The Marxist Transformation of the Democrat Party

American  Thinker 

Since 1912 and the election of Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat Party has been America’s left-wing political party. Nonetheless, over the decades it has maintained tenuous ties to the basic tenets of the nation’s founding. In the 1930s, beginning with what was a de facto “cult of personality” centered around Franklin Roosevelt, the Democrat party establishment began wallowing in myopic party loyalty. It was that myopic party loyalty extended to Barack Obama together with a psychotic obsession with Donald Trump that has led to the Democrat party evolving into America’s Marxist/socialist political party and the greatest internal threat to the nation as founded in its 250-year history.

By 2020, the far-left or Marxists/socialists had cemented their grip on the party. In that election cycle the socialist wing of the Democrat party gained significant ground compared to previous elections. In 2020, per the Heartland Institute, 266 avowed socialist candidates ran under the Democrat banner for state legislative seats (200), U.S. House seats (60), and U.S. Senate seats (6). Virtually all ran in predominantly Democrat strongholds. More than ninety percent won their races. By comparison in 2018, only 86 Democrat candidates running for state and congressional seats were avowed socialists and of that number fewer than forty percent won their races.

By the summer and fall of 2025, even the legacy media was reporting about the Marxist/socialist takeover of the Democrat party and that the party is “…threatening to bring socialism into America’s mainstream via the two-party system.”

That outcome became inevitable in 2008 when the party went on a blind date with someone they did not know and made no effort to find out about and was responsible for Donald Trump seeking the presidency in 2016.

In 2008, Barack Obama, playing on his skin color, ability to deliver a speech, and a manufactured image geared to appeal to a celebrity-obsessed populace, captured the hearts and minds of the Democrat Party movers and shakers. It mattered little to an establishment marinated in party loyalty who Obama was or what he had said or done in his past. Winning the White House after eight years of Republican occupation was the only objective.

The mainstream media, the vast majority of whom historically promote Democrat candidates, were overwhelmingly predisposed to swallow the faux image portrayed by the Obama team as he met and exceeded their superficial image of an ideal presidential candidate.

The major financial contributors to the party were also susceptible to the new celebrity in their midst, as he had the unique ability to obfuscate socialism and make it sound not only benign but nation-saving. Out of loyalty to the party, they willfully chose to not believe that Obama harbored extreme left-wing beliefs, had historically demonized capitalism, and had incessantly trafficked in racial and class warfare rhetoric.

Additionally, Obama effectively stated during the campaign that he intended to transform the nation into a socialist state via a Marxist takeover of the Democrat party. However, all the revelations about his political philosophy and his past that were exposed during the campaign were waved away by those who in their juvenile celebrity worship or party loyalty refused to listen or ask questions.

To the elected Democrat officeholders, dependent on the largess of the party hierarchy, it mattered little who was the party nominee -- they would blindly support anyone chosen but particularly one the legacy media portrayed as “messianic.”

Once in office, the real Barack Obama surfaced. The blind date turned out to be a disaster for the party and the country.

Counting on the fascination with his racial identity and unbridled loyalty to the Democratic Party, Obama coerced the Congress, overwhelming controlled by the Democrats in 2009-2010, to take the lead and the arrows as they passed numerous bills transferring near unlimited power to the executive branch. Among these were the extremely unpopular ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act.

As all spending must be approved by Congress, a convenient scapegoat, Obama tacitly agreed with every spending request by his administration or any member of the party no matter how outrageous and detrimental to the long-term future of the country. In exchange, members of Congress raised no objections when extra-constitutional executive orders were issued and far-left ideologues appointed to further radicalize the federal bureaucracy. Additionally, many dubious and potentially illegal actions by the administration (such as the Fast and Furious debacle) were ignored and swept under the rug.

In the meantime, Barack Obama remained above the fray, ignoring Congress and its leaders as they myopically and slavishly did his bidding. His rare meetings with them were condescending and reminiscent of a summons before the throne of a monarch.

