DSA Leadership Quietly Voted to Scrap the Senate
By a Razor-Thin Margin, Not a Members’ Mandate.
Fox News reported July 10, 2026, citing “a source familiar with DSA’s planning,” that the Democratic Socialists of America is preparing to unveil an updated platform calling for “scrapping the U.S. Senate” and replacing the president and the Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary “chosen by and subordinate to Congress.” The language traces to City Journal’s June 17, 2026 reporting, which first obtained and quoted the amendment’s text.
What neither report is saying — and what gets flattened in the loudest social-media reactions — is who actually voted for it. DSA’s roughly 900-delegate National Convention never took this up. The Senate-abolition language was added by DSA’s 27-member National Political Committee, the organization’s elected leadership body, at an in-person meeting in June 2026, passed by what City Journal describes only as “a razor-thin margin” — no outlet has published an exact vote count.
As of this story’s publish date, the amendment does not appear on DSA’s own public platform page. The organization is not scheduled to formally unveil the full platform to its own wider membership until its “Socialists Summit” in Chicago, July 31–Aug. 2, 2026. This page keeps those three layers — convention, committee, and rollout — separate throughout, because conflating them is exactly the inaccuracy this story exists to correct.
- 27 members — size of DSA's National Political Committee, the leadership body that added the Senate-abolition language — not the full convention or membership · Source: City Journal; DSA's own structure page
- 900–291 — vote by which DSA's ~900-delegate National Convention adopted the base 'Workers Deserve More!' program in Chicago, Aug. 8–10, 2025 — a program that does not itself call for abolishing the Senate · Source: Rochester DSA
- 7 leaders named — National Political Committee members City Journal reported were present for the June 2026 amendment vote, including two co-chairs and four caucus representatives · Source: City Journal
- 0 mentions — of abolishing the Senate on DSA's own public platform page as of this story's publish date, even though the amendment reportedly passed a month earlier · Source: platform.dsausa.org
- July 31–Aug 2 — dates of DSA's 'Socialists Summit' in Chicago, where the amended platform is set to be unveiled publicly for the first time · Source: Fox News
Coverage of DSA’s platform update has tended to compress a multi-step process into a single headline — “DSA wants to abolish the Senate” — without saying which part of the organization actually voted for what, or when. The record, pieced together from City Journal’s original reporting, DSA’s own convention materials, and Fox News’s July 10 disclosure, breaks into three distinct events.
First, DSA’s full National Convention — roughly 900 delegates — met in Chicago Aug. 8–10, 2025, and adopted the base “Workers Deserve More!” program by a 900–291 vote, according to a Rochester DSA delegate’s published account of the proceedings. That base program is the one still posted on DSA’s own platform site. Second, DSA’s 27-member National Political Committee — the elected body that governs the organization between conventions, not the convention delegates and not the roughly 80,000-member roll — met in person in June 2026 and passed an amendment adding the Senate-abolition and executive/judiciary language, by what City Journal reported only as “a razor-thin margin.” Third, the amended platform, NPC addition included, is scheduled for its first public unveiling to DSA’s own broader membership at the organization’s “Socialists Summit” in Chicago, July 31–Aug. 2, 2026 — roughly three weeks after Fox News’s report and more than a month after the NPC vote itself.
“Scrapping the U.S. Senate … replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”
Language from DSA's National Political Committee amendment, as reported by City Journal (Stu Smith), June 17, 2026
DSA’s public platform page, platform.dsausa.org/democracy/, is the 2025 convention-approved version — the one 900 delegates actually voted on. As of this story’s publish date, it calls for ending the Senate filibuster, replacing the Electoral College with a national popular vote for president, and limiting “the Court’s power of judicial review, which it uses to effectively create and abolish laws outside the legislative process.” It also calls, more broadly, for “a new democratic constitution” establishing rights “based on proportional representation in a single federal legislature” and a “representative Congress” elected under a multi-party system.
None of that is the same as calling to abolish the Senate outright, or to strip the presidency and Supreme Court of independent authority. Ending the filibuster is a procedural rule change Senate Democrats and Republicans have both floated at various points; a national popular vote for president is a live proposal in state legislatures unrelated to DSA. The base program’s “single federal legislature” language gestures toward a unicameral system in the abstract — but it is the June 2026 NPC amendment, not the convention-approved base program, that names the Senate specifically and calls for scrapping it.
New at City Journal: DSA's National Political Committee just voted — by a razor-thin margin — to add language to their platform calling for abolishing the U.S. Senate and putting the presidency and Supreme Court under Congress's control. Full report and the seven NPC members behind it.
City Journal’s Stu Smith reported that DSA’s National Political Committee — described in the organization’s own materials as its top elected leadership body, governing between the biennial conventions — met in person in June 2026 and adopted the Senate-abolition amendment by what the report calls only “a razor-thin margin.” No outlet, including City Journal, has published the actual tally. That is a meaningful gap: a “razor-thin” vote of a 27-member committee could mean 14–13, or it could mean an even narrower split depending on absences and abstentions. This story does not estimate a number that has not been reported.
What is reported is who was in the room. City Journal named seven NPC members present for the vote, spanning several of DSA’s internal ideological caucuses — evidence, on its own, that the amendment was a leadership-level action rather than anything resembling a membership referendum.
Ashik Siddique — NPC co-chair.
Cliff Connolly — Marxist Unity Group.
Sarah Milner — Reform & Revolution.
Hazel Williams — Red Star Caucus.
