Valdez was the overwhelming winner of the District 37 race in June 2024
via Instagram @claireforqueens
Claire Valdez, a democratic socialist representing parts of Ridgewood, Sunnyside and Long Island City in the State Assembly, has launched a campaign for U.S. Rep Nydia Velázquez’s soon-to-be-vacant seat in Congress.
Valdez, a member of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) who has represented the 37th Assembly District since early 2025, announced her campaign to replace Velázquez early Thursday morning and is widely expected to pick up the DSA nomination in the race.
Velázquez announced in November that she would not be seeking re-election for New York’s 7th Congressional District having served 16 terms in Congress. A trailblazer who became the first Puerto Rican woman to ever serve in Congress, Velázquez represents one of the most left-leaning districts in the entire city, including parts of North Brooklyn and Western Queens.
A DSA candidate had long been expected to announce a run for the seat, with Valdez and Astoria Council Member Tiffany Cabán both reportedly expressing interest in running for a district that broke for Mayor Zohran Mamdani by 51% last year.
Announcing her candidacy on Thursday morning, Valdez said her campaign was rooted in “labor organizing, economic justice and opposition to war and genocide.”
Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, a progressive but more traditional Democratic candidate, had already launched a campaign to replace Velázquez in Congress. Both Reynoso and Valdez share a number of similarities; both are prominent labor organizers and both have described Israel’s actions as a genocide.
Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso speaks at a rally in support of Amazon workers in Woodside in December. Valdez was also present at the event. Photo by Shane O’Brien
A former City Council Member, Reynoso boasts more than a decade of government experience, while Valdez has little government experience but is ideologically aligned with the DSA. She is also a staunch Mamdani ally, giving a rousing speech at a campaign event in Forest Hills Stadium last October where she proclaimed the importance of the DSA movement in combating wealth inequality in the city.
“Zohran didn’t come out of nowhere,” she said last October. “He came out of our movement, our movement that has been fighting for workers and tenants and immigrants and our trans siblings, our movement that believes that, in the richest country this world has ever seen, no one should go without housing and health care.”
Launching her campaign on Thursday, Valdez said there was little question that Democrats would win a majority in the 7th Congressional District but said questions remain over what they “do with it.”
“We need a labor organizer in Washington who will turn Democratic power into a real opposition—one that confronts oligarchy and fascism, opposes genocide and war, and offers a real economic agenda that empowers working people and expands social rights,” Valdez said in a statement announcing her run for Congress.
Valdez grew up in Lubbock, Texas, before moving to New York in 2015 where she became an administrative assistant at Columbia University. There, she became a union organizer with United Auto Workers Local 2110 and was elected to the union’s bargaining committee.
She pointed to a career of low-wage customer service jobs before entering politics and said the labor movement had drawn her to politics rather than the “party machine” or “career ambition.”
Valdez has outlined “Union for All, Housing for All and Medicaid for All” as three central components of her congressional campaign, pledging to pay for the progressive platform by raising taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations.
She has also pledged to eschew donations from corporate PACs during the campaign, stating that her campaign will be “powered exclusively” by small donors and grassroots volunteers.
Valdez, meanwhile, has tapped a number of political aides who advised Mamdani during his successful mayoral campaign, including Mamdani’s closest political advisor Morris Katz and former communications director Andrew Epstein.
She was the only elected official to appear at a launch event for Mamdani’s then-long-shot mayoral campaign, and the New York Times has reported that the Mayor has encourged Valdez to run for the soon-to-be-vacant seat.
Valdez is expected to pick up the DSA nomination when the organization begins considering a formal endorsement next month, which could prove significant in a congressional district with more DSA members than any other.
On the other hand, Reynoso has picked up endorsements from a number of City Council Members, including Shekar Krishnan, Jen Gutierrez and Sandy Nurse. He is also expected to pick up an endorsement from Velázquez, according to multiple reports.
The revelers who packed Tuesday’s election night party in L.A.’s Highland Park neighborhood were roughly 2,500 miles from the concert hall where New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani celebrated his historic win.
Yet despite that sprawling distance, the crowd, heavily populated with members of the L.A. chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, had no trouble finishing the applause lines delivered by Mamdani, himself a DSA member, during his victory speech.
“New York!” Mamdani bellowed on the oversized television screens hung throughout the Greyhound Bar & Grill. “We’re going to make buses fast and — “
“Free!” the crowd inside the bar yelled back in response.
