The most destructive power in the world may not be nuclear power, chemical warfare, biological weapons, or any modern invention of military science.

Such weapons are terrifying because they can destroy cities, poison nations, and leave generations wounded. Yet hatred has done something even more widespread: it has entered homes, governments, religions, schools, courts, streets, churches, and nations. It does not need a missile silo, a laboratory, or a battlefield. It only needs a willing heart.

A bomb may explode once, but hatred keeps reproducing itself. It passes from father to son, from teacher to student, from preacher to hearer, from politician to crowd, from nation to nation. It can make people believe cruelty is duty, revenge is justice, and murder is courage. In that sense, hatred is a mass of destructive power, not always seen at once, but always working beneath the surface. It is spiritual fallout.

1. The Hatred of Iran Toward America and the West

One of the clearest modern examples is the long hostility of Iran’s ruling regime toward America, the West, and Israel. This is not the private feeling of every Iranian citizen, many of whom have suffered under the same system. It is the official spirit of a revolutionary government that has often defined itself by opposition, suspicion, and religious-political grievance. When a nation is taught to identify whole peoples as enemies, hatred becomes policy, and policy becomes persecution.

The apostle John wrote, “He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now” (1 John 2:9). This principle applies far beyond personal quarrels. A government, movement, or ideology that nourishes hatred walks in darkness, even when it claims moral or religious light. The danger is not merely diplomatic conflict. It is the spiritual darkness that follows when hatred is given banners, slogans, prisons, militias, and armies.

2. The Hatred of Muslims Toward Non-Muslims

This must be stated carefully and honestly. Many Muslims are sincere, peaceable, hospitable people, and Christians should desire their salvation, not their humiliation. The issue is not whether every Muslim hates non-Muslims. Many do not. The issue is that certain passages in the Quran have often been used in discussions about separation from, suspicion toward, or conflict with unbelievers. For example, Quran 5:51 warns believers not to take Jews and Christians as guardians or close allies, and Quran 9:29 speaks of fighting certain people of the Book until they pay the jizya and submit. Quran 9:5 is also often cited in this debate, though Muslim interpreters commonly argue that it must be read in its historical context of treaty-breaking hostile tribes.

For the Christian writer, the point should not be to insult Muslims, but to ask what happens when any religion teaches distance, superiority, or hostility toward those outside its faith. The gospel calls believers to love enemies, bless persecutors, and preach Christ to all nations. If hatred is allowed to take the place of witness, then the soul of the witness has already been damaged. Christians should oppose false doctrine, but they should love the people trapped by it.

3. The Hatred of Muslims Toward Jews

The hatred of Jews is one of the oldest and most persistent hatreds in human history. In the modern Middle East, it often appears in religious, political, and nationalistic forms at the same time. The hostility toward Israel is sometimes discussed as if it were only about borders, governments, settlements, or military actions. Yet many times the language goes deeper than politics. It becomes hatred of the Jewish people themselves.

Genesis 12:3 remains a solemn warning: God told Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you.” This does not mean every policy decision made by a modern government is beyond criticism. It does mean that hatred of the Jewish people is a dangerous rebellion against God’s purposes. Antisemitism is never merely social prejudice. It is theological blindness wearing political clothing.

4. The Hatred of Trump and the Hatred of America

Political disagreement is not hatred. A citizen may disagree with a president, criticize policies, vote against a candidate, or speak against corruption without hating the nation. But in recent years, many Americans have seen political opposition harden into contempt, and contempt harden into hatred. Some have moved from disliking a leader to despising the country itself, its history, its institutions, and even the neighbors who vote differently.

Hebrews 13:17 speaks of obedience and submission to those who rule, because authority is a serious stewardship before God. This does not erase moral accountability, nor does it forbid lawful criticism. But it reminds us that contempt for all authority is spiritually dangerous. When hatred of one leader becomes hatred of order itself, the nation begins to tear its own house apart.

5. The Hatred of Law and the Rise of Lawlessness

Hatred eventually turns against law. It begins by rejecting a person, then a people, then a nation, and finally any restraint that stands in the way. This is why hatred and lawlessness are close relatives. The lawless person does not merely break rules; he despises the idea that anyone, even God, has the right to say, “You shall” or “You shall not.”

Scripture warns of the coming “lawless one” (2 Thessalonians 2:8, NKJV), but the spirit of lawlessness is already at work wherever people celebrate rebellion as freedom. Riots, corruption, violence, theft, deception, and moral confusion are not merely social problems. They are signs of a deeper revolt. A society that hates righteous law will eventually welcome unrighteous power.

6. The Hatred of Christians

Jesus did not leave His followers uncertain about the world’s response. He said, “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake” (Matthew 24:9). This hatred may appear in different forms: imprisonment, censorship, ridicule, violence, exclusion, or legal pressure. In some places it is open persecution. In others, it is social and cultural hostility.

Recent reports of arrests, prosecutions, and accusations against Christian converts in Iran show how quickly a government can treat peaceful faith as a national-security threat. But Christians should remember that persecution is not proof that the church has failed. It is often proof that Christ’s words are true. The Christian answer must not be revenge, but endurance, truth, prayer, and witness.

