It’s becoming increasingly taxing for Donald Trump to defend his tariff policy. His latest gambit is to float the prospect of a $2,000 rebate to Americans from the tens of billions that the federal government has collected in tariffs. But will this prove any more successful than his previous attempts to justify his loopy tariffs?
With the Supreme Court apparently poised to strike down his tariffs as a form of revenue collection designed to perform an end-run around Congress, Trump is scrambling. As usual, bravado prevails. On Sunday, he declared, “A dividend of at $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” the president said on Truth Social.” Trump also dismissed his detractors as “FOOLS!” In his view, “We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion. Record Investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place.”
What specific factories Trump meant was left unsaid. The truth is that a small coterie of tech firms is driving the American economy by building AI centers. To fund them, companies are relying on exotic debt-financed options. If that bubble pops, it could be 2008 all over again – or worse.
Speculation about a 1929 redux is on the rise. Former Securities and Exchange Commission official William A. Birdthistle notes that Trump has been “has been firing regulators and vigorously tearing down the guardrails that have kept our markets thriving for nine decades.” As he bellows about the efficacy of high tariffs, Trump himself seems intent on replicating the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff which ensured that America tumbled even deeper into the Great Depression. At least Smoot-Hawley was passed by Congress. Trump is doing it singlehandedly while Republican lawmakers cower in fear at the consequences.
The difficulty for Trump is that in promising an economic boom, he has highlighted his responsibility for inflation and unemployment. Voters, as the recent election showed, remain as unhappy about the economy as they were during the Biden era, when the White House also issued a steady stream of happy talk. In July 2021 Biden dismissed the notion that inflation would prove to be a persistent problem: “Our experts believe, and the data shows, that most of the price increases we’ve seen are expected to be temporary.”
Speaking at the American Business Forum in Miami this past Wednesday, Trump insisted that nothing less than an ”economic miracle” was taking place under his leadership. He also invoked his favorite adverb, tremendously, to state that “Americans are doing tremendously now.” A day later, he said, “I don’t want to hear about affordability” – a line that is certain to feature in Democratic campaign ads. Trump is also touting a new Walmart Thanksgiving meal as 25 percent cheaper than last year, but it also has six fewer items than the 2024 basket. The most recent consumer price index shows that grocery prices were up 2.7 percent in September compared to a year ago. So much for whipping inflation now.
Then there is the government shutdown. Disrupting air travel, terminating SNAP benefits and allowing health insurance premiums to soar even as Trump sends billions to Argentina is hardly a recipe for promoting economic growth. Some Republicans are getting antsy. “We need to deal with [health care] now because, number one, it’s the right thing to do, just morally,” New Jersey Congressman Jeff Van Drew said on Fox this past Wednesday.” “Number two, we’re going to get killed” in the 2026 midterm elections.
But Trump has other concerns. On Friday night, he threw another opulent gala event for his chums at Mar-a-Lago, complete with opera singers and ice sculptures. As Republican lawmakers fret about their futures, Trump continues to party on.
Category: Policy
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Is Trump’s $2,000 tariff dividend plan loopy?
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Who will replace Pelosi in Republican demonology?
Nancy Pelosi’s career is ending as it began. She entered Congress in 1986 during the Reagan administration and is ending it under the most influential Republican president since the Gipper. On Thursday she released a six-minute video announcing her retirement in 2027 from Congress, the latest octogenarian to depart it.
No sooner did this contagonist announce that she would not seek reelection, than Donald Trump crowed that he had outlasted her. Old age, it seems, is no barrier to a slanging match. A few days ago the 85-year old Pelosi called him an “evil creature.” Now Trump, on the verge of becoming an octogenarian himself, returned the favor. She was evil, corrupt and only focused on bad things for our country,” Trump said. “She was rapidly losing control of her party, and it was never coming back. I’m very honored that she impeached me twice and failed miserably twice. Nancy Pelosi is a highly overrated politician.”
The impeachments, the first over Ukraine, the second January 6, went nowhere. But the notion that Pelosi was overrated does not hold water. At the 1984 Republican convention UN ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick mocked what she called “the San Francisco Democrats” – weak, spineless, simpering. But this was one San Francisco Democrat who did not fit that mold. Pelosi had sat at the feet of her father, the mayor of Baltimore.
She was a skilled and ruthless operator, superior to many of the men she dealt with during her political career, including Barack Obama. It was Pelosi who ensured that Obamacare passed the House of Representatives in 2010. This measure, which, after a faltering start, has gained mounting popularity, including in the Red states, continues to bedevil the Republican Party and Trump. It is at the core of the current government shutdown as the Democrats demand the restoration of subsidies for health insurance. In a sense, Pelosi has had more than a small measure of vengeance against her detractors.
