New Progressive Blueprint: ‘Forging a Democracy that Works for All’

Interview with Khury Petersen-Smith, Michael Ratner Middle East fellow and the co-director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, conducted by Scott Harris

July 29, 2026

As the nation’s attention is increasingly focused on the affordability crisis where prices on just about everything are on the rise, this November’s midterm election is a primary point of leverage where voters can register their opposition to current Trump administration policies. Public opinion polls find that there’s increasing opposition to President Trump’s war on Iran, his irrational imposition of tariffs that are in reality new taxes on American consumers, and deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

While Democratic party House and Senate candidates are banking on the unpopularity of Donald Trump’s erratic, lawless authoritarian presidency to win elections this fall, progressive Democrats and activists assert that a return to the pre-Trump status quo is not a viable solution to the nation’s many intractable problems.

In July, the Institute for Policy Studies, a 62-year-old progressive think tank in Washington, D.C. released a report titled, “Forging a Democracy that Works for All: Countering the power of billionaires, corporations, and the Pentagon.” Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with one of the co-authors of the report, Khury Petersen-Smith, the Michael Ratner Middle East fellow and the co-director of the New Internationalism Project at IPS. Here he summarizes the report, identifying key measures to strengthen democracy, with an emphasis on challenging the outsized influence of the U.S. military.

KHURY PETERSEN-SMITH: So identifying these key anti-democratic forces, the billionaires, corporations, and the Pentagon, we basically issued this report saying we need to push back on the power of those institutions and those forces in favor of more democratic rights for everybody. And crucially—and this is a big part of my job— when we talk about fighting for democracy, that’s critical obviously for domestic life here within the United States, but we also need to democratize U.S. foreign policy.

SCOTT HARRIS: Khury, please summarize for our audience each of the top line action items in this blueprint to counter the power of billionaires, corporate influence, and the Pentagon. What are some of the specific actions that you’re calling for?

KHURY PETERSEN-SMITH: I’m going to focus on the Pentagon stuff because that really is my job. But of course, I mean, there’s any number of ways that we need to counter the power of billionaires and the kind of I mean, “influence” isn’t even strong enough a word, the way that they are dominating U.S. politics in terms of their place in the political system. And of course, economically, the kind of lack of regulation of their companies, the way that they were evading taxes, all of that is counter to democracy. And we address all of that. And my colleagues at IPS who focus on economic inequality address that more specifically. When it comes to countering Pentagon influence, I mean, the first thing is just cutting this Pentagon budget, which at the moment is around a trillion dollars, which is an unreal amount of money. And the Trump administration has decided that that’s not enough actually.

They want $1.5 trillion and we see what they use that money for. So we’re saying first things first, cut that. The report says cut it in half. I want to be clear, that’s a beginning (chuckles). I don’t think that we need to stay at cutting it in half. Half a trillion dollars is still an unreal amount of money, but because it’s so much money, if we cut the Pentagon budget by that much, not only would that be of tremendous benefit to people around the world because this kind of out-of-control war machine would not have the essentially unlimited resource that it has at the moment. Would it be critical to people here as well? I mean, we are seeing not only that they are proposing a larger Pentagon budget, but they’re proposing cutting really the basic things that keep people alive, not just proposing, but cutting things like SNAP.

They want to cut Social Security. Trump is saying explicitly, “We can’t pay for things like childcare because we are waging wars.” And so all of that needs to be reversed. Another thing that we say is, it’s not us saying it, it’s really reminding the constitutional fact that the president actually doesn’t have the right to declare war. That is Congress’ right. And when I say that, I want to be clear. I’m not for wars declared by Congress. Rather, I’m saying that we need Congress to exercise what they are charged with in the Constitution, which is they get to decide whether or not the U.S. goes to war. And at the U.S. is carrying out any number of wars in military operations, we think that Congress needs to exercise its power to stop these wars. Over these past two-plus decades, going on 25 years of the War on Terror, that whole understanding that power lies with Congress has been corroded to the point where the president is now waging all kinds of military campaigns and that needs to be reversed entirely.

So those are some of the key things that we say in this report. The last thing is on the question that I’ll name here is on the question of military aid. And there has been an extremely important conversation that is only just beginning about the U.S. arming countries that are committing all kinds of horrendous violations. Obviously, there’s been this outpouring of just disgust with Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which is armed by the United States. And so we, again, need to review and stop that kind of aid. And I think again, that’s not an end, that’s a beginning because it’s not just Israel that the U.S. is arming. There’s all kinds of states committing horrendous crimes. And so it’s time to reverse all those things.

Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Khury Petersen-Smith (15:39) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the related links section of this page. To subscribe to our podcasts, email newsletters, our Between The Lines Radio Newsmagazine Substack or social media, subscribe here.