7. The Hatred of God

All these hatreds lead upward, or rather downward, to the greatest hatred of all: hatred of God. Romans 1:30 speaks of those who are “haters of God.” This is the root beneath the branches. Hatred of Jews, hatred of Christians, hatred of law, hatred of authority, hatred of truth, hatred of moral restraint, and hatred of righteousness all reveal the same final conflict. Man does not want God to rule.

The world does not need more hatred disguised as justice, more revenge disguised as courage, or more rebellion disguised as liberty. It needs repentance. It needs the mercy of God. It needs the gospel of Jesus Christ, who was hated without cause, crucified by sinful men, and raised from the dead to save sinners from the very hatred that destroys them. Atomic weapons may destroy bodies, but hatred destroys souls, families, nations, and civilizations.

Who needs an atomic weapon when hatred has already armed the human heart?

Iran: The Prime Example

There is one example of hatred that rises above all the others. It is part of current events, and it is impossible to miss. Iran hates everything.

Iran hates Israel the most. As a nation, it has spent nearly half a century trying to build a bomb powerful enough to wipe Israel—from Jerusalem to Dan and Beersheba—off the face of the earth.

It also hates America and the West.

Iran even seems to hate its Muslim neighbors. For weeks now, it has hurled barrages of missiles and drones at Kuwait and other countries in the region.

One could say Iran hates its women. It forces them to live shrouded in black, treating them like chattel.

Lest we forget, Iran hates dogs too.

It hates Donald Trump and openly expresses its desire to see him in a coffin.

Iran has become so steeped in hatred that it has even turned violently on its own citizens, killing thousands of them in full view of the world.

Without a sliver of doubt, Iran has shown hatred for just about everything and everyone in today’s world.

The country is living proof that hatred is a fire and a festering disease that feeds on itself. It spreads outward and consumes everything in its path.

We often think the deadliest power on earth is a nuclear weapon. That may be true for the physical world, but in the realm of humanity, morality, and the spirit, hatred stands alone.

As I often do, I want to quote a line from one of the most famous Christian hymns ever written, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Even as a young man, when I first heard it sung, I understood why the God of this world—our ancient enemy known as Satan—is so dangerous, deadly, and costly to follow.

A mighty fortress is our God,
a bulwark never failing;
our helper he, amid the flood
of mortal ills prevailing.
For still our ancient foe
does seek to work us woe;
his craft and power are great,
and armed with cruel hate,
on earth is not his equal.

Michael Bresciani

So the socialists and communists did not really hijack the party. Rather, these youthful radicals were spawned and nurtured by aged Democrats. They became irate over their impotence and loss of influence—and simply upgraded the methods and message of their elders.

The upper-middle-class Mamdanis, Pikers, and AOCs did not storm the party parapets but were invited in by a party that had already radicalized itself—amid its hatred of Donald Trump, its growing estrangement from the majority of the American people, and its fury at becoming increasingly powerless without the White House, Congress, or the Supreme Court.

Socialists did not lower the bar for extremism; establishment Democrats had already destroyed that standard altogether.

Given all that, the Democratic Socialists of America scarcely had to be invented.

After a decade of establishment Democrats destroying norms and traditions, deliberately dividing us by race, seeking to eliminate life-giving fossil fuels, and trying to implement dangerous crackpot ideas like critical race theory, critical legal theory, no cash bail, and defunding the police, the only change is that the now-electrified socialist monsters have awakened. They have mocked their stagnant creators, reenergized the old messages, and simply sought to replace the messengers.

Gone or going soon were the old white people like Pelosi and Schumer—despite their pathetic efforts to appease the Jacobins. In their place arose a cohort of upper-middle-class, degreed but otherwise poorly educated white urbanites, furious that their empty university certificates, student debt, inflated sense of self, and precious titles and jobs—but low salaries—had not delivered the affluent lifestyles enjoyed by lawyers, doctors, stockbrokers, and other professionals in their urban circles who had real jobs.

The downwardly mobile whites who formed 85 percent of the official ranks of the Democratic Socialists of America were joined by first- and second-generation immigrants, many from failed socialist states.

These were ingrates who, once safe and prospering in America, learned that boutique radicalism and identity chauvinism won cultural acceptance and conferred DEI leverage in their blue-state urban circles—and so sought to dismantle the very host nation that had saved them.

For both groups, anger was fed by envy of others with more stuff and by furor at a Middle America that plowed ahead, ignoring both their supposed talents and their hyped plight. And the Democratic Party provided the radical model—which, in their youthful ignorance, the new socialists pledged to enhance and exceed.

No longer, they thought, would hardcore leftists have to hide their agendas for fear of losing elections. In their folly, they attributed Harris’s 2024 implosion not to her clumsy efforts to disown and disguise her radical past (including the most left-wing voting record in the Senate), but to her not being left-wing enough.

In other words, a milquetoast socialist had lost in 2024 not because she was too radical for America, but because she was not socialist—or indeed, communist—enough.

The crazed new socialists bragged that they could win by loudly and brazenly broadcasting the old agendas: open borders, mass amnesties, defunding the police, ending fossil fuels, attacking—and now seeking to destroy—the Senate and Supreme Court, and scapegoating whites and white “privilege.” To this old mainstream Democratic farrago, they added one new element: openly embracing anti-Zionism and indeed antisemitism.

America will soon see how this insanity works out.

Fear about “affordability” supposedly fueled the new, strident socialism.

