The Social World

Tag: Republican

  • Who will replace Pelosi in Republican demonology?

    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?

  • Establishment Democrats win in Minneapolis

    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.

  • How Republicans can win New York?

    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.

  • Was Dr. Roberts the school board’s ‘Magical Negro’?

    Was Dr. Roberts the school board’s ‘Magical Negro’?

    When news broke that the head of Iowa’s largest school district was in ICE custody as an alleged illegal alien, the response from all quarters was disbelief. A school superintendent undergoes intense vetting, and every rung on the career ladder requires background checks. How could such a man possibly have slipped through?

    Anyone hoping the full story might provide a sensible explanation was quickly disappointed. The more you dig, the more absurd it becomes. Although we don’t yet know the full truth about his immigration status, there is already plenty in his record that raises red flags about the biographies he’s offered. Ian Andre Roberts’ life reads less like a CV than a pitch for a Hollywood script in the classic tradition of the charming conman.

    Roberts worked hard at his presentation. He cultivated a flamboyant look – tight suits in loud colors and patterns, topped with his signature cloth flower in the lapel and flashy sneakers. His social media feeds feature professional portraits, sometimes shirtless, sometimes in trousers so tight they left little to the imagination. He spoke in smooth clichés, delivered with a Caribbean accent that lent a whiff of exoticism to Iowan ears.

    And then there is his “life story” – or rather, his competing life stories. All reliable evidence points to Guyana as his birthplace, where he was schooled until the early 1990s. Yet in interviews he sometimes claimed to have been born and raised in Brooklyn, the child of a single mother. That contradicts his own statement that she immigrated only in the 2000s, by which time he was already in his 30s. Even his age shifts – legal records say 1970, while Roberts himself has variously given 1973 or 1978.

    Ironically, the most colorful elements of his tale appear to be true. A retired police commissioner in Guyana confirmed that Roberts graduated from officer training and joined the country’s police force. He was a standout runner in college in the United States and even represented Guyana in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. But once you reach other aspects of his life – degrees, awards, academic achievements – the truth grows hazier.

    On LinkedIn he lists seven universities, but curiously omits mention of any degrees. Elsewhere, he claimed several master’s degrees and a doctorate in education from Morgan State University in 2007. He began styling himself “Dr.” as early as 2012, yet records show he did not actually receive an Ed.D. until 2021, from an online institution widely regarded as a diploma mill. His official Des Moines biography boasted of being named “Principal of the Year” by George Washington University – an award the university says it has never given. And this is only a sampling of the inconsistencies.

    Why did no one bother to check before offering him a $300,000-a-year post? Why did no one even question the contradictions? The honest answer is race and ideology. In the current climate, pressing a man with a Caribbean lilt about where he was born is deemed a “microaggression.” Anyone schooled in the catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion knows better than to question the “lived experience” of someone like Roberts.

    And Roberts, to his credit as a conman, gave them exactly what they craved. He embodied the DEI narrative: a black immigrant who rose from poverty to academic brilliance, to Olympic heights, to leadership in education. In Iowa – one of the whitest states in America – the all-female school board glowed with pride when they announced his appointment in 2023.

    Spike Lee coined the phrase “Magical Negro” to mock Hollywood’s fondness for the saintly black character who redeems white protagonists. Roberts filled that role in real life. He promised not only to raise test scores but to cleanse Des Moines of its original sin of racism. He was their redemption, offered with a winning smile and a résumé that, if partially fictional, was at least inspirational.

    And now, exposed, he is still defended. Rather than express outrage at being deceived, his supporters rally. Some protests bear the fingerprints of unions and activists, but much of the outcry looks organic. People insist he was kind, inspiring, a role model. But the essence of a successful con is that people fall for the charismatic conman and cling to the illusion. Mark Twain’s old adage still holds true – it is easier to fool people than to convince them they’ve been fooled.

    The broader lesson is not merely that one smooth talker tricked his way into a prestigious office. It is that our institutions have made themselves especially easy prey. DEI ideology discourages skepticism, instructs people to rank themselves by race, and warns the “privileged” against questioning the “oppressed.” That ideology creates a golden opportunity for a resourceful grifter.