In Los Angeles, activists with the Democratic Socialists of America have already fired up their campaigns for the June election, sending out canvassing teams and scheduling postcard-writing events for their chosen candidates. But they’re also taking fresh inspiration from Mamdani’s win, pointing to his inclusive, unapologetic campaign and his relentless focus on pocketbook issues, particularly among working-class voters.
The message that propelled Mamdani to victory resonates just as much in L.A., said City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who won her seat in 2022 with logistical support from the DSA.
“What New York City is saying is that the rent is too damn high, that affordability is a huge issue not just on housing, but when it comes to grocery shopping, when it comes to daycare,” she said. “These are the things that we’re also experiencing here in Los Angeles.”
City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, appearing at a rally in Lincoln Heights last year, said New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s message will resonate in L.A.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
DSA-LA, which is a membership organization and not a political party, has elected four of its endorsed candidates to the council since 2020, ousting incumbents in each of the last three election cycles. They’ve done so in large part by knocking on doors and working to increase turnout among renters and lower-income households.
The chapter hopes to win two additional seats in June. Organizers have begun contemplating a full-on socialist City Council — possibly by the end of 2028 — with DSA members holding eight of the council’s 15 seats.
“We would like a socialist City Council majority,” said Benina Stern, co-chair of DSA’s Los Angeles chapter. “Because clearly that is the logical progression, to keep growing the bloc.”
Despite those lofty ambitions, it could take at least five years before the L.A. chapter matches this week’s breakthrough in New York City.
Mayor Karen Bass, a high-profile leader within the Democratic Party with few ties to the DSA, is now running for a second term. Her only major opponent is former schools superintendent Austin Beutner, who occupies the center of the political spectrum in L.A. Real estate developer Rick Caruso, a longtime Republican who is now a Democrat, has not disclosed his intentions but has long been at odds with DSA‘s progressive policies.
In L.A., DSA organizers have put their emphasis on identifying and campaigning for candidates in down-ballot races, not citywide contests. Part of that is due to the fact that L.A. has a weak-mayor system, particularly when compared with New York City, where the mayor has responsibility not just for city services but also public schools and even judicial appointments.
L.A. council members propose and approve legislation, rework the budgets submitted by the mayor and represent districts with more than a quarter of a million people. As a result, DSA organizers have chosen the council as their path to power at City Hall, Stern said.
“The conditions in Los Angeles and New York I think are very different,” she said.
Since 2020, DSA-LA has been highly selective about its endorsement choices. The all-volunteer organization sends applicants a lengthy questionnaire with dozens of litmus test questions: Do they support diverting funds away from law enforcement? Do they oppose L.A.’s decision to host the Olympics? Do they support a repeal of L.A.’s ban on homeless encampments near schools?
Once a candidate secures an endorsement, DSA-LA turns to its formidable pool of volunteers, sending them out to help candidates knock on doors, staff phone banks and stage fundraising events.
During Tuesday’s party, DSA-LA organizers recruited new members to assist with the reelection campaigns of Hernandez and Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, a former labor organizer. They distributed postcard-sized fliers with the message, “Hate Capitalism? So do we.”
Standing nearby was Estuardo Mazariegos, a tenant rights advocate now running to replace Councilmember Curren Price in a South L.A. district. Mazariegos, 40, said he first became interested in the DSA in the seventh grade, when his middle school civics teacher displayed a DSA flag in her classroom.
The crowd at the Greyhound in Highland Park reacts to results on Tuesday.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Mazariegos hailed the results from New York and California, saying voters are “taking back America for the working people of America.” He sounded somewhat less excited about Bass, a former community organizer who has pursued some middle-of-the-road positions, such as hiring more police officers.
Asked if he supports Bass’ bid for a second term, Mazariegos responded: “If she’s up against a billionaire, yes.”
“If she’s up against another comrade, maybe not,” he added, laughing.
When Bass ran in November 2022, DSA-LA grudgingly recommended a vote for her in its popular voter guide, describing her as a “status quo politician.”
Councilmember Nithya Raman, who represents a Hollywood Hills district, is far more enthusiastic. Raman has worked closely with Bass on efforts to move homeless Angelenos indoors, while also seeking fixes to the larger systems that serve L.A.’s unhoused population.