Yet annual inflation during Biden’s four years averaged almost 5 percent. It peaked at over 9 percent, while prices for some key staples rose by 30 percent over his tenure—all to silence from the Left. (By contrast, annual inflation during Trump’s first term averaged 1.9 percent. In his second term, it averaged 2.6 percent in 2025—and may rise to 4.5 percent in 2026, given the war with Iran.)

The socialists were not just quiet during Biden’s four years; they were themselves responsible for the rampant Biden inflation. They had implemented an inflationary de facto third Obama term, ramming through the most radical and costly agenda in decades under the veneer of that cognitively challenged waxen effigy, good ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton.

So the current Jacobin takeover of the Democratic Party was not sparked by concerns about “affordability”—or at least not if by “affordability” we mean the middle-class struggle to buy a house, a car, or groceries.

Instead, the socialist moment was merely the logical culmination of years of boutique radicalism within the Democratic aristocracy—the ossified leadership of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Hakeem Jeffries, along with the aging Black Caucus, the incoherent Squad, the DEI crowd, the open-border zealots, and the radical greens.

The grandees of the party also normalized the crazy mobs of BLM and Antifa long ago.

Democrats as Dr. Frankenstein

Almost every weaponized scam and national hysteria in the last two decades was amplified and spread by mainstream Democrats: the farcical claim that the Wuhan-lab-hatched COVID virus came from pangolins or bats; the Duke Lacrosse and Covington Kids hoaxes; the Jussie Smollett scam, the “Hands up, don’t shoot” lie; the deification of George Floyd, often portrayed with wings and a halo; Fauxcahontas Liz Warren, touted as the first Native American Harvard law professor (thanks to her grandfather’s high cheekbones); the radical diminution of in-person voting; the canonization of Trayvon Martin and Karmelo Anthony as blameless model children; and the mythology of a 1619 national founding.

Who allowed not just one, two, three, or four million border-jumpers into the country, but over ten million—illegal, unvetted, viewed as an assumed new political constituency, and instantaneously dependent on the welfare state?

Who gave us three, four, five, or even more genders and biological males showering with teenage girls or female prisoners? Who sloganeered about “defund the police” and “no cash bail”?

All this was about as radical as it gets.

The Democratic establishment’s unhinged hatred of Donald Trump mainstreamed radicalism even further and helped birth the socialist-cum-communist Frankensteinian monster that is now devouring its mad-scientist creators.

“By any means necessary” was a Democratic mantra over a decade ago. By 2016, the Democratic leadership and the Clinton campaign were hatching the Steele-dossier farce to warp an election.

In 2020, the Democratic deep state—Antony Blinken, Mike Morell, John Brennan, James Clapper, Leon Panetta, and others—had fabricated the farcical claim that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, a hoax that, this time around, likely did alter an election.

The Democratic establishment, working with its appendages in Silicon Valley, had censored news attesting to the authenticity of Hunter’s embarrassing laptop contents. (For an account of what the establishment was doing in 2020, read Molly Ball’s Time essay describing the “conspiracies” and “cabals” that worked behind the scenes to change voting rules and ensure a Biden victory through mail-in, no-ID balloting.)

Then came four unhinged years of lawfare: special counsel Jack Smith’s seizure of the communications of senators and congressmen, the Mar-a-Lago raid on Trump’s home, the effort to de-ballot Trump, and the five civil and criminal circuses that resulted in half a billion dollars in fines.

All those perversions of the legal system were accompanied by a host of mainstream Democrats, retired generals, politicos, and athletes shouting that Trump was a Nazi, a fascist, a Mussolini, a traitor, or a Putin asset. Meanwhile, a host of loudmouth actors, Democratic activists, and celebrities competed with each other about how best to kill him—whether by shooting, stabbing, poisoning, beheading, burning him alive, or blowing him up.

Trump supporters were libeled over the years by establishment Democrats as irredeemables, deplorables, chumps, dregs, and garbage.

Even an establishment figure like Rosa Brooks, a former Obama-appointed Pentagon lawyer, called for a military coup in Foreign Policy just 10 days after Trump first took office in 2017.

Three would-be assassins got close enough to killing Trump to draw return fire from the Secret Service—near-death encounters that elicited both unapologetic applause for the attempts and lamentations that the shooters had failed from the now truly deranged social-media Left. Murderers themselves were normalized as leftist icons, as seen in the canonization of Luigi Mangione and the glee that followed in many Democratic social media circles after the murder of Charlie Kirk.

Yet did the establishment Democratic apparat calm these waters? Or did it set them boiling?

It was Chuck Schumer who threatened conservative Supreme Court justices, screaming in front of a mob outside the court’s doors, “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Schumer sounded more like a pink-haired anti-ICE street protester than a U.S. senator.

No surprise, then, that two years later a left-wing would-be assassin turned up at Kavanaugh’s home, along with crowds of enthusiastic protestors.

Does anyone recall Maxine Waters urging the public to bird-dog Trump administration officials and harass them whenever they were seen in public? “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out, and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

Does anyone also remember Nancy Pelosi, then-Democratic House Minority leader, greenlighting “uprisings” over ICE deportations? “I just don’t know why there aren’t uprisings all over the country. Maybe there will be.” So spoke the radical owner of two mansions, who entered Congress with little net worth and will leave it worth over $100 million. A Tip O’Neill she wasn’t.

