The Socialists Are Coming for Your Grandparents

Townhall 

The same ideological forces attacking children are setting their sights on the elderly.

“You and I are like bookends. You radicalize the youth, I radicalize the old.”

Most political activists try to hide the game. Jane Fonda said it out loud.

During a virtual town hall event moderated by Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Fonda explained to a youth activist how their movement divides the work: Young activists radicalize young people, while veteran activists focus on misinforming and radicalizing older generations.

I was introduced to this relic from the COVID era by Natalya Murakhver, who heads up the nonprofit Restore Childhood.

Our conversation turned to the meteoric rise of socialist rhetoric and ideals in American culture — to the point where it’s being taught in schools as something to strive for.

The left’s strategy is hiding in plain sight, and we are watching this “bookend tactic” go to work on the most impressionable populations.

Leftist leaders like Weingarten want us to think it’s just about the children, but it’s not. This is about our grandparents, too.

While unions like the National Education Association (NEA) are using lessonsinspired by infamous Marxist Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States, to reach kids as young as kindergarteners, government unions are also reaching older age groups to imprint on them the perceived needs of the working class and the importance of social justice activism — including why implementing communist systems and other socialist ideas are the only ways to save America.

The NEA has a branch specifically for retirees called NEA-Retired. In the May 2026 edition of its member magazine, the publishers included comments such as, 

“In light of the current political crisis facing our members, our schools, and our very democracy, the 2026 NEA Representative Assembly, in July, will build on the momentum of No Kings and May Day.”

“This moment requires all of us working in solidarity. We must organize for power.”

“Take an action every day, because we will not allow the Trump administration to privatize our schools, restrict our voting rights, erode civil rights, attack our unions, or silence our voices. ... We can’t just be outraged by what’s happening; we have to use that anger to courageously stand in this season of suffering.”

And if that anti-Trump message wasn’t clear enough, the magazine also included a photo of President Becky Pringle enjoying the “pleasure and honor” of meeting New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani ¾ a proud socialist. 

In a similar way, the AFT has a program built around mobilizing retirees and helping them “discover techniques to help them build their retiree power.” 

Topics from a past conference included workshops on strategic planning, data gathering, and effective messaging.

An AFT post on the 2023 event reported that Weingarten addressed her members by saying, “What does any good army do, alongside fighting for what it believes in? It trains, and it recruits.”

Now, much of this messaging relies on the pro-union, pro-collective idea that retirees — even after they are done working — still owe a duty to their union, and that’s that. 

While some of that might seem innocuous, these efforts are seeds that will allow even more radical ideas to be planted down the line.

“I think I saw that Zoom call like probably a year or two ago, and I’m like, ‘How are they going to radicalize the old?’ ” Murakhver recalled. “Because the old are the ones who know the history. They weren’t subjected to this whole media blackout and the solution of consensus.”

Turns out, the answer lies in betraying the faith the elderly have in historically trusted institutions, such as government labor unions. 

Leaders like Becky Pringle can start with a light touch of anti-establishment rhetoric about protecting education, and then a few years later can bluntly call for fighting the Trump administration.

The picture of her praising Mamdani on BlueSky is the next warning sign. In a few years, we shouldn’t be surprised to see the NEA glorify socialism by name.

In fact, the Democratic Socialists of America posted an article back in 2021 titled, “How DSA Can Activate an Under-tapped Resource: Retirees,” offering detailed instructions on how to activate retirees and make sure that their demographic is “treasured and valued as comrades in our long fight for socialism.” 

These leaders have been playing the long game. 

The tragic part about all this is that the people being targeted by the left are not, by any means, stupid or naive. They’re simply being misinformed and misled by organizations with extremely malicious intent. 

There is none more skilled at spreading deliberate misinformation and shaping political narratives than the teachers’ unions.  

When most people think of socialism, they imagine attacks on Amazon, Steve Jobs, or any other wealthy, self-made CEO. 

But today, the target isn’t Wall Street. It’s your grandparents.

Podcast thread for June 25

 

I appreciate the breaks, but for real, why does summer have to feel like you are sometimes just sleepwalking thru the day?

Calm Down About JD Vance

Townhall 

JD Vance is getting a lot of heat right now because he’s become the face of the administration in trying to deal with the Iranian mullahs, as thankless a job as one could ever imagine. The Iranian mullahs are degenerate freaks who want to annihilate every Jew, then every Christian, from the face of the Earth, so you can see the problem he faces in trying to negotiate with them and in discussing the results of those negotiations. To the extent he supports the negotiations, we’re entitled to tie him to what is a miserable deal. If I had my way, we’d be destroying these people. But I don’t get my way. I wasn’t elected to anything, and a majority of Americans appear to support resolving this situation—for the time being, because we’re not actually resolving anything—by talking instead of bombing.

