Zohran Mamdani Localizes the Intifada
Plus, Jewish groups sever ties with Heritage as think tank's anti-Semitism task force delivers ultimatum to president Kevin Roberts
Good morning, comrade! Socialist Zohran Mamdani swept to victory in the New York City mayoral election and government-run grocery stores, fast and free buses, and free diapers and wipes are just around the corner. Not to mention Bibi Netanyahu’s arrest, if he ever dares set foot in New York City.
“Mamdani will enter Gracie Mansion as a historically left-wing mayor: He called for ‘seizing the means of production’ while a New York state assemblyman and has long argued in favor of defunding the police, though he attempted to walk back that position after winning the nomination. He has also pledged to target ‘negligent’ landlords and seize their properties, marking a significant expansion of city power and decreasing the quality of affordable housing for New Yorkers,” our Jon Levine writes.
“Mamdani’s history of radical anti-Israel rhetoric has caused concern for Jewish New Yorkers since he began his campaign. He has refused to condemn slogans like ‘globalize the intifada,’ instead telling a group of New York CEOs that he stands by ‘the idea.’ He has also pledged to arrest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he visit New York and campaigned with a radical Islamist cleric who once urged ‘jihad’ against the city Mamdani will now lead.”
READ MORE: Localize the Intifada: Mamdani Seizes New York City Mayoralty
Consolidation in GLP1 Market Threatens Trump Drug Pricing Wins, American Jobs
Novo Nordisk—a foreign company—wants to increase their market share by acquiring another GLP1 manufacturer. It’s bad for American jobs. It raises antitrust concerns. And worst, it’s bad for American patients. Nothing about what Novo Nordisk is doing is America first. Learn more.
The news didn’t get better anywhere else. Jay Jones, the Democratic attorney general candidate in Virginia who fantasized about putting a couple of bullets in the head of his GOP colleague, will soon be the state’s chief law enforcement officer. The underwhelming Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill were elected to the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey, respectively.
READ MORE: Choosing Violence: Jay ‘Two Bullets’ Jones Wins Virginia Attorney General Race
Abigail Spanberger Wins Virginia’s Gubernatorial Race After Bruising Campaign
Mikie Sherrill Clinches New Jersey Governor’s Mansion
The Heritage Foundation’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism is shrinking thanks to Kevin Roberts’s defense of “close friend” Tucker Carlson, our Zach Kessel reports.
Roberts made a second—third? fourth? I’ve lost count—attempt, in remarks at Hillsdale College on Monday, to clean up a video statement released Thursday declaring undying loyalty to Carlson. There, Roberts said the Heritage Foundation will “never, ever, ever” stop fighting anti-Semitism, except, apparently, when it comes to one of the country’s leading purveyors and launderers of it. Former Free Beacon intern Thomas McKenna asked Roberts what it would take for Carlson to lose the support of the Heritage Foundation. “We don’t forsake friends,” Roberts said.
That helps to explain why the Coalition for Jewish Values cut ties with the task force on Tuesday morning, joining National Jewish Advocacy Center CEO Mark Goldfeder and Woke Antisemitism author David Bernstein. The Combat Antisemitism Movement, led by former Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky, followed suit shortly thereafter.
The task force is still standing, but that could change. Its leaders sent an email to Roberts on Tuesday demanding he remove his video statement, issue an apology to “Christians and Jews who are steadfast members of the conservative movement,” and acknowledge “disagreements” with Carlson. “If you are not able to come to an agreement soon, the relationship between the Heritage Foundation and the Task Force will be irreparably harmed,” the message concluded.
Dick Cheney, the widely beloved wartime vice president, oil executive, and outdoor sports enthusiast, died on Monday, his family said.
One of the “only men in history with enough swagger to look cool in a cowboy hat,” Cheney “perfected the neoconservative worldview, just as Clausewitz perfected the science of war,” our Andrew Stiles writes. He was a champion of freedom and an enemy of dictators and terrorists, forming an iconic duo with George W. Bush. Together they “protected the homeland through military strength abroad while cruising to reelection in 2004, forestalling the disastrous consequences of a John Kerry presidency. Cheney helped seal the victory by humiliating John Edwards on live television.”
“One of Cheney’s most memorable acts as vice president came in 2004, when he advised Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), the obnoxious anti-war liberal, to go f— himself. Leahy, like a total bitch, said he was ‘shocked to hear that kind of language’ on the Senate floor. Cheney would later recall the confrontation as ‘the best thing I ever did.’”
For more on Cheney’s legacy, here’s his former chief of staff and longtime friend, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby in the Wall Street Journal:
“I often found him, pen and yellow pad in hand, contemplating our nation’s challenges, considering goals to pursue, and developing a strategy for attaining them. He contended that America needs leaders focused on ‘the larger cause of the country,’ not simply what the public wants to hear.
“As a result, he often bucked the fashionable intellectual tide. He did so in the late 1980s, when experts asserted Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika would resurrect the Soviet economy; in the early 1990s, when many deemed unstoppable a bureaucratized restructuring of the U.S. health sector; in 2002, when policy elites embraced Yasser Arafat as a key to Middle East peace; in 2006, when respected leaders declared the war in Iraq lost and the surge hopeless; and in later years, when he defended America’s interests and principles from those he believed were threatening them.”
READ MORE: Vice, Virtue, and Victory: Dick Cheney, RIP
In other news:
Left-wing darling Jasmine Crockett may be in legal trouble after an ethics watchdog filed a complaint against her for concealing ownership stakes in at least 25 companies. The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust believes Crockett’s omissions, which we first reported last week, may be a violation of the Ethics in Government Act, which outlines jail time for politicians who knowingly file false financial disclosures.
He’s back: Donald Trump renominated entrepreneur, astronaut, and Elon Musk ally Jared Isaacman to run NASA after the agency’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, feuded with Musk and frustrated the White House. Trump nominated Isaacman to the same job in May but pulled it after revelations Isaacman had donated to Democrats.
Liberal magazine for minors Teen Vogue is laying off staffers as it shutters its own website and folds into Vogue.com. We’ll miss indispensable news coverage like “How to Find an Accessible Chest Binder as a Disabled Trans Person.” RIP.
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