    The officials who hired Roberts failed in their basic duty to fact-check his résumé. They failed because their ideology told them not to ask questions. They preferred the fairy tale. But in the real world, when you believe in fairy tales, no wand appears at the end to make the story come true. You are left with failing schools, squandered money and the humiliation of realizing that the man hired to redeem you was simply playing the oldest role in the book – the conman who knew exactly what his audience wanted to hear.

  • Did Ilhan Omar marry her brother?

    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 later attended college in the US. It is Elmi who some have suggested may be Omar’s brother, an allegation Omar has consistently denied. 

    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.

  • Did the Jews kill Charlie Kirk?

    Did the Jews kill Charlie Kirk?

    Yes, things can always get worse. Within less than a week of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, a new conspiracy was in town. Despite mounting evidence of the homegrown nature of Tyler Robinson’s radicalism, social media was ablaze with an explanation so perfect, so fitting, so dazzling that only a stooge could possibly deny it. This was no story about terrorism, they say, let alone the online incubation of extremism. This was a story about – who else? – the Jews.

    The idea that Israel is responsible for the assassination of Charlie Kirk continues to clock up millions of views every single day on X, so it’s worthwhile explaining what happened to readers sane enough to avoid social media entirely. By far the most common accusation was that Benjamin Netanyahu himself gave the order to kill Charlie Kirk because he was starting to “turn against Israel,” The evidence provided for this view is predictably slim, and rests mostly on a few short clips in which Charlie Kirk talks to Ben Shapiro and raises some sporadic, though hardly uncommon, questions about the conduct of the Gaza war. It didn’t make things any better when Netanyahu himself went on camera to deny the accusations soon after, doubly strange given the old adage that you should never believe anything until it is officially denied.

    The second (and only slightly less ludicrous) theory is that Charlie Kirk was killed so that Ben Shapiro could take the reins of his organization, Turning Point USA. This would allow full consolidation of the organization in the hands of someone who wanted to protect Israel from criticism within the MAGA movement.

    Then, another conspiracy theory appeared claiming that Jewish donors were upset with Charlie for his broad stance against US involvement in the Israel-Iran war last June.

    Lastly, and least surprisingly, a conspiracy interpreted all of this in light of the Jeffrey Epstein/Mossad cover-up saga which continues to engulf the imagination of a considerable number of Americans today.

    Whichever angle you take, it appears that a degree of anti-Semitic conspiratorialism has gone mainstream among large swathes of the American electorate. Why?

    Some have said that anti-Semitism, like all forms of racism, simply always exists. Analogously, it is like a “virus” that is liable to suddenly catch and take over people at any random point in history. But this way of viewing things doesn’t quite explain why anti-Semitism happens to catch particular people at particular times, other than by invoking a kind of weakened “social immune system” kind of explanation. Plausible? Somewhat. But completely satisfying? I don’t think so. Even if we carry this idea to its logical conclusion, we’d still need to explain why anti-Semitism has gone mainstream right now – as opposed to, say, ten or twenty years ago.

    Another popular alternative explanation would be to blame social media, and Lord knows I have done it. In this telling, some weird mixture of bot activity and engagement farming – particularly from the blatant use of highly emotive and conspiratorial ideas – drive revenue for social-media influencers, particularly on the far ends of the political spectrum. By peddling these wild and extreme theories to millions through the monetization algorithm of X/Twitter, they can (and do) make a lot of money. And even if they do get sued for defamation, these fines can be absorbed and written off as the cost of doing business – much as the marketing departments always have the biggest budget in tech companies. Early reports suggest that this disinformation about Kirk is indeed being pumped into social media by bots, but whether it’s for making money or foreign influence still remains unclear.

    Maybe, others have told me, the people that push these “Israel killed Charlie Kirk” conspiracies are just crazy. And it’s a nice idea, and probably not altogether completely incorrect, but crazy is as crazy does – and crazy people are doing extremely well in global politics these days. Without realizing it, we’ve entered a cultural universe so totally fused with the internet and a memeified social media today that bombastic and wild trickster anti-heroes continue to reach the summits of global power. You can never quite write off the sense that crazy performative politics is just a cynical, tongue-in-cheek technique for gaining attention. But attention, when skillfully manipulated, easily turns into political power.