I’d prefer the bombing. I want to make that clear. But the president and the vice president have chosen to go in another direction, one that the American people seem more inclined to support. They don’t want another war right now, or rather, they don’t want a kinetic war right now. They’re willing to accept a phony, temporary peace, which is pretty much what this MOU means. This war is going to go on one way or the other until either the mullahs or we are dead. That’s a consequence of dealing with apocalyptic 7th-century pagans.

What we are really negotiating for is a halftime to avoid economic collapse and a Democrat wave in the midterms. As Clausewitz pointed out, war is a subset of politics, and in this case, it’s domestic politics. You can like that or not like that, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s a fact that Donald Trump and JD Vance have to consider, even if a lot of critics have not.

I like most of these critics and agree with much of what they’re saying. Not all of them, because some of them are nuts, but like them, I’m not happy with this deal. Yet I understand why we’re making it. I also understand the problems we are having implementing it and fully expected them. I suspect JD Vance feels the same way, though he’s being painted as someone who sincerely believes this is a terrific diplomatic coup instead of the best of several bad choices.

There’s no way that JD Vance is fooled by these people any more than Donald Trump is fooled by these people—as Salena Zito famously observed, one needs to take Donald Trump’s bluster and blarney about the MOU seriously, not literally. They’re liars, degenerates, and sociopaths. Aided by the mainstream media, which credulously reports anything that anyone remotely connected with the regime—or not connected with the regime—says that contradicts what the Americans are saying, the Iranians are presenting an image of chaos. But it’s only an image. This is an information operation. They don’t have much in the way of kinetic power. They can scare ships from going through the Strait of Hormuz. They can promise to shoot missiles at the Gulf states’ installations. They can even threaten to walk out of the negotiations, although you’ll note that they walked right back after they ostentatiously departed the other day.

They want this deal, but unfortunately, the administration wants it, too, and they’re taking full advantage of that fact. JD Vance has been taking a lot of heat for being the face of this project. You’ll notice that we haven’t seen anything about Secretary Rubio or Secretary Hegseth in the last week or so. It’s clear they hate the deal and don’t want anything to do with it. JD Vance is taking a risk by making himself the face of it. If the whole thing goes to hell, that’ll be on him. And if we manage to muddle through, he’ll get some of the credit.

A lot of folks on our side irrationally hate JD Vance. Part of this may be transferred anger against Donald Trump—there are real consequences for crossing the president, but the vice president? Not so much. Still, it’s unreasonable. He’s an extremely intelligent guy, and he’s very well-spoken. We’ve seen a lot of short clips of him over the last week or so, but you need to watch longer. This is a guy who can handle himself. Most of what he says isn’t crazy. Now, some of it was not great—he misspoke about World War II, for instance, and that was embarrassing. But if you think he’s dumb, you’re just deluding yourself. He’s not dumb. He’s a very smart guy who is very suspicious of the use of American power in the Middle East, which is not surprising because he’s one of the relatively few people screaming about all of this who actually put on a uniform and went over there. It’s personal for him.

There’s an idea out there that he is somehow playing footsies with the groyper types, and that he hates Israel and, for some reason, loves the Iranians. Look, I get why a lot of people on our side are paranoid about being sold out. It comes from being sold out. No one gets sold out like conservatives. Look at John Cornyn, Donald Trump’s very best friend until he lost his primary, and now all he does is try to screw with the president on Twitter.

But it’s especially true if you’re a supporter of Israel, which I am—my criticism of Israel is that it’s been far too nice to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. If you’re Jewish, or a friend of the Jewish people, yeah, you should be paranoid, because a huge number of people want to kill you. That’s now an unofficial plank of the Democrat Party platform if you haven’t noticed. Oh, they don’t say they want genocide. They just want to accuse Israel of genocide, and to do things that are entirely consistent with allowing their new green/red friends to murder everyone of the Jewish faith from the river to the sea.

JD Vance does not support that nonsense. The idea that he’s some sort of secret antisemite is ridiculous. He gets grief because of his friendship with some of the podcast types. He was a personal friend of Tucker Carlson, and Tucker’s gone insane. It’s not fun to have your friends go haywire. However, JD Vance has demonstrated zero concurrence with any of Tucker’s more bizarre tangents. There are people out there who want JD Vance to “repudiate” Tucker or otherwise trash him. He refuses to do so, and I don’t blame him. For one thing, the people demanding he disavow his friend aren’t going to like him any better once he does. They’re just going to add “weakness” to their list of objections to the vice president. The second thing is that you don’t trash your friends because somebody tells you to. Occasionally, in the conservative movement, I’ve been told I must repudiate somebody who’s a friend and who has said something I don’t necessarily agree with, and my reaction is always the same: Pound sand. Nobody gets to tell me what I have to say. Ever. And JD Vance, who grew up in Appalachia, where loyalty means something, clearly feels the same way. If your price of admission for JD Vance is that he publicly castigates friends, you’re out of luck.