“Karen Bass is the most progressive mayor we’ve ever had in L.A,” said Raman, who co-hosted the election night party with the other three DSA-aligned council members, DSA-LA and others.
Raman was the first of the DSA-backed candidates to win a council seat in L.A., running in 2020 as a reformer who would bring stronger renter protections and a network of community access centers to assist homeless residents.
Two years later, voters elected labor organizer Soto-Martínez and Hernandez. Tenant rights attorney Ysabel Jurado became the fourth last year, ousting Councilmember Kevin de León.
Stern, the DSA-LA co-chair, said she believes the four council members have brought a “sea change” to City Hall, working with their progressive colleagues to expand the city’s teams of unarmed responders, who are viewed as an alternative to gun-carrying police officers.
The DSA voting bloc also shaped this year’s city budget, voting to reduce the number of new recruits at the Los Angeles Police Department and preserve other city jobs, Stern said.
To be clear, the four-member bloc has pursued those efforts by working with other progressives on the council who are not affiliated with the DSA but more moderate on other issues. Beyond that, the group has plenty of detractors.
Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., said DSA-backed council members are making the city worse, by pushing for a $30 per hour hotel minimum wage and a $32.35 minimum wage for construction workers.
“No one is ever going to build a hotel in this city again, and DSA were a part of that,” he said. “Pretty soon no one will build housing, and the DSA is a part of that too.”
The union that represents LAPD officers vowed to fight the DSA’s effort to expand its reach, saying it would work to ensure that “Angelenos are not bamboozled by the socialist bait and switch.”
“Socialists want to bait Angelenos into talking about affordability, oppression and fairness, get their candidates elected, and then switch to enact their platform that states ‘Defund the police by rejecting any expansion to police budgets … while cutting [police] budgets annually towards zero,’” the union’s board of directors said in a statement.
In New York City, Mamdani has proposed a series of measures to make the city more affordable, including free bus fares, city-run grocery stores and a four-year freeze on rent increases inside rent stabilized apartment units.
Some of those ideas have already been tried in L.A.
In 2020, weeks into the COVID-19 shutdown, Mayor Eric Garcetti placed a moratorium on rent hikes for more than 600,000 rent-stabilized apartments. The council kept that measure in place for four years.
Around the same time, L.A. County’s transit agency suspended mandatory collection of bus fares. The agency started charging bus passengers again in 2022.
City Councilmembers Nithya Raman and Eunisses Hernandez celebrate at the election night party they co-hosted with Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter and two other council members.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
In recent months, the DSA-LA has pushed for new limits on rent increases inside L.A.’s rent-stabilized apartments. Raman, who chairs the council’s housing committee, is backing a yearly cap of 3% in those buildings, most of which were built before October 1978.
Hernandez, whose district stretches from working-class Westlake to rapidly gentrifying Highland Park, is a believer in shifting the Overton Window at City Hall — moving the political debate left and “putting people over profits.”
Like others at the election party, Hernandez is hoping the council will eventually have eight DSA-aligned members in the coming years, saying such a shift would be a “game changer.” With a clear majority, she said, the council would not face a huge battle to approve new tenant protections, expand the network of unarmed response teams and place “accountability measures” on corporations that are “making money off our city.”
“There’s so many things … that we could do easier for the people of the city of Los Angeles if we had a majority,” she said.
The European Commission has found that Meta and TikTok had violated rules under the Digital Services Act (DSA) and is now giving them the chance to comply if they don’t want to be fined up to 6 percent of their total worldwide annual turnover. According to the Commission, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have “put in place burdensome procedures and tools” for researchers who want to request access to public data. This means they’re stuck with incomplete or unreliable information if they want to do research on topics like how minors are exposed to illegal or harmful content online. “Allowing researchers access to platforms’ data is an essential transparency obligation under the DSA,” the Commission wrote.
In addition, the Commission is charging Meta over the lack of a user-friendly mechanism that would allow users to easily report posts with illegal content, such as child sexual abuse materials. The Commission explained that Facebook and Instagram use mechanisms that require several steps to be able to flag posts, and they use dark interface designs that make reporting confusing and dissuading. All those factors are in breach of DSA rules that require online platforms to give EU users easy-to-use mechanisms to be able to report illegal content.
Under the DSA, users must also be able to challenge social networks’ decisions to remove their posts or suspend their accounts. The Commission found that neither Facebook nor Instagram allow users to explain their sides or provide evidence to substantiate their appeals, which limits the effectiveness of the appeal process.