Unable to muster any self-respect, the Democrat members of Congress, in their juvenile obsession with party loyalty, continued to bow before the throne, even after a devastating defeat in the 2010 mid-term election (the Democrats lost a record 63 House seats). In that campaign, the titular leader of the Party, Barack Obama, did next to nothing to help those running for re-election.

As part of his agenda to transform the Democrat party, Obama, in the 2010, 2012, and 2014 election cycles essentially ignored the financial and campaign needs of a vast number of “moderate” Democrats resulting in the retirement or defeat of many in the primaries or general elections, thus, opening the door for far-left candidates to run under the Democrat banner.

Barack Obama no longer needed a Democrat Congress as he had a compliant and racially intimidated Republican party as his so-called opposition. Further, the Democrats had already granted and allowed him to usurp sufficient power to unilaterally proceed on transforming America but more importantly the party during his second term regardless of who controlled Congress.

With Obama’s re-election in 2012, the die was cast. By the end of his second term, the Democrat party was on the road to being in the grip of the far left. It was going to take time but it was only a matter of when.

The unexpected election of Donald Trump in 2016 not only cemented that inevitability but moved the timetable up dramatically as Trump Derangement Syndrome overwhelmingly seized the Democrat party establishment transforming them into a babbling, incoherent rabble with revenge as their only reason for existence.

Rather than focus on why they lost in 2016 and the stealthy but persistent encroachment of Marxist true believers within both the elected and establishment ranks of the party, the old guard hierarchy became fixated on defeating and humiliating Donald Trump by any means possible including unleashing hitherto unthinkable voting fraud and manipulation to guarantee Trump’s defeat in 2020 and entering into de facto alliances and power sharing with virtually any element of the far left.

Those alliances opened the gates for groups such as The Democratic Socialist of America, the Progressive Democrats of America, and Our Revolution to not only field candidates under the Democrat party banner (which they successfully did in 2020) but occupy seats at the table.

These newest members of the Democrat hierarchy have youth and determination on their side as well as the backing of a majority of the younger generations. As the old guard establishment rapidly fades away, they will consolidate their control of the party and never relinquish their domination. The Democrat Party is America’s Marxist/socialist political party in perpetuity and greatest internal threat in its 250-year history.

That reality is not lost on the American people, as a July 2025 poll revealed that just 28% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Democrat party. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the prevailing view of the party establishment Republicans in Congress as they refuse to acknowledge the threat the current Democrat party represents and to aggressively confront the Marxist agenda and tactics of their “colleagues” across the aisle.

US Trade Representative Cites Access to Canadian Dairy and Alcohol Markets as Conditions for USMCA Renewal

 

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer speaks during a media conference in Brussels, Belgium, on Nov. 24, 2025. AP Photo/Omar Havana

Top U.S. trade negotiator Jamieson Greer said Canada must change a number of its policies including in the dairy sector if it wants the United States to commit to a long-term renewal of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

In a portion of his closed-door remarks to members of Congress that were released to the public Dec. 17, Greer said that a “rubberstamp” of USMCA at next year’s July 1 joint review is not in the American “national interest” unless Canada changes its dairy supply management system, digital streaming rules, and provincial import bans on U.S. alcohol.

Greer also outlined U.S. requests that Mexico do more to enforce labour standards, give U.S. energy firms more access to bid on contracts instead of favouring state-run firms, and stop the flow of Chinese-made products from entering the United States.

Greer said the trade deal has grown American exports to Mexico and Canada by 56 percent since 2020 but that significant sticking points remain from Washington’s perspective.

“The USMCA has been successful to a certain degree,” Greer said in remarks released Dec. 17. “But at the same time, it is clear that we have not achieved all of our goals with respect to strengthening U.S. manufacturing capacity and creating good jobs, and nearly all stakeholders advocate improvements.”

Review Process

The tripartite trade agreement was signed in November 2018 for a term of 16 years, and comes up for its first joint review on July 1 of next year.