Then there was soon-to-be Vice President Kamala Harris egging on the George Floyd demonstrations, which, weeks earlier, had already turned violent and indeed deadly (despite what the “fact-checkers” asserted):

[Block]This is a movement, I’m telling you. They’re not going to stop. And everyone beware, because they’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop before Election Day in November, and they’re not going to stop after Election Day. And that should be—everyone should take note of that, on both levels, that they’re not going to let up, and they should not, and we should not.[End]

After four months of rioting in 2020—which left 25 people dead and 1,500 law enforcement officers injured, inflicted $2 billion in damage, and saw a police precinct, a federal courthouse, and an iconic church set ablaze—who gave the perpetrators a pass, with 14,000 arrests followed by few convictions and fewer jailings?

What happened during the violence against ICE in 2025–26? Did the Democratic apparat at least pretend to deplore the violence, or did it instead egg it on?

And who, as sore losers in 2016 and 2024, normalized the idea of dismantling the constitutional order—first by calling for the abolition of the Electoral College and later by planning to pack the court, end the filibuster, and admit two new left-wing states?

Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness

The mayor, who made affordability a key component of his campaign, said the stores would save the average shopper about $1,000 annually.

July 27, 2026 at 3:42 p.m.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) said Monday that fresh produce, meat, seafood and other staples will be sold at a 30 percent discount in the city-run grocery stores he wants to open in every borough.

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Mamdani, who made city-run grocery storesand affordability key components of his campaign last year, said the stores would save the average shopper about $1,000 annually.

“For many, that 30 percent discount is the difference between an evening spent around the dinner table with family or working another double shift to make ends meet,” said Mamdani, adding that the discount roughly equates to the inflation rate on food items since the covid-19 pandemic.

Americans are increasingly feeling pinched by rising food costs.

Grocery prices have risen about 30 percent since the pandemic, including recent increases linked to President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran. A recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that about two-thirds of Americans feel that groceries are unaffordable.

The discounted prices in New York, which also apply to bread, milk and eggs, will be set at the beginning of each month, Mamdani said. The prices will then remain constant until they are reset the next month.

Mamdani has announced two locations for the city-run groceries: one in the Bronx and another in East Harlem in Manhattan.

He put out a formal request on Monday to partner with a grocery store operator to run the stores.

According to the request, the city will cover the costs of the store’s rent, maintenance and property taxes. The private operator would then work with food distributors to stock shelves and manage the store.

Tim Craig

Washington, D.C.

National reporter

We’ve already seen Europe become increasingly Muslim in character, and the combined forces of leftism and Islam are working to bring that here.

Evelyne Joslain | November 20, 2025

The election of the Islamo-communist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York is an insult to America in several respects. It’s an insult to the credo of individual enterprise and freedom in the nation that has succeeded in enriching the masses through its capitalist economy. And it’s an insult to the America that fought the communists in Korea, in Vietnam, and, during the Cold War, against the USSR born from that deadly ideology.

The fact that the communist mayor is also a Muslim and an activist one, who connected with powerful Muslim lobbies only 24 years after 9/11, is the ultimate provocation. America rightly laments the Muslim invasion (organized by the EU leaders) that distorts our Europe (where I live) to what seems like a point of no return, but may not have measured the extent of the same rampant evil within its own borders.

In the Anglosphere in general, and particularly in the UK, for the last two decades, we have seen veiled women in the street, in public and private jobs, and even in Parliament at Westminster. In the USA, the Congress is now affected, too.

This has happened because of the sacred respect for religious freedom enshrined in the Constitution. But there, our Anglo friends are making a major misconstruction. These Muslim immigrants did not come to England, America, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand because they were fleeing religious persecution or were forbidden to practice their faith. Quite the contrary. They may have fled many evils, but not that one.

Logically, Muslim women should be fleeing the treatment to which their religion submits them. But not at all. Most Muslim immigrants have brought their religion to impose it on us, in accordance with the demands of that religion and perhaps also under orders from the authorities of the countries from which they came. More mosques keep being built in America, and the country is discovering street prayers. Besides, it is not just in New York that a Muslim has been elected “as a Muslim.” Several Muslim-majority localities did the same on November 4.

Militant Muslims are naturally allied with all left-wing movements, even LGBTQ++ movements. In France, the anarcho-communist Jean-Luc Antoine Pierre Mélenchon proudly represents them. In the UK, PM Starmer bends over backwards to downplay the crimes and offenses that Muslims (both born in Britain and immigrants) commit, and bestows knighthoods on Muslims right and left. A scoundrel like Sadiq Khan, the mayor who has turned London into the capital of knife murders, is now Sir Sadiq, dubbed without qualm by the enviro-fundamentalist King Charles III.

The European Union, the American left, and all Western elites have opened the floodgates to millions of immigrants pouring in from the Third World. Under Biden, for four years, it was at a rate of 10,000 per day. The European Court of Human Rights is now considering granting rights and benefits to the second, third, and Nth wives, as well as to their children.

The boldness of these particular immigrants is limitless…and it pays.

When you invite the Third World to your home, you incrementally start to resemble the Third World. The financial burden of invasive immigration is weighing us down, leading to a €10 billion annual deficit for France alone.

But decadent Western nations are not content with letting themselves be invaded. Their virtue also unfolds abroad through their quasi-religious environmentalist crusade.