Katie Sims — Socialist Majority Caucus.
Sidney Carlson White — Marxist Unity Group.
Francesca Maviglia — Spring of Revolution.
Source: City Journal, June 17, 2026. This is the outlet’s list of members reported present, not a certified roll-call vote; DSA has not published one.
The full 27-member NPC is elected by convention delegates every two years, which gives it a democratic mandate of a kind — but a mandate to govern between conventions, not a substitute for a convention vote on a specific platform plank. DSA’s own rules route major program changes through the convention’s resolution process; the Senate-abolition language instead moved through the committee’s own amendment authority, which is why it does not yet appear on the group’s public platform page even though the vote itself is now more than a month old.
The most-quoted Democratic reactions to DSA’s rise all landed in late June 2026 — one to two weeks before Fox News’s July 10 report disclosed the Senate-abolition language publicly. That timing matters: none of the officials quoted below were responding to this specific provision. They were reacting to DSA-aligned candidates’ broader records after a run of primary wins.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) drew criticism in late June for what Fox News described as a “gentle, nebulous” refusal to fully endorse DSA-aligned nominees’ views, even as he separately congratulated the primary winners as the “newest members of the NYC congressional delegation.” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) was blunter, calling socialist influence in the party “a growing cancer” the party “can’t let… spread,” and warning that incoming DSA-aligned members will “wreak havoc in Congress” and try to “hold the party hostage” to their positions.
Abolish the Senate is in their platform. Not a fringe post somewhere — their actual platform. And Democratic leadership still won't say a word about it.
Democratic strategist James Carville — not an elected official — went further on Fox News on June 27, 2026, saying of primary winner Darializa Avila-Chevalier: “I don’t have anything in common with Ms. Chevalier, and I really don’t want to be in the same party she’s in.” Carville’s objections, as reported, centered on Avila-Chevalier’s broader record — her positions on Israel policy and past public statements — not on the Senate-abolition amendment, which had not yet been publicly reported when he spoke.
DSA counts several prominent elected officials as members or endorses them in general elections: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) are DSA members; 2026 Democratic primary winners Melat Kiros (Colorado) and Darializa Avila-Chevalier (New York) were DSA-endorsed. No reporting found for this story shows any of them commenting on, endorsing, or being asked about the Senate-abolition amendment specifically. Their appearance in coverage of DSA’s rise reflects general DSA affiliation or endorsement — not a position on this provision, which had not been publicly reported when most of the coverage of their campaigns ran.
Documented: Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, and Mamdani (D) are DSA members; Kiros and Avila-Chevalier were DSA-endorsed 2026 primary winners.
Not documented: any statement from any of the five specifically addressing the National Political Committee’s Senate-abolition amendment, its June 2026 vote, or City Journal’s reporting on it.
Why the gap likely exists: the amendment was not publicly reported until City Journal’s June 17 story and Fox News’s July 10 follow-up — and DSA itself does not plan to formally present the platform to its own membership until the Socialists Summit, July 31–Aug. 2, 2026.
That gap cuts against reading this story as “here is what elected socialist Democrats believe about the Senate.” It is, more precisely, a story about what a 27-member committee voted to add to a platform that the wider party — DSA-affiliated officials included — has not yet been asked to react to in public.
DSA members describing their strategy in plain terms: work inside the Democratic Party, run candidates under its banner, and use the positions they win to advance goals — including this platform — that go well beyond anything in the party's own platform.
DSA co-chair Ashik Siddique has not disputed the substance of City Journal’s reporting. Quoted in that same June 17, 2026 report defending the platform generally, Siddique said: “abolishing the Senate is pretty radical and is something that I think more and more people are… seeing that as very reasonable.” That is a defense of the position on the merits, not a denial that the NPC adopted it or a claim that it went through the full convention.
“Abolishing the Senate is pretty radical and is something that I think more and more people are … seeing that as very reasonable.”
DSA co-chair Ashik Siddique, quoted in City Journal, June 17, 2026
Separately, in a July 1, 2026 appearance on Fox News’ Will Cain Show, Siddique pushed back on comparisons between DSA and the former Soviet Union and argued the organization’s long-term goals shouldn’t be confused with “shorter-term visions of governance, for which you should look to our candidates’ actual platform” — a distinction that, read alongside the amendment itself, underscores the same three-layer structure this story documents: an aspirational, committee-driven maximum program on one track, and individual candidates’ actual governing platforms on another.
No Truth Social activity addressing this specific amendment was found for this story as of publication — a real, disclosed gap rather than an omission. DSA does not maintain an official Truth Social presence, and no DSA-affiliated official’s Truth Social account was found commenting on the Senate-abolition language.
DSA’s 27-member National Political Committee — not its roughly 900-delegate convention, and not its wider membership — voted by a razor-thin, unpublished margin in June 2026 to add language calling for scrapping the U.S. Senate and subordinating the presidency and Supreme Court to Congress. DSA co-chair Ashik Siddique has defended the position rather than disputed it. The language does not yet appear on DSA’s own public platform page, and the organization is not scheduled to present it to its own membership until the Chicago Socialists Summit, July 31–Aug. 2, 2026. The sharpest Democratic pushback so far — from Hakeem Jeffries, Josh Gottheimer, and James Carville — predates the amendment’s public disclosure and targets DSA-aligned candidates’ broader records, not this provision. No DSA-affiliated elected official has been found on the record addressing it either. The story, for now, is a leadership committee’s vote — not yet a party reckoning.
