left office.
We should demand nothing less.
Because laws are human choices.
Political systems are human constructions.
And the conditions under which people live are shaped, in part, by decisions we make together.
We can choose to preserve systems that reward concentrated wealth, tolerate unnecessary suffering, and treat inequality as inevitable.
Or we can choose to build something better.
The power to make that choice is not unlimited. It is constrained by constitutional rights, democratic processes, practical realities, and the need to respect the rights of others.
But within those constraints, there is enormous room to act.
The question is whether we have the courage to use that room.
When the opportunity comes, do not simply promise to fix America.
Change the rules that keep breaking it.
— Dr. Aletheia Aurelius
Knowledge is power. Context is everything. Perception is reality.