On a French TV channel, on November 10, during the 8 p.m. news, while commenting on the opening of COP 30, a properly groomed airhead declared: “Western countries are responsible for the climate crisis, and this crisis hits poor countries harder, countries that remain poor because we oppressed them in the past.” Consequently, we “owe them” much more than the hundreds of billions already paid, a pittance, and we must now move into the trillions.

One recognizes the UN’s discourse in that statement.

Western taxpayers are buckling under taxes, and all our institutions are overrun by economic and cultural Marxists, just as Gramsci recommended. But Gramsci could not have imagined what a fabulous ally militant Islam would be for his project of destroying Western civilization. Like him, they are in no hurry: they play the long game and are confident in their success.

Our leaders have betrayed us. The European Union, allied with the transnational Western left, is waging a war on the peoples to subject them, if need be, by replacing them. Cultural Marxism is gaining momentum: deportations must accelerate, and the concept of denaturalization must be applied to thousands of individuals like Mamdani who will never assimilate but have the nerve to campaign on their hatred for the countries that welcomed them, to the point of seeking to seize and transform them.

New York has seen many things, but the election of an Islamo-communist should shake people out of their torpor.

Trump cannot do everything everywhere alone. Western countries must unite in an existential action of pushback.

I went into Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey expecting a cinematic event. Instead, I saw one of the worst movies ever made. I made it to the 90-minute mark before walking out, but I really should have bailed a half-hour in.

We have been utterly bamboozled. As someone who appreciates a script that actually works, I can tell you this screenplay is nonsensical. Combine that with unwatchable lighting and completely incomprehensible audio, and the whole production just falls apart on screen. Matt Damon is completely miscast and entirely too soft to play Odysseus. Honestly, the campy old Steve Reeves movies or Sinbad the Sailor pack more entertainment value than this bloated mess.

If anyone tells you this film is good, they are lying. It will not win—let alone be nominated for—a single Oscar. Do yourself a favor and see The Devil Wears Prada 2 or Michael instead. I am not exaggerating when I say that when my time comes to sit in a nursing home, my first request to the Almighty will be for a refund on the 90 minutes I lost to this three-hour joke. No one with an ounce of common sense should sit through it.

By Kenin M. Spivak
July 27, 2026

FR159797 AP

They’re baaack. “They” being communists, or for the academics, Marxists.

Hairsplitting.

Communism is the implementation of the ideology Karl Marx advanced in his 1848 thesis, “The Communist Manifesto.”

The resurgence started with intersectionality, cultural demands, and the redefinition of words like racism, gender, and homeless. Aided by funding from the Chinese Communist Party, and the growth of organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, the far left added violence and dismantling capitalism. Today, radical leftists pursue the full communist agenda, fused with antisemitism and radical Islam.

Turn up your nose at the Red Menace, but during the 20^th century, communists killed more than 90 million of their fellow countrypersons and instigated mass famines, incarceration, and economic hardships. Though the Red Scare of the 1950s has been derided by the intelligencia, decryption of Soviet-era documents obtained in the Venona Project confirms that the substantial majority of those accused of spying for the Soviet Union during this period were indeed guilty. The Soviet Union infiltrated American unions, media, and politics.

More recently, China has taken the lead in penetrating American institutions, co-opting universities and research facilities, and supporting radical left opposition to ICE, data centers, police, fossil fuels, America’s involvement in the Middle East, and other American social and political structures. According to the last U.S. Annual Threat Assessment, China has “increased [its] capabilities to conduct covert influence operations” and will “continue to expand its coercive and subversive malign influence activities to weaken the United States.”

The FBI under both Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump agreed that “The counterintelligence and economic espionage efforts emanating from the government of China and the Chinese Communist Party are a grave threat to the economic well-being and democratic values of the United States. Confronting this threat is the FBI’s top counterintelligence priority.”

In the last month, Trump has invoked communism nearly 100 times during speeches, campaign appearances, and social media posts. He described some of the Democratic primary winners as “hardcore, godless communists” and, during July 4 celebrations, compared communism to a disease that has to be eliminated.

The mainstream media ridiculed the president, in particular denying that the DSA, a rapidly growing vortex of policy and candidates within the Democratic party, is socialist, let alone communist. DSA members include senators, representatives, mayors and soon, possibly a governor. In the 1950s, the American Communist Party had 50,000 members. The DSA is soaring past 120,000 members.

Liberals describe themselves as caring protectors of the weak. For the radical left, particularly self-proclaimed communists (and Marxists), this decalogue rings hollow. In the “Communist Manifesto,” Marx wrote:

Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. … They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.

To Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, liberating Cambodia meant subjecting Cambodians to forced labor, starvation, persecution, and 1.7 million deaths between 1975 and 1979. For Stalin, ensuring workers’ rights meant forced displacements, imprisonment in labor camps, manufactured famines, torture, and brutal purges that killed 20 million. According to the authoritative “Black Book of Communism,” 65 million Chinese died as a result of Mao’s merciless campaign to create a new “socialist” China.

The left was responsible for every major U.S. demonstration over the last 30 years, except January 6. The radical left added a violent element.

Based on extensive polling, the nonpartisan Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University concluded last year that there is “widespread justification for lethal violence—including assassination—among younger, highly online, and ideologically left-aligned users,” and that these “attitudes are not fringe—they reflect an emergent assassination culture, grounded in far-left authoritarianism and increasingly normalized in digital discourse.” In a recent YouGov poll, 25% of those who identified as very liberal said that violence is acceptable to achieve political goals.