A new generation of Democratic females such as AOC will take the place in Republican demonology. Whom the Democrats, in turn, will focus on in coming years in the House of Representatives is an open question. A prime candidate, Marjorie Taylor Greene, has lately been the recipient of friendly overtures from liberals besotted by her criticisms of the Republican leadership and the government shutdown. Indeed, speaking on Thursday on CNN, Greene had this to say about Pelosi: “I will praise Nancy Pelosi. She had an incredible career for her party. I served under her during her Speakership in Congress. I was very impressed in her ability to get things done.” Could this be the beginning of a beautiful friendship?
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Establishment Democrats win in Minneapolis
In the heartland of America, an inflection point has come to pass. Minneapolis was once immortalized in the 1970s television series The Mary Tyler Moore Show, when Mary Richards made her bright-eyed and optimistic journey there in search of opportunity and a new life. But now it is a relic; worn away, gritty and unwelcoming – with more empty storefronts than warm smiles. Of course, the decay didn’t happen overnight.
The failed policies of a series of Democratic leaders and a progressive city council have left the biggest city in the Minnesota Nice State a shadow of its former self. Minneapolis has had a Democrat mayor (Democrat-Farmer-Labor in this neck of the woods) every term since 1976 and hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Richard Erdall served one day on December 31, 1973. Out of the 15 candidates who ran for mayor this year, there were no Republicans.
This Election Day the choice was between the current mayor, Jacob Frey, who oversaw the disastrous “Summer of Love” 2020 riots in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, from which the city is still reeling, and Omar Fateh, the Ilhan Omar and Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed state senator who won reelection in 2022 and touts his work there as “transformative policy.”
Ultimately, Jacob Frey won his third mayoral term with 50.03 percent of the vote after the second round of ranked-choice voting (no candidate received more than 50 percent in the first round) was counted on Tuesday. But the contest was fraught.
Fateh’s state’s legislative session in 2023 was controversial and included a massive new state-run paid family leave program, free school breakfast and lunch for all K-12 students, regardless of family income, free college tuition and healthcare for illegal immigrants, free housing and free menstrual products in all school bathrooms, including boys. All this spending blew away previous state budget records, with the omnibus bill increasing spending by 40 percent – from $51.6 billion to $71.5 billion over two years.
For his part, Frey has tried to hold together a city at odds with itself – consistent with the divisions within the Democratic Party, not just in the city or the state, but the country at large, most notably in New York City. The battle is between radical-left progressives – who want males to participate in female sports and gender-affirming surgery for minors – and moderate Democrats who reject much of the woke ideology, language and radical policies that have run the political and cultural conversations of the last five years (think “defund the police” and not knowing what a woman is).
Frey branded himself as a “pragmatic progressive.” Considering the state of Minneapolis politics, this means he sounds more like an establishment Democrat; supportive of law and order, public safety, affordable housing (while addressing the city’s persistent homelessness problem) and green energy policies. He won the endorsements of U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, former U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Andrew Luger and two previous Minneapolis chiefs of police.
Fateh is one of a rising group of Democratic-Socialists running for office across the country this election cycle – not only against their immediate opponents, like Frey in Minneapolis, but against the party establishment and gatekeepers who they see as hindrances to their turn at power, all with a raised fist that combines elements of Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, BDS and antisemitism.
From the outside, it looked like a left versus further-left fight. Still, one issue has really rubbed Minneapolitans the wrong way: a guaranteed minimum wage and worker protection for rideshare drivers like Uber and Lyft, which Fateh championed in the state senate. The effects have increased the cost of rideshare and delivery services in a city where “affordability” is a buzzword.
Further, the city was ground zero for the 2020 costly and deadly race riots in a state that might be the most corrupt in the nation, with $1 billion stolen from government coffers in fraud schemes, all with ties to the immigrant Somali community, including Fateh.
It turns out that Minneapolis had more pragmatic Democrats, Independents and Republicans, who held their nose to vote for Frey, than New York City did in voting for Mayor Mamdani.
And, zooming out from the mayoral race, the Minneapolis City Council appears to have leaned away from its previous progressive bloc and will no longer have a veto-proof majority. Frey’s “pragmatic” approach appealed to right-of-socialist voters and motivated them to turn out as well.
Taken together, voters in Minneapolis decided to keep limping along with the devil they know rather than to go all-in with a mayoral candidate who could put the final nail in the city’s coffin. Minneapolis might not make Mary Richards smile, but she might just make it after all.
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California’s Prop 50 passed because grifters were scared of losing their grift
While it’s premature for a full autopsy of the No on Prop 50 campaign, the opposition clearly faced structural hurdles that went well beyond Governor Gavin Newsom’s thinly veiled presidential ambitions. The pundits are quick to make it a referendum on President Donald Trump, but upon deeper inspection, we’re seeing big government going all in to retain power behind the Sierra Curtain. The grifters are scared of losing their grift
The progressive left rallied effectively to boost Newsom’s ego-play because its core supporters, especially government unions and allied special interest, depend on taxpayer resources to sustain their influence, giving them strong incentives to mobilize. Watching DoGE cuts slash welfare programs, housing subsidies, federal educational grants and infrastructure dollars cease or go to red states was just too much to bear for the blue staters.
By contrast, the center-right coalition’s challenges stem from decades of neglecting local political infrastructure while fixating on high-profile exodus narratives from the state. Many would rather stay home and complain about the system and lose than get in the game. While unions and progressive special interests can line people up and scour the neighborhoods for loose ballots to be cast.
Progressive dominance in legislative battles over the past two decades has made Republicans largely irrelevant in Sacramento, deterring out-of-state donors from investing in what appear to be long-shot defenses of a handful of congressional seats. Their dollars stretch further in red states with lower barriers to impact. And conservatives and political moderates have given up on the beautiful climate in California and made a permanent change by voting with their feet. The once reliable votes are stacking their fortunes in echo chambers while those who stay and battle it out wonder if the state can be golden again.
So, the immediate commentary is going to be focused on the funding shortages and inability for formerly prolific fundraisers, like ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy who promised to raise $100 million and fell well short. While that’s an easy target, it misses the point.
The lack of funds was not the reason the No on Prop 50 teams lost. What the campaign truly lacked was a unifying, charismatic voice like former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. His disdain for Trump, combined with his commonsense independence and once-in-a-generation celebrity appeal, could have supercharged opposition messaging through videos, posters and mailers.
Newsom’s victory didn’t prevail on the merits or even unlimited funds alone. He was able to puppeteer the legislative support he needed, stifle litigation on the merits in the courts and remind other politicos dependent upon the state’s good graces that any commentary contrary to his wishes was met with pain. We saw it during the 2021 recall and he still had a lot of people with their head on a swivel after that adventure, In the end, Newsom didn’t have to make that much of a sell when he knew that the opposition campaign was splintered. So we watched him filibuster all he wanted while the center-right faltered by failing to articulate a crisp, compelling alternative vision for fair redistricting process.
What the people needed was a legitimate hero who could move the needle. Instead, California’s last action hero mailed it in.
Rather than show up for prime time and throw everything he had to protect his legacy of the independent redistricting commission, the Governator kept his activism to wearing a provocative t-shirt several weeks ago followed by a few token guest appearances on television with some light talk on opposing Prop 50. And that’s it. Rather than go all out and battle the man who has besmirched everything he fought for while he toured Sacramento 15 years ago, he retreated to the green room. The temporary changes in Congressional lines we were promised will be made permanent.
Will there be lawsuits on processes and the role of federal law? Yes, the opposition to Prop 50 has those ready to drop. There is going to be some panic as a handful of radically gerrymandered Congressional seats are heading into an unfair fight for 2026. Who know how that will all shake out for California, the state that is set to lose at least 3 seats in the 2030 reapportionment. And for the several red states that are watching a leftist takeover of California and New York City, it’s likely we’ll have another couple dozen Republican seats carved up before the end of the year, negating anything that Newsom and his cronies thought they were accomplishing.
Newsom won this battle, but we all lost the war.
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Far left is the new face of the Democratic party
If you think America doesn’t permit assisted suicide, you haven’t been watching the New York mayoral election. The city is deliberately killing itself.
The country’s largest city, its financial and media capital, had a choice among three truly dreadful candidates: a deeply-tarnished former governor, a Republican who runs in every election except Homecoming Queen and had no chance of winning this one (but refused to withdraw), and a young socialist with a winning smile, dreamy programs, Islamist allies, and zero administrative experience. Predictably, New York voters chose the absolute worst. Zohran Mamdani won handily.
Now, they’ll have to live with Mamdani’s socialist programs, which fail everywhere and break the bank in the process. The city’s budget is already underwater, drowning in red ink. Mamdani’s proposed programs – Free! Free! Free! – will pour buckets more red ink onto the already-crimson spreadsheet.
Raising taxes, always the left’s panacea, won’t help. Andrew Cuomo did that as governor (among his many failures), predictably driving hundreds of thousands out of the city and the state. The state’s current governor, Kathy Hochul, has already said she won’t bail out the city. Neither will President Trump. Train wreck ahead.
Having voted for this bloody collision between dreams and reality, New Yorkers have entered the Olympic contest for America’s worst mayor. The competition is tough. Far-left leaders in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland have shown just how badly their policies work, yet none is willing to change.
These mayors are all Democrats, and they aren’t outliers in today’s party. No party leaders have denounced them. Some have openly supported them and will be saddled with those endorsements in future elections, after the costly programs fail, crime rises, and taxpayers flee to welcoming jurisdictions. Republicans will make sure national Democrats are tagged with those failures.
The Democrats’ move to the left is not confined to one city or state. It’s a broad movement that could threaten the party’s hold on centrist independents. In city after city, Democratic mayors support open borders, sanctuary city status, lax policing, no cash bail, weak punishment for criminals, onerous regulations and heavy taxes on anyone who can pay them. They are politically indebted to teachers unions, who have saddled taxpayers with expensive K-12 schools (almost $40,000 per student in NYC), eliminated competition and trapped families in these failing institutions, unless they move.
Mamdani checks every box on that list and goes even further. He wants to open city-owned grocery stores for the poor. Those never work. He wants to raise the minimum wage. That will kill small businesses and raises prices for those that survive. He wants free bus rides for everyone. He cannot pay for them and has no way to deal with hordes of homeless riders, looking for a warm place to sleep and inject drugs.
Promoting these policies makes Mamdani, like Chicago’s Brandon Johnson and LA’s Karen Bass, a walking billboard with flashing lights proclaiming, “Move to Florida. Move to Nashville or Charlotte. Move your bank to Dallas. Get the hell out.”
Leadership in the Democratic Party has not resisted this dramatic shift to the left. Their embrace sends message to voters in next year’s midterms, and Republicans will amplify it. The message says, “The far left is the new face of the Democratic Party.” Mamdani is now the most prominent face, followed closely by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The éminence grise is Bernie Sanders.
Their airy promises might win votes in deep blue cities and states, but they are losers in the rest of the country. That’s why Democratic Party spokesmen are already rushing to spin a counter-narrative, “We’re a lot more than Zohran Mamdani. Just look at the moderates we elected in Virginia and New Jersey. We’re a big tent.” The party’s success nationally depends on selling that message.
They add that rising Obamacare premiums are the fault of Republicans, not flaws in the program itself. And, of course, they keep repeating, “Orange Man Bad.”
Those messages have gained traction with voters – they helped Democrats win impressive victories on Tuesday – but the messages are entirely negative. They aren’t accompanied by positive, workable policies. That gap becomes obvious when these Democrats are charged with running cities and states. None are thriving, people are leaving, and voters are switching registration.
Democrats also have a problem with their “big tent” message. It’s hard to sell nationally for several reasons. First, Mamdani’s victory in New York City is by far the biggest story of the off-year election. Important as it is to win the governor’s mansions in Virginia and New Jersey, those will soon become local stories. Not so with Mamdani’s victory. It will remain a major national event, partly because New York is the country’s media capital, partly because Republicans will make sure voters consider Mamdani the face of the Democratic Party.
The Republican message will be simple: “Democrat really means Socialist.” If Mamdani’s programs fail, they will become national news, even if mainstream media try their best to hide them.
Second, what Democratic spokesmen sell as “moderate” winners in NJ and Virginia may not sound so moderate to voters outside the Boston-Washington corridor and the West Coast. That political gap has been especially clear on cultural issues, notably transgender women in girls’ locker rooms and sports.
Third, party primaries make it hard for both Democrats and Republicans to renounce the hardline positions favored by their activist base. Those activists dominate primary elections and fund the campaigns. Unless candidates win those primaries, they’ll never make to it to November. And they won’t win the primaries by taking moderate positions and alienating the base.
This hyper-partisan logic locks in candidates to hardline positions and strenuous resistance to the opposing party, not a search for bipartisan compromise in the general election and afterwards. This obdurate resistance is not the responsibility of one party alone. It comes from both, and for the same reasons. If Trump says you are not fully committed to the MAGA agenda, he’ll back a primary opponent.
The result has been a deepening cleavage between the two parties, reinforced, most recently, by gerrymandering. The new districts leave even fewer contested House seats where candidates win by appealing to moderate, independent voters. The winning strategy is to appeal to the base, win the primary, and push for high partisan turnout in the general election, not tack to the center.
Although the Democratic victories Tuesday night were not unexpected, the results are still ominous for Republicans. The results were expected because the party out of power typically wins the “off year” elections and midterms. If that pattern holds next November, Democrats will retake the House and have a shot at winning the Senate. Gerrymandering might make that task a little harder for Democrats, but not much, especially after Tuesday’s vote to increase Democratic districts in California.
The Republicans’ best chance of staving off defeat will be strong economic growth, low unemployment, and moderate inflation (under 3 percent). They will be helped by the massive surge of inward foreign investment, prompted by Trump’s tariffs. Lower interest rates would also help, unless they are accompanied by higher inflation. If the economy turns down, however, the roof will cave in for Republicans.
They can already feel the roof leaking after Tuesday’s results. They do see one silver lining, though. Zohran Mamdani. Republicans will do everything they can to make him the national face of the Democratic Party. They will include Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders on the same poster.
It won’t be too hard for Republicans to promote them since Mamdani is a fresh, new face and the Democrats’ energy is clearly on the left. There is no equally-prominent, charismatic Democrat on the center-left to offset them. There is only an older generation, fading away.
Senior Democrats understand the problem. They know the party’s sharp move to the left doesn’t play well outside deep blue cities and states. Their best response is one they are already touting: “We listen to our voters. What they want in New York is different from what they want in Richmond or Atlanta. We hear them. We’re a big tent party.”
The question for voters is whether they think the Democrats’ tent is filled with lion tamers or clowns. -
Mayor Mamdani will terrify America
Zohran Mamdani is the mayor-elect of New York City, and the progressive wing of the Democratic party is Champagne drunk celebrating his ascension.
But should it be? Mamdani has only narrowly prevailed in a race with a clear spoiler candidate, Republican Curtis Sliwa, lead-blocking for him against a charmless opponent, former governor Andrew Cuomo. With tougher, more honorable competition, it’s possible – likely, even – that he may not have even made it to the general election, much less won it.
Only when compared to a corrupt, sleazy, nepobaby with blood on his hands, and a beret-clad, narcissistic cat-man whose own friends begged him to step aside, did voters view Mamdani as a much-needed alternative. Both the Republican and Democratic establishments in New York have much to reflect upon – and atone for. Mamdani’s victory is less a ringing endorsement of his agenda than it is an indictment of the lazy, complacent power brokers to whom he’s meant to be a middle finger.
Moreover, while he may scratch every neurotic, fanciful itch to plague his party’s radical base, Mamdani’s mayoralty will most assuredly prove a failure. And on a scale that neither the nation, nor even the Democrats, will be able to deny.
The tragedy of it all, though, is that for the country to avoid falling into the hands of an explicitly anti-American socialist, its greatest city will have to do just that. For New Yorkers, it’s difficult to imagine Tuesday night’s results yielding anything but pain, and, indeed, suffering. Four years ago, Eric Adams swept into office amid not only the Covid-19 pandemic, but the crime epidemic that accompanied it. The intervening years have seen a partial recovery, with significant decreases in some of the most important categories.
Mamdani threatens to reverse what progress has been made. In 2020, amidst the pandemic crime wave, he declared that “police do not create safety,” and “actually create and amplify violence,” even going so far as to suggest that non-cops should be the ones to respond to domestic violence calls. In other comments, Mamdani smeared law enforcement as “racist,” “wicked,” and “anti-queer,” lamented the “boot of the NYPD” on residents’ necks, and reveled in officers’ tears.
The mayor-elect may have tacked to the center and apologized to the NYPD during his campaign, but the sheer number of prior statements expressing his vitriol in no uncertain terms suggests that his backtrack was one borne of convenience rather than a genuine change of heart. Not only can New Yorkers expect Mamdani to implement policies that will leave them and their loved ones less safe, but his presence in Gracie Mansion will send unmistakable messages to police and criminals alike – with terrible consequences.
Similarly, while Mamdani has succeeded, in large part, thanks to his focus on affordability, his agenda in action will make life anything but. Price controls have failed anywhere and everywhere they’ve been tried, but that hasn’t stopped Mamdani from touting them as the fix for the city’s housing crisis. What else? How about free transit and childcare, a ludicrous minimum wage hike up to $30 an hour, and, get this, city-owned and operated grocery stores.
These heavy-handed interventions into the free market, which are meant as stepping stones toward a seizure of the means of production, if Mamdani himself is to be taken at his word, are sure to have the exact opposite effect they’re meant to. It has been said that a rising tide lifts all votes. By driving wealth out of the city and punishing that which remains, Mamdani will lower the tide to the detriment of every boat on the Hudson, from the most magnificent yacht to the smallest dinghy.
New York’s fall is a moral one, too, of course. It isn’t just a city in America, it’s a symbol of it. Alas, there is little sign Mamdani has anything but resentment for his adopted country or the values for which it stands. Hence his shameless photo-ops with an unindicted co-conspirator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and a far-left influencer who believes the United States had 9/11 coming.
And all of that is to say nothing of his undeniable sympathy for Hamas, or his obsessive hatred for the world’s Jewish-majority state, about which he has articulated conspiracy theories worthy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
So yes, New York has fallen, but not permanently. The good news is that David Dinkins and Bill de Blasio’s disastrous tenures both led to furious, righteous backlashes, and so too will Mamdani’s.
The better news is that Mamdani’s shortcomings will serve as a warning system for the nation.
The closest parallel to Mamdani on the national stage, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, lives in his city. Both rose to national prominence inside of blue bubbles where progressive politics are not just popular, but required. Both have proudly claimed, rather than run away from, the dreaded “socialist” descriptor. Both have been praised for their communications skills and social media strategies. And both defeated avatars of a complacent – even stultifying – Democratic establishment on their way to victory.
Ocasio-Cortez is among the early favorites in the 2028 Democratic primary, and was a vocal backer of Mamdani’s campaign. Ironically though, she may end up a victim of his success.
For the better part of a decade now, Ocasio-Cortez has been able to skate by as a congresswoman – one of 435 – whose unpopular, destructive ideas are never actually put into action. Now, those ideas will take centerstage as New York plays the role of a lab rat seemingly blissfully unaware of the toll the experiment took on its forerunners, let’s call them San Francisco and Chicago.
America as a whole is seemingly next up, but will have every opportunity to opt out after surveying Mamdani’s handiwork.
So enjoy that Champagne tonight, progressives. It isn’t the kind that ages well.
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Democrats win New Jersey governorship with Trump scare tactics
The votes are in – and they’ve shattered any illusion that New Jersey is a swing state.
The Democratic Party will hold onto the New Jersey governorship, with governor-elect Mikie Sherrill beating Republican Jack Ciattarelli in his third attempt at the governor’s mansion.
While Sherrill was always the favorite, polls continued to narrow even in the final stretch of the race. This pushed both parties into increasingly aggressive, even desperate, tactics.
In mid-October, Sherrill accused Ciattarelli of “kill[ing] tens of thousands of people in New Jersey, including children” with opiates through a “misinformation” campaign pushed by a medical company he once owned.
When even The New York Times couldn’t dig up proof, the Democratic National Committee poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the state – in addition to the $3 million already committed.
And over the last weekend, bigwig Democrats including Barack Obama turned out to stump for Sherrill. “Let’s face it, our country and our politics are in a pretty dark place right now,” Obama said before rambling off a list of grievances against Donald Trump.
Democrats stuck to the same script: ignore Ciattarelli, and scare voters with Trump.
Yet Ciattarelli leaned into the Trump connection, incorrectly believing that MAGA political capital could pull him through.
After distancing himself in the 2021 campaign, Ciattarelli enthusiastically admitted that Trump has been “right about everything” (which Democrats turned into an attack ad) this time around. Trump endorsed him with equal enthusiasm in May: “Jack has gone ALL IN, and is now 100 percent (PLUS!)”
Republicans, meanwhile, pumped massive resources into the Garden State in the final stretch: five full-time staffers, 50 county captains and over 15,000 volunteers from attorneys to poll workers. They even rolled out a new app called VotePro, a voter mobilization tool to help more efficiently allocate last minute resources.
On the night before the election, Ciattarelli even held a heartwarming photo-op with his son, an Army Officer who returned from Kuwait.
But even election day bomb threats in North Jersey didn’t keep voters from the polls.
Off-year elections aren’t typically monitored in the national press, but a once deep-blue Jersey has drawn national attention as it turned increasingly purple in recent years. Trump only lost the state by six points in 2024, and Ciattarelli has gained ground with each campaign. With independents making up over one-third of the state’s voter pool, Republicans thought momentum was on their side.
Beyond the governorship, both parties clearly saw this election as an indicator for elections to come. The most salient question was whether New Jersey and its 14 electoral votes could potentially be up for grabs in 2028. But the broader strategic question remains: is Trump an asset to the party even when he’s not on the ballot, or is the specter of Trumpism just too scary for swing-voters?
Democrats will now surely double down, by tying everything they can to the Bad Orange Man. They may be right – but they also leave themselves vulnerable.
With his slicked-back hair and Jersey accent, Ciattarelli always leaned into being a goombah as much as he embraced Trump. Sherrill meanwhile – with her Navy service, Georgetown law degree, and pantsuits – was effectively designed in a lab to win elections. Perhaps Jersey voters simply appreciated her blandness over a goofy state caricature.
That bodes just as poorly for Republicans, as they race to see who the next big populist personality will be. A bland suit might just outperform a subpar personality, even in the age of populism.
But Democrats can equally hinder themselves if they continue to make everything about Trump even when he eases into political retirement. Trump derangement can easily turn into a personality itself – and it’s just as off-putting as anything the Republicans deliver.
In the end, the election will likely change very little in New Jersey. Sherrill will follow in the footsteps of incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy, another faceless politico.This election may just not have the national implications Democrats hope for. But Democrats will no doubt delude themselves into thinking Sherrill’s victory harkens a future beyond Trumpism.
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How Republicans can win New York?
Is Maud Maron crazy? Bill Ackman certainly thought the Republican candidate for Manhattan DA was, she tells me, when she asked him for $2 million. While the billionaire hedge fund CEO said he could easily raise the money she needed to fund her campaign in a single night, ultimately he chose not to – and instead focused on backing Andrew Cuomo for mayor.
Ackman thought “oh, she’s a nice lady, but she’s crazy,” Maron recalls. “She’s running as a Republican in a Democratic city.”
Fast forward six months and Cuomo is on the brink of losing to Zohran Mamdani – and Ackman has cast a vote for Maron, who he now calls “great.”
“I’m not crazy, I’m just ahead of the curve,” says Maron, a former public defender “And I am trying to find the least obnoxious way to say ‘I told you so’ to all of the big donors in New York.”
Maron is fighting an uphill battle of her own against current DA Alvin Bragg. The Democrat is expected to win. But she contends that it is Cuomo’s anticipated loss that should change Republican calculus in the city – and end the failed strategy of always backing the least worst Democrat.
As a recent candidate herself in two Democratic Congressional primaries, Maron knows about New York Democrats. But her critical view of DEI (for which she was called a “racist”), of trans issues (on which she said “any dude who feels like a woman is supposed to be treated like a woman – that’s absurd”) and staunch support of Jews (over which she was suspended from her post as parent council president for criticizing a letter that defended October 7) put her out of step with the party that has been captured by its progressive wing. She was beaten on both occasions and switched teams.
Those losses, combined with Cuomo’s expected defeat, augur well, Maron argues, for Republicans.
“Donors in the past have put in a lot of money to convince Republicans to register as Democrats because they thought the Democratic primary decides the election. But if you felt like your vote would count whether you were registered as a Democrat or a Republican, you would see an exodus from the Democratic party.
“Cuomo has already started that process by standing as an independent. Once you get people to say ‘I’m not just going to vote straight Democrat, I’m going to go listen to both candidates and see who’s better,’ then there’s a vote to be gotten.”
That the blue and red tectonic plates have shifted is beyond doubt with a certain New Yorker now residing in the White House and with the very real prospect of a Republican moving into the Governor’s mansion in neighboring New Jersey for the first time since 2013. The most recent polls show a dead heat between Democrat Mikie Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciattarelli.
“Trump won all seven swing states and the popular vote really just by turning up and talking to people. Republicans win where Republicans show up and fight with some money and some infrastructure, that’s what we see in New Jersey too.
“And there’s something going on with the Democrat party. There’s a switcheroo happening where working class people are now finding themselves more drawn to and represented by the Republican party. You saw it with Robert F. Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard joining the Trump campaign. There’s a lot of Democrats out there who want something better than what the Democratic party is offering right now, which is far left extremism.”
But why should anyone listen to – let alone donate $2 million to – a candidate who is likely to lose on November 4 to a District Attorney so bad that the conviction rate has fallen every year since he took over in January 2022 and now stands at just 35 percent?
“Far left progressive prosecutors are winning because big donors like George Soros are funding the Democratic Socialists of America. But the backlash has started: Chesa Boudin was recalled in San Francisco and George Gascon was voted out of Los Angeles. When enough voters see what extreme leftism looks like in practice, they’re ready for an alternative.
“Republicans need to copy the DSA because they did a really smart thing. They invested a ton of money and recruited candidates when nobody took them seriously. You have to show up and you need money and you need infrastructure. In New York, that just has not been happening.
“As a Republican I haven’t been able to raise the millions of dollars that you would need to have a real fighting chance.” In the end Maron raised $500,000, still four times more than the last Republican DA candidate.
The further left the Democrats track, Maron says, the greater the opportunity for Republicans.
“Moderates can’t win in the Democratic primary, that’s why we have Mamdani. Democrats have lurched so far to the left because every single Democrat in office is worried about a challenger from their left. So they all tack left with their loony legalized prostitution, legalized marijuana, safe injection sites, they don’t arrest people for jumping the turnstile or beating up a cop. They are not worried about a challenger from the Republican party.”
Maron laughs at the thought of standing for mayor herself – “not a job I’m after” – and says the city needs another Michael Bloomberg. “I don’t think Curtis Sliwa will run again. New Yorkers won’t be put off by voting Republican if it’s somebody like Bloomberg who knows how to run things and turn things around.”
Politics is a contact sport these days, which is perhaps one of the reasons Maron, a mother of four who lives in Manhattan, wouldn’t seek the mayor’s office. Recently her nine-year-old son asked her why people were calling her racist. “It can get kind of nasty sometimes. But it does make the kids a little bit tougher and stronger.”
Maron predicts that under Mayor Mamdani “New York is about to have a rude awakening.” But, if her analysis is correct, when the contest is held again in four years time the Big Apple will be also low-hanging fruit, ripe for the plucking by Republicans. -
Trump plays battleships
The US Navy retired its last battleship 19 years ago, the grand warship’s devastating firepower deemed surplus to requirements in the new war on terror. But the era of Great Power conflict has now returned with storm clouds gathering between the US and China. And with them the old warhorse bristling with guns, the battleship, is facing a call back to action.
President Trump has said the battleship will come back as the centerpiece of his new Golden Fleet – a cadre of warships designed to equip our navy to face the challenges of the future, not the past.
In a speech to the nation’s top military brass, Trump said:
“I think we should maybe start thinking about battleships, by the way. You know, we have – Secretary of the Navy came to me – because I look at the Iowa out in California and I look at different ships in the old pictures… Some people would say, no, that’s old technology. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s old technology when you look at those guns, but it’s something we’re actually considering, the concept of battleship, nice six-inch size, solid steel, not aluminum, aluminum that melts if it looks at a missile coming at it… Now those ships, they don’t make them that way anymore… But I tell you, it’s something we’re seriously considering.”
America hasn’t built a new battleship since World War Two. The warship class fell to the wayside because submarines and aircraft carriers can project power further, and nuclear weapons became a focus. The last American battleships built were modernized for use in the First Gulf War in 1991 and were mainly shelled Iraqi shore positions.
The “Iowa” that Trump referenced in his speech is the eponymous battleship, built in 1944 and finally retired in 2006 after on-and-off service for decades, including in Operation Desert Storm. It now sits as a museum ship in Los Angeles, drawing crowds who wish to see the last of the iconic warships that captured the public imagination for generations. That fascination with the battleship has led to films, board games and plenty of influence on popular culture. And it may now augur the return of the ship class, given the president’s powerful interest in the matter.
Battleships were always about bringing to bear as much destructive long-range firepower as possible, while retaining the ability to strike back if hit by the enemy. And it’s those qualities that the US Navy believes it needs again. Beijing has the ability to block access to the Taiwan Strait for American surface ships with longer-range missiles. But if America possessed battleships with similar ranged missiles it could make a difference in defending the island. These long-range munitions have been effective in the Ukraine War and may be similarly effective in the looming conflict in Asia, especially if they are based on maneuverable warships.
American warships today are generally lightly armored and rely on avoiding or countering enemy fire, but that may not be possible in a more evenly matched conflict. Battleships are meant to strike hard, yet survive by absorbing enemy firepower. Executing retaliatory strikes after taking enemy hits gives it an advantage over other modern warships.
And modern battleships could be built to field more advanced weapons systems, whether that is the long-discussed railgun – which the Japanese are heavily testing – or swarms of autonomous drones providing cover and extending range. All of this would be powered by the same nuclear reactors that make our aircraft carriers and submarines the most advanced in the world.
But creating a brand-new ship design would be incredibly time-consuming and expensive. America already struggles to build and maintain the fleet that we have, so adding a novel warship class would tax that maritime infrastructure to its limit. We would need to build several additional shipyards to accommodate the construction of the “Golden Fleet,” but these new facilities would possibly be more useful producing already-existing, combat-ready ships and submarines. Even if those facilities were available immediately, the design, construction and testing process for the new battleships would take years, if not a decade. Any claims as to when these ships could roll off the line would likely be a significant underestimate.
The China challenge is not in the far future. It is here in the present. America’s limited resources should, in the minds of the battleship skeptics, be ruthlessly prioritized to build as many useful, proven ships as quickly as possible. China’s navy is larger than our own and we need to play catch-up. If we decide to innovate a novel design, we will only fall further behind Beijing at a time in which we cannot afford to. The American people are only so willing to incur more debt and finance larger military budgets, even in the face of a powerful adversary. Prioritization is necessary to make the most of our constraints and still achieve victory. And achieving that victory is a must.
America is historically a maritime power built around a mighty naval force that defends our interests and commerce abroad. The past two decades of land-based imperial policing actions in Western Asia have abstracted us from that storied history and downplayed our innate national advantages. Focusing on our naval mission, especially in an era of Great Power conflict, is crucial. It, alongside our aerospace dominance, will be the defining military factor in any American success over the coming decades. The battleship may or may not be a part of that success, but the conversation that the idea has sparked is a prerequisite for achieving it. -
When foreign-policy critique becomes blood libel
“I’m a Christian man,” the college student at the University of Mississippi said to J.D. Vance, our future 48th (or 49th) President, during a TPUSA event attended by thousands. Uh-oh, here we go.
“And I’m just confused why there’s this notion that we might owe Israel something… or that they’re our greatest ally or that we have to support this multi-hundred-billion-dollar foreign aid package to Israel… to quote Charlie Kirk, ‘ethnic cleansing in Gaza.’”
That was nothing you wouldn’t hear outside of, say, Glenn Greenwald’s Twitter feed, but then it got dark. The student continued, “I’m just confused why this idea has come around considering the fact that not only does their religion not agree with ours but also openly supports the persecution of ours.”
Judaism doesn’t support the “persecution” of Christians. The religions share half a Bible. Christianity’s savior was a Jew until the Romans murdered him. Here we go again with a foreign-policy critique turning into a disgusting blood libel.
The audience, trained by groypers to hate Jews since childhood, roared with approval, and J.D. Vance didn’t seem willing to anger his base. “Sometimes Israel has similar interests to the United States and sometimes they don’t,” he said, as though he were talking about Almond Joy and Mounds. But sometimes you feel like a nut, and Vance said there were “significant theological differences” between Judaism and Christianity.
Instead of adding something like “Israel is our trusted ally and Jews do not control the United States, they are a valued part of America’s rich, diverse tapestry,” Vance said, “What I’m not OK with is any country coming before the interests of American citizens. That’s what we’re going to do… I promise you.”
And so we come to the central problem. As on the left, there’s a significant number of people on the political right who simply hate the Jews. This week, Tucker Carlson interviewed Nick Fuentes, who went on and on, as he does, about how “organized Jewry” is a threat. Tucker laughed and laughed in front of the roaring river that forms the backdrop to his online life.
In response, Heritage Foundation President Kevin D. Roberts, who as recently as this year called anti-semitism “evil,” refused to condemn this conversation. “We won’t start canceling our own people… that includes Tucker Carlson, who remains — and always will be — a close friend of the Heritage Foundation.” He also said, “Christians can critique the state of Israel without being antisemitic. And of course anti-semitism should be condemned.”
It should be condemned, and it often is, usually by Jews who feel the walls closing in around them. My social-media feed yesterday was full of World Series chatter, see-through Sydney Sweeney dress photos and conservative Jews saying that they feel betrayed by their political compatriots. Yesterday was a day you’ll never forget, unless you weren’t paying attention. When the left hates you and the right hates you, all that remains is vigilance. American Jews should get their passports ready. And maybe sign up for some Krav Maga.