New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani marked the 4th of July with a speech loaded with leftist pablum, as he seeks to establish himself as Blue America’s leader of the opposition in the Trump era. In Mamdani’s telling, America has the potential to be great, but only if it rises up against the “oligarchs” and conservative forces holding it back. He granted no credit to the role that business owners and innovators play in the country’s economic success, instead claiming, “We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt-streaked hands … a nation that…
Author: Cliff Rudsky
In the aftermath of Los Angeles’s recent mayoral primary, it appears that the Left does not quite have a total grip on the city’s politics — for now, at least. The Los Angeles City Council was recently planning to put forth a ballot measure to voters that, if passed, would allow illegal aliens to vote in municipal and school district elections. However, the council has since decided against this, at least for the upcoming November midterms. Part of the backlash to the proposal appears to have come from local racial politics. Black community and religious leaders have expressed concern that…
California Governor Gavin Newsom is attempting to shore up his left-wing street cred prior to a 2028 run. While Newsom is associated with the limousine liberal wing of the state’s Democratic politics — heavy on left-wing cultural messaging, while eschewing radical economics — he has recently called for a nationwide billionaire tax, while opposing a similar statewide measure that the state will vote on in November. According to Newsom, working-class Americans “[…] did everything right, and the system still has nothing for them. What stands in their way is the federal tax code, a corporate code, and an inheritance code…
The general election to replace Rep. Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco is heating up, with leftists once again engaging in confrontational tactics. Amusingly, their target is California State Senator Scott Wiener, who embraces left-wing orthodoxy on gay and transgender politics, but has been pegged as not sufficiently devoted to the Palestinian cause. The two worlds collided during a pro-trans march in SF’s Dolores Park, where a group of leftist attendees followed and harangued Wiener over his Gaza stance. One protester yelled, “You stopped being queer the moment you started supporting Israel,” before Wiener exited the park. Wiener, who is gay…
Three San Francisco Giants baseball pitchers have landed the team in hot water after protesting their rainbow hats on Pride Night. During a recent game where all Giants players were supposed to wear rainbow hats for an annual promotion of gay pride in the city, three pitchers wrote Bible verses on their hats, while a fourth pitcher wore the team’s regular orange-and-black hat. Local backlash was swift, with many fans demanding an apology from the team’s leadership. So far, the team’s management has refrained from issuing any kind of sweeping condemnation such fans clearly are seeking. San Francisco Mayor Daniel…
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates appear to have the momentum in urban America, as Washington, DC City Councilman Janeese Lewis George is the latest member to emerge victorious in a Democratic mayoral primary. Given DC’s deep-blue demographics, Lewis George’s primary victory virtually guarantees she will replace outgoing Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser. Her win also continues the trend of Democratic Socialist candidates becoming increasingly competitive in urban elections, starting with Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York City. Unsurprisingly, Lewis George was entirely onboard with the Defund the Police mass hysteria in 2019, minimizing crime as a “public health…
The University of California (UC’s) six-year experiment in banishing standardized testing requirements has, predictably, not gone according to plan. Back in 2020, the UC Board of Regents voted to phase out SAT and ACT test scores in admissions requirements, echoing now-familiar claims that the tests were unfairly biased against black, Latino, and poor students. Now, as faculty deal with students who are severely deficient in math, the university system is revisiting its ill-advised decision. According to an open letter signed by 1,400 UC faculty members, “We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must re-teach middle school mathematics while…
Border crossings are at their lowest level in over 50 years under the Trump administration, and House Republicans are attempting to pass legislation aimed at warding off future Democratic open-borders policies. Recognizing that subsequent Democratic administrations could reverse President Donald J. Trump’s executive orders, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) explained, “We plan on keeping it [a secure border,] and we in Congress need to do everything we possibly can to ensure that we do keep it, and that means codifying President Trump’s executive orders.” Should the effort prove successful, Democrats would need to control the presidency and both chambers of Congress…
Democrats have been promoting Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner as their working-class left-wing hero this election cycle. His personal life, though, has increasingly cast a cloud over his chances for an upset victory in November as the presumptive party nominee. Platner is the latest Democratic attempt to rebrand the party with their idea of a plainspoken, blue-collar candidate in a swing state, without substantively changing any of their left-wing policies. His campaign rhetoric is indistinguishable from that of Bernie Sanders, but his persona has appealed to Democratic voters who view the party leadership as insufficiently combative. The latest allegations regarding…
President Donald J. Trump confirmed that he had been critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Lebanon strategy in a recent phone call, while offering assurance that the two worked well together. While rejecting the idea that he was angry during the phone call, Trump acknowledged, “I was a little bit perturbed at his constantly fighting with Lebanon, you know? At some point, ‘Bibi, we’ve got to stop this. We gotta stop it.'” The call comes amid Trump’s attempts to wind down the Iran War, as well as Israeli strikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. Netanyahu is facing a potentially…