Democratic Socialists of America

Overview

In July 2026, the U.S. State Department devoted an entire section of a 100-page report to the Democratic Socialists of America. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Cuba of running “one of the most sophisticated infiltrations of U.S. politics, in part using the Democratic Socialists of America” (Washington Examiner). The report, titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism,” called the DSA “a particularly potent illustration of the ideological victory of Cuba’s effort to position itself as the spiritual capital of Third Worldist radicalism” (Washington Examiner). In the same breath, the report conceded what the DSA has always said about itself: “The DSA was not founded as a Cuban intelligence or influence front; it was born in 1982 as a fusion of socialist organizations and movements from both the Old Left and New Left factions, including veterans of CPUSA and SDS” (Washington Examiner).

That strange duality — accused foreign-politics cutout in a State Department report, and the mainstream-left organization that produced the sitting mayor of New York City — is where the DSA stands in late 2026. It is the largest socialist organization in the United States, with nearly 100,000 members (Al Jazeera). It is a political organization but not a party: a decentralized grassroots network of hundreds of local chapters engaged in labor campaigns, mutual aid and community organizing, which endorses progressive candidates — usually in Democratic primaries — while remaining formally independent of the Democratic Party (Al Jazeera; AJC). Its platform calls for “collectively own[ing] the key economic drivers that dominate our lives” — universal healthcare, affordable housing, strong unions and aggressive climate action through public investment (Al Jazeera).

The founding: 1982, Harrington, and the merger

The modern DSA was formed in 1982, when Michael Harrington’s Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee merged with the New American Movement (AJC). Harrington was an American socialist intellectual and, notably, a Zionist who was a friend of Israeli leader Shimon Peres — a biographical detail that makes the organization’s later trajectory on Israel all the more striking (AJC). The DSA’s platform goes further than many of its elected allies: it calls for “the abolition of capitalism” and a “democratically run economy,” even though endorsed candidates tend to pursue incremental, Scandinavian-style policies (AJC).

For most of its first three decades, the DSA was a small educational and activist outfit. That changed with Bernie Sanders’s 2016 Democratic presidential campaign. Sanders is not a formal DSA member — he has long identified as a democratic socialist — but his 2016 run, which won 13.2 million primary votes (about 45 percent) before losing to Hillary Clinton, electrified a generation of young activists who then joined the organization (Al Jazeera). The DSA’s own website references Sanders’s “political revolution” as a guiding ideology, making him “less a member politician and more a symbolic anchor for an organization that is constantly in flux” (Al Jazeera).

The membership arc: 2017 to the mayoralty

Zohran Mamdani has been a member of the Democratic Socialists of America since 2017 (Al Jazeera). His nine-year path from chapter member to the mayor of America’s largest city is the single most consequential membership story in the organization’s history. In 2017 — the year he joined — Mamdani worked on the DSA-backed New York City Council campaign of Khader El-Yateem, a Palestinian-American Lutheran pastor and immigrant-rights activist, after leading the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Bowdoin College (AJC).

Mamdani won the mayoralty in November 2025, running on both the Democratic and Working Families Party ballot lines with a platform of freezing rents on stabilized apartments, fare-free buses and higher taxes on the wealthy (Al Jazeera). He took office on January 1, 2026, as the first Muslim mayor of New York City, the first of South Asian descent, the first born in an African country (Uganda) and the youngest in more than a century (Al Jazeera). His election is what the State Department report points to when it claims the DSA has achieved “real influence inside the Democratic Party coalition” (Washington Examiner).

The electoral footprint: the Squad, Casar, and the 2026 primaries

The DSA’s breakthrough into Congress came in 2018, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib won House seats and brought DSA politics into the national mainstream as part of the group dubbed “the Squad” (Al Jazeera). But the relationship with its electeds has been fractious. The DSA withdrew its endorsement of Ocasio-Cortez by mid-2024, after her participation in an antisemitism panel, and later condemned her July 2025 vote on funding for Israel’s Iron Dome; she remains affiliated with the organization (AJC). Greg Casar of Texas lost the backing of his local chapter after voting for continued federal aid to Israel (Al Jazeera). Other officials, like New York Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha — who defeated 13-term incumbent Kevin Cahill in 2022 — have kept the chapter’s support (Al Jazeera).