During each six-year review, the three nations have the option to renew for an additional 16-year term. Greer said if U.S. demands on Canada and Mexico are not met, the Trump administration may choose to approve the agreement on a year-by-year basis, rather than agreeing to a 16-year renewal.

Greer, who serves as the chief trade negotiator for the Trump administration as the U.S. Trade Representative, added that he’s open to negotiating the outstanding matters with Mexico and Canada in a bilateral or trilateral setting.

Dairy

Canada’s dairy supply management policy sets quotas for the production of dairy products, eggs, and poultry in order to prevent a glut in the market.

The policy also applies considerable tariffs and tariff-rate quotas on foreign eggs, milk, and poultry in order to shield domestic producers from foreign competition.

Greer said Canada’s rules “unfairly restrict market access for U.S. dairy products,” and go against the free-trade provisions of the USMCA.

Although he didn’t call for ending supply management altogether, Greer said that Canada must grow its “market access for U.S. dairy products” and stop exporting cheap Canadian dairy products if Ottawa wants the United States to renew the trade agreement.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said in April that Canada’s supply management is not negotiable.

“Supply management is part of our economic sovereignty. When it comes to negotiations with President Trump, it’s off the table,” he said.

Digital Regulations

Greer said Canadian digital regulations are another major impediment to renewing the USMCA. Canada pledged to rescind its Digital Services Tax (DST) this past June after U.S. President Donald Trump cited it in pausing trade talks at the time. The tax, which went into effect in June 2024, applied a 3 percent levy on revenue from large digital companies, which the Trump administration said unfairly impacted the earnings of large American companies such as Google, Meta, and Amazon.

Greer said Dec. 17 that while the lifting of the DST was a step forward, Canada’s Online Streaming Act and Online News Act continue to be roadblocks for Washington renewing the USMCA. The Online Streaming Act requires large streaming services like Netflix and Spotify to promote, fund, and platform Canadian content.

The Online News Act requires tech companies to pay back profits to Canadian news companies when the news outlets’ content earns revenue on the tech companies’ platforms such as Meta. The law has led to platforms such as Meta banning Canadian news from being shared on their platform, so they don’t have to pay publishers.

Greer says both laws go against the rules of the USMCA.

“We have succeeded in getting Canada to meaningfully address some of them, including its Digital Services Tax, which would have cost American digital companies billions in tax payments to Canada,” Greer said. He added that “Canada insists on maintaining its Online Streaming Act, a law that discriminates against U.S. tech and media firms, as well as a number of other measures that restrict digital services trade.”

Ottawa says the laws are needed to ensure fairness to publishers and to support Canadian content.

“If you benefit from the system, you should contribute to it. With the Online Streaming Act, we’re acting to support our creators, our artists, our independent producers and our culture so that they thrive in the digital age,” then-Minister of Canadian Heritage Pablo Rodriguez said in 2023.

US Alcohol

A number of Canadian provinces stopped selling U.S. alcohol products this past March due to ongoing U.S. tariffs, although Alberta and Saskatchewan have removed their bans on U.S. alcohol.

Greer said the provincial decisions violate the heart of the USMCA, and various procurement policies in Quebec, B.C., and Ontario limit market access to U.S. suppliers, citing concerns with Canadian customs registration processes. Greer said all these matters must be satisfactorily addressed before the United States agrees to renew the USMCA to a full term.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has said the ban on U.S. alcohol in his province will remain until the United States removes its tariffs on Canada.

“It’s still going to be banned until they cut the tariffs or we make a deal with them. It’s not coming on our shelves,” Ford said in August.

Ottawa’s View

Greer’s comments come in the wake of his previous statements Dec. 10 in which he said the United States is open to negotiating separate bilateral deals with Canada and Mexico instead of recommitting to the USMCA. Greer said exiting the USMCA entirely was one option being considered.

Carney responded to these comments by denying that the United States might leave the trade pact.

“That’s not what they’re saying,” he told media Dec. 11.

Minister Responsible for Canada-U.S. Relations Dominic LeBlanc also said Dec. 11 that he does not expect Washington to leave the USMCA and added that his view is also shared by Mexico.