But there are legitimate criticisms of JD Vance, such as over his criticism of Israeli politicians. You can argue that he’s been too harsh, but that’s not necessarily indicative of an anti-Israel bias. Statements he makes while negotiating with Iranians are not necessarily evidence that he thinks Israel is the problem. And sometimes, Israel is a problem in the sense that what it wants is not necessarily what America needs. Look, the Venn diagram of American and Israeli interests is not a perfect circle, though it overlaps about 90 percent. There’s a 10 percent difference. Israel is a different country. It has different interests and it pursues them, as one should expect. The United States has its own interests, and sometimes they conflict with Israel’s. Sorry about that, but America needs to do what America needs to do. JD Vance does not hate Israel because he points out that indisputable fact.

The Iranians are doing everything they can to make him look bad, and the necessity of defending this deal implies the necessity to put up with a lot of Iranian nonsense. You typically don’t go into negotiation screaming obscenities about your negotiating partner. JD Vance is being nicer to the Iranians than they deserve because he’s trying to get this negotiation done. His problem is not only that the mullahs are sociopathic liars, but that there are many different regime factions and they are all saying different things. Who the hell is in charge over there? That’s kind of hard to know because we’ve killed so many of them. That’s why you get 10 different takes on whatever JD Vance comes out and says. It doesn’t reflect on him that the Iranians can’t get their act together.

Now, we all know—and that includes JD Vance—that these semi-humans are going to lie and cheat. Again, the vice president is not stupid. He knows this will not lead to a final peace. It’s going to be a temporary truce. And to make the deal, we’re going to have to give up things, like letting them sell oil under certain conditions. Apparently, the oil money can only be used to buy food from American farmers, which sounds like a pretty good deal. As for the nuclear weapons inspectors, well, we’ll see how that goes, but I think we all know the Iranians are going to renege, and eventually we’re going to have to go in and smash them. But we’re not going to go in with boots on the ground and conduct regime change. There’s no support for that from anybody. Since that isn’t possible, JD Vance, as the president’s lead negotiator, needs to look at what is possible. Sometimes all you have are bad choices.

The Republican Party is going to have to make a choice in 2028. It must choose someone to carry on the Trump legacy. Right now, the obvious, and overwhelmingly likely, choice is JD Vance. But some of the MOU critics—again, with whom I mostly agree about destroying the mullahs—have announced that they are out. They consider this an absolute betrayal. They’re going to sit out the midterms, and they are not going to support JD Vance if he’s nominated.

Since we’re demanding people repudiate friends, let me do it. That’s stupid. As I said, life is about choices, and you don’t always get to pick between ones you find optimal. JD Vance is very popular among the base and is overwhelmingly likely to be our nominee at this point. It’s not completely settled, though, and this controversy does create an opening for someone to run against him (which I think will be Ted Cruz, who will lose). The bottom line is that in 2028, a lot of people who are very mad at JD Vance are going to have to choose between JD Vance and Kamala Harris, who’s almost certain to be their nominee. Kamala Harris will actively support the enemies of Israel and the United States. Where JD Vance chastises Israel in the gentlest terms, she will cut off their arms and ally us with people who want to finish what Hitler started.

That’s the choice. It’s literal madness to be so mad at JD Vance for his minor disagreements with Israel and his embrace of what he sees as the least-worst Iran option that one would effectively support someone who literally supports our enemies. So, calm down, be objective, and focus on the long-term goal of defeating our enemies abroad and at home. Focusing on JD Vance and imagining he is some sort of malignant monster supports neither.

One Question Exposed the Democrats’ Socialism Problem

One Question Exposed the Democrats’ Socialism Problem

Matt Margolis for PJ Media.com

AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

The Democrat Party has a socialism problem, and it's the kind of problem you can't spin your way out of. But, before we get into that, let's back up. Most Americans already viewed the Democrat Party as too far to the left. A CNN survey from February found the number of Americans who think the Democrat Party has become too liberal sitting at an all-time high. "The Democrats are moving to the left, the far left is gaining power, and there could be some electoral repercussions because what we see right now is voters — the clear majority — say that they are too liberal," CNN senior data analyst Harry Enten said.

Well, now it's getting devoured from within by socialists who think it's not far-left enough. In New York City, three Mamdani-backed socialist candidates just knocked off establishment Democrats in primaries. Even House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who won his own primary, has socialist-aligned activists chanting "You're next!" at him.

The reaction from the crowd to @RepJeffriespic.twitter.com/hxqaFQCLdT

— katie honan (@katie_honan) June 24, 2026

Here's the problem: Democrats have no idea how to fight back, because they can't admit capitalism works, and they definitely can't explain where socialism has ever worked. Watching them try is one of the more entertaining spectacles in politics right now.