The Mamdani effect is now compounding. In June 2026, DSA-backed Claire Valdez and Darializa Chevalier won Democratic congressional primaries in New York with Mamdani’s backing; if they win in November, they would double the DSA’s congressional representation (AJC). The Associated Press noted that “several of [Mamdani’s] proteges” had won New York City congressional primaries that month (NPR). Chevalier drew scrutiny during her campaign for attending an October 8, 2023 pro-Palestinian rally, posting “Israel doesn’t exist,” and declining to condemn Hamas (AJC).

The fractures: October 7 and after

The organization’s stance on Israel has been its most divisive internal matter. The day after the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre, the DSA’s New York City chapter organized a pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square where speakers used slogans including “Resistance is justified,” “Globalize the Intifada” and “Smash the settler Zionist state,” according to the American Jewish Committee (AJC). The fallout was swift: Rep. Jamaal Bowman let his membership lapse, former Rep. Shri Thanedar quit, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander resigned — saying the organization had “crossed a moral line” — and Los Angeles council member Nithya Raman was censured (AJC). The DSA also rejected the October 2025 Gaza ceasefire agreement as “conditional” (AJC). Its youth wing, the Young Democratic Socialists of America, operates more than 100 chapters at universities and high schools and partners with Students for Justice in Palestine (AJC).

The 2026 pressure campaign

The DSA’s political moment has made it a target of the Trump administration’s broader campaign against the left. On July 16, 2026, Rubio convened leaders from more than 60 countries at the State Department for what was billed as a “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism,” declaring that Cuba had “helped to build the far left in our country” (NPR). The administration announced a new visa-restriction policy for members of alleged leftist groups who support or incite terrorism, following its November 2025 designation of four European antifa groups as foreign terrorist organizations (NPR). Trump himself has repeatedly called the Democratic left “communists” who want to “completely destroy the traditional American way of life,” with Vice President Vance and House Speaker Johnson echoing the charge (NPR).

The report’s DSA section went far beyond rhetoric. It detailed years of DSA delegations to Cuba, including a 2023 visit hosted by the Communist Party of Cuba to “establish formal channels of communication,” with a private meeting with President Miguel Diaz-Canel followed by sessions with senior military and intelligence officials (Washington Examiner). It described a DSA fund intended to “support the struggle to dismantle U.S. empire” and a Cuba Solidarity Working Group aimed at cultivating “pro-Cuba block” elected officials, “especially at the federal level” (Washington Examiner). It noted the DSA’s membership in the 60-member National Network on Cuba, whose June 2026 “National Rapid Response Plan” laid out an escalation ladder targeting federal facilities, military bases and ICE detention centers within 24 hours of any U.S. military action on Cuba — with the stated goal of making it “politically and materially costly for the U.S. government to wage war on Cuba” (Washington Examiner). It also reported that the Venceremos Brigade — which the report quoted a Senate source calling one of “the most extensive and dangerous infiltration operations ever undertaken by a foreign power against the United States” — has direct financial ties with the DSA, and noted that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was a leading Brigade organizer in her youth while former mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is a Brigade alumnus (Washington Examiner).

All of this remains, as of this writing, the administration’s account — a set of allegations in a government report, not independently verified findings. What is independently verifiable is the DSA’s size, its chapter-based structure, its endorsement record and the plain fact that its most prominent member now runs New York City. In June 2026, AJC CEO Ted Deutch wrote an open letter to Mamdani calling his anti-Israel rhetoric “outrageous and dangerous” and arguing that “the mayoral office does not confer the moral authority to rewrite history or to delegitimize a nation” (AJC). The organization that Harrington founded in 1982 as a merger of socialist reading groups and activist campaigns has never been closer to power — or more contested.

What this profile does not claim

This profile presents the July 2026 State Department report’s claims about Cuba and the DSA as the administration’s allegations, not as independently verified findings; no response from the DSA to the report was found in the sources read. It does not assert an ordinal number for Mamdani’s mayoralty — Al Jazeera (November 2025) says 111th while another published profile says 112th — and avoids the number entirely. Membership figures are given as ranges from two sources (“nearly 100,000” per Al Jazeera; “more than 80,000 dues-paying” per AJC) rather than a single figure. The characterization of the DSA’s Israel stance as “anti-Zionist” reflects the American Jewish Committee’s framing in its profile; the AJC is a pro-Israel advocacy organization, and that framing is its own. Details of the Times Square rally, the departures and the censure are reported as the AJC documented them.