Dem Socialists Target Constitution’s Guardrails

July 30, 2026

A political group with growing influence in Democratic primaries just put its name on a plan to erase the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court as we know them.

Quick Take

The Democratic Socialists of America unveiled an updated platform called “Workers Deserve More” that calls for abolishing the Senate.
The plan also proposes replacing the presidency and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by, and answerable to, Congress.
The document adds abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and ending “mass incarceration,” on top of earlier calls to scrap the Electoral College.
A DSA co-chair defended the ideas on television as “true” and said they are not extreme, even as some Democratic lawmakers dodged questions about it.

What The New Platform Actually Says

The Democratic Socialists of America posted its full platform online in July 2026 under the title “Workers Deserve More.” The group’s official program page says it wants to “replace the two-party system with a multi-party democracy” and “abolish the Senate”. The document also calls for expanding the House of Representatives and adding ranked choice voting nationwide.

Reporting on the platform describes an even bigger goal than trimming the Senate. The plan would replace the presidency and Supreme Court with “an executive judiciary selected by and answerable to Congress”. That means no more independently elected president and no more justices confirmed for life. Congress alone would pick the people running the executive and judicial branches.

The group is not shy about calling this what it is: a rewrite of the American system of checks and balances. One analysis of the platform said the group wants to “abolish the Senate, destroy constitutional checks and balances, and eliminate the ‘carceral forces of the capitalist state'”. That last phrase refers to prisons and policing, which the platform also targets for major cuts.

Co-Chairs Defend The Plan On Camera

Democratic Socialists of America co-chair Ashik Siddique went on television and stood behind the Senate proposal without hedging. Asked directly if the plan was true, he said “true,” then argued eliminating the Senate would make government “more representative”. He has said in other interviews that government “should be proportional to the population” and that he doesn’t “see the point of the Senate”.

Another co-chair, Gustavo Gordillo, called the Senate an “undemocratic institution” during a Fox News segment, pointing to how it gives smaller states equal representation regardless of population. That argument is not new. Critics on the left have made it for years. What is new is a national platform putting it in writing alongside plans to replace the presidency itself.

Democrats In Congress Struggle To Answer For It

House Democrats got caught flat-footed when reporters asked them about the platform directly. Video coverage showed several lawmakers dodging or deflecting questions about whether they support eliminating the Senate and the presidency. That kind of silence speaks volumes. If elected Democrats truly rejected this platform outright, saying so would cost them nothing.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, herself a Democratic Socialists of America member, tried to find middle ground instead of a flat no. Reports say she is “looking for wiggle room,” arguing the Senate needs reform rather than outright abolition. That is a notably softer stance than rejecting the idea altogether, and it says something about how far this thinking has traveled inside her own political circles.

Why This Matters Beyond One Platform

The Democratic Socialists of America is not a fringe group with zero reach. Its members and endorsed candidates have won seats in Congress and city halls across the country. A platform calling for the end of the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court as built by the Constitution is not a hypothetical debate club exercise. It is a stated goal from an organization with real electoral wins behind it.

This is not the first time the group has floated these ideas. Its 2021 platform draft already called for constitutional amendments to abolish the Senate and the Electoral College. The new document goes further, tying that goal to replacing the presidency and courts, and it does so under a co-chair willing to say “true” on camera rather than walk it back.

The Constitution’s system of separate branches and a Senate built to slow down pure majority rule was designed on purpose, not by accident. Proposals to scrap it wholesale for a Congress-controlled executive and judiciary deserve to be judged on the plain text the group itself published, not softened by supporters after the fact.