Case in point: CNBC anchor Joe Kernen asked Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) to name just one place where socialism has worked. One. Just one. She couldn't do it. Instead, she deflected: "Is that another question, or is that for the next interview?" Kernen wasn't letting her off the hook that easily. He told her the question was "definitely for you" and that he simply wanted "one place where it has been beneficial." Rochester dodged again, offering, "Well, when you have me come back on, we can talk about all the races." Kernen, sensing he'd just watched a sitting United States senator fail to answer the easiest question imaginable, closed with, "Get your answer ready." She still doesn't have one. Nobody does, because there isn't one.

Democrat Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester dodges when asked when socialism has ever worked.

ROCHESTER: Is that another question or is that for the next interview?

CNBC: I just want to know one place...

ROCHESTER: When you have me come back on we can talk about all the races... pic.twitter.com/vEwq0ObxBi

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 24, 2026

Make no mistake about it, this isn't just an isolated gaffe. It was a revealing glimpse into the corner Democrats have backed themselves into. For years, the party has lurched further left, embracing ideas and candidates that would have been considered politically toxic not long ago. Now, as more openly socialist voices gain prominence, Democrats are finding it increasingly difficult to explain where the party stands—or where it draws the line.

That’s a problem because, as the polls show, voters have been paying attention to the Democrat Party’s leftward drift. Democrats desperately want to convince Americans they’re the reasonable alternative. Yet the base keeps pushing them further to the left, toward socialism, blowing that message apart, all while party leaders keep struggling to defend it. When party leaders can’t point to a single successful example of socialism in practice, yet continue embracing policies and candidates associated with it, they have something far worse than a messaging problem.

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They Banned This Book To Keep You From Talking About Immigration

Jean Raspail’s ‘Camp of the Saints’ is not a great book, but a necessary one to understand the current moment.

The Federalist 

These days, many books like to boast of being “banned,” though it’s hard to take this seriously when many such books are prominently featured at bookstores and regularly assigned in English classes. In truth, the only real banned book of note — that is, a book that is consciously ignored, deliberately kept out of print, not allowed in libraries, and impossible to find in any bookstore — has been The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail, a French novel originally published in 1973 dealing with the issue of mass migration from the Third World. Despite the ongoing relevance of its subject matter — particularly given the rape gang inquiry in the U.K. and other immigration controversies across Europe — educators, publishers, and cultural gatekeepers, both in France and elsewhere, have deemed it too subversive for the public to read.

Thankfully, a few prominent voices on the Right, including conservative podcaster Matt Walsh, have revived interest in The Camp of the Saints. Although the book was out of print for decades, the publisher Vauban Books recently reprinted a new English translation of the book by Ethan Rundell. Soon after interest in the book surged after Matt Walsh’s endorsement, its listing on Amazon mysteriously disappeared earlier this year. After being called out by Walsh in turn, the listing is back up, yet no one has apologized or explained why it went down in the first place.

To be fair, some of the outrage over this book is merited. The Camp of the Saints really is an offensive book that challenges the status quo, handles controversy with bluntness and aggression, intentionally disgusts the reader on countless occasions, and induces profound doubts and despair about the world. In his introductory essay to the book, “Big Other,” Raspail proudly admits, “It is an impetuous, fierce, bracing book, almost joyful in its distress, but savage, sometimes brutal, and repellant to those pure souls who are spreading like an epidemic.” He intentionally put free speech and open public discourse to the test—and mostly found it wanting.

Yet, for all that, is The Camp of the Saints a good book? By any conventional standard, not really. As writer and physician Theodore Dalrymple remarks in his review of the novel, “It is very badly written, too long, verbose, and frequently boring.”

Although this assessment is not altogether wrong, it misses Raspail’s purpose in The Camp of the Saints. Like other books in the dystopia genre, the focus is on world-building and exploring the misguided principles that govern such a world. And like any satire, it portrays people as worse than they are to make a point on an issue. It just so happens that both the world and issues that Raspail discusses in his novel are extremely messy and defy a clear, compelling narrative. Moreover, when it comes to mass migration, everyone is guilty, leaving Raspail to give each actor their moment in the sun before gleefully crushing him under the weight of his own hypocrisy.

In many ways, Raspail’s novel is less a story about immigration and more about demographic patterns in the late 20th century when overpopulation in the developing world would start overtaking a morally and spiritually depleted developed world. Anticipating the arguments of the 1974 essay “Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor” by Professor Garret Hardin, Raspail concludes there is no truly moral solution to this problem: either the West (symbolized by a lifeboat) keeps out the developing world outside their borders and lets them die from famine and resource scarcity, or they let them in and consequently destroy their own countries (symbolized by sinking the lifeboat).

Everything in the novel’s basic plot serves to illustrate this dilemma. The story begins in India when a million indigent peasants are rallied to migrate to Western Europe. Led by a deformed child being carried around by a giant who kneads human excrement for a living, they embark on a collection of hardly functional steamboats and slowly make their way to Europe. As all this happens, the commentariat and leadership in France spend all their time squabbling about “The Last Chance Armada” and gradually lose the collective will to repulse them.

