Former DSA vice chair defends platform to abolish US Senate
Former Democratic Socialists of America vice chair Bhaskar Sunkara defends DSA’s growing influence and radical platform, including calls to abolish the U.S. Senate. He explains his Marxist views, addressing criticism from a former DSA member about the organization’s ideologies. Sunkara discusses DSA candidates pushing progressive demands, like universal healthcare, within the Democratic Party.
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Senate Republicans are warning that a new policy push from a far-left group gaining momentum in politics would unravel the Constitution, and could leave them without a job.
As a progressive surge threatens to rewrite the core of the Democratic Party, earlier this month the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which scored early victories in primary elections across the U.S. over the last several weeks, unveiled its vision for government.
Among the three main pillars was a call to abolish the Senate in favor of an expanded House of Representatives with multiple parties in a bid to effectively eliminate the age-old two-party system that has dominated American politics and representation for over two centuries.
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The DSA wants to abolish the Senate, among several other goals, in their vision of government. But Senate Republicans contend that the notion runs afoul of the Constitution, and argue that the experiment is best tested on an island unseen to the world. ( )
“I mean, we are important,” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., quipped to Fox News Digital. “[It’s] pretty disgusting. I mean, you know the Senate is here so we can represent all — make sure all the states are represented. So, yeah. I think the Founding Fathers were pretty smart.”
While the number of members in the House of Representatives depends on the population of every state, the Senate is the great equalizer where every state, regardless of size or population, receives two senators to represent them in the upper chamber.
The progressive swell during this midterm cycle, so far, has largely been contained to the House, where DSA-backed candidates toppled longtime Democratic incumbents in New York City and Colorado last month.
But one candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, who is running for the Democratic nomination in the Michigan Senate race, has tenuous links to the DSA from events the organization has sponsored that he’s attended. They’ve also not formally endorsed him in his battle against Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich.
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Still, he has the backing of two of the top DSA-aligned lawmakers in Congress: Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y.
The DSA’s program, dubbed Workers Deserve More, was officially launched last week on a call with DSA members and called to eliminate the upper chamber of Congress.
One of the group’s top organizers, Michaela Branagan, contended, “Well, why do we have a Senate?”
“A lot of people are going to see that, and they’d be, like, ‘Wait a second. What’s so great about the Senate?’ I mean, I’m not sure about this, but I’m pretty sure the only popular senator is Bernie Sanders — because he ran for president as a Democratic Socialist,” Branagan said on the call.
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Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told Fox News Digital that the DSA ought to test their vision of governance far from where anybody could see it.
“Maybe a little pilot project on an island nation where the entire world experiment is on somebody’s shoulders, like, ‘ooh, I didn’t get that one right,’” Tillis said. “My God. I’m pretty happy with being the exceptional nation on the planet right now. I’m into course correction, a little tuning there, trimming the sails, but not sinking the boat.”
And Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, questioned “where did this group of geniuses come from in America?”
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., makes his way to a vote in the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, April 30, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc)
He argued that the midterm election, and the schism within the Democratic Party, was turning the battle into not being about the GOP versus Democrats, but rather “people who hate this country versus people who love this country.”
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Moreno, who was born in Columbia before moving to Florida with his family as a child, said that he learned there was a “very specific reason the Senate was created” after his mother made him to read the Federalist Papers before obtaining his citizenship.
“I think if somebody goes through that exercise they’re going to say, ‘What were these guys thinking? Like, why was the Senate created? Why is it the way it is?’ They’ll understand it,” Moreno said. “They also, remember, want to abolish the electoral college.”
“Basically, they just want to have a Cuban dictatorship in America,” he continued. “It hasn’t worked out so well for Cuba.”