William Lawrence, the Democratic nominee in one of Michigans most closely watched House races, is now scrambling to explain away a record of radical rhetoric that includes calls for a world without borders and to redistribute all the land and all the money as penance for Americas evil deeds."
According to The Washington Free Beacon, Lawrence, a former member of the Democratic Socialists of America who abruptly exited the organization this summer, is attempting to recast those and other statements as nothing more than thinking out loud on the internet.
The 36-year-old activist, who cofounded the hardline environmental group Sunrise Movementan organization that has openly agitated for a climate revolutionvoiced his most extreme views on an Oct. 22, 2024, episode of the Hegemonicon podcast, which he hosts for Convergence, a self-described magazine for radical insights.
In that episode, titled Protecting Our Migrant Neighbors, Lawrence contrasted incremental left-wing reformers with full-fledged revolutionaries and made clear he stands with the latter.
We are lacking for a framework that can make sense of how to be revolutionary in the sense of truly, truly wanting a world without borders and wanting to redistribute all the land and all the money, he said, endorsing a vision that would dismantle national sovereignty and private property alike.
Lawrence, an avowed Hasan Piker superfan, argued that such sweeping confiscation would be morally justified, claiming that current economic disparities are the result of violence and evil deeds.
He went on to sketch a humane society in which [we would] throw open the gates and welcome all of the migrants, the refugees, the asylum seekers from climate disaster and conflict all around the world, praising the visions we hold on the left, including the vision of a world without borders.
Even as border communities struggle with crime, drug trafficking, and strained public services, Lawrence criticized both major parties for not going far enough toward his open-borders ideal.
He lamented that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris had each vowed to be tougher on immigration, insisting that immigration policy would be bad either way, regardless of whether a Republican or a Democrat prevailed in the presidential race.
Such positions threaten to undercut Democratic efforts to capture Michigans Seventh Congressional District, currently represented by Republican Tom Barrett.
The district backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2024 and only narrowly supported Joe Biden in 2020, and leading election forecasters now rate the contest as a toss-up, suggesting that a candidate with a far-left record may be a risky bet for Democrats.
Republicans have seized on Lawrences history of radicalism, which extends beyond immigration and redistribution to include support for defunding the police.
He has also drawn fire from within his own party, particularly from black Democrats, after branding black political leaders a big problem for Left politics and accusing them of embracing establishment, capitalist, imperialist American power in a way that had defang[ed] the white left, remarks that are especially striking given that his district is only about 5 percent black.
Lawrences podcast has served as a platform for other extreme pronouncements, as The Washington Free Beacon has previously detailed.
He spoke of destroying the American way of life during a conversation with two self-described Marxist scholars and described the 2024 collapse of Baltimores Francis Scott Key Bridgea disaster that killed six construction workersas a climate activists dream because it temporarily halted coal exports.
Facing a general-election electorate that is far more moderate than his podcast audience, Lawrence has tried to walk back his most incendiary comments.
He announced in July that he had left the Democratic Socialists of America in an effort, he claimed, to promote unity in the Seventh District race, even as his past statements continue to surface.
CNN has reported that Lawrence quietly scrubbed hundreds of controversial social media posts, including messages advocating open borders and attacks on self-styled moderate Democrats such as Sen. Elissa Slotkin.
In 2021, he went so far as to write that thenSen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), who had resisted parts of the Democrats climate agenda, should hurry up and die, a remark that underscores the extremism behind his professed concern for democracy.
Lawrence now insists he has evolved, saying in a written statement that he no longer stands by some things I posted in the past.
Like many millennials, Ive done my fair share of thinking out loud on the internet, Lawrence told the Free Beacon, adding, I don't support open borders, and asserting, I remain a staunch critic of the political status quo, and the obscene concentration of wealth and power that corrupts our politics and leaves working people unrepresented.
For voters in Michigans Seventh District, the question is whether these late-stage disclaimers outweigh years of recorded advocacy for borderless globalism, wealth confiscation, and hostility toward law enforcement and traditional American norms.
As Democrats gamble on a candidate who once championed destroying the American way of life, Republicans are betting that a district with a history of backing Trump will reject a nominee whose own words paint a picture of radicalism that no amount of post hoc editing can easily erase.
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