Part One

Dear Gen Z (and Millennials, You're in This Too)

Dear Gen Z,

And to the Millennials reading over our shoulders: this is for you too. You hit the wall first, and you've been stuck against it longer than we have.

I'm writing this days before the 2026 midterms. I'm not writing to tell you who to vote for. I'm writing because I think we're about to waste another election cycle doing exactly what the people in charge want us to do, which is fight each other.

I'll start with where we are. In the spring 2026 Harvard Youth Poll, trust in the federal government among Americans ages 18 to 29 fell to 15 percent, the lowest the poll has ever recorded[1]. Half of us said people like us have no real say in government[2]. We are watching a war with Iran that Congress never authorized[3]. We are watching home prices drift further out of reach every year. And every time we try to talk about any of it, the conversation gets dragged back to whatever culture war topic is trending that week.

Opinion I don't think that's an accident. I think the people who profit from the way things are have figured out that a generation busy fighting itself is a generation that never organizes. As long as we're at each other's throats online, nobody has to answer for the wars, the money, or the fact that a full-time job no longer buys the life it used to.

So here's what I'm asking. Opinion Put the culture war down for now. Not forever. We'll have those arguments, and we'll have them honestly. But we'll have them after we've put people in office who actually answer to us. First, we unite on what we already agree on: no more unauthorized wars, no more money from PACs that put a foreign country's interests ahead of ours, and a real shot at building the same life our parents and grandparents were able to build.

That's the whole letter in one paragraph. The rest of it is the evidence, and the plan.

Part Two

The Fight They Want Us to Have

I'm not going to pretend we all agree on everything. We don't. Immigration enforcement, for example, splits young Americans sharply along party lines[4]. The same goes for abortion, guns, gender, policing, and a dozen other issues that fill our feeds every day. Those disagreements are real, and the people on both sides of them mostly hold their views for real reasons.

Opinion But look at how those fights actually play out. Every few weeks a new controversy takes over. Everyone picks a side. Members of Congress from both parties post about it, fundraise off it, and go on cable news to talk about it. Then it fades and the next one starts. Meanwhile, the votes that shape our lives, like funding a war, writing a tax bill, or deciding who gets to bankroll a campaign, happen with a fraction of the attention.

Opinion That isn't a coincidence. A culture war fight costs a politician nothing. It doesn't require passing a bill or crossing a donor. It keeps the base angry, keeps the small-dollar donations coming in, and keeps us sorted into two teams that will never talk to each other. A voter who is furious about the other side is a voter who won't look too closely at their own.

There's a line I keep coming back to on this site: United Above to Distract Below. The people at the top of both parties disagree loudly on the issues that don't threaten them, and quietly agree on the ones that do. When it comes to war, the people in charge of both parties have a long record of voting together, and the votes I'll walk through show it.

Opinion So I'm not asking you to give up your beliefs. I'm asking you to notice who benefits when we spend all our energy on the fights they pick for us. We can come back to the culture questions, and we will. But we'll argue them out a lot more honestly once the people running the country can't use those arguments as cover.

Part Three

We Already Agree on More Than They Want Us to Know

Here's the part that should give us hope. On the issues I care about most in this letter, we're not that divided.

War. In the spring 2026 Harvard Youth Poll, 55 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 said the U.S. military action in Iran is not in the best interest of the American people[5]. That's a majority of a generation that is famously hard to get a majority on anything.

Foreign aid and alliances. In the same poll, 46 percent of us said the U.S. relationship with Israel is mostly a burden, while only 16 percent called it mostly a benefit, the lowest of any country tested[6]. Pew found the same gap two years earlier: only 16 percent of adults under 30 favored sending military aid to Israel for its war against Hamas, compared with 56 percent of those 65 and older[7]. This isn't a one-party position either. In a 2026 Pew survey of Americans ages 18 to 49, 84 percent of Democrats held a negative view of Israel, and so did 57 percent of Republicans[8]. The numbers aren't identical, but a majority on both sides of our age group sees it the same way.

Money in politics. This one isn't limited to our generation, and that makes it even stronger. In 2023, 72 percent of American adults said there should be limits on how much individuals and organizations can spend on political campaigns, and that support crossed ideological and demographic lines[9]. Large majorities of Republicans and Democrats alike said campaign donors, lobbyists, and special interest groups have too much influence[10].