Meta and TikTok will be able to examine the Commission’s investigation files and to reply in writing about its findings. They’ll also have the opportunity to implement changes to comply with DSA rules, and it’s only if the Commission decides they’re non-compliant that they can be fined up to 6 percent of their global annual turnover. Meta disagreed that it had breached DSA rules, according to Financial Times. “In the European Union, we have introduced changes to our content reporting options, appeals process, and data access tools since the DSA came into force and are confident that these solutions match what is required under the law in the EU,” it said in a statement. Meanwhile, TikTok said it was reviewing the Commission’s findings but that “requirements to ease data safeguards place the DSA and GDPR in direct tension.” It’s asking regulators for guidance on “how these obligations should be reconciled.”
A court in the Netherlands has ordered Meta to change Facebook and Instagram’s timelines, after finding that the element ran afoul of the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA). As reported by , the Dutch court said that the company needs to provide users with simpler options — namely ones that don’t rely on an algorithm.
“People in the Netherlands are not sufficiently able to make free and autonomous choices about the use of profiled recommendation systems,” the court said in its decision. It ruled that the timeline must honor a user’s choice of chronological order or other non-profiled options, instead of reverting to the algorithm-driven version whenever a user closes and reopens either app.
The case was brought by Bits of Freedom, a Dutch digital rights group. “It is unacceptable that a few American tech billionaires can determine how we view the world,” said the group’s spokesperson, Maartje Knaap.
Meta said it will appeal the decision, and that these DSA issues should be handled by the European Commission and other EU regulators, not by the courts of individual nations. “Proceedings like this threaten the digital single market and the harmonized regulatory regime that should underpin it,” a Meta spokesperson said. Meta faces a potential fine of $117,450 for every day it fails to comply with the court’s order, up to a maximum of $5.8 million.
The DSA has been a common thorn in the side of big tech companies since its approval in 2022. The European Commission has levied in fines against the likes of, Meta and Alphabet for violations of the DSA. The regulations have also been used to on these platforms in the name of privacy, data security and the protection of minors.
The European Union (EU) into TikTok and has accused the platform of running afoul of the region’s Digital Services Act (DSA), . The probe involves the addictive nature of TikTok Lite, which is a smaller version of the app that takes up less memory on a smartphone and was built to perform over slower internet connections.
TikTok Lite launched earlier this month in France and Spain and includes a design aspect that allows users to earn points by watching and liking videos. These points can be exchanged for stuff like Amazon vouchers and TikTok’s proprietary digital currency, which is typically used to tip creators. The EU’s Commission has expressed concern that this type of “task and reward” design language could impact the mental health of young users by “stimulating addictive behavior.”
The Commission hasn’t yet confirmed any breaches of the DSA, but has suggested that it might impose temporary measures to force parent company ByteDance to suspend TikTok Lite in the EU while it continues the investigation. The company has until April 24 to argue against these potential measures, so the app’s still available for EU residents. However, ByteDance failed to provide the EU with a risk assessment document regarding TikTok Lite after being asked last week.
This failure to comply with the DSA could open the company up to steep penalties of up to one percent of its total annual income and periodic penalties of up to five percent of daily income. The Commission hasn’t indicated if it plans on issuing these fines as the investigation continues.
“We suspect TikTok Lite could be as toxic and addictive as” light cigarettes, Thierry Breton, the commissioner for the EU Internal Market, wrote in a press release announcing the probe. “We will spare no effort to protect our children.”
ByteDance has yet to respond to the investigation and the potential of TikTok Lite being banned in the EU. This latest inquiry follows a more comprehensive probe . That wide-ranging investigation focuses on addictive algorithms, age verification issues, default privacy settings and ad transparency.
February’s probe is ongoing, but ByteDance was already forced to make concessions to allow TikTok to operate in the EU. The company had to give users the choice to the For You Page and instituted new harmful content reporting options. It also suspended personalized ads for EU users aged 13 to 17.
As for America, the keeps inching closer to reality. The US House of Representatives tucked a revised version of the bill into this weekend’s foreign aid package. Under this new proposed legislation, ByteDance would have one year to sell off TikTok before it would be banned from app stores. It’s now heading to the Senate and will likely be voted on this week. However, it remains to be seen if the Senate will even keep the stuff about TikTok in the foreign aid package. President Biden has previously said if Congress passes it.
