Democratic Socialists of America co-chair Megan Romer reaffirmed the party’s calls to abolish the Senate, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and national borders in an interview on Sunday.
The DSA, whose members include Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has become the leading force on the Democratic Party’s progressive wing after DSA-backed candidates defeated several establishment Democrats in primary elections this summer. Romer stuck by many of her movement’s more controversial policy objectives while speaking with Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday.
Romer answered affirmatively when asked if she wants to defund the Pentagon and replace the Supreme Court and Presidency “as we know them,” and also said she supports “government or public ownership of most large corporations.” When asked specifically about abolishing the Senate, Romer said the upper chamber is “an anachronistic institution.”
“It is made to protect power for — the Senate was part of the system that was made to make sure that the people didn’t have too much of a say. So we want to expand Congress significantly but make it a unicameral legislature.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) responded to the comments on social media, saying the “DSA isn’t just gaining influence in New York or California… these ideas could be coming to your community sooner than you think.”
Centrist Democratic figures such as Van Jones and Bill Maher have recently disavowed their party’s leftward shift ahead of November’s midterm elections. Democratic strategist Bill Carville said in late June that New York socialist House candidate Avila Chevalier should “form her own party” after her primary victory.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) also highlighted Romer’s comments on social media, likening voters’ choice in November to that between “common sense” and “communism.” DSA candidates run on an anti-Israel platform that calls for the abolishment of immigration enforcement, higher wealth taxes, and Medicare for All.
Romer referred to “long-term” ambitions in the context of immigration and prison reform, and said establishment Democrats “should be worried about the voters, and about what the voters think” ahead of November.
“This is part of this longer-term plan,” Romer said when asked about DSA’s calls to abolish ICE. “If we can get to a place where the U.S. is not destabilizing countries in order to mine them for resources, there will be significantly less migration… we’re not saying open the borders tomorrow, we’re saying rebuild an economy and a society that works for everyone. And the open borders is part of a longer-term, international plan.”
AOC AND PROGRESSIVES POUR COLD WATER ON DSA’S CALL TO ABOLISH THE SENATE
When asked if she wants to “abolish prisons, at least in large part,” Romer said, “as part of a long-term program, yeah.”
“So the long-term plan, when we think about most people who are in prison, they are mostly in prison for crimes of poverty,” Romer said. “So when we get rid of this need for crimes of poverty to exist, when we get rid of that destabilizing force that creates so many people who are living in desperate situations and doing desperate things, that brings those numbers down to very small numbers, and then we can collectively decide what we do with those people. I suspect it won’t look like the prison system as we know it today.”