A Democrat running for Congress in Michigan thought he could scrub his past before voters got a look at it.
The internet had other plans.
And what CNN’s KFile dug up about William Lawrence is the kind of digital trail that could blow up a key swing-seat race.
What Lawrence Actually Wrote
William Lawrence is the Democrat nominee for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, running against incumbent Republican Rep. Tom Barrett, who is seeking his first reelection. Before launching his campaign, Lawrence deleted hundreds of old social media posts that documented years of openly Marxist, open-borders, anti-police, anti-family politics.
The posts, unearthed by CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, stretch back to when Lawrence was building his career as an original co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, the radical climate organization that helped push the Green New Deal into Democrat politics in 2018. Lawrence is 36.
The deleted content reads like a greatest-hits album of the Democratic Socialists of America’s wish list. Lawrence called for abolishing police and prisons. He demanded “forced nationalization” of fossil-fuel companies to shut down their production. He called for a “fundamental overhaul” of the Constitution. He wrote posts envisioning “a world of free and open migration.” He called to “Abolish the Senate.”
And he went after the nuclear family directly. In repeated posts, Lawrence wrote “f**k” the nuclear-family home, calling it an “isolating, individualistic, violent way of organizing society.”
On Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 2020, Lawrence thanked indigenous writers and organizers who he said helped him “imagine a world beyond the nation-state and capitalism.” He wrote: “May the 21st century begin an indigenous millennium.” In another post he declared: “Racial capitalism is the problem. Empire is the problem.”
In 2021, Lawrence praised the Minneapolis activist group Black Visions, writing that its “defund the police” campaign had brought the country “nearer to a world without police and prisons.” In August 2022, he argued that remaining fossil-fuel production “should happen through forced nationalization and that should be our demand.”
He even wrote a song. Inspired by moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s resistance to the Democrat climate agenda, Lawrence posted lyrics in December 2021 that read: “Our generation says f**k you for everything.” The next line: “Hurry up and die so that we can get started.”
That is not a political position. That is the output of someone who has spent years marinating in a worldview that treats American institutions, American families, and American energy as the enemy.
The DSA Connection and the Cleanup Operation
Lawrence was a member of the openly Marxist Democratic Socialists of America until July of this year. He told CNN’s Manu Raju that he let his DSA membership “lapse” in July. The timing is not subtle. He announced his congressional run in August 2025. The DSA membership quietly disappeared before the campaign got rolling.
The DSA’s own platform calls for government seizure of major corporations, the abolition of the Senate, replacement of the Presidency and Supreme Court with bodies subordinate to Congress, and the creation of a classless society. Lawrence spent years as a card-carrying member of that organization while publicly championing its agenda. Letting the membership “lapse” does not erase the record.
His deleted posts also went after fellow Democrats who weren’t radical enough for his taste. In January 2020, Lawrence attacked then-Rep. Elissa Slotkin, writing that he was “ashamed to be represented” by her and calling her a “supposed Democrat” because she did not condemn President Donald Trump’s decision to order a strike on Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
Following the 2020 election, when then-Rep. Abigail Spanberger criticized “defund the police” and socialist rhetoric, Lawrence dismissed her comments as a “tantrum” and warned that “timid Dems” could “leave the Party” if they could not accept the activist left.
During the fight over President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, Lawrence urged progressives to go “scorched earth” on conservative Democrats and the “absolute rubes throughout the party who believed them.” He wrote to a moderate account: “You f**king morons,” over questions about why Republicans overturned Roe v. Wade before the 2022 midterms. He also wrote that it was “better to be a minority party that stands for something than a majority party that can’t govern” and declared: “It’s time for the Dem civil war to rage.”
Lawrence summarized his own politics in August 2022 as “social democrat in the streets, libertarian socialist in the sheets.” That was not a throwaway line. It was a self-description from a man now asking Michigan voters to send him to Congress.
The Cleanup Statement and What It Actually Means
Lawrence issued a statement to CNN that leaned hard on a familiar excuse. “Like many millennials, I’ve done my fair share of thinking out loud on the internet,” he said. “I’ve been clear that I disagree today with some things I posted in the past. I don’t support defunding the police or open borders.”
He also told CNN he regretted his past comments about Sen. Slotkin.
But notice what he did not disavow. He did not walk back the call for forced nationalization of fossil-fuel companies. He did not renounce the demand to abolish the Senate. He did not address the “fundamental overhaul” of the Constitution. He did not explain the song wishing a sitting US senator would hurry up and die.
Telling voters you no longer support defunding the police is the bare minimum. It is not a platform. It is damage control.
And the idea that years of documented, consistent, ideologically coherent Marxist politics amount to a millennial “thinking out loud” is an insult to the voters of Michigan’s 7th district. These were not teenage diary entries. Lawrence was in his late 20s and early 30s when he wrote these posts, working as a professional activist and co-founder of a nationally prominent organization. He knew exactly what he believed.
Michigan’s 7th is a genuine battleground. President Trump carried it by less than two points in 2024. The district was previously represented by now-Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin. Rep. Barrett is seeking his first reelection in a district that neither party can take for granted.
The Democrat Party’s decision to nominate Lawrence in a seat this competitive is itself worth examining. Democrats had two more moderate primary opponents in this race. Lawrence beat them both. That tells a story about where the activist base of the Democrat Party actually is, regardless of what the nominee says in cleanup statements to CNN.
And the pattern extends beyond this one race. US Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, the other Michigan Democrat at the top of the ticket, faced scrutiny over his own deleted posts supporting defunding the police, along with deleted videos in which he called American football racist. Lawrence and El-Sayed appeared together at a rally in Lansing with US Sen. Bernie Sanders and US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in July.
That is the coalition. That is what Michigan Democrats chose to put on the ballot in a state President Trump carried in 2024.
The anti-police agenda has a documented record in cities that embraced it after 2020. Crime went up. Officers resigned or retired. Communities that could least afford the consequences paid the price. Lawrence spent years cheering that movement on and calling its critics “timid.” Now he wants a seat in Congress representing a district full of the working families his politics would harm.
Voters in Michigan’s 7th are going to have to decide whether “thinking out loud on the internet” is a satisfying explanation for years of documented calls to abolish law enforcement, nationalize private industry, throw open the borders, and dismantle the constitutional order. The posts existed. The deletions happened. The record is what it is.
Sources: CNN KFile, Andrew Kaczynski, September 4, 2026; Semafor; CNN interview with Manu Raju