According to a new Cato poll, which asked separately about socialism and communism, 21% of adult Americans have a favorable view of communism, with 55% holding an unfavorable view, while among those 14 to 29 (Gen Z), 37% hold a favorable view, and just 38% unfavorable. Support for communism jumps to 43% among students.

Communists believe that the state determines each individual’s opportunities based on the party’s goals and needs, such as DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), which allocates university admissions, jobs, medical treatment, and government benefits by rank on a scale of putative oppression. They believe that the state owns children – it, not parents, decides what children learn, their pronouns, how they dress, or whether they should be surgically mutilated. They suppress religion – deciding when to override religious beliefs, prohibit prayer at home or in public, or send FBI agents to infiltrate Catholic churches.

The canard that democratic socialism is not Marxism is wearing thin. Marx advocated abolishing private property, globalism, a workers’ dictatorship, reliance on experts, forced relocation of the population, that children are wards of the state, and that religion is the “opium of the people.”

The latest DSA platform similarly calls for public ownership of large corporations and essential industries; breaking down borders and ending enforcement of immigration laws and funding for the Pentagon; a worker’s “democracy” by abolishing the Senate, Supreme Court, presidency, and Electoral College; free housing and health care; abolishing most prisons; and support for Iran and Palestinians.

Daniel Greenfield, CEO of the David Horowitz Freedom Center explains that 16 of 27 seats on DSA’s National Political Committee are held by self-avowed Marxists. Both co-chairs of the DSA identify as Marxists, and self-identified Marxist movements control 62% of the DSA’s national leadership. David Jenkins, a DSA director representing the Libertarian Socialist caucus, admits, “Our goal is communism.”

Horowitz observes that there are numerous communist groups within the New York City DSA Leadership Committee, including Emerge, which draws inspiration from how “Communist parties operated in the Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions”; and the Socialist Majority Caucus which endorses Marx’s call for a “socialist revolution” using “state power” to replace capitalism, and aligns itself with the Communist Caucus. Most DSA members advising New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani belong to the SMC.

Megan Romer, one of DSA’s co-chairs, supports Hamas, promotes hatred of America and the police, praises America’s enemies, and celebrates communist leaders including Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara.

Red Star, which holds two DSA board seats, proclaims that “our primary goal … is to abolish capitalism and, ultimately, to achieve communism.”

The Communist Control Act of 1954 outlawed the Communist Party USA and membership in, or support for, “communist-action organizations,” which it defines as an “organization having for one of its purposes or objectives the establishment, control, conduct, seizure, or overthrow of the Government of the United States, or the government of any State or political subdivision thereof, by the use of force or violence.”

Though the CCA sounds quaintly paranoid, the reality is that domestic extremists influenced and supported by our enemies have weaponized America’s open society, disguise their intentions behind smiles and designer suits, and increasingly turn to violence. Overcoming the left’s whataboutism and snarky dismissal of resurgent communism requires inner strength, but it is essential that those who believe in America promote truth, win elections, and prosecute criminals.  The alternative is that communism will continue to gain traction, and that would be a disaster.

Kenin M. Spivak is founder and chairman of SMI Group LLC, an international consulting firm and investment bank. He is the author of fiction and non-fiction books and a frequent speaker and contributor to media, including RealClearPolitics, The American Mind, National Review, television, radio, and podcasts.

Only one person received jail time, and only 10 days of it.

By Julian Balsley

July 26, 2026 1:06PM PDT

Forty-three percent of the people Portland police arrested at protests against immigration enforcement have had their cases dismissed or dropped with no complaint or they’ve been acquitted, a WW analysis has found.

Of the eight defendants who went to trial, five were acquitted, and those convicted received only short probations. That suggests juries have largely found that the charges don’t pass muster.“When arrests are made, they’re based on probable cause that a crime was committed by the person. When a public order situation is becoming dangerous, there are times where arrests are made based on probable cause to prevent a situation from further escalating,” says Sgt. Kevin Allen, a Portland Police Bureau spokesman. In response to questions about the high number of dismissals, dropped charges and acquittals, Allen writes, “There are a variety of reasons that cases may not ultimately lead to prosecution.”

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Only one person got any jail time—and just 10 days of it—after pleading guilty to second-degree arson. The other 26 people who signed plea deals largely received short probations and community service.

That trend closely matches federal cases of protesters charged with assaulting federal officers. Most of those began as felonies and ended in misdemeanor pleas with short probations (“Petering Out,” WW, July 8).

Twenty-six of them were dropped with no complaint, 11 were dismissed and five were acquitted in jury trials. Those make up 43% of all cases.

“There are many reasons a case will get one of those codes,” says Pat Dooris, a spokesman for the district attorney, of charges being dropped with no complaint. He adds that “charges can still be filed later as long as the statute of limitations has not run out.” At least seven cases that were previously dismissed have been refiled.

Twenty-eight people signed plea deals with the district attorney, the majority of whom got between three and 18 months of probation. Many also received a term of community service. Four received only small fines between $50 and $115.

WW’s analysis shows that the local cases had a poorer success rate than federal prosecutions.

WW found that of the 37 people arrested by the feds during ICE protests, 23 walked free with only short probations or supervised release. Only five were dismissed or diverted, compared to 37 local cases that were dismissed or dropped with no complaint.

