Democratic Socialists Come Clean about Their True Intentions: ‘Overthrowing’ the U.S. Government

The government of the United States may soon be headed toward territory it has not encountered since the Civil War: having sitting members of Congress who openly defy the Constitution and express the desire to overthrow America’s constitutional republic in favor of a government based on socialist and communist principles.

This possibility has become much more likely as the true intentions of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) become increasingly laid bare. With the recent primary victories of DSA members Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez of New York and Melat Kiros of Colorado, there is a distinct possibility that November’s election will see all three become members of Congress, as each of their congressional districts is deeply blue.

As documented by City Journal last month, a curious phenomenon within the DSA has been occurring in recent months. One would expect that the radical positions of the party would begin to moderate as more and more democratic socialists win public office, including the mayoral victories of Zohran Mamdani in New York, Katie Wilson in Seattle, and the virtually assured victory of Janeese Lewis George in the District of Columbia in November. Instead, the official platform of the DSA is radicalizing even more.

During the party’s National Political Committee (NPC) last month, the DSA revised its platform to call for the abolition of the office of the President and the Supreme Court to be replaced by “an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress,” the abolition of police and prisons, giving ownership of corporations to the public, giving universal amnesty to illegal immigrants, and even “explicitly naming Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.”

As The Washington Stand has previously reported, DSA candidates like Darializa Avila Chevalier combine virulent anti-Semitic views with demanding that all property from landlords be seized and to “literally abolish the border.” Chevalier was also co-founder of an anti-Israel campus group that declared it was “fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.”

A recent video compilation of DSA party leaders describing the ultimate goals of the party makes it quite clear that the party indeed has ambitions to topple the United States government:

Frances Gill (DSA Los Angeles): “We have a unique responsibility to act from the heart of empire, the belly of the beast. The most important thing that we can do is take that empire down from within.”

Amy Wilhelm (DSA Seattle): “Our role ultimately is to facilitate our own empire’s failure in ways that we can, ultimately to overthrow our own empire.”

Hazel Williams (DSA San Francisco): “U.S. imperialism is not a thing that can be reformed away. It has to be overthrown through revolutionary struggle.”

Sarah Anastasia Milner (DSA Portland): “… to build a mass movement that can use the leverage of workers to hit the kill switch on American imperialism here within the American empire.”

Notice how all four DSA members fall in line with the apparently agreed-upon language of referring to the U.S. as the “empire” and “imperial.” The allusion is obvious: America is evil, and therefore it should be referred to as the “empire” à la the evil empire in the “Star Wars” universe.

To make this vision a reality, the DSA is calling for a “new democratic constitution” that would establish proportional representation in a “single federal legislature.”

Experts like FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter say that the radical views of the DSA are likely to continue to spread.

“There is no denying it, the Democratic Party has been trending toward the kind of totalitarian socialism that ravaged Europe over the previous two centuries,” he told TWS. “The Democratic Party has long embraced removing all traces of America’s historic Christian faith from the public square, has always supported a socialist-style welfare state based on the redistribution of wealth, and more recently has sought to redefine marriage and even gender. Now, mainstream figures on the Left have embraced radical ideas to ensure their grip on power, like packing the Supreme Court and making D.C. a state.”

“The latest revelations on the aims of the DSA are concerning because DSA-aligned candidates have seen success at the local level recently,” Carpenter added. “Unfortunately, it is only a matter of time before these ideas become mainstream within the Democratic Party. I would not be surprised to see Democratic candidates for president in 2028 espouse some of these ideas.”

Lawmakers like House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) agree. “The danger is that the energy, the excitement, the funding, the grassroots [are] on the side of the insurgent Left, and they have disdain for America’s founding principles,” he pointed out during “This Week on Capitol Hill” last month. “They don’t want to preserve the republic. They want to tear it down to its foundations and create a communist utopia. This is serious stuff.”

Johnson further described the Democratic Socialist primary victories in New York as a “seismic earthquake kind of development.” “… [I]t was a repudiation [Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries] because a couple of these races were in his literal own backyard. … So it demonstrated that the leader here, the Democrat establishment, is no longer able to defend the turf … and they can’t possibly do it nationwide. … [W]e’ve been talking a lot about the contrast election. It is on vivid display now. This midterm election is about a contrast between common sense and crazy, and they give us new illustrations of crazy every day.”

Johnson went on to underscore just how dire the wave of socialist victories is during “This Week on Capitol Hill” earlier this month.

“Everybody just kind of waved [Mamdani’s victory] off and said, ‘Oh, that was a New York City anomaly.’ No, sir, it’s everywhere,” he emphasized. “And we’ve got to confront it. We’ve got to take it very seriously. … [T]hey have disdain for America’s founding principles. They wipe their hands on the American flag. Some of them have ties to terrorist organizations. This is not a game. We have to take it seriously.”

Johnson concluded by calling for a renewal of the guiding principles that the Founding Fathers called for as the nation celebrates 250 years.

“One of the things that the Founders of this grand experiment in self-governance reminded us of — their advice that echoes down through the generations to you and me — is that religion and morality are indispensable support to the Republic. And in order to keep the Republic, you had to have an informed and engaged electorate. You had to have citizens, people who understood that if you’re going to be self-governing, if you’re going to maintain a government of, by, and for the people ourselves, then the people have to be engaged [and] be wary of their responsibility as citizens. We need much more of that, and this is a wake-up call for us to do all those very things.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is repbulished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

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