Trust. And we share the same frustration. Trust in the federal government among young Americans hit 15 percent this spring, a record low[11].

Opinion Put those together and you have the foundation of a movement. A young Republican who's tired of funding foreign wars and a young Democrat who's tired of AIPAC money in their primaries are angry about the same thing. They just haven't been told they're on the same side. The people who benefit from keeping them apart would very much like it to stay that way.

Part Four

The Math Doesn't Work Anymore

Opinion There was a time in this country when one person working a factory job could buy a house, raise a family, put the kids through college, and let the other parent stay home. I'm not saying that life was perfect for everyone, because it wasn't. But the basic deal was there: work hard at a steady job and you could build something. That deal is gone for most of us, and nobody in Washington seems in a hurry to bring it back.

The numbers back that up.

Housing. In the 1990s, the typical home cost about 3.2 times the median household income. By 2024, it cost five times the median income[12]. The 2026 State of the Nation's Housing report found that the income needed to buy a median-priced home has nearly doubled since 2020 and now tops $120,000[13]. So it shouldn't surprise anyone that the typical first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old, the oldest in the National Association of Realtors' long-term tracking. Back in the 1980s, that buyer was in their late twenties. First-time buyers also fell to a record low 21 percent of all purchases[14].

Opinion Forty. A whole decade of building equity that our parents had and we don't. That isn't us being lazy or spending too much on coffee. It's wages that didn't keep up with the price of the one asset that built the American middle class.

College. After adjusting for inflation, published tuition and fees rose about 101 percent at public four-year colleges since the mid-1990s, and about 74 percent at private nonprofit four-year schools[15]. To be fair, grant aid has brought the average net price down at many schools over the last decade[16]. But the sticker price is what a lot of families borrow against, and the debt is still here. Americans owe $1.65 trillion in student loans, and 10.6 percent of that balance is now 90 days or more past due[17]. Federal Reserve economists found that the growth in student debt between 2005 and 2014 accounted for more than 20 percent of the drop in homeownership among young adults, which they estimated at roughly 400,000 people who could have bought a home and didn't[18].

Wealth. As of mid-2026, Baby Boomers hold 52 percent of all U.S. household net worth while making up 30 percent of households. Millennials and Gen Z make up 37 percent of households and hold 11 percent of the wealth[19].

I want to be very clear about what I'm saying here. Opinion I don't want anyone's house, savings, or retirement. Our parents and grandparents worked for what they have. I'm not asking to take it. I'm asking for the same shot they had: a job that pays enough to buy a home before middle age, an education that doesn't follow you for twenty years, and a government that spends our money on us instead of on wars we never voted for.

Opinion We have more technology, more information, and more productivity than any generation in history, and somehow we're further from owning a home than they were. That isn't a personal failure. It's a policy failure, and policy is made by the people we elect.

Part Five

The War Party Wears Both Jerseys

If you only listened to the messaging, you'd think one party loves war and the other hates it. The voting record says otherwise.

Start with the wars our generation grew up inside. After September 11, the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force passed the House 420 to 1 and the Senate 98 to 0[20]. A year later, the authorization for the Iraq War passed the House 296 to 133 and the Senate 77 to 23, with 29 Senate Democrats voting yes alongside nearly every Republican[21]. Those two votes shaped the next two decades of American foreign policy, and both parties' leadership signed off on them.

Now look at today. The current war with Iran began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on February 28, 2026[22]. Congress never authorized it. A ceasefire took effect in April, but by July the president said he considered it "over" after U.S. forces struck more than 80 targets[23].

Here's how Congress responded:

Opinion Look at who crossed the line in each direction. Republicans like Fitzpatrick and Collins voted to put the war back under Congress's control. A Democrat voted to let it continue. The real divide isn't left versus right. It's between members who believe Congress should decide when this country goes to war, and members who are happy to let a president do it for them, especially when that president is on their team.