The United States has applied a 35 percent tariff on all Canadian goods exported to the United States that are not covered under the USMCA, in addition to sectoral duties and tariffs on autos, steel, aluminum, copper, and softwood lumber.

Carney has repeatedly praised the USMCA as a favourable deal for Canada, saying that around 85 percent of Canadian goods exported to the United States remain tariff-free under the deal.

However in a meeting with Trump this past May at the White House, Carney also said there are aspects of the USMCA that will “have to change.”

“Some things about it are going to have to change, and part of the way you’ve conducted these tariffs have taken advantage of existing aspects of the USMCA, so it’s going to have to change,” Carney said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/us-trade-representative-cites-access-to-canadian-dairy-and-alcohol-markets-as-conditions-for-usmca-renewal-5959716?&utm_source=MB_article_paid&utm_campaign=MB_article_2025-12-18-ca&utm_medium=email&est=RMXGc5C%2FJuBy1jw2KqFvnwLm4zK5OpBIRYUhcgJOSA6oK3inT2Wkodn2%2FqO%2BGmsetBaM&utm_content=more-top-news-2

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There’s No Evidence Australia’s Strict Gun Control Laws Are Effective

The supposed benefits of Australia’s gun buy-back rest on flawed statistics. Only concealed carry reduces mass public shootings.

The Federalist

Democrats in the United States repeatedly praise Australia’s 1996 gun confiscation law as a successful model to emulate, while many Australians — especially after the Bondi Beach terror attack earlier this week — argue that the confiscation helped but failed to go far enough. Yet the supposed benefits of this policy rest on deeply flawed statistical analysis.

After the Minneapolis school shooting in September, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz claimed, “When they had a school shooting in Scotland or they had an incident in Australia, they simply made changes. … And since they did those things, they don’t have them. We’re an outlier amongst nations in terms of what happens to our children.” Prominent Democrats, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, have echoed this praise for Australia’s 1996 gun confiscation law.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reinforced this narrative on Monday after the massacre, stating that a prior administration’s gun laws “have made an enormous difference in Australia and are a proud moment of reform, quite rightly, achieved across the parliament with bipartisan support.” Supporters typically point to declines in firearm homicides and firearm suicides as evidence of success.

Relying on that perceived success, Albanese has promised even stricter gun control, arguing that tighter laws would yield even greater benefits. Policymakers already advocate proposals such as limits on the number of firearms individuals may own and periodic license reviews.

For years, major media outlets — including USA Today, The New York Times, and The Washington Post — have published stories crediting Australia’s 1996–1997 gun confiscation with cutting firearm homicide and suicide rates in half and eliminating mass public shootings.

Grossly Misleading Statistics

But simple before-and-after averages of Australian gun deaths are grossly misleading. Firearm homicides and firearm suicides declined steadily for roughly 15 years before the 1996–1997 confiscation. As a result, analysts could choose almost any year during that period and show lower average firearm death rates afterward than before, regardless of whether the law had any effect.

To illustrate, imagine a perfectly straight line declining at the same rate before and after the confiscation. In that case, no one could credibly claim the law caused the decline.

The relevant question is whether the rate of decline changed after the confiscation took effect. It did — but not in the way supporters predicted. After the gun confiscation, the decline in firearm homicides and firearm suicides actually slowed.

The confiscation removed nearly 1 million firearms — about 29 percent of privately owned guns — but private gun ownership soon began rising again. Today, Australians own more guns than they did before the confiscation. Since 1997, gun ownership has grown more than three times faster than the population, increasing from about 2.5 million to 5.8 million.

If gun control advocates’ theory were correct, firearm homicides and suicides should have dropped sharply after the “buyback,” as politicians often call the confiscation, even though the government never owned the guns in the first place. Those rates should have then risen again as gun ownership rebounded. That pattern never appeared.

