KFile: Swing-seat Democrat deleted posts envisioning ‘a world without police and prisons’

By Andrew Kaczynski, CNN

(CNN) — William Lawrence, the Democratic nominee in one of the country’s most competitive House races in Michigan, deleted hundreds of old social media posts in which he embraced police and prison abolition, called for nationalizing fossil-fuel companies to end their production, attacked moderate Democrats and argued for a “fundamental overhaul” of the Constitution.

Other deleted posts show Lawrence writing “f**k” the nuclear-family home and calling it an “isolating, individualistic, violent way of organizing society,” envisioning “a world of free and open migration,” and calling to “Abolish the Senate.”

Lawrence even wrote a song inspired by moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s resistance to Democrats’ climate agenda: “Our generation says f**k you for everything,” Lawrence wrote in lyrics he posted in December 2021. “Hurry up and die so that we can get started.”

The deleted posts, most of which have not been previously reported and came under a previous Twitter handle, stretch back years to when Lawrence, now 36, was building his career as a progressive organizer as an original co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, helping propel the Green New Deal into Democratic politics in 2018.

Since winning the Democratic primary in August, he’s now the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, running against incumbent Republican Rep. Tom Barrett, who is seeking to win his first reelection.

Michigan’s 7th is one of the country’s truest House battleground tests: President Donald Trump carried it by less than two points in 2024 and the district was previously represented by now-Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin.

But Lawrence’s past rhetoric may complicate Democrats’ ability to retake the district, especially those deleted posts which include attacks aimed at fellow Democrats from the party’s more moderate wing, including Slotkin.

In January 2020, Lawrence attacked then-Rep. Slotkin, writing that he was “ashamed to be represented” by her and calling her a “supposed Democrat” over her response to President Donald Trump’s decision to order a deadly strike on Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, saying she did not condemn Trump.

‘Thinking out loud on the internet’

Lawrence has since distanced himself from at least some of his earlier positions. He told Semafor last month that his past posts supporting the 2020 “defund the police” movement “are out of step with what I believe now.” Last month, he told CNN’s Manu Raju that he let his membership in the Democratic Socialists of America “lapse” in July.

He told CNN in a further statement he regretted his past comments on Sen. Slotkin and said he did not support defunding the police or open borders.

“Like many millennials, I’ve done my fair share of thinking out loud on the internet. 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. I don’t agree with my previous statement about Senator Slotkin, who has been fiercely critical of the Trump administration’s war in Iran and is doing essential work to protect the integrity of the upcoming election. 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.

He’s one of a number of progressive candidates this cycle to face scrutiny over a scrubbed social-media history. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, has faced criticism over deleted posts supporting the “defund the police” movement, as well as since-removed YouTube videos in which he suggested football was racist.

Also in Michigan, El-Sayed’s one-time rival for the Democratic Senate nomination Mallory McMorrow suspended her campaign months after CNN reported that she had deleted thousands of old tweets.

In Wisconsin, democratic socialist Francesca Hong lost her gubernatorial primary after her deleted posts uncovered by CNN became a late issue in the race, while in New York City, DSA-backed Darializa Avila Chevalier upset longtime Rep. Adriano Espaillat after CNN uncovered a deleted account containing calls to abolish police, prisons and borders and embraces of communisms.

‘A world without police and prisons’

Lawrence’s ideological arguments stretched well beyond Democratic infighting.

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 be wound down through a “more confrontational” strategy, writing that it “should happen through forced nationalization and that should be our demand.” In October 2021, he pushed for then-President Joe Biden to “promise” to “end the coal industry,” through an executive order.

Later in August 2022, Lawrence summarized his politics as “social democrat in the streets, libertarian socialist in the sheets.”

He repeatedly took aim at the nuclear family home as well.

“F**k isolation and the nuclear family domicile,” Lawrence wrote in 2021 while praising communal living. The following year, he went further, calling the nuclear-family home an “isolating, individualistic, violent way of organizing society.” “I don’t want to be part of that,” he wrote.

Days later, Lawrence argued that the “hetero-patriarchial nuclear family” is a “MATERIAL foundation of wealth accumulation” because inheritance was concentrated through male family lines, while writing that “Queer families create MATERIAL conditions for solidarity and wealth sharing.”

His critiques extended to America’s political and economic order more broadly.

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.”

“May the 21st century begin an indigenous millennium,” he wrote.

In another post, Lawrence declared: “Racial capitalism is the problem. Empire is the problem.”

And in 2021 he urged readers to “envision a world of free and open migration,” answering his own question — “You mean, ANYBODY can move ANYWHERE??” — with an emphatic: “Yes!”

Attacks on moderates

Many of Lawrence’s now deleted posts were also attacks aimed at more moderate members of the Democratic Party.

Following the 2020 election, when Democratic 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.

In another intra-party fight over President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, Lawrence warned that if the bill failed to pass the House, he urged progressives to go “scorched earth” on conservative Democrats and the “absolute rubes throughout the party who believed them.”

Months later, responding to a moderate account, he wrote, “You f**king morons,” for questioning why Republicans overturned Roe. v. Wade before the 2022 midterm elections.

Lawrence also questioned whether Democrats should seek broad governing majorities at all if it meant sacrificing their values.

He wrote that it was “better to be a minority party that stands for something than a majority party that can’t govern,” arguing that it was sometimes necessary “to divide in order to unite a stronger and more coherent force.” In another post, he declared: “It’s time for the Dem civil war to rage.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.