    But there’s the last perspective, too, and it’s one which I personally believe to be the most compelling of all. People greatly misunderstand conspiracy theories. Most of us believe that they are, in the words of the critic Frederic Jameson, simply the “poor person’s cognitive mapping in the postmodern age.” In other words, conspiracy theories help us make sense of a world which is increasingly fragmented and destabilized by social media, fake news, conflicting narratives and straightforward lies. Rather than try and organize and shift through this incredible complexity of information, most people prefer to just take a black-and-white view of things. They ignore everything else, and are easily prey to simplistic conspiracy theories.

    It’s a seductive theory, but it’s not quite the full story. Conspiracy theories, much like the outgrowth of strange cults and mystical religions, do more than just offer us a digestible explanation of the world. They’re not just intellectual. They do something for us socially, too. When new movements break off and found new Churches, secret societies, or even tech startups – they’ll often do so with the rationalization that the older guys were doing it wrongly or immorally. Think of the many Protestant sects that exploded in the 16th century, all of whom disagreed with one another but basically agreed that the Catholics were absolutely and unequivocally wrong. They didn’t split in the name of some new variety of prayer, or view on transubstantiation, or resurrection, or whatever. They broke off and then they came up with the reasons for doing so. New ideologies are always downstream of the desire to break away from the original group. Ideologies are rationalizations, not explanations.

    And the same basic process is now happening within the American right. Donald Trump upended a system of neoconservative Republicanism that had been relatively stable for decades. He rode to power renouncing many of the old shibboleths, particularly around foreign intervention, that had once animated serious players on the Washington scene. Now, however, deep and possibly unresolvable cracks are starting to appear in the MAGA movement, particularly (although not by any means entirely) around America’s relationship to Israel. Now is the time of conspiracies not because the loonies have temporarily taken over, as many people earnestly wish to be true, but rather because we’re in the middle of a white-hot battle for ideological control over the Republican party and the essence of American conservatism itself.

    Public anti-Semitism is often simply a tool – and a particularly shrewd one, as is often the case in the history of conspiracies about Jews – to hive off support away from previously mainstream leaders and institutions to build rivals that can compete with them. Even some of the most pro-MAGA social media commentators said the conspiracy was dumb. But it’s only dumb if you misunderstand what it is. Tucker Carlson’s final speech at Charlie Kirk’s funeral comparing his death to Christ’s crucifixion by the Jews seems outrageous, which it obviously is. It seems stupid, too, but it’s not. It’s the opening gambit in an ideological battle which will only continue to accelerate the widening gulf between factions within the MAGA movement. It reflects an assertiveness and a growing dominance which, whilst still marginal, is rapidly gaining in strength.

    Soon, Donald Trump will finish his second presidency and his successor, almost certainly J.D. Vance, will fight the next election. The fight is on to see whether the MAGA movement will fully institutionalize as mainstream, or fade as a little more than a charismatic ejaculation tied to the personal fortune and celebrity affection for the current president. Anti-Semitism has been loaded in the deck, and the cards are being shuffled. What comes next will almost certainly direct the future of American Jewry, and perhaps even the United States itself.

  • Erika Kirk is no handmaiden

    Erika Kirk is no handmaiden

    Contrary to the claims of his critics, Charlie Kirk did not marry a handmaiden. A 2012 Miss Arizona USA, NCAA basketball player and current doctoral student, Erika Kirk also has her own ministry, podcast and clothing line. And now Turning Point USA has named her as its new CEO.

    Fighting the caricature of the left, Erika, like so many strong conservative women whom Charlie championed, is highly educated, accomplished and articulate. A veritable army of these women, including Riley Gaines, Candace Owens and Alex Clark, has spoken out in the days since Charlie’s assassination to describe his impact on their lives and leadership trajectories. Charlie Kirk was no misogynist; he supported conservative women just as he inspired conservative men.

    At Charlie’s memorial service on Sunday, Erika took to the stage not only to remember her fallen husband, but also to assure an anxious nation she was more than ready to take up the reins of his organization. She spoke of the horror of having to identify his body, the loving collaboration of their marriage and her passion for carrying on her martyred husband’s mission. Most of all, she spoke of their shared Christian faith that carried her even when her voice fell to a whisper. She exhorted the more than 200,000 people who flooded the State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, and countless millions watching on television.