Economists also note that people can substitute other methods for suicide or homicide, which makes total deaths more informative than firearm-specific counts. By that measure, the results look even worse. Immediately after the confiscation, total suicides jumped by roughly 20 percent and remained at or above pre-confiscation levels. A decade later, firearm homicides had declined slightly, but total homicides had increased.

Other crimes also defied predictions. Armed robbery rates surged immediately after the buyback before gradually declining.

Comparisons to U.S., Other Countries

Gun control advocates have lost their claim that Australia has experienced no mass public shootings since its gun confiscation. Despite banning anything resembling an “assault weapon,” the recent Bondi Beach attack left 15 people murdered and 43 injured — a toll far worse than the vast majority of U.S. mass public shootings. In the United States, researchers define mass public shootings as incidents in which four or more people are murdered in a public place and the attack is not connected to another crime such as robbery or gang activity. From 1998 to 2024, the average mass public shooting in the U.S. killed 8.4 people — roughly half the number murdered in Australia in this single incident. On average, U.S. attacks wounded about 11 people, roughly one-quarter of the 43 wounded in Australia this past Saturday.

Gun control advocates selectively highlight countries that appear to confirm their preferred narrative. Using Australia as proof is like selectively pointing to U.S. states with lax gun control laws that have experienced no mass public shootings. Thirteen states that the Giffords gun control group gave an “F” grade to have had no mass public shootings since 2010 — Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

European countries such as Belgium, France, and the Netherlands impose even stricter gun control laws than Australia, yet their mass public shooting rates are at least as high as those in the United States.

Which Gun Control Measures Make a Difference?

The proper approach examines many comparable places and evaluates which gun control measures actually make a difference. In the first study to do this, Bill Landes of the University of Chicago and I compiled data on every multiple-victim public shooting in the United States from 1977 to 1999. 

We analyzed 13 different gun control policies, including waiting periods, registration, background checks, bans on so-called assault weapons, the death penalty, and harsher penalties for crimes committed with firearms. Only one policy reduced both the number and severity of mass public shootings: allowing law-abiding citizens to defend themselves by carrying permitted concealed handguns. Subsequent research has continued to confirm this finding.

Even more research shows that shooters are able to kill fewer people when an armed civilian is present. Police are extremely important in stopping crime, and research shows they are the single most important factor. But their uniforms make them operate at a real tactical disadvantage in stopping these shootings. Attackers can wait for uniformed officers to leave, pick another target, or if they do attack there, shoot the officers first — after all, the officer is the one person they know who can stop them. As a result, police were killed at 11 times the rate of intervening civilians and accidentally killed civilian bystanders or fellow officers five times more often than civilians accidentally shot bystanders.

From 2014 to 2024, using the FBI’s active-shooter definition (cases where a gun is fired in public, not part of some other type of crime), armed civilians stopped 199 of 562 incidents, preventing 35.4 percent of the attacks — and this figure rises to 52.5 percent in locations where carry was allowed. By contrast, police stopped 167 incidents (29.7 percent). Overall, armed civilians have proven remarkably safe and effective. In the 199 civilian interventions, bystanders were accidentally shot only once (0.5 percent of cases), with zero instances of interfering with police. Civilians were killed in just 2 cases (1.0 percent) and wounded in 49 (24.6 percent), and in 58 incidents (32 percent) they prevented potential mass shootings.

Uniformed police, despite superior training, faced greater risks and error rates in the 167 incidents they stopped. They accidentally shot bystanders or fellow officers five times (3.0 percent) — over five times the civilian rate — and suffered 19 officers killed (11.4 percent, 11 times the civilian rate) and 51 wounded (30.5 percent). In no active-shooter incident did either group have their firearm taken by the attacker. While neither civilians nor police stop every attack, the data demonstrates the presence of armed civilians improves outcomes. 

Unfortunately, both the Australia attack and the recent Brown University attack occurred in gun-free zones, where victims could not defend themselves. In fact, 92 percent  of mass public shootings take place in locations that ban guns. Gun control laws create defenseless victims, yet when attacks happen, policymakers respond not by repealing the regulations that contributed to the problem, but by imposing even more regulations.