In itself, the premise is not what makes the novel such a popular target for bans and censorship, but more in Raspail’s dehumanizing characterizations. The Indians making the journey are routinely described as reeking subhuman hordes, copulating in their own filth and mindlessly trampling anything in their way. The French characters are either cynical, licentious scoundrels with a insatiable death wish, or they are gullible dupes incapable of independent thought. Additionally, the Arab and African immigrants in France are shown to be duplicitous and brutal, primed to betray their white neighbors at the first opportunity.

If one can make it past these unapologetically derisive descriptions — ironically coming from a person with extensive experience and sympathy for marginalized communities around the world — they may falter with the depressingly anti-climactic story. Aside from a few prescient points (e.g., Raspail predicts the appointment of a Latin-American pope who would sell the Catholic Church’s wealth, preach liberation theology, and advocate for the global poor) along with some amusing episodes (e.g., when European NGOs try to help the Armada only to be rebuffed by the migrants, or when a professor shoots down a hippie invading his home), the reader is subjected to rants both for and against immigration and tediously long lurid descriptions of the migrants.

And yet, for all that, The Camp of the Saints is hugely important book that deserves to be read and appreciated. Had Raspail pulled his punches and complicated his novel with more nuanced treatments of each character and situation, his novel would have far less of an impact. However injudiciously he may have described migrants from the third-world—which is clearly an amalgamation of the most primitive Third World peoples, not an actual portrayal of people from East India—he is right to express alarm at the potential of civilizational collapse. If a million poor migrants arrived on France’s shores all at once, what would the French or other Western countries do? Based on what they have already done with much smaller numbers of incoming migrants, they would likely just as passive, idiotic, and helpless as Raspail predicts.

Understanding this does not necessarily mean that Raspail calls for closing all borders and kicking out everyone of non-European descent. Rather, he is mainly highlighting the tradeoffs and complications that come from taking in so many immigrants from less civilized parts of the world. Many Leftists naturally like to pride themselves as more compassionate and enlightened for preaching open-borders and denigrating Western civilization, but Raspail exposes this shallow thinking and demonstrates how it quickly falls apart in practice.

Unfortunately, he does not follow this up by presenting a viable alternative, which ends up becoming the novel’s biggest weakness. At most, he tells what comes of the final outpost of French culture that he calls “The Village,” inhabited by the last few Frenchmen who refuse to submit to the new order (or disorder) after the Armada makes landfall. Needless to say, this settlement does not last long and is soon bombed in oblivion and swamped by migrants from the Armada. France’s superior culture alone means little if its guardians lay down their arms and abandon their reason.

Even if this may seem like a spoiler, no one who makes it this far in the novel will be reading it to see what happens in the end. Instead, they will be taking in the many horrors that will come with giving up on their nation and cultural heritage. They will learn the important lesson that migration encompasses all aspects of life and cannot be outsourced to clueless elites who hate their own country.

It would be an exaggeration to call The Camp of the Saints prophetic, particularly for Americans who have welcomed millions of immigrants, but it is nonetheless pertinent. Raspail warns of a very real danger that can destroy even a country if its people aren’t careful. Contrary to the objection that this novel will radicalize its readers, it will more likely alert them them to the true radicals who are using mass migration as a vehicle to carry out their destructive agenda. Today more than ever, this is something that all educated people should understand and internalize so that they can avoid the sad fate of Raspail’s Frenchmen.

The DSA Is a Hate Group, and What It Hates Is America

The DSA Is a Hate Group, and What It Hates Is America

Noah Rothman for National Review

From left: Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, Zohran Mamdani, and Aber Kawas are shown before a Democratic Socialists of America flag.(Eduardo Munoz, Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images, NR Illustration)

As it was becoming clear on Tuesday night that the Democratic primary voters were eagerly handing their party’s reins over to Democratic Socialists, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (D.) made his peace with his new Marxist overlords.

When asked to respond to Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman’s observation that those who once described themselvesas the “dirtbag left” are on the ascendancy, Booker chastised his Democratic colleague for “picking fights” with the insurgents already at war with Democratic establishmentarians. “One of the things that makes the Democratic Party great is it’s a big tent party,” Booker contended. “We need to stay that way.”

Implicit in Booker’s capitulatory remarks is that, moving forward, the Democratic Party will have a lot of dirtbags in it.

He’s not the only Democrat making accommodations with the socialist left. Senator Chris Murphy, for example, dissented from onetime Democratic National Committee Chairman Jamie Harrison’s request that those who “hate the Democratic Party” refrain from attempts to hijack it. “Who is ‘the Democratic Party’ if it’s not the voters?” Murphy squeaked impotently. The voters have spoken, he added, “and right now they are demanding our party be bolder.”