    “My husband, Charlie. He wanted to save young men, just like the one who took his life. Our Savior said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ That man. That young man. I forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did… What Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love.”

    Erika Kirk’s ability to forgive the gravest sin committed against her family, to show grace to the undeserving and to speak out courageously just eleven days after the greatest shock of her young life tells us everything we need to know about her strength, her vision and most of all, her character. Through Erika, we also have come to learn so much more about her beloved Charlie, the husband who truly saw this remarkable woman as an equal partner.

    In the days after Charlie’s murder, at least half of a deeply polarized nation asked who would take up his mantle. He was the voice of a generation and a born leader who roused conservative young people all across America into political action. Forty-eight hours after his shocking assassination on a college campus in Orem, Utah, Erika stood in the gap for her slain husband. Delivering a powerful speech, she said the “evildoers responsible for my husband’s assassination have no idea what they have done. They killed Charlie because he preached a message of patriotism, faith and of God’s merciful love. They should all know this: If you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before… You had no idea what you have just unleashed across this entire country, in this world.”

    America responded to Erika in full force. The organization Charlie founded at age 18, Turning Point USA, was flooded with 18,000 new chapter requests in the 24 hours after she spoke. By week’s end, that number had risen to 62,000. Supporters raised nearly $5 million for Erika and the two young Kirk children. Notably, no riots ensued in the aftermath of the assassination. Instead, inspired by his stoic widow, Americans held prayer vigils.

    Against the relentless noise of the cancel culture, Charlie Kirk taught us how to live in the land of the free. In the face of unfathomable evil, Erika Kirk is teaching us how to respond to death in the home of the brave.

  • The Democratic party is now messianic

    The Democratic party is now messianic

    The New York Times recently announced that Democrats face a “voter registration crisis.” With its delicate, frilly font, the Times story agonized over younger voters, Latinos, and men, especially young black men, who appear to be drifting away from the Democratic party. The Times diagnosis? It’s an accounting problem: The party isn’t signing up enough people. Its cure, predictably, was more money, more organization and more clipboards.

    This is the answer you’d expect from a bureaucracy. If the shelves are full of unsold tins of beans, the problem is obviously the warehouse.

    In truth, Democrats don’t have a logistics problem. They have a product problem. Americans don’t want to buy the party they are selling.

    For decades Democrats have treated politics as an engineering exercise. Build the machine, crank the levers, identify and register the aggrieved which, conveniently, they manufacture. Registering black voters, the Times worries, “cost $575 per vote in 2020,” about the same as 100 Grande Blonde Vanilla Lattes at Starbucks! But the cost of collecting these customers is high because they keep walking out of the shop. They are spitting out the drink.

    The Democratic party has come to embody a politics of national and personal self-degradation: Democrats are required to apologize for living in a strong country, profiting from its economy, and displaying the well-known privilege of ambition. The only time Democrats can define manhood is when they demand it request forgiveness.

    Millions of young men, Latinos, and blue-collar workers are not impressed.

    It isn’t simply immigration or inflation driving men out of the Democratic party. The fuel for the exodus is cultural. When a man works hard, plays by the rules and still can’t support his family, the wound is to his identity, not just his wallet. When he’s laughed at for his alleged toxicity, it is emasculating.

    American culture has spent decades mocking fatherhood and sanding down the manly virtues of competitiveness and responsibility. Now the bill has come due. After years of derision, masculinity is walking out of the Democratic party and fighting back.

    Trump’s language of strength resonates with women who want to put back the man back into manliness. It resonates with Hispanics, young Black men, Gen Z men, and union workers. In Republican strength, they see an antidote to chaos: not just to national chaos, but the chaos of their own diminished lives.

    The Left has traded a culture of common strength for a government of weakness and separation. Democrats who used to carry rifles to defend the country now carry tote-bags to get a chai tea. But American men are not ready to give up on who they could still be.

    When Democrats invent new genders and quarrel over pronouns, they assault the connective cultural tissue that holds our nation together. The Democrats have not merely tolerated this erosion; they’ve fed on it. A confident nation does not require a self-anointed clerisy to micro-manage its language and thought. It does not need political priests to enforce woke commandments. But a weakened, divided people may. That is why the Democratic party exists.