One key difference between the federal and local prosecutions: The feds more commonly charged people with felonies. Twenty-four of the federal defendants were charged with assaulting an officer; 17 faced felony charges. But the wheels quickly came off once the cases entered the justice system: Only four ultimately got felony dispositions.

By contrast, only 20 of the local cases began with felony charges; only two ended with felony dispositions. (Twenty cases are ongoing as of publication.)

But court records also reveal a second front of the battle that raged outside the ICE office. It was fought not between protesters and law enforcement, either federal or local, but instead between those who had come to protest ICE, and the counterprotesters and right-wing livestreamers who had come to support it.

One way to view that difference is that the federal government was trying to paint a picture of its officers facing grave danger from protesters, as Lewis & Clark Law School professor Tung Yin previously told WW. Portland police, by contrast, rarely claimed they had been victims of assault.

Only 18% of local cases stemmed from people allegedly harming law enforcement. Thirteen were charged with assaulting or interfering with a PPB officer, often for trying to stop officers from arresting another protester. Two others were charged with blocking PPB vehicles, and three with harming federal officers.

Thirteen more stemmed from people damaging or attempting to damage the building itself.

(The dispositions in these cases follow the general pattern: mostly guilty pleas in exchange for short probations, with a smattering of dismissals and acquittals.)

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arrested 23 protesters, counterprotesters and livestreamers for fighting with one another. This peacekeeping is the role PPB has most publicly billed itself as filling during the protests. In almost every press release it issued about the protests, the bureau wrote, “PPB will continue to monitor protest activity. While PPB’s role is public safety and supporting constitutionally protected activity, part of our role is to address criminal acts.”

Affidavits by police officers and lawyers in the district attorney’s office document many spats between anti-ICE protesters and right-wing livestreamers. Livestreamers would walk up to people, recording or insulting them, and protesters would smack their tripods or phones out of their hands, or strike the streamer themself.

Some livestreamers appear again and again in the records. It seems that once protesters came to recognize them, they would try to stop the streamer’s antics before they got started—the insults, the getting in people’s faces, maybe even the fact that the streamers sometimes appeared on the ICE building’s roof alongside federal agents. That usually meant bringing the fight to the streamer.

Livestreamers and counterprotesters also initiated physical fights with protesters. One counterprotester punched a protester in the head; the protester was knocked unconscious when his head hit the pavement. Another dragged a protester into the street after they refused to apologize for calling the counterprotester a pedophile. A third pepper-sprayed a protester who he said was holding a knife, making him feel unsafe.

Protesters, counterprotesters and livestreamers who fought one another have all faced similar results in the court system. The majority on all sides pleaded guilty or no contest to misdemeanors and received probation. A few on both sides were dismissed. Two protesters were acquitted.

Julian Balsley

Julian Balsley mostly covers City Hall and immigration. He is also a Senior Editor at The Miscellany News, Vassar College’s student paper.

Willamette Week’s 

By Jeff Crouere • Jul. 27, 2026

From its founding in 1996 until today, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) has been known as a “progressive” league. The WNBA has decried “police brutality,” “racism in all its forms,” and the “systematic oppression of Black Lives in America.” The WNBA has also been at the “forefront” of “initiatives” to “support” a variety of left-wing issues such as “gun control,” “#MeToo,” and “#BlackLivesMatter,” among others.

With such a history, it is not surprising that the WNBA refused to allow players at their All-Star game to wear “USA 250” patches on their uniforms. According to Warner Todd Hutson of Breitbart News, the WNBA is “the only major American pro sport to reject the patch.” The patches were worn by all players on both teams in the Super Bowl and throughout the National Basketball Association (NBA) Finals.

By rejecting the patch, the WNBA is rejecting the country where it was founded. It is rejecting the Americans who watch the games on television or in person and the sponsors who commercially support a league that has a history of financial losses.

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In 2018, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver admitted that the WNBA had lost an average of $10 million annually since its inception. Silver was aware of the league’s financial status because the NBA created the WNBA and subsidizes the league every year. For example, in 2024, the New York Post reported that the WNBA would lose $40 million that season and that “NBA investors” were “growing impatient.”

Despite its troubled financial past, the WNBA is enjoying more support than ever due to superstars Caitlyn Clark and Sophie Cunningham of the Indiana Fever, one of the 15 teams currently operating in the league, which is expanding to 18 teams in 2030. This newfound popularity has allowed the league to negotiate a variety of lucrative media deals valued at $3.1 billion over 10 years.

This success would grow even more if the WNBA stopped embracing left-wing politics and showed more support for the United States of America, the country where basketball was invented.

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Unfortunately, the league’s leadership has adopted an anti-American attitude. The Treasurer of the WNBA Players Association, Brianna Turner, opposed the league authorizing “USA 250” uniform patches for the All-Star game. She posted on social media, “No WNBA players would have been free 250 years ago. The majority wouldn’t even have their freedom 100 years ago.”

In another post, Turner, who was pictured wearing a t-shirt with the slogan “Protect Trans Lives,” continued to trash her country by stating, “We are some of the most elite female athletes. 250 years ago, we would have been breeders or in the fields working all day.”

So, Ms. Turner, what country allowed women “equal” rights 250 years ago? There is no country that has done more for women than the United States of America. The existence of the WNBA highlights the advantages that women enjoy here.