The revolution depends on figures like these: the spineless, the cowed, and the enervated. They may manage to be eaten last, but the Democratic Socialists of America are coming for Murphy and Booker, too.

The DSA cannot be coopted, mollified, and incorporated into a broader political coalition. It is not a constituency. It is a hate group. And the object of its hatred isn’t the “Zionists” as they increasingly euphemistically refer to Jews, or the capitalist enterprise. It is America itself. For a while, though, casual observers could be forgiven for thinking that this rabid sect just had a pathological contempt for Israel.

Even as Hamas terrorists were still at large inside Israel — raping, torturing, and massacring any Jew in their line of sight — the DSA held an “anti-Israel” rally in “solidarity” with the terrorists, who were “not unprovoked.”

They kept up the pace in the weeks that followed. Almost 140 people were arrested during a nighttime march through New York City — a menacing, destructive outburst in which marchers held signs that read, “I do not condemn Hamas,” and chanted, “There is only one solution. Intifada. Revolution.” On October 28, 2023, thousands attended a DSA rally, which they called “Flood Brooklyn for Gaza” in a direct reference to the October 7 operation that Hamas called “al-Aqsa Flood,” throttling traffic on roads and bridges and harassing Jews.

Antisocial? Yes. Bigoted? Sure. Criminally malicious? Definitely. But anti-American? Democrats could still tell themselves that was a bridge too far.

By November, the Democratic Party should have noticed that it was the target of this insurrectionary movement. On November 16, DSA activists descended upon the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., on a night when they knew that the party’s lawmakers would be on the premises. They were met by Capitol Police in riot gear, and the two forces clashed violently as the insurgents tried to secure access to the building. “We were rescued by armed officers who did not know the protestors’ intent,” Representative Sean Casten confessed. “I’m also keenly aware that it could have been much worse.”

If Democrats were going to display something approximating an instinct toward self-preservation, this would have been the time to do it. But the Democrats did nothing. And things have only gotten worse.

Throughout 2024, DSA-sponsored events — particularly those on American college campuses — contributed to the air of menace the socialist left cultivates around itself. In April of that year, the DSA’s International Committee issued a statement affirming “Iran’s right to self-defense” in response to an Israeli airstrike on what Jerusalem maintained was a Quds Force installation. That July, the DSA’s International Committee also expressed support for Yemen’s Houthis in their effort to close the Red Sea to international shipping and regretted the neutralization of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh inside a safehouse in Tehran.

The fever didn’t break in 2025. That September, at the second annual People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit, the DSA-backed mayor of Richmond, Calif. — Eduardo Martinez — “drew cheers” when he defended Hamas’s actions on October 7. So, too, did the members of U.S.-designated terrorist groups like al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and Palestinian Islamic Jihad who addressed the convention.

“We all know who they are, whether they are in Israel, in Tel Aviv, in Washington, in Germany, in Europe,” said Michigan-based Dr. Nidal Jboor at the conference that was also attended by the likes of Representative Rashida Tlaib. “They need to be locked up, they need to be taken out, they need to be neutralized, to save children.”

It was a revealing slip. So, too, was the chant that broke out among DSA activists in San Francisco this February. They started out saying “Tax Israel,” but eventually dropped the pretense in favor of “Tax the Jews.”

Yes, Tuesday night was a great electoral night for the DSA’s chosen candidates. But whom did the Democratic Party’s primary voters endorse? Unreconstructed versions of the militant activists who have tormented the party for years.

Darializa Avila Chevalier is one. She defeated the sitting chairman of the Democratic Party’s Hispanic Caucus in the House on Tuesday in a race in which voters discounted her very recent endorsement of the abolition of prisonsin America. After all, how can there be prisons in a country without justice? They ignored her contempt for American property rights captured in her support for “seiz[ing] all properties from landlords.”

The voters in her district cared little for her contempt for the American flag, her endorsement of political violence (Chevalier attended that October 8 rally in support of Hamas’s actions), and her refusal to even attempt to lieabout how her views have evolved. Those views, as expressed by the group she founded, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), include support for efforts to “undermine and eradicate America” by translating “resistance in Gaza to unrest and violence in America.”

Aber Kawas is another. She earned the Democratic nomination to a New York State Senate seat despite her contention that the city she will represent in Albany deserved the 9/11 attacks, in which thousands of her fellow New Yorkers perished.

“The idea that we have to apologize for, like, a terror attack that, like, a couple people did, and then there’s no apologies or reparations for genocides and for slavery, et cetera, is something that I kind of find, like, reprehensible,” she said, combining a Valley Girl affect with radical Islamist rhetoric. No one asked Kawas to apologize for anything. Perhaps she felt tacitly compelled to do so by virtue of the associations and affinities in her own head.

“For decades, we have been sold a lie: that the U.S. empire defends freedom, advances democracy, and protects human rights,” read the literature produced by Claire Valdez’s victorious campaign. Rather, in her view, the American project is an exercise in imperialism. Indeed, from the Middle East to Latin America, the U.S. is responsible for indiscriminate violence and enslavement to the capitalist project. She even went so far as to revive an ancient Soviet campaign to radicalize Puerto Ricans and agitate for San Juan’s independence.

They will join Chris Rabb in the new Democratic establishment. He is likely headed to Congress next year after he won his race despite blaming the Bondi Beach massacre of Australian Jews on “Zionists.” So, too, is Adam Hamawy — the nominee for Congress in New Jersey’s twelfth district — who laid out his platform at an event sponsored by the Young Democratic Socialists of America. There, he articulated his opposition to “genocide,” expansively defined, but he subsequently defended his longtime association with the architect of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

What tethers these candidates is not their shared hatred of the Jews or the banks or the moneyed and propertied classes. They hate America and the West.

At least, they hate it as it is presently constituted, which is pretty much how it has been constituted for decades. Today, the manifestations of that hatred are particularly frightening for America’s Jewish minority, but the DSA won’t stop there.

Marxian revolutionaries do not stop. They must consume continually, find new enemies to demonize and scapegoat, and channel their militant vanguard’s hatreds toward productive ends (lest the vanguard come for them, too).

There is no doubt that Democratic Socialism is on the march. We know exactly in which direction it is headed. It is a hate group masquerading as a political movement, and it would be recognized as such if its policy preferences were right of center. But American institutions have turned a blind eye to the threat, and there may be no stopping it now.

Usha Vance Expertly Trolls NYT 'Journo' Who Had Epic Melt Down Over MAGA Baby Boom

RedState 

Second Lady Usha Vance took to social media Wednesday afternoon to have some fun at the expense of the New York Times, which had just published an absurd article in which the author vigorously clutched her pearls over the recent MAGA baby boom. Egads, wrote Vanessa Friedman (who is apparently the paper's chief fashion critic), not only is Vance enjoying her pregnancy, she's flaunting it for all to see! 

To which Mrs. Vance basically replied, "Oh well."

Friedman's premise seemed to be that the second lady – along with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Katie Miller, wife of Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who both recently delivered babies – were far too into their pregnancies, as evidenced by the trio appearing in public wearing nice clothes. Oh, and they all had the nerve to cradle their growing bellies in full view of others! You know, just like every expectant mother does at some point during her pregnancy.

Vance is the first one Friedman picks on, probably because she's still pregnant and in a more vulnerable state. Real nice, right? It's a Father's Day video released by Mrs. Vance's office, in which Vice President Vance makes an appearance to read a children's book, that seems to have stoked Friedman's ire.

“Luckily, there’s going to be a new baby for you to read to,” the second lady says to her husband, “so you’re going to have many more years ahead of you.” She is wearing a stretchy coral dress that hugs her stomach, making what she is talking about very clear.

He grins and responds, “I was not yet ready to be out of the baby phase, so here we are, about to jump right in in just a few short weeks.”

This is apparently an example of how MAGA is using the "power and politics of pregnancy" to advance its agenda. Babies and motherhood, how awful! Oh, and that coral dress Usha wore in the video? That's of particular concern to Friedman, as the dress skimmed the second lady's 8-month pregnant belly in a way that seemed offensive to the author. It exhibited, Friedman wrote, "an image of idealized womanhood that gives literal shape to the pronatalist movement."

Hilariously, the second lady responded on her official X account, "Now that we know the political significance of my $8.75 coral maternity dress from Old Navy, can’t wait to hear what the New York Times has to say about my elastic-waistband pants and compression socks!"

Now that we know the political significance of my $8.75 coral maternity dress from Old Navy, can’t wait to hear what the New York Times has to say about my elastic-waistband pants and compression socks! In the meantime, enjoy my pregnancy fashion (or lack thereof) and a good story with your kids on Storytime with the Second Lady.

She even provided the receipt showing she paid $8.75 for the dress that looked extremely comfortable for a woman experiencing late-stage pregnancy in the steamy heat of a Washington, D.C., summer.

Let's face it, it's the fact that the Usha Vance, Karoline Leavitt, and Katie Miller are happily-married mothers who look fantastic while pregnant and live fulfilling lives that really gets under the skin of liberal women like Vanessa Friedman. And she found some fellow "feminists" to join in her rage-fest.

“It almost feels like a memo went out,” said Jill Filipovic, the host of the “Week in Women” podcast. “They have quite intentionally opted to present themselves as, ‘I am really pregnant, and this is what women were chosen to do,’ and they are happy to say that both with their looks and their mouths.”

Oh, and they really don't like Katie Miller, who recently posted this:

“In honor of Mother’s Day,” she wrote, “a reminder that peak feminism is having babies. The most radical thing a woman can do is embrace her biological destiny."

The weirdest part of the article is the anger Friedman clearly feels over the MAGA ladies not dressing like ... Jackie Kennedy and Cherie Blair? Could someone please make that silliness make sense? 

It seems like Friedman would like nothing more than to see pregnant MAGA mamas covered head to toe – maybe even in a burka? Which brings the absurdity of this New York Times folly full-circle. Liberal ladies are nothing more than sneering, seething has-beens who have relegated themselves to the sidelines while real women embrace and celebrate their God-given ability to create life. 

There is zero scandal in Usha Vance's coral maternity dress or happy mothers smiling their way through their pregnancies, but it is indeed concerning that the left has become so hostile to traditional womanhood that even a pregnant woman in an Old Navy dress registers to them as a five-alarm political threat. Usha Vance, a very accomplished woman in her own right, only needed a receipt and a healthy sense of humor to make the New York Times and their anti-woman bias look absolutely ridiculous.

Obama’s Hideous Monument to Hubris It is the perfect symbol for a sociopathic solipsist and a failed presidency.

Obama’s Hideous Monument to Hubris It is the perfect symbol for a sociopathic solipsist and a failed presidency.

David Catron for American Spectator 

It is the perfect symbol for a sociopathic solipsist and a failed presidency.

When the Democrats nominated Barack Obama to represent their party in the 2008 presidential election many voters consoled themselves with this thought: “Well, at least it’s not Hillary.” Unfortunately, preventing her from taking up residence in the White House was the last useful thing he did for the country. Indeed, from the moment he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as a participation trophy during his first year in office, it became clear that there would be a huge gap between his actual accomplishments and the celebration of his presidency. The grotesque monolith that towers over the South Side of Chicago is the perfect symbol of that chasm.

There is, however, no such gap between Obama’s grandiose self image and the monument to himself that he has now inflicted on the Chicago skyline. All presidential libraries are vanity projects, of course, but the Barack Obama Presidential Center radiates hubris in a way that would have embarrassed Ozymandius. It all but screams, “I am Barack Obama, president of presidents: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Unlike Percy Bysshe Shelly, the author of that prescient poem, Obama clearly has no clue that the sands of history will eventually bury him. Etched in gigantic letters on the exterior of the monolith is an excerpt from Obama’s 2015 speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma.

“You are America. Unconstrained by habit and convention. Unencumbered by what is, ready to seize what ought to be. For everywhere in this country, there are first steps to be taken, there is new ground to cover, there are more bridges to be crossed. America is not the project of any one person. The single most powerful word in our democracy is the word ‘We.’ ‘We The People.’ ‘We Shall Overcome.’ ‘Yes We Can.’ That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone. Oh, what a glorious task we are given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours.”

For those who can’t get enough of Obama’s wisdom, inane phrases like the following appear on almost every wall of his monument to himself: The Audacity of Hope, Change We Can Believe In, We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, ad nauseum. One thing that is conspicuously absent from the Barack Obama Presidential Center is a library containing a physical archive where historians and biographers can do research. Instead, the Obama Foundation partnered with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to establish the first fully digital presidential library. By keeping the center separate from the traditional federal library system, Obama retains control over the campus and how his legacy is presented to the public.

This is convenient considering the many failures of Obama’s presidency. His most spectacular failure was, of course, the ironically named “Affordable Care Act.” Obama famously promised that Obamacare would reduce health care costs while increasing access and quality. Obama signed it into law in March of 2010. That year, according to a KFF report, “In 2010, the U.S. spent $2.6 trillion on health care, an average of $8,402 per person.” Fourteen years later, according to a CMS report, National Healthcare Expenditures had skyrocketed to a stunning “$5.3 trillion in 2024, or $15,474 per person.” Moreover, as Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) pointed out when he introduced the “Health Care Freedom for Patients Act”:

There were signs from the start that Obamacare would not work, which is why not one single Republican voted for it. That is also why the Democrats created the premium tax credits in the first place: they did not trust the one-size-fits-all nature of Obamacare to lower costs or to expand options. Instead of decreasing, over the last 15 years, Obamacare premiums have increased over 220 percent. A family of four pays $10,000 more for coverage today than they did before Obamacare, and their deductibles have doubled. Insurance providers have dried up and rural hospitals are struggling.

But Obamacare was by no means Obama’a only failure. Here’s what he predicted when the Democrats nominated him to be president in 2008: “I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Looking back, it’s difficult not to laugh aloud at this. Obama’s foreign policy was also disasterous. In Russia, China and the Middle East, he left the world more dangerous than when he first took the oath of office. Even in race relations, our first Black president somehow contrived to significantly increase tensions.

These failures perhaps portended the sheer ugliness of his monument. He reportedly interfered with its architects, and personally dictated important aesthetic choices. Maybe his hubris is such that he believed he knew more than the professionals. This is certainly an accurate reflection of his presidency.  It doesn’t matter in the end. Obama’s legacy, like that of Ozymandias, will amount to nothing  more than a colossal wreck of the monument he built to himself.