    If Democrats were honest, they would admit their woke hierarchy has failed. Defunding police unleashed crime. Open borders invited chaos. Spending produced crushing inflation. Pretending men can be women destroyed women, not just women’s sports.

    But they cannot say these things because the Democratic party has become messianic. It does not pass laws to solve problems. It passes them to award its supporters a halo of moral superiority. Failure is irrelevant; every new radical program delivers the one thing the party truly values: a sense of being better than the rest of us.

    The Times and the Democratic party, to the vanishing degree they remain separate entities, are wrong. They don’t have a voter-registration crisis. They have an identity crisis. Our saviors can’t admit they cannot save us. The Democratic party is broken because its soul is.

  • Is it safe to be conservative in Hollywood?

    Is it safe to be conservative in Hollywood?

    The news that the actress Gina Carano has secured a climbdown and undisclosed (but undoubtedly) generous settlement from Disney over her dismissal from The Mandalorian television series in 2021 is sure to have far-reaching consequences that stretch far beyond La La Land. Carano posted a triumphant statement on X, saying, “I hope this brings some healing to the force,” thanked Elon Musk for bankrolling her case and concluded by saying “Yes, I’m smiling.” Disney, meanwhile, released their own, terse assessment in which they announced, “We look forward to identifying opportunities to work together with Ms. Carano in the near future.”

    It was a win for Carano on every level. She was humiliatingly dismissed from The Mandalorian after comparing her status as a Hollywood conservative to being a Jew during the Holocaust. While this might have had some hyperbole to it, the actress rightly pointed out that her co-star Pedro Pascal – an actor firmly to the Hollywood Left – made similarly emotive statements on social media, using the Holocaust comparison, and went undisciplined by the higher-ups at Disney. The question now is what the settlement means not just for Carano, but for conservatives in the industry more generally.

    It used to be that gay actors were advised to keep their sexuality to themselves, for fear of alienating their potential audience, but this has been soundly disproved thanks to the mainstream success of everyone from Jonathan Bailey and Luke Evans to Kate McKinnon and Ncuti Gatwa. However, Hollywood conservatives are still a rare breed. There are many leading actors, from Mel Gibson to Dennis Quaid, who have been vocal in their support of Donald Trump, but comparatively few younger A-listers who have dared to voice right-wing or Republican sympathies in public. The revelation that Sydney Sweeney was a registered Republican, and the subsequent anger – coupled with the storm-in-a-teacup American Eagle–jeans advert that she starred in – that this engendered in liberal circles would make you believe that she was a fully paid-up fascist, rather than simply a supporter of the current governing party in the United States.

    Still, Hollywood has always been a left-leaning industry, and while its most vocal practitioners may find that their invective damages their careers irreparably (step forward John Cusack, whose transformation from ’90s indie darling to furious keyboard warrior is now complete), the likes of Pascal and Mark Ruffalo can offer their unvarnished opinions without pushback from the executives who hire them. Still, a more intriguing subsection of the industry are those who are, in the words of Jon Voight’s clandestine dining society, “Friends of Abe”: actors or filmmakers who have right-wing or conservative views that they are unwilling to share in public for fear of jeopardizing their career. It is a long, long list – any reader of this could probably name a dozen leading figures who are likely to vote Republican, even if not all of them remain full MAGA supporters – but it has been, up until now, a kind of McCarthyite club in reverse. Nobody wants to lose a successful career because they have voted the wrong way.

    It therefore will be fascinating to see whether Carano’s victory leads to a permanent sea change in the industry, or whether it’s just a blip before business-as-usual resumes. Certainly, the success of faith-based films, often starring openly conservative actors such as Kelsey Grammer, indicates that there is a market for films that the American Right, in particular, will lap up, and the news that Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ sequel, currently titled Resurrection, has begun filming for release in 2027 will be catnip for its considerable fanbase. Yet these might be isolated examples rather than a new trend. What will change the industry forever is when there are as many Sydney Sweeneys as Scarlett Johanssons, whose political views are regarded as unexceptional, and then – and only then – being a Hollywood conservative will no longer seem like an oxymoron, or worse.