The West’s Embrace Of Mass Third-World Migration Is Civilizational Suicide

The West’s mass importation of Third-Worlders with no emphasis on assimilation has been, is, and will continue to be a complete failure.

The Federalist

How many innocent civilians have to be senselessly murdered before Western powers admit that mass importation of Third-World migrants was a mistake? Apparently, the answer is: many more.

By now, most Americans have heard of the horrific terrorist attack that occurred at Bondi Beach in Australia over the weekend, in which two Islamists opened fire on a crowd of Jewish festivalgoers. The suspects — who allegedly murdered at least 15 people and injured many more — have since been identified as father and son, Sajid and Naveed Akram.

According to Sky News, Sajid came to Australia from India on a student visa in 1998 before later becoming a permanent resident, while Naveed was born in Australia. Law enforcement previously investigated the latter “on the basis of being associated with” alleged terrorists, but officials ultimately assessed “that there was no indication of any ongoing threat or threat of him engaging in violence,” according to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

The prime minister all but admitted the attack was “driven by” radical Islamic ideology.

Rest assured, Australian authorities are prepared to take action in the wake of this terrible tragedy — just not the kind that would actually prevent barbarity like this from happening again in the future.

Rather than focus on shutting off the immigration pipeline responsible for the Akrams’ presence in the Land Down Under, the nation’s leading officials are preparing to implement more extreme gun control policies throughout the country. Put another way, the Australian government is going to further inhibit the native Aussie population’s ability to defend itself from the radical Islamists their elected officials are willfully importing.

But it’s not solely Australia that’s facing these types of problems. Other Western nations — including the United States — are grappling with the consequences of mass importation of Third-World (specifically Islamic) migrants.

In France, Paris officials recently announced plans to cancel an upcoming New Year’s Eve celebration event. While police pinned the move on “unpredictable crowd movements,” skeptics of the narrative quickly put the blame on “France’s open-door immigration policies” and the looming threat of migrant violence, according to the New York Post.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom continues to prioritize targeting its own citizens for disfavored speech over fixing the problems caused by its embrace of mass migration. As The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson has regularly reported in these pages, Great Britain is employing the same playbook now being used by Australia — “introduc[ing] and favor[ing] foreign cultural practices, extend[ing] the power of the state over the traditional rights and liberties of the people, and persecut[ing] the native British population for dissenting from the forced transformation of their country.”

Much like their European counterparts, American leftists have adopted the practice of attempting to silence voices warning about the dangers of such destructive immigration policies. Dare to point out the proven disasters stemming from the importation of the Third World with no assimilation, and you’re immediately hit with smears of “racism” and “xenophobia.”

That’s what happened earlier this week when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., accused Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., of “Islamophobia.” Tuberville’s crime? Having the audacity to call for Islamists who “aren’t here to assimilate” into American culture to be sent back to their home countries.

Contrary to the New York senator’s temper tantrum, there is nothing “Islamophobic” about highlighting the incompatibility of Islam and Western civilization. Nor is it wrong for Americans and other Westerners to demand that non-Westerners assimilate into the culture they fostered and created.

If a native-born American or European were to immigrate to a Middle Eastern country, he or she would be expected to adopt that nation’s cultural norms and practices. Yet when it comes to Third-Worlders immigrating to the West, that standard is thrown out the window.

“Diversity is our strength,” advocates of the latter repeatedly told us. Now, that obsession with “diversity” is getting people killed.

None of this is to say that every individual of Middle Eastern descent deserves blame for the actions of others. But the fact remains that the West’s mass importation of Muslim migrants with no emphasis on assimilation has been, is, and will continue to be a complete and utter failure.

Western powers have a choice. They can either reverse course and ensure the people they’re admitting into their nation will adopt their cultural norms; or they can continue to embrace the self-destructive immigration policies facilitating their civilizational collapse.

Given what we’ve seen from them thus far, it appears they’re intent on finding things out the hard way.