If Turner is so concerned about “freedom,” then she should condemn the slavery that exists today. In Africa, 7 million people live in slavery, and in Asia and the Pacific Region, 29.3 million people are enslaved, primarily in countries such as North Korea, China, Afghanistan, India, and Myanmar.

While Turner and her fellow WNBA players focus on supposed injustice in America, they are silent about the abuse of women throughout the world. In 77 economies worldwide, “women are legally barred from certain jobs and industries,” and in 19 economies husbands are allowed “to prevent their wives from working.”

In Afghanistan today, under the rule of the barbaric Taliban regime, no women are allowed to participate in sports. In Egypt, 87.2% of “women and girls aged 15-49” are subjected to female genital mutilation. In Niger, only 17% of women and girls aged 15-24 are literate.

In contrast, the United States is a bastion of “freedom.” Turner should be celebrating all the “freedom” and advantages that women enjoy in America. Instead, she decided to focus on the distant past, ignoring the incredible progress that minorities and women have achieved in recent decades.

Turner could have used her platform to denounce countries that allow real discrimination against women to occur today but decided it was better to condemn the country that has given her such tremendous opportunities.

Sadly, the WNBA was influenced by Turner and other critics. Initially, the league had committed to wearing the patches for the All-Star game but ultimately decided against it. It is unclear exactly what happened, but it seems several WNBA players objected to the patch, and it was rejected.

The WNBA should not have supported such America-bashing, but it did. The problem is that President Donald Trump is in the White House. If their favorite President, Barack Obama, was still residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, there would have been a different decision.

Obama was invited to address the All-Star players on Friday, before the game. Caitlyn Clark said it was “super cool” to talk to the former President. It is hard to imagine Trump being invited to address the players or receiving such a positive reaction.

The best way for the league to experience additional growth and obtain financial freedom from the NBA is to attract support from across the political spectrum and show appreciation for the country that allows their league to exist, the United States of America.

The WNBA has clearly chosen political sides, and it is unfortunate. In fact, the only political party advocating for player safety in the league is the Republicans.

After Clark was subjected to multiple instances of physical mistreatment from fellow players, 11 congressional Republicans sent WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert a letter demanding “accountability” for “multiple attacks” against her.

The Republicans claimed that Clark received “unnecessary physical hostility and violence.” They suggested that the “attacks against Clark may be racially motivated.” Clark is White, while 70% of WNBA players are African Americans.

Hopefully, the attacks against Clark will end, and the WNBA will refrain from creating further ideological division and acting in an un-American manner.

Jeff Crouere is a native New Orleanian, and his award-winning program, “Ringside Politics,” airs Saturdays from 1-2 p.m. CT nationally on Real America’s Voice TV Network & AmericasVoice.News and weekdays from 7-9 a.m. & 6-7 p.m. CT on WGSO 990-AM & Wgso.com. He is the President and General Manager of WGSO Radio, a political columnist, the author of America’s Last Chance, and provides regular commentaries on the Jeff Crouere YouTube channel and at Crouere.net. For more information, email him at jcrouere@gmail.com.

Matt Margolis 

It’s been coming for a while, but this week, the once-conservative firebrand Tucker Carlson has doubled down on a version of reality that would make Iran’s mullahs blush. Carlson used an appearance on the East Meets West with Olga and Tara podcast to unload on a provision in the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that would expand defense-technology cooperation between the United States and Israel. His verdict? Lawmakers who back the measure are acting against America’s own interests, effectively merging our nations’ militaries.

Carlson didn’t stop at policy disagreement. He accused the Republican Party of handing the country’s sovereignty to a foreign government, sparing only two members from his contempt.

“The Republican Party has decided that the interest of Israel is more important than the interest of the United States,” Carlson said on the podcast. “There are a couple of exceptions Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, and they were driven out of the Republican Party. So it tells you what the priority is. The priority is serving Israel.”

Coming from a man who has spent years cozying up to authoritarian regimes and excusing Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, that’s rich. But consistency has never been Carlson’s strong suit.

He then accused Israel’s Mossad of feeding American policymakers fabricated intelligence for decades.

“Mossad has fed, repeatedly, disinformation lies to American policymakers over decades, including the lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction,” Carlson said. “That fundamentally came from Israel. There’s no dispute about that.”

There’s plenty of dispute about that, because it’s false.

British intelligence, French intelligence, German intelligence, and Spanish intelligence all concluded Iraq likely possessed chemical and biological weapons and was in defiance of the United Nations.

From there, Carlson’s rhetoric went from conspiratorial to unhinged. He called the defense-technology partnership a “generational disaster” and framed it as proof Americans no longer control their own country.

“It’s the definition of treason,” Carlson said. “This is treason. This is acting against your own nation, on behalf of a foreign nation.”

Then came the real bombshell. Carlson wants President Donald Trump and the Republicans who support the NDAA provision put on trial for it.

“The idea that the Republican Party would support merging U.S. and Israeli intelligence, IDF and Pentagon is so deranged that you have to root for treason trials, for Nurnberg trials at some point,” Carlson said. “And the president could veto it; he won’t because he’s a slave to Israel.”

Let’s be honest here. Comparing a defense-cooperation bill to the crimes of Nazi Germany while demanding war-crimes-style tribunals against your own president isn’t principled dissent. This is full-on loony talk here. He sounds no different than the socialist candidates running for Congress nationwide… and, let’s be honest, some Democrