Journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin’s DealBook summit, sponsored by the New York Times, made a lot of news yesterday, though it felt more like 1975 than 2025, particularly when it came to “women’s issues”. We were one degree of separation from participants arguing over galleys of Ms. Magazine or getting into shouting matches with Norman Mailer.
In the role of Phyllis Schlafly, the beautiful right-wing career woman leading a charge for a return to traditional values, was Erika Kirk, CEO of Turning Point USA and recent widow of Charlie Kirk. She claimed it was “ironic” that women in New York City had voted for Zohran Mamdani, given that many of them are childless but voiced support for his promise to provide free childcare for children under six years old. Kirk said that women were using government as a “replacement” for marriage and family.
This was somewhat ironic in itself because Erika Kirk didn’t marry Charlie until she was 32, with an already successful career and a full life – and is now a major public figure, studying for a PhD. Also, there’s the fact that women might have voted for Mamdani because their other choices were Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, neither of whom have a lot of curb appeal to young female voters. Regardless, the right looked at the comments and continued to consider Erika Kirk a hero of the revolution, and the left looked at them and continued to consider her some sort of sinister she-devil, so the needle didn’t actually move.
More surprising was the appearance of actress Halle Berry, in a new role as some sort of hybrid version of Gloria Steinem and Shirley Chisholm. Berry ripped into California Governor and potential 2028 presidential candidate Gavin Newsom for not supporting a Menopause Care Equity Act in California. “With the way he’s overlooked women, half the population, by devaluing us in midlife, he probably should not be the next president,” Berry said. She said that menopause and perimenopause are staggering health problems that affect the entire national economy, causing one of six women to leave the workforce. If men “had a medical condition that disrupted their sleep, brain function and sex life, we’d be calling that a health crisis on par with Covid, and the whole world would shut down.”
“I need every woman in this country to fight with me,” Berry said. “But the truth is, the fight isn’t just for us women. We need men too. We need all of the leaders, every single one of you in this room – this fight needs you.”
Newsom himself appeared at the DealBook summit, but spent his headline-making moment by claiming that if Hakeem Jeffries somehow doesn’t become Speaker of the House just over a year from now, the United States will descend into permanent autocracy – with show elections like the ones in Russia. Newsom urged the people in the crowd, most of whom were Democrats, to wake up from their stupor and elect Democrats, the only way to save America. This seemed like a bit of an exaggeration, a reach, and a fear tactic, Gavin Newsom specialties, given that he has his own authoritarian tendencies.
Halle Berry couldn’t have been too pleased, as Newsom didn’t once mention menopause, though he did decry the bill earlier this year as too expensive. Governor Newsom, Bella Abzug and Germaine Greer would like to have a word with you. Even Erika Kirk might like to have a word. And Halle Berry isn’t going to cede ground. She said, “At this stage of my life, I have zero fucks left to give.”
Tag: Charlie Kirk
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Halle Berry vs. Erika Kirk
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Is MAGA cracking up?
In the year since his triumphant reelection, Donald Trump has racked up an enormous list of accomplishments, both foreign and domestic. His sweeping, “move fast and break things” approach to governance has generated a form of accepted normalcy which his first administration never experienced.
His White House staff and cabinet, once full of leaks and disloyalty, has turned out to be incredibly faithful. On the international scene, he has credibly been suggested as deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize. And at home, according to polling averages from RealClearPolitics, Trump is more popular at this point in his second term than either George W. Bush or Barack Obama was.
Yet within the movement that made all this possible, it seems everyone is at each other’s throats. The long knives are out for people not on the left, but inside the big tent that Trump built. It’s not just a hierarchical fight between social and fiscal conservatives, insiders vs outsiders. It’s MAHA moms and tech giants; tariff lovers and haters; the Wall Street Journal vs the Heritage Foundation; Candace Owens vs Turning Point USA; Megyn Kelly vs based icon Sydney Sweeney; comic Dave Smith vs the Babylon Bee; Ben Shapiro vs Tucker Carlson; and Tucker vs, well, pretty much everyone on Fox News and most people who aren’t. It’s the most vicious, catty, well-coiffed and fully botoxed melee since Anchorman, and no one knows where Marjorie Taylor Greene found that hand grenade.
The question on the mind of every Republican in Washington: are we witnessing the great MAGA crack-up? And the answer is: almost certainly yes.
The insiders always knew it was too good to last. Trump’s remarkable political skill is in identifying the one issue that cuts across natural partisan tendencies to create a coalition that seemed incompatible. He won over the broad ethnic working-class coalition that supported him in 2024. He also scooped up the votes of those who wanted crackdowns on crime and those who want nonviolent offenders freed, of drug legalizers and vaccine skeptics, pro-natalists and crypto bros, supply siders and trade hawks, pastors and porn stars.
“Trump is so unique of a political figure, when he’s focused on governing, it’s actually time that daddy is spending away from the kids,” says one longtime GOP insider. “He brings back gifts whenever he comes back from one of his trips, but while he’s away at work or just not paying attention to us, we scrap like cats and dogs and start every day with bruises on our shins.”
The fights often take place on X – the site where everything is happening, which for many on the right these days seems to make everything about Israel, all the time. Ongoing squabbles can become so internecine as to be more difficult to follow than the plots of prestige TV shows. The strife is often colored by personal relationships: former employees feuding with past bosses or personnel fights with gripes held over from the first Trump term, or the different responses to January 6. This stretches all the way up to the President himself, who refused to endorse his former critic, Virginia Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, in the state’s recent gubernatorial race. It might not have made a difference, given her double-digit failure at the polls. But it was still a reminder that old wounds linger.
On the surface, the MAGA cohort should be enormously pleased with how things are going, even despite the Democratic success in the off-year elections. Yet rumbling underneath, multiple asymmetric fights are being waged, all of which can be viewed through the lens of who is up or down in controlling and directing the next generation of MAGA. Typically, conflicts of this nature are based on which ideological faction supports whom as the next presidential candidate. But in the case of the current fracas, such lines are often unclear. With even Marco Rubio reportedly acknowledging that J.D. Vance is the frontrunner for the 2028 Republican nomination, there isn’t really a competing candidate coalescing support for an uphill run… yet.
The Heritage Foundation’s struggles in this moment are a microcosm of the crackup’s tangled motivations. The story goes like this: in the aftermath of the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk in September, a violent moment that both unified and depressed the coalition of the right, various figures began to position themselves to inherit all – or a portion – of Kirk’s role as the titular leader of the younger MAGA base.
It quickly became clear that this was about more than just reaching right-leaning college students and that it actually reflected competing visions about both Kirk’s and Turning Point’s attitudes toward Israel and anti-Semitism. Fights and arguments conducted via text messages and DMs spilled out into the open, with some conspiratorially minded figures claiming (without any evidence) that Kirk was actually assassinated over his shifting views on the subject. No personality exploited this moment more than Carlson, whose appearance as a speaker at Kirk’s memorial event included him comparing the young activist’s murder to the death of Jesus Christ. He invited the audience to “picture the scene in a lamp-lit room with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus,” painting the hummus-eaters as the ones who engineered the crucifixion. As he typically does, Carlson pretended the suggestion of anything untoward about his anecdote was ridiculous. But afterwards he brought a longtime Kirk antagonist, the aggressively misogynist and racist troll Nick Fuentes, onto his show for what essentially amounted to a softball promotional interview.
The interview broke something open. Conservatives already uncomfortable with Carlson’s pro-Russia and Qatar-spinning tendencies turned on him. This turned explosive when the leadership of Heritage, the central think tank for American conservatism and the creator of the Project 2025 agenda that has guided much of Trump’s second term, decided to weigh in on Carlson’s side. Heritage president Kevin Roberts released a video defending the broadcaster, claiming that “we will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda,” and that “conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or from their mouthpieces in Washington.” He denounced Carlson’s critics as a “venomous coalition” and suggested that criticism of the Fuentes interview amounted to an attempt at cancellation.
The statement prompted widespread condemnation. Texas Senator Ted Cruz denounced it, conservative publications and op-ed pages decried it, long-tenured scholars resigned from the think tank, Heritage’s dedicated committee to tackle anti-Semitism considered assigning staffers to observe Shabbat. Ultimately, Roberts’s chief of staff took the fall and left his post. Roberts himself was compelled to hold a lengthy apology session. In the face of calls for his resignation, he held on to his position with the mantra: “I made the mess; let me clean it up.”
At that session, a young female staffer provided a view of why that “mess” happened in the first place, standing up to say: “I condemn Nick Fuentes’s hateful rhetoric. That being said, I would like to point out that some of the most vocal people against Tucker Carlson have been calling him an anti-Semite since he started to hold more anti-interventionalist views. A handful of young colleagues and I had no issue with the points you made in the original video… Gen Z has an increasingly unfavorable view of Israel – and it’s not because millions of Americans are anti-Semitic. It’s because we are Catholic and Orthodox and believe that Christian Zionism is a modern heresy… as a young person, many of us are generally tired of foreign entanglements, while our problems in this country worsen.”
While the old guard GOP might like it to be otherwise, the young staffer speaks for a growing number of solid MAGA voters who have become frustrated with the state of things. In a cycle when Democrats are embracing a political message emphasizing “affordability” and Trump seems to be spending outsized time on legacy-building projects instead of addressing the problems of inflation and growth, even some of his most loyal supporters are beginning to sound like critics. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Representative who became the first Republican to call Israel’s actions in Gaza “genocide,” has become the recipient of a dramatic degree of strange new respect from everyone from Wolf Blitzer to Bill Maher to the harridans of The View. Her message is essentially that America’s leaders are spending too much time looking at other people’s problems and need to get back to focusing on their own. The critique is clearly aimed at Trump and those around him: the Donald’s focus has been decidedly more international in recent months.
It’s hard not to see this as sour grapes from supporters who expected a different Trump 2.0 than they are getting. As author James Kirchick summarized in the Washington Post: “Though Trump campaigned as an isolationist, he has certainly not governed as one. He has recently pulled a U-turn on Ukraine, imposing fresh sanctions on Moscow and calling off a proposed summit with Putin in Budapest. Trump is also ramping up action against Venezuela, citing dubious legal pretext to launch airstrikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and amassing military assets off the country’s coast for a possible attack on the mainland. And with Operation Midnight Hammer, he joined the Israeli assault on Iran’s nuclear program. Even in symbolic ways, like changing the Defense Department’s name to the War Department, Trump has taken American foreign policy in a more interventionist, even bellicose direction.”
When Trump was making the decision to attack Iran in the summer and Carlson intoned, publicly, that such a strike would be likely to spark World War Three, the President responded by noting that he alone decides what “America First” means. The central question for the MAGA coalition is now who, once Trump is no longer behind the Resolute Desk, gets to decide what America First means?
For Vance, the man who seems likeliest to inherit that role, there seems to be recognition that things aren’t headed in the right direction. “We need to focus on the home front,” the Vice-President tweeted in response to the electoral drubbing the Republican party received earlier this month. “The infighting is stupid. I care about my fellow citizens – particularly young Americans – being able to afford a decent life, I care about immigration and our sovereignty and I care about establishing peace overseas so our resources can be focused at home. If you care about those things too, let’s work together.”
Whether Vance can hold things together through this moment of crack-up could determine whether this coalition, forged originally by Trump’s political ingenuity and force of will, can endure beyond the man himself.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 24, 2025 World edition.
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How Israel won the war – and lost the PR battle
Regardless of the ultimate outcome of the Gaza peace deal brokered by Donald Trump, the past two years have seen Israel achieve an unprecedented litany of military accomplishments in the Middle East. The level of damage done to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis is difficult to comprehend. The end of the Assad regime and, with American support, the demolition of the Iranian nuclear program – setting it back years at the least – were steps that many once thought impossible. Israel has emerged from the post-October 7 period unquestionably stronger in every way except one: its support around the globe, particularly among the youngest voices in the West.
Polling is consistent, showing increased opposition to Israel and even support for Hamas among younger voters
The polling on this question has been consistent and widespread, finding a clear trendline toward increased opposition to Israel and even support for Hamas among younger voters. In America, the widely respected Harvard-Harris poll found last month that nearly half of Generation Z respondents supported Hamas over Israel, and more than a third of millennials shared their views.
Gallup’s July survey found support among those aged 18 to 34 for Israel’s military actions in Gaza and Iran to be just 9 and 15 percent respectively. A Quinnipiac survey which previously showed strong majorities believing it is in America’s interest to favor Israel found support had fallen from 69 percent in December 2023 to 47 percent today, driven by a significant increase in skepticism among younger voters.
And a major study released in October by the conservative Family Research Council that surveyed American Christians found just six in ten regular churchgoers believe it’s important to pray for Israel, and a majority did not believe it was important for the United States or for their churches to support Israel. Consistent with other polling, churchgoing Gen Z respondents ranked the lowest in favoring any kind of support – prayer, verbal, or financial. In the wake of the October 7 attacks, it would have seemed ludicrous to predict this level of dropoff. But for those who consistently conduct polling on this topic, the trend is both undeniable and the reasons too convoluted to explain with simple questions.
“For young people on the left, it’s a racial thing, a victimhood thing,” one pollster told me. “On the right, I think it’s more complicated. There’s a strong narrative that’s taken hold in a younger generation that claims American foreign policy is still overwhelmingly being dictated by the Jews, not ‘America First’ influences. So being an Israel skeptic has become a transgressive revolt against the establishment – and people need to understand that even for those who support him, Trump is the new establishment.”
What has helped this trend take hold in the minds of some young conservatives is that sometimes the actions of Israel’s most vociferous supporters trigger callbacks to the speech codes of the American left. A survey over the summer conducted by Turning Point USA of roughly 7,000 attendees who participated in their major student activist conference in Tampa, Florida, found that 73 percent self-identify as pro-Israel. But that doesn’t mean they don’t recoil at what they view as a tendency by some Israel supporters to frame criticism of the nation or its political leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu as anti-Semitism.
“One of the things that’s driving more people away from Israel is when you shut them down and don’t say they’re allowed to ask certain questions,” Andrew Kolvet, Charlie Kirk’s producer, said in a NewsNation interview outlining the results of the survey and a series of focus groups. “We have lived through an era where they were called racist if they felt like DEI was a problem. A lot of these kids have been steeped in a world where they were told they couldn’t say something, then the floodgates broke open and now they can say it, and now they feel like the anti-Semite word is being thrown out just like the racist word was a few years ago.”
The effort Kirk and his team placed on navigating the complicated feelings on campuses about Israel, even gathering multiple Jewish and non-Jewish influencers to discuss the questions he was getting from fans in the weeks prior to his death, indicates how much this area has become a minefield for the young right.
The Mike Huckabee generation of America’s baby boomer Christians who looked forward to their church’s annual trip to the Promised Land may still be in key positions within the Republican party, but they no longer dominate the conversation online or among younger voters. And for people raised on the idea that a core principle of “America First” foreign policy is avoiding entangling alliances which risk dragging the United States into needless wars, Israel is the number one example.
Yet for some avowed supporters of Israel, the real story here isn’t entirely or even mostly an organic one, but is driven by a number of intentional actors with their own agendas, backed and promoted by foreign or anti-American interests. Mark Levin, the radio host and Fox News anchor, has taken to labeling these forces “the enemy within,” a combination of media figures and politicians he believes have seen their rhetoric boosted and shared across social media in an attempt to break the America-Israel alliance.
The ongoing feud on this question between Levin and his former colleague Tucker Carlson (Levin calls him “Chatsworth Qatarlson”) has been just one of many to play out on social media and across a vast diaspora of podcasts, many of which have stronger consumption among politically engaged young people than the cable-news programs that once dictated the direction of foreign-policy debate.
In the grand scheme of things, this is a battle that is not going away so it cannot be considered lost
Just as the degradation of power held by the Democratic media establishment has furthered the fortunes of radical candidates like Zohran Mamdani, the fear among some pro-Israel activists is that diminishing strength of leadership on the right could lead to critics of the Israel alliance – like once-MAGA darling Marjorie Taylor Greene – taking on larger roles within the coalition. And behind it all is an abiding concern about the future of the Republican party after Donald Trump. As much as Trump has cemented his place in the minds of many as the most pro-Israel President in American history, his heir apparent is viewed with significantly more skepticism. The potential of a J.D. Vance contest against the likes of Marco Rubio for the GOP nomination in 2028 could become one where differences of opinion on Israel take center stage.
There is near-universal acknowledgment on the part of American Jewish activists that there is a problem here for their cause, but the question of what to do about it prompts little in the way of answers. AIPAC, the much criticized pro-Israel lobbying group, recently rolled out an ad campaign to rebrand their organization as “America First” to online derision. The elevation of Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News by David Ellison, who is very public about his pro-Israel views, has prompted hopes for more pro-Israel commentary from a network that has courted controversy with their coverage.
But there is a noticeable lack of vibrant leadership making the case for Israel to young audiences – a fact that becomes all the more noticeable with the loss of Kirk. “We know the kind of voices we need, we just don’t have them right now,” one Jewish activist told me. And in their absence, anti-Israel voices such as Nick Fuentes’s can fill the void.
When CBS News’s Tony Dokoupil put the question to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing a poll showing just 14 percent of Americans under 30 support Israel, his response was clear-eyed. “I think the first fix is to finish the war as speedily as possible, something that I have sought to do against all these contrarian propaganda… so, first, you want to end it, end the war speedily, because in the TikTok age and in the television age, letting wars go on too long is going to cost you precisely what it cost you. There’s a real battle on the social media. It’s a big battle. It’s a battle for truth, really.” Netanyahu’s answer implies that Israel is losing that battle.
In the grand scheme of things, this is a battle that is not going away, so it cannot yet be considered lost. The lack of bipartisan support for Israel has been an acknowledged problem for years, and now the danger of real opposition within both parties is a growing concern that can’t be ignored. For now, Israel backers can hold on to the reality that they continue to get the votes they need and the backing of many of the most prominent American politicians.
So long as Donald Trump is the leader of the GOP, he defines “America First” – as he reiterated when some of his MAGA supporters were invoking the prospect of World War Three during the debate over striking Iran. He has given no indication of handing over the reins to anyone else.
It is important to remember that there is a time for war and a time for peace. The debate over the Israeli alliance takes on a different nature in both contexts in American politics. The emergence of an emboldened anti-Israel faction of the American right has been driven not just by prominent voices but by the images from Gaza blasted across TikTok. With a ceasefire in place, a renewed conversation can be had. Israel’s focus remains survival above all else, even if the destruction of its enemies has come with a critical loss of western support. In the hierarchy of needs, staying alive matters most. The arguments can wait for another day.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 27, 2025 World edition.
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Tucker Carlson, ‘belle of the ball’
Tucker time
In the month since his death, Charlie Kirk has been credited for his role as a unifying figure on the American right. Nowhere was that more evident than at the Tuesday afternoon service posthumously awarding him the Presidential Medal of Honor, where four hosts of Fox News’s prestigious 8 p.m. slot posed for a photo together: Jesse Watters, Glenn Beck, Bill O‘Reilly and Tucker Carlson.
Tucker also got a picture with Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham – incredible considering how acrimoniously things ended between him, his former network and a number of his other high-profile colleagues. (Carlson branded Hannity a “warmonger” as recently as June.)
Per a source: “Tucker was the belle of the ball among the press – and was the only guest who ‘gaggled’ with reporters after the ceremony ended, until Katie Pavlich shooed them away. He talked at length to LindellTV’s Cara Castronuova about her work on the new January 6 committee. He was definitely the most goo-gooed figure there. Perhaps evidence of how much the GOP will need Tucker on their side for the next couple of elections.”
On our radar
LIGHT LUNCH President Trump is briefly hosting President Volodymyr Zelensky for lunch – before jetting off to Mar-a-Lago at 3 p.m.
ZOH NO In a Fox News poll taken before last night’s New York City mayoral debate, Zohran Mamdani holds a 21-point lead. (Obviously Cockburn’s debate highlight was the bizarre exchange about parades.)
TRAP HOUSE TISH A new twist in the Leticia James fraud case: the New York Post discovered the New York AG is housing her grandniece Cayla Thompson-Hairston at one of her properties in Virginia. The Post describes 21-year-old Thompson-Hairston as “an OnlyFans star with a public, X-rated social media presence” (which has been nuked since they broke the story last night).
Cockburn would have signed the Pentagon pledge
Not all the media has decided to shun the Pentagon’s new “loyalty pledge” that it asked reporters to sign. Conservative outlets like the Federalist, One America News and the Epoch Times will lick the Department of War’s boots, as will several Turkish journalists. So will Kristina Anderson from AWPS News, with its 212 followers on X, who tweeted that she felt “a profound sense of loss as I walk the Pentagon’s Correspondent spaces today.”
Cockburn would obviously have signed the agreement, but his lunch went long and he missed the deadline, so now he’s out of the loop. You can email any tips about goings-on at the WarDep to cockburn@thespectator.com, safe in the knowledge that he’ll keep your identity anonymous until Pete Hegseth applies the thumbscrews (or offers to share an 11 a.m. gin and tonic).
Cockburn is definitely not interested in leaks about procurement scandals, Venezuela invasion plans, Chinese drone strikes, funneling of Tomahawk weapons systems to Ukraine, disgruntled personnel, or cabinet secretaries being sleazy. That would be thoroughly inappropriate and un-American. So whatever you do, do not email cockburn@thespectator.com because, again, Cockburn missed the deadline and is now inadvertently on the naughty list of the Pentagon – which is his favorite building and favorite shape, that houses his very favorite cabinet department that never conceals any shenanigans. Once again: the tips email to avoid is cockburn@thespectator.com.
State rep kills on Kill Tony
Smash-hit Austin comedy show Kill Tony had a surprise guest at Joe Rogan’s Mothership club the other night when they pulled far-left-wing Delaware State Representative Medinah Wilson-Anton’s name from the “bucket.”
In each edition of the show, Tony “Puerto Rico is a garbage island” Hinchcliffe, Brian Redban and other comics sit on stage as judges while scores of aspiring comics wait in the green room. Wilson-Anton was one of the chosen few on Monday’s episode.
Representative Wilson-Anton, who revealed that she’d taken the Greyhound bus to Austin from Fort Worth, emerged from backstage wearing a red hijab and did a few quick jokes about her vitiligo, a condition that causes the loss of melanin pigment. “My body is gentrifying itself,” she said. “My mom smacked the black off me.”
Hinchcliffe, who described himself as a “common-sense centrist who just saw in the last election that there was only one option,” asked Medinah-Wilson about her ethnic background. She said, “Black and black. Blackety-black.”
Medinah Wilson said that in the State House, “I wish that we had a light. Because my colleagues go on and on. Democrats and Republicans all suck.”
Hinchcliffe liked that – and also nodded along when she said, “this is the America I love. You can have voted for Trump and not agree with everything, just like you can be a Democrat and not suck. We all exist in multiplicities.”
“Indeed,” Hinchcliffe said. “We’re all meeting in the middle. We are the United States of America. The greatest country in the world.”
Then one of Hinchcliffe’s co-hosts pointed to Anton-Wilson’s hijab and said, “Is there a yarmulke under that?”
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The mainstreaming of leftist violence
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Democratic lawmakers and commentators found themselves in a quandary. On the one hand, most of them loathed Kirk. On the other, many felt that they should try to hold the line condemning the shooting through the throat of a young husband and father at an American university.
These so-called ‘anti-fascists’ started behaving like nothing so much as the fascists they were searching for
The New York Times’s Ezra Klein was among those who dipped his toe into the water, writing a piece within the day titled “Charlie Kirk was practicing politics the right way.” Unfortunately, Klein then found himself the subject of a backlash from others on the left who thought that by praising Kirk’s invitation to nonviolent debate, he was somehow “legitimizing” Kirk’s views.
In order to try to tidy up this controversy, Klein invited on to his NYT podcast the Democratic left’s most sacred figure – the memoirist Ta-Nehisi Coates – to carry out a public struggle-session on Klein. Giving Coates all the deference that the NYT believes is his due, Coates and Klein tried to have the “difficult conversation” about why Coates had reacted negatively to Klein’s initial piece. Coates said that since Kirk’s murder he had, with his usual degree of research, watched some “clips” of the right-wing speaker. He did not like what he saw. In fact, he concluded that Kirk was anti-black, anti-gay and anti-trans. Or, as Coates elegantly summed it up: “This dude was wrong.”
Yet the most important moment in an otherwise interminable conversation was when Klein tried to explain what he was thinking when he wrote his initial condemnation of Kirk’s murder. Coates gave the telling reply: “Was silence not an option?”
And there it was. The same people who had been telling Americans for the past decade that “silence” in the face of violence is “complicity,” that “silence is violence,” now preaching that silence should, in fact, be an option after a political assassination. Welcome to the current state of the American left.
It should not be necessary to rehearse the litany of left-wing violence that has scarred America for the past decade. But it is probably worth repeating some of it.
Firstly there was the emergence, early in the past decade, of the groupings that became known as “antifa.” In fact, these so-called “anti-fascists” started from the get-go behaving like nothing so much as the fascists they everywhere searched for. While hunting for “literal Nazis” in cities such as Portland, Oregon, they got away with attacking federal buildings on a nightly basis, shooting up businesses which antifa claimed were “fascist” and attacking and hospitalizing journalists who reported on their activities.
One of the main targets of antifa activists over the past decade has been federal buildings and any federal agency. These activists dressed head to toe in black and covered their faces with masks long before the Covid-19 virus made masking popular. Yet you would have to scour the newspapers over the past decade to find full-throated condemnation of antifa from Democratic politicians and pundits. Most either ignored antifa’s growth, minimized it or, when questioned, said that it is a good thing to be anti-fascist. Which it is. But that completely ignores the fact that antifa were the ones behaving like fascists.
Compare that lack of condemnation with the words that prominent Democrats have used – in recent weeks alone – to describe one of the main targets of antifa: ICE. The former vice-presidential candidate and current Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, described ICE officers as the “Gestapo.” The Democratic Mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu, described them as “neo-Nazis.” And the oh-so moderate Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, described them as the “secret police.” Politicians who reserve their strongest language for government agencies and their most milquetoast comments for vandals parading the streets might be said to have an extremism problem. But it is only in recent months that this has come into even plainer sight.
The language that the Democrat left has long been using against mainstream Republican voters has spiraled out of all reasonable control. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi and almost every other major Democrat leader of recent years repeatedly insisted that Donald Trump was “an existential threat to democracy” and that his victory in a free and fair election would herald a Nazi era in America. By almost any reasonable analysis, this would be described as deranged.
But it has long been mainstream rhetoric in the Democratic party and its organs such as MSNBC and the New York Times to describe Trump and his voters in this way. And it has remained so, even after Trump himself suffered not one but two very near misses in assassination attempts against his life. Perhaps some of the Democrats and party mouthpieces who parrot the “Nazi” line seriously believe this. Others – perhaps more often – use these slurs because they are the strongest rhetorical armory they can deploy. Last month, after Kirk’s assassination, Gavin Newsom’s press office was having a perfectly normal Friday night by posting a message on X saying, in capitalized letters: “Stephen Miller is a fascist.”
This despite the fact that such rhetoric, used against Kirk for years, appears to have persuaded the young man who took the shot that (in the suspected assassin’s own words) he “had enough of [Kirk’s] hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.” The goons of antifa, whose ideology Kirk’s assassin evidently aligned with, have spouted for years the line that the only good fascist is a dead one. The helpful proviso is that they get to decide who the fascists are.
The Democratic left had already broken the taboo on attacking federal agents, allowing them to be normalized in the “mostly peaceful” summer of 2020, when the police were the ones in the crosshairs of the left. But even that was nothing compared with the demonization of federal agents working for ICE.
Only days after Kirk’s assassination, another young gunman got on to the roof of a building and fired. Joshua Jahn – also in his twenties – scaled a building in Dallas to shoot at an ICE facility there. Like Kirk’s assassin he ornamented his bullets with slogans. While Kirk’s assassin had inscribed antifa slogans such as “Hey fascist, catch,” on his bullets, Jahn adorned his with “Anti-ICE” slogans. Jahn fired at ICE officers but managed, in a cruel twist, to kill one detainee and wound two others before turning the gun on himself. Jahn killed a foreign immigrant in the name of anti-fascism, which is certainly another vindication for those who have pointed out that antifa are not who they say they are.
The attack was carried out not by a MAGA Republican but by a crazed gunman acting for a ‘Free Palestine’
At this stage, Democrats have a predictable retort: to point to acts of violence against Democrats. One of the most-cited examples is the violence carried out against the Governor of Pennsylvania. As a talking point, this is suitably vague and untrue. The reference is to the firebomb attack on Josh Shapiro’s official residence in April. The Molotov cocktail attack was indeed an appalling act. But it was carried out not by a MAGA Republican, but by a crazed man in his thirties who claimed to be acting in the name of a “Free Palestine.”
You would have thought that an attack on a Jewish Democrat’s home in the name of Palestine might itself give off a certain “fascist” vibe. But if so, it is one that the Democratic media and politicians have chosen to gloss over. Indeed, many have hoped to turn into an example of equal violence on the political sides.
Again, it shouldn’t need saying that political violence can come from any and all political sides. But it clearly does need saying that if one side flirts with political violence or excuses political violence or believes that “saying nothing” is, in fact, a good response to political violence, then it should be incumbent on people of all sides to (adopting the left’s loathsome vernacular) call it out.
Some Democrats thought that they had a fine moment of “both sides-ism” when a gunman targeted Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota in June. That attack included the murder of state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in their home in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. And the (thankfully non-fatal) shooting of Senator John Hoffman and his wife at their home. Although some, including Walz, put this down as an act of political violence, one reason why the heinous attack has already receded in the collective memory is that firstly, no prominent figure on the American right failed to condemn the attack; and secondly, that the suspected gunman, one Vance Luther Boelter, turned out to have been a two-time Walz political appointee.
It presently feels inevitable that America will continue to see acts of political violence, either orchestrated against federal agents or in attacks like that carried out by the reprehensible and radicalized young man who chose to take the life of Charlie Kirk. There are questions as to how to mitigate the risk to prominent individuals. After all, an attempt on the life of Trump-appointed Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh was successfully stopped (albeit a little late for comfort) in June 2022. But it is hard to imagine any world in which every politician, pundit and public figure in American life could be protected from violence at all times.
The question then, is whether or not Democrats and Republicans can hold one very basic line. A line which it has been perfectly possible for people on both sides of the aisle to stick to for years. Not just to condemn violence in the pursuit of political goals, whatever those goals, but to agree that on this matter – above all others – silence is not, in fact, an option.
Douglas Murray is an associate editor of The Spectator. His latest book is On Democracies and Death Cults. This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 13, 2025 World edition.
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Britain’s MAGA moment is coming
Summer is fun. Winter is serious. Autumn in London feels almost Boolean – the light, the air, the mood, seemed to turn on an equinox dime. The political situation, I heard, had grown even stranger since my last sojourn. “Cool Britannia” is dead. Nothing today is more dated than centrism.
And yet the inexorable rules of the unwritten constitution mean no election until 2029. And the great barbarian, Nigel Farage, his weapons a grin and a beer, lies in wait as his numbers rise. Like J.D. Vance and Donald Trump, in an age of immediate media, Farage’s great weapon is that he is human. The same in public and private. Who is Kemi Badenoch in private, or Keir Starmer? Are they even anatomically correct? Someone must know. We never will.
A series of small quakes shake the bond market. All of Britain, chic and squalid, tower blocks and Jermyn Street, is in the red. It borrows and borrows – for what? For railroads, factories, fabs, tangible capital? For single-needle shirts, for motability (lol), for a vast, shady corps of Afghan “interpreters.” A pound is not a dollar – not even a euro. Sure, with infinite Fedbucks the IMF can bail anyone out. And Glendower can call spirits from the vasty deep – but if they come when he calls, it is Trump who sends them. Will he? And if he does, what are the terms of the deal?
And yet! Johnson remains right: when one is tired of London, one is tired of life. On stage in Hampstead, Alastair Campbell told me scornfully that I and my fellow MAGAts think London is some Turd World Mogadishu Dhaka Trenchtown hellhole. Maybe in Idaho, but we contain multitudes. If life was not real I would live nowhere else but London. And I never feel real when I’m in London. Even the problems are surreal. Problem: can’t enter a proper club without a collared shirt that takes a tie. Can’t film a chat with Lord Skidelsky without a mandarin collar to match my Nehru jacket (bought 25 years ago in… London). On my way from A to B, would I find myself on Jermyn Street? Would just the right thing appear in a window? For less than a hundred pounds, even? Yes, yes and no.
Alastair Campbell. Somehow this dark lord of the Britpoppers, the Vader to Tony Blair’s Palpatine, was tricked by a sly impresario into literally “platforming” me, presumably under the impression that he would get to work out on some weird San Francisco nerd in pajamas, before a sympathetic audience of classic North London champagne Bolshies. No one expects the Nehru! Before the match, like boxers, we traded backhanded sartorial compliments. Yes, my charcoal trousers were a shade long. Yes, while I would never wear paisley, it did compliment his thin lapels and aged, yet athletic, physique. And yet it’s not all fun and games out there. I had questions. Security questions. The answer: an absolutely lovely chap who looked like he’d been a West Ham supporter since roughly 1980 (and 1980 was rough indeed!) and who shadowed me at every point. Not much may be left of the Homeric Bill Buford Among The Thugs world I devoured as a teenager, but the yobbo ultra we have always with us. And on that crisp fall day, nothing looked better than those face tattoos. And nothing happened. Thanks, mate. Thanks from my wife as well – thanks from my unborn son. No one is immune, and anyone can be a threat.
It was not just Charlie Kirk’s assassination that woke up the American normiecons – it was the cruel, mendacious, gleeful response of millions of seemingly civilized liberals. Leftism, we realized, is not love. It is the violent lust for power. The left in power is soft and flabby, yet nothing of its darkness is slaked. Once it stops being able to silence its enemies with a quiet call to Nick Clegg at Facebook, it goes right back to bullets and bombs. The anni di piombo return. Wait ’till anyone can buy a war drone on Alibaba. I shudder. Fun time is over.
When we of the right do next get the power in our hands, how do we handle this? Not with maximum violence – violence is the language of the left. With maximum force – force is the language of the right. Violence is chaos. Force is order. My own clever idea – one which will measure my actual influence over the Trump administration, which sadly is almost (but not quite) zero, is to prosecute old 1960s radicals. Bill Ayers. Angela Davis. Like good ol’ boys in the 1960s Deep South, they did political murders and got off, “guilty as sin and free as a bird” – in Ayers’s own words. Well, the federal government invented double-jeopardy “civil rights” laws to deal with that. A legal solecism. Who cares. And the Department of Justice even has an office, OSI, for prosecuting 99-year-old Auschwitz secretaries. What are they supposed to do for the next century? Twiddle their thumbs?
The pendulum theory of politics is over. The Roman Republic will not endlessly oscillate between optimates and populares. One side will win – and win permanently. Britain and America will restore their greatness, or become Third World Chinese tributary debt farms with posh Hunger Games museum tourist enclaves. From where we are, frankly, I would bet on the enemy! But nothing is written yet.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 13, 2025 World edition.
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To mark George Floyd or Charlie Kirk?
October 14 will mark the birthday of two very different American martyrs.
On that day in 1973, George Floyd was born. And, as everyone knows only too well, he died in 2020 after being placed under arrest by a Minneapolis police officer.
Twenty years later Charlie Kirk was born on the same October day. The nation is still coming to terms with his assassination while speaking to students on the Utah Valley University campus two weeks ago.Floyd’s death was the result of a tragic mistake; officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of second-degree murder, but on the basis that he killed Floyd unintentionally. Kirk was struck down by an assassin with an explicitly political motive.
Floyd was unknown to the world until his death, while the 31-year-old Kirk had founded and built one of the most powerful organizations in the country, not to mention been the confidant of a president.
Both deaths were not just tragedies, they had profound political and social aftershocks that have shaped the national psyche.
And as the anniversary of their birth approaches, how that day is marked by their respective followers will reveal how close to boiling point America really is.
The House and Senate have passed a resolution deeming October 14 of this year a National Day of Remembrance for Kirk, an inoffensive measure aimed merely at encouraging the country “to observe this day with appropriate programs, activities, prayers, and ceremonies that promote civic engagement and the principles of faith, liberty, and democracy that Charlie Kirk championed.”
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi was among the 22 Democrats to walk out of the House chamber during the vote.
That act marked a stark contrast from June 2020, when Pelosi and her colleagues – dressed up in performative Kente cloth stoles – knelt for eight minutes and 46 seconds – the time Floyd was pinned under a cop’s knee for – in the Capitol Building’s Emancipation Hall to honor Floyd.
“We’re here to observe that pain,” declared Pelosi. “We’re here to respect the actions of the American people to speak out against that.”
There was, of course, much pain to observe. Floyd’s death kicked off a summer of divisive disorder that yielded pain, destruction, and still more death.
In the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul alone, more than 1,500 businesses were damaged and well over $500 million in property destruction was wrought in violent riots in the days after his killing. Five years later, businesses are still struggling.
“Even the guy that, you know, helped George Floyd, helped the guy get convicted for the murder. He had a black Chinese spot. He had to move out because he couldn’t afford it, you know. He wasn’t generating any income,” one resident noted.
By the fall of 2020, the Insurance Information Institute was projecting that across only 20 states, $1 to $2 billion in paid insurance claims were forthcoming.
The losses were more than pecuniary. It was reported that 17 people had died “in incidents stemming from the unrest following Floyd’s May 25 death.” Among those killed was David Dorn, a 77-year-old, retired black police officer who was shot and killed after responding to a break-in at his friend’s pawn shop in St. Louis.
Contrast this carnage with the reaction to Kirk’s planned murder on the basis of his widely-held beliefs – a murder that was openly celebrated by the far-left, and lied about in the mainstream press.
Where are the riots? Where’s the violence and recriminations? What about the vandalism and economic ruin? Has there even been a discernible amount of bitterness?
Certainly not from Erika Kirk, the widow of the fallen and heir to his organization.
“That man, that young man, I forgive him,” declared Kirk before a roaring stadium at her husband’s memorial last Sunday. “I forgive him because it was what Christ did, and is what Charlie would do.”
“The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know, from the Gospel, is love and always love,” she added.
Good people lamented the deaths of both George Floyd and Charlie Kirk, and bad actors tried to take advantage of both tragedies.
But how October 14 is marked will show whether the left has learned lessons from its last self-righteous moral panic – and likely demonstrate that the country is not yet done excusing the indefensible, both then and now.
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The joke’s on Dave Chappelle
The problem with Dave Chappelle taking his comedy to Saudi Arabia isn’t the money they paid him. It’s what they bought.
We’re all familiar with the reputation laundering that the Middle East has engaged in on a grand scale in recent years, spending big to get into sports, entertainment and now hosting more than fifty of the biggest names in standup comedy for a Riyadh Comedy Festival. Chappelle’s performance was notable for its direct attack on the quality of free speech rights in America – and a claim that Saudi Arabia of all places is actually more free.
“Right now in America, they say that if you talk about Charlie Kirk, that you’ll get canceled,” he said according to the New York Times. “It’s easier to talk here than it is in America.”
During his set, Kevin Hart – no stranger to the appeal of a dollar – was even more obsequious. “I love what y’all are doing here,” Hart said. “I’ll continue being a positive ambassador of your change to the world.” Who knew that amount of cringe could come in such small packages?
Of course, the conditions for these men and others to go to Saudi Arabia in the first place was to break faith with the whole mindset of comedy. Entering a country where all media is government approved and massive legal sentences can be directed at people who flaunt the most basic conventions is easier when you’re a paid guest – but they still had to sign on a dotted line of a contract that included this prohibition:
“[Artists] shall not prepare or perform any material that may be considered to degrade, defame, or bring into public disrepute…The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, including its leadership, public figures, culture, or people; B) The Saudi royal family, legal system, or government, and; C) Any religion, religious tradition, religious figure, or religious practice.”
The actual problem isn’t accepting the money. Plenty of artists and performers and businesses have done the same. The problem is signing away the whole reason your comedy became popular in the first place. Hart is one thing – he’s always been a corporate shill, Jumanji, Draft Kings, Saudis, what’s the difference? No one would be surprised at him making the hand prints in the sand ceremony.
Chappelle was different. He made a career skewering the hypocrisy and posturing of right, left, and middle for years. He made a recurring hilarious joke of going after George W. Bush. And the only real threat he ever experienced to free speech in America was when he ran afoul of the trans mob, who endeavored unsuccessfully to get him canceled from Netflix.
When Chappelle signed up for the Saudi cash, he was giving something up by agreeing to their terms and going above and beyond to criticize America along the way. He was agreeing not to keep it real, lest anything go wrong. And the Saudis knew it, and were happy to pay for it. That’s because what they were buying wasn’t comedy – it was compliance. -
Did Ilhan Omar marry her brother?
In as Trumpian a fashion as it gets, the president has rekindled the years-long debate: Did progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) marry her brother?
Shortly after conservative icon Charlie Kirk was assassinated in cold blood by a deranged leftist, Omar reposted a video on X that called Kirk a “reprehensible human being” who was “spewing racist dog whistles” in his “last, dying words.” Republican lawmakers saw an opportunity to censure the “Squad” member and remove her committee assignments. The motion failed by a 214-213 vote.
Nevertheless, some conservatives are demanding Omar’s denaturalization and deportation to Somalia. Denaturalization is allowed in cases of “concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation.” To be clear, Omar will not be denaturalized, nor deported.
But amid Omar-gate, President Trump fumed that she was “SCUM,” derided her “Country of Somalia,” and asked, “Wasn’t she the one that married her brother in order to gain citizenship???”
The accusation is nearly a decade old, prompted in part by court filings and a trail of murkier evidence.
Public records show that Omar entered a religious marriage with a man named Ahmed Hirsi in 2002, separated in 2008, and then legally married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009. Elmi, a British citizen who
The marriage with Elmi ended in 2011, but they did not obtain a legal divorce until 2017. In that same period, Omar reconciled with Hirsi, had another child with him, and even filed joint tax returns with him in 2014 and 2015, despite still being legally married to her alleged brother.
In 2020, the Daily Mail quoted an old friend of Omar, Abdihakim Osman, who claimed Omar herself had described Elmi as her brother – and admitted she married him to get the papers he needed to study in the US. Osman claimed Elmi was introduced around Minneapolis as family, and that Omar told him explicitly she was helping her brother get student loans. Omar has flatly denied this, dismissing the story as “baseless,” but has refused to provide documentary evidence to settle the matter.
In 2018, one conservative outlet discovered archived Instagram posts from 2012 that appear to show Ahmed Elmi calling Ilhan Omar’s daughter his “niece.” In 2015, photos from a London trip placed Omar alongside Elmi and relatives, all appearing under the shared surname “Elmi.” But these posts are no longer available and cannot be independently verified.
The Star Tribune tried to confirm Elmi’s identity but ran into the same problem: Somali records are difficult to obtain, and Omar herself declined to clarify.
While this scavenger hunt remains incomplete, what is beyond doubt is that Omar’s life today bears little resemblance to the humble origins she once invoked.
Ilhan Omar was born in Mogadishu in 1982, the youngest of seven children. Her father, Nur Omar Mohamed, was a colonel in the Somali army who brought the family to a Kenyan refugee camp before they eventually resettled in Minneapolis, where Omar grew up in public housing and later entered politics.
She built her brand as the daughter of refugees, a progressive outsider weighed down by student debt – the antithesis of a silver spoon Congressman. But her most recent financial disclosure revealed a net worth as high as $30 million — a staggering increase of 3,500 percent in a single year.
The source of that fortune is her most recent husband, Tim Mynett. His venture capital firm, Rose Lake Capital, ballooned from under $1,000 in 2023 to as much as $25 million by the end of 2024. The firm’s board is stacked with powerful names, including former senator and ambassador to China Max Baucus.
Rose Lake Capital’s website once bragged about structuring “legislation” before that word was quietly removed. It now claims $60 billion in assets under management. Around the same time Rose Lake took off, Mynett’s California winery, eStCru, jumped from being worth just $50,000 to as much as $5 million. Both companies have faced lawsuits alleging fraud, which have since been settled.
The overlap with Omar’s official role is clear. After the launch of Rose Lake, Omar formed a congressional US-Africa Policy Working Group. She and Mynett have since appeared at events promoting investment in Africa – exactly the kind of opportunity Rose Lake now pursues. At face value the arrangement is indistinguishable from influence-peddling.
The same Omar who has scorned politicians for leveraging their office for gain now appears to be doing it herself, handsomely. In America, the socialists have a funny way of always cashing in.
So, back to Trump’s accusation. Did Ilhan Omar marry her brother? As it stands, it’s impossible to say one way or the other. Omar continues to deny the allegation as baseless.
What is certain is that Omar has prospered enormously in America, moving from refugee housing to the halls of Congress to a personal fortune worth tens of millions.
That story is perhaps the greater indictment. The congresswoman who speaks endlessly of justice and equity appears to have mastered the very Washington tricks she pretends to loathe. -
Why is Apple hosting an assassin’s app?
ICEBlock is an app that uses real-time information to pinpoint the location of ICE agents in the field. Launched in April in response to Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, it now boasts more than one million users across the country.
Among them, until recently, was self-styled “anti-fascist” sniper Joshua Jahn, who killed one person – a detainee – and critically injured two more at an ICE facility in Dallas. The FBI has discovered that Jahn used the app, or one like it, to track his intended victims. In a handwritten note, Jahn, who took his own life, wrote, “Hopefully this will give ICE agents real terror.”
ICEBlock claims that its purpose is to help illegal immigrants evade arrest by alerting them to the presence of ICE agents. But its far more wicked use as an assassin’s tool has for a long time been all too easy to predict with the left’s prolific and incendiary rhetoric around “Nazis” and “fascists,” the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the new record-high of left-wing terror attacks.
And it is almost inevitable that another targeted attack based on data from the app will happen again.
That’s because Apple is still hosting ICEBlock and apps like it on its App Store. The big tech platform that notoriously removed the conservative social media app Parler for far more nebulous claims of harm after Jan. 6. seems perfectly content to aid future would-be assassins. Apparently, Big Tech is more worried about censoring conservative grannies for wrongthink than it is actual real world violence.
ICEBlock was developed by Joshua Aaron, a tech bro and former indie musician from Texas. It allows activists to drop a pin on a map wherever they spot ICE agents, which then sends a notification to all other users in a five mile radius.
“We don’t want anything being discoverable,” Aaron said in a gushing profile for CNN earlier this year. “And so, this is 100 percent anonymous and free for anybody who wants to use it.”
Of course, ICEBlock would never explicitly incite violence, it would like you to know. Upon log-in, a legal disclaimer states, “Please note that the use of this app is for information and notification purposes only.”
Aaron says he’s the good guy, someone who wants to “fight back” against the rising tide of Nazism in America. He only cares about “keeping people safe,” he told The Guardian in another fawning interview.
And playing the victim in an interview with USA Today, he claimed it was “insanity” to link his app with the Texas shooting and that the DOJ was merely “trying to bully [him].” Indeed, he has seemed much more concerned that his wife was let go from her job as a forensic auditor at the Department of Justice because of her ties to the app.
Most tech founders would sell their first-born to mirror ICEBlock’s growth: it boasted just 20,000 users in June, but as of September Aaron says there are 1.1 million active users across the country – all of whom seem perfectly happy to help would-be assassins find their next victim.
The app has come under fire from both ICE agents on the ground as well high-ranking Trump officials for putting a very real target on agents’ backs.
“The DOJ’s looking at it, and they need to throw some people in jail,” Border Czar Tom Homan said of ICEBlock over the summer.
But little if anything beyond some angry letters and statements has so far been done.
With the implicit endorsement of mainstream media and big tech, ICEBlock has enjoyed a stamp of institutional legitimacy along with all the impunity that affords. But the days of normalizing leftist agitators with a wink and a nod are over.
Aaron can cry peaceful resistance as much as he wants, but violent attacks against ICE agents become inevitable in a climate where they’re deemed Nazis and any lunatic is free to track their real-time movements. Denying this reality beggars belief; anyone who does so is stupid, or more likely, lying, and indifferent to violence against agents.
Attorney General Pam Bondi warned Aaron to “watch out” in July, but it’s time for her office to initiate a real crackdown. Whether through cultural or government pressure, Apple must no longer allow apps like ICEBlock to proliferate, and the full force of the federal government must be used to scrutinize Aaron’s activities. Or these attacks are only going to keep happening.
This isn’t a matter of free speech, but a matter of very real harm as we saw in Texas.
Yet it’s an even deeper question of what kind of country we want to live in: one where ICE agents are seen as brownshirts for enforcing basic U.S. law, or one where law, order, and common sense receive the unanimous respect necessary for a functioning nation?
We can’t have a country without borders. Those who claim otherwise have enjoyed more than enough time dominating the Overton window, and deserve to go back to the fringe.