Opinion And that last part matters, because the record shows a lot of these members only care about Congress's war powers when the other party holds the White House. In 2011, Republican Speaker John Boehner led the House in rebuking President Obama for going into Libya without Congress's approval[27]. In 2026, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson defended President Trump's decision to attack Iran without it[28]. Democrats did the same thing in reverse. In November 2024, with Biden in office, only 19 senators backed even one of Bernie Sanders' resolutions to block offensive weapons sales to Israel[29]. By 2026, with Trump in office, 40 of 47 Senate Democrats voted to block a sale[30]. Conditions in Gaza changed between those votes, and some Democrats said that's what moved them. But the shift lined up almost perfectly with the change in who held the White House. Same policy. Different president.

To be fair, some members held the line no matter who was in charge. When Biden bombed the Houthis in Yemen without congressional approval in 2024, Democrats like Pramila Jayapal and Ro Khanna called it unconstitutional, and Republicans like Thomas Massie and Mike Lee agreed with them[31]. Jayapal went on to write this year's Iran war powers resolution[32]. Opinion Those are the members who actually believe what they say. Everyone else is just picking a jersey.

That's what I mean by the war party. It isn't a party at all. It's a habit that both parties' leadership falls into whenever it's convenient, and we're the ones who get sent to fight, and the ones who end up paying for it.

Part Six

Follow the Money

To understand why the war party never seems to lose, you have to follow the money. Most of it moves through a type of group most of us never think about: the super PAC.

How we got here. In 2010, the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United opened the door to unlimited outside spending in our elections. The Brennan Center found that in the first few cycles afterward, super PACs spent more than $1 billion on federal elections, and nearly 60 percent of that money came from just 195 people and their spouses[33]. In the most competitive Senate races of 2014, outside groups outspent the candidates themselves[34]. Opinion When a handful of donors can outspend the people actually running for office, our votes are competing with their checkbooks.

The biggest spender of 2026. This cycle, the largest outside spender in the country is the United Democracy Project, the super PAC of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It has spent $54 million on congressional races, and the wider pro-Israel donor network has spent $71 million, second only to the crypto industry[35]. AIPAC itself has put $30 million into the super PAC[36]. Most of that spending has gone into Democratic primaries, targeting candidates who criticize unconditional military aid to Israel[37]. In Michigan alone, the super PAC spent $30.6 million in a single Senate primary[38]. And according to a New York Times analysis, its ads now rarely mention Israel at all[39].

Some of the money is harder to see. In 2024, The Intercept reported that AIPAC was routing money into an Oregon congressional primary through 314 Action, a PAC that says it elects scientists[40]. 314 Action called the report inaccurate. Its next FEC filing showed a $1 million donation from AIPAC's super PAC, received around the time it was spending in that race[41]. This year, Drop Site News reported a similar pattern in a Philadelphia House race[42].

To be fair to AIPAC, it argues that it takes no foreign money and represents American citizens exercising their right to participate in politics[43]. That's legally true. Opinion But my line isn't about where the dollars come from. It's about whose interests the group puts first. A PAC whose core mission is a foreign government's security, and that spends tens of millions to punish American candidates who question aid to that government, is not putting our generation first. And this isn't only a left-wing complaint anymore: criticism of AIPAC has spread to the populist right[44], and candidates in both parties are now publicly refusing its money[45].

The defense industry plays both sides. In the first half of 2023 alone, defense contractors spent nearly $70 million lobbying the federal government. Republicans got about 63 percent of the sector's contributions overall, while in the Senate a slim majority went to Democrats[46]. Opinion The defense industry doesn't care which party wins. It just makes sure whoever wins owes it something.

Foreign governments don't pick a side either. Look at the record:

Opinion Qatar shows up on both sides of that list. That should tell you everything. Foreign governments aren't loyal to Democrats or Republicans. They're loyal to whoever can deliver for them, and both parties keep proving they're willing to deliver.

Part Seven

What Happens When You Say No

If you want to see what this system does to someone who breaks from it, look at Thomas Massie.

Massie, a Republican from northern Kentucky, spent 14 years in the House as one of its most consistent anti-war voices. In June 2025, he and Democrat Ro Khanna introduced a bipartisan war powers resolution to keep the United States out of the Israel-Iran war[52]. They had already teamed up to challenge Biden's strikes in Yemen[53]. He voted against the 2027 defense bill[54]. And he repeatedly voted against military aid to Israel, along with aid to other foreign countries[55].

On May 19, 2026, he lost his primary to Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL recruited by Trump allies specifically to beat him[56]. It became the most expensive House primary in American history, with roughly $37 million spent in total[57].

Here's where the money came from:

To be fair, Massie wasn't defenseless. His campaign and the PACs backing him spent more than $18 million combined, only slightly less than the pro-Gallrein side[63]. And the ugliest moment of the race came from both camps using artificial intelligence.

Two weeks before the primary, MAGA KY ran an ad built from AI-generated footage, styled to look like security camera video, showing Massie holding hands with Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, eating dinner with them, and walking into a hotel lobby together[64]. The narrator announced that Massie had been "caught in a throuple" and was cheating with the Squad on the America First movement[65]. None of it happened. The ad carried a disclaimer saying it was satire created with AI, but it ran in small print that many viewers could easily miss[66], and one local outlet's review found no apparent AI disclosure at all[67]. Massie called it "disgusting and defamatory" and said the ad was counting on older voters not recognizing it as AI[68]. After he lost, he claimed many older people voted against him because they believed he'd actually dated Ocasio-Cortez and Omar[69].

The pro-Massie side wasn't clean either. Kentucky 4th PAC, which supported Massie, ran its own AI ad depicting Gallrein, a decorated combat veteran, fleeing from Trump on a fictional battlefield[70]. Another pro-Massie super PAC ran an ad featuring a rainbow Star of David alongside a picture of an anti-Massie donor[71]. And the groups that opposed Massie have their own case against him: the RJC pointed to his votes against emergency aid to Israel after October 7 and against resolutions condemning antisemitism[72].

Opinion Think about what that means for us. Our generation grew up online. Most of us can spot AI slop in a second. But a lot of the people who actually vote in primaries can't, and the people running these campaigns know it. When a super PAC funded by a few billionaires can fabricate a sex scandal about a sitting congressman two weeks before an election, and the only warning is fine print, the problem isn't just the money anymore. It's whether voters can trust what they're seeing at all.

Opinion But here's what I want our generation to take from this race. Massie took the exact position a majority of young Americans hold: Congress, not the president, decides when we go to war, and our tax dollars shouldn't fund foreign wars that aren't ours. For holding that position, he faced a president of his own party, a super PAC built just to end his career, and more than $15 million from groups whose central mission is a foreign country's security. He lost.

Opinion If one of the most consistent members of Congress can be taken out this way, nobody in office will stick their neck out for us unless they know we'll show up for them. That's the lesson. The money only wins when we don't vote in primaries. Massie's district decided his fate in an election most people, especially young people, never pay attention to.

I go deeper on how the money moved in that race in The Massie Primary.

Part Eight

It's Been Done Before

If all of this sounds impossible, it isn't. Both the right and the left have already proven that ordinary voters can take out powerful incumbents in a primary. They just have to show up when nobody else does.

The right did it first. In 2010, Utah Senator Bob Bennett, an 18-year incumbent, didn't even make it onto his own party's primary ballot. Tea Party activists flooded the Republican caucuses, nearly doubling turnout from two years earlier, and the delegates they sent to the state convention knocked him out[73]. Mike Lee, the challenger who went on to win the seat, is still in the Senate today[74].

Four years later, it happened to one of the most powerful Republicans in the country. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his primary to Dave Brat, an economics professor nobody in Washington had taken seriously[75]. Cantor outspent him more than 40 to 1, and his own internal poll had him ahead by more than 30 points[76]. Brat won by roughly 7,000 votes. Here's the part that matters most: if Cantor had simply held onto the votes he got in his 2012 primary, he would have won[77]. He didn't lose because his district turned against him. He lost because Brat's voters showed up and his didn't.

The left did it next. In 2018, Joe Crowley was the No. 4 Democrat in the House and a possible future Speaker[78]. A 28-year-old organizer named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez challenged him, and was outspent by roughly 18 to 1[79]. She won with 16,898 votes[80], in a primary where only about 13 percent of active Democrats in the district turned out[81].

Opinion Look at those numbers again. Fewer than 17,000 people changed who represents a district of more than 700,000. Brat beat the second most powerful Republican in the House with about 36,000 votes[77]. Primaries are where the real decisions get made, and they're decided by tiny numbers of people. That's the opening for us.

The counterpunch. I'm not going to pretend it's easy, because the people with the money learn too. In 2024, AIPAC's super PAC spent about $15 million to defeat Jamaal Bowman[82], a Justice Democrats congressman who had unseated the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee four years earlier. That race became the most expensive House primary in history at the time, and pro-Israel groups also helped defeat Cori Bush that same year[83]. Two years later, the record was broken again in Massie's race. The money adapts. That's exactly why one-off upsets aren't enough. We need a sustained movement that shows up every primary, every cycle, in both parties.

Opinion I'm not holding up the Tea Party or Justice Democrats as models for what to believe. I disagree with plenty from both, and both made mistakes, including backing candidates who couldn't win general elections. I'm holding them up as proof of what's possible. Two movements on opposite ends of the spectrum used the same tool, the primary, to unseat people the establishment thought were untouchable. If they could do it separately, imagine what we could do together.

Part Nine

The Plan After November

So what do we actually do? Here's what I think it looks like. Opinion

Step one: Vote on November 3. This letter isn't about who you vote for this week. But show up. Every election we skip teaches the people in power that they don't have to listen to us.

Step two: Learn your primary rules now, not in 2028. Primaries decide most seats in this country, and the rules are set state by state. In states with closed primaries, you have to be registered with a party to vote in its primary, and the deadline to register or switch can come months before the vote[84]. If you're a registered independent in one of those states, you may have already locked yourself out of the election that actually matters. Look up your state's rules after the midterms and plan around them. Opinion If that means registering with the party that controls your district just to vote in its primary, do it. Party registration is a tool, not a loyalty oath.

Step three: Find out who's paying your representatives. You don't need to take my word for any of this. You can look it up yourself:

Step four: Hold every candidate to the same three questions. Whether they have an R or a D next to their name, ask them:

  1. Will you refuse money from any PAC whose central mission puts a foreign country's interests ahead of America's?
  2. Will you vote for every war powers resolution that requires Congress to approve a war, no matter which party holds the White House?
  3. Will you vote against military aid for any war Congress hasn't authorized?

Opinion A "yes" on all three earns our support in the primary. A "no," or a dodge, earns a challenger. And we judge them on their record, not their promises. Section 5 showed how many members discover their principles only when the other party is in power.

Step five: Run. The people who beat Cantor and Crowley weren't career politicians. One was an economics professor; the other was a bartender and community organizer[85]. Filing deadlines for the 2028 primaries come sooner than most people think, often within a year[86]. Opinion If you've ever thought someone our age should be running, it might be you. And if it isn't you, find the person in your district who should be, and get behind them early, before the money picks a side.

Step six: Do it in both parties at once. Opinion This is the part that makes it different from the Tea Party or Justice Democrats. Those movements took over one side. We go after the war caucus everywhere, at the same time. A young Republican primarying a warhawk in Texas and a young Democrat primarying one in New Jersey are fighting the same fight. If we coordinate, the people who profit from our division lose the one thing they count on: us being too busy fighting each other to notice.

Part Ten

Sincerely, One of You

I know how this sounds. Another person online telling our generation to get involved. We've heard it every election since we were old enough to vote, and most of the time it comes from people who want our votes and then disappear until the next cycle.

I'm not asking for your vote. I'm asking for something harder. Opinion I'm asking you to stop letting them decide what we fight about.

We already agree that we're tired of wars nobody voted for. We already agree that a foreign government's lobby shouldn't be the biggest spender in our elections. We already agree that a full-time job should be enough to build a life. Those aren't left-wing or right-wing positions. They're ours. The only thing standing between us and the people who could actually act on them is a primary system that almost none of us pay attention to, and a culture war that keeps us too busy to notice.

Opinion So let's notice. Let's argue about everything else later, and we will, loudly and honestly, the way people who actually respect each other do. But first, let's put people in office who answer to us instead of to the donors, the defense contractors, and the foreign governments who've been running the show while we were distracted.

United above to distract below. That's how they've kept power. United below is how we take it back.

See you at the primaries.

Sincerely,
One of you