Justice Democrats

After the 2016 presidential election resulted in a victory for Donald Trump, many progressives pointed to the perceived loyalty of politicians to large donors as a major contributing factor to Hillary Clinton's loss to Trump. These critics contend that a campaign finance model similar to that of Bernie Sanders, whose 2016 presidential campaign was funded by small individual donations, will increase public trust in politicians through increased accountability to their constituents.

On January 23, 2017, Cenk Uygur and Kyle Kulinski, founded Justice Democrats with ten others, including former staffers from the Sanders campaign such as its Director of Organizing Technology, Saikat Chakrabarti, and MoveOn.org fundraiser Zack Exley.[12][13][14] According to the organization, they seek to create a left-wing populist movement to support alternative Democratic candidates beginning with the 2018 mid-term elections, in order to either defeat the incumbent Democrats or cause them to become accountable to their constituents. They require their candidates to take a pledge to refuse financial contributions from billionaires and corporations.[6] In addition, they hope to rebuild the Democratic Party on a national level and to defeat President Trump in his 2020 run for re-election.

The Democrats used to represent something wonderful – voters. We want you to represent just us, not your donors... [and stand for] justice for the people

— Cenk Uygur explaining the name of the group[5][15]

On March 20, 2017, Justice Democrats reported that they had received 8,300 nominations and raised $1 million.[16] Justice Democrats announced in March 2017 they had teamed up with Brand New Congress, a PAC established by former Sanders campaign supporters, to further their goals.[14] By November 1, 2017, they had merged with fellow progressive group AllOfUs.[17][18]

Representative Ro Khanna of California's 17th congressional district announced on May 9, 2017, that he had become a Justice Democrat, and the first sitting member of Congress to join the organization.[19][5] Over the following year, Raúl Grijalva of Arizona's 3rd congressional district and Pramila Jayapal of Washington's 7th congressional district also joined bringing the number of sitting representatives in Justice Democrats to three.[20] Khanna and Jayapal had first won elections to the House of Representatives in 2016 while Grijalva had been an incumbent since 2002.

During the 2018 elections, Justice Democrats ran 79 progressive candidates against Democrats, Republicans and Independents in local, state, and federal elections.[11] 26 of them advanced past the primary stage. All Justice Democrat candidates running for office were endorsed by The Young Turks who provided them with a media platform on their interview show Rebel HQ.[21] The seven Justice Democrats candidates who won their electoral congressional races in 2018 were Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the three sitting members. All seven won districts already held by Democrats.

In 2020, Justice Democrat Marie Newman defeated incumbent Representative Dan Lipinski in the 2020 primary for Illinois's 3rd congressional district.[22] Jamaal Bowman defeated incumbent Representative Eliot Engel in New York's 16th congressional district's primary. Bowman was also endorsed by Justice Democrats. Another Justice Democrat-endorsed candidate won in Missouri's 1st congressional district, when Cori Bush defeated Representative Lacy Clay.

According to Justice Democrats, their highest priority is to effectively eliminate the role of money and conflicts of interests in politics. As such, any candidate running with Justice Democrats must pledge to refuse any donations from corporate PACs and lobbyists.[28] Declining money from corporate PACs and supporting Medicare For All have both been described as litmus tests for the organization.[29] Justice Democrats support the idea of publicly funded elections, banning Super PACs as well as banning private donations to politicians and campaigns. In addition, they advocate for the reinstatement of provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and a ban on gerrymandering for partisan gain. Several members have voiced support for a constitutional amendment aimed at removing money from American politics.[30]

To accompany its launch, Kulinski and Uygur published the following set of progressive founding principles for the coalition.[31] Adjustments have been made since 2017, resulting in a slightly different platform appearing on the Justice Democrats webpage at a given time.[32]

• Creating a new infrastructure program called the "Green New Deal"[33]
• Ending arms sales to countries that it says violate human rights such as Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt
• Enacting a federal job guarantee, which would promise all Americans a job paying $15 per hour plus benefits
• Ending the death penalty
• Ending the practice of unilaterally waging war, except as a last resort to defend U.S. territory
• Ending the War on Drugs in favor of legalization, regulation, and taxation of drugs, and pardoning all non-violent drug offenders and treating all drug addicts
• Ensuring free speech on college campuses and supporting net neutrality
• Ensuring universal education as a right, including free four-year public college and university education
• Ensuring universal healthcare as a right
• Establishing paid maternity leave, paid vacation leave, and free childcare
• Expanding anti-discrimination laws to apply to LGBT people
• Expanding background checks on firearms and banning high capacity magazines and assault weapons
• Funding Planned Parenthood and other contraceptive and abortion services, and recognizing reproductive rights
• Implementing electoral reform and publicly financed elections nationwide to make irrelevant and obsolete fundraising from large corporations and the wealthy
• Implementing instant-runoff voting nationwide in an effort to make third-party and independent candidates more viable
• Implementing the Buffett Rule, ending offshore financial centers, "chain[ing]" the capital gains and income taxes, and increasing the estate tax
• Making the minimum wage a living wage and tying it to inflation
• Pardoning Edward Snowden, prosecuting CIA torturers and DoD war criminals, shutting down the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and all other extrajudicial prisons, and ending warrantless spying and bulk data collection by the National Security Agency
• Passing the Paycheck Fairness Act
• Abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE)
• Reforming police by mandating body cameras, establishing community oversight boards, eliminating broken windows policing, ending stop and frisk, and appointing special prosecutors to hold police accountable in courts
• Renegotiating CAFTA-DR and NAFTA, and opposing Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China and the World Trade Organization
• Stopping any reductions to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and establishing single-payer universal healthcare
• Stopping anthropogenic climate change through an ecological revolution and upholding the United States' participation in the Paris Climate Agreement
• Uncompromisingly rejecting President Trump's immigration proposals and policies, particularly Executive Order 13769 and deportation of illegal immigrants, and implementing comprehensive immigration reform which will include giving non-criminal illegal immigrants a path to citizenship

• Our Revolution
• Brand New Congress
• Wolf PAC
• Sunrise Movement

• Official website
• JD YouTube channel
• Justice Democrats on Twitter
• Justice Democrats Ballotpedia page
• Justice Democrats financial reports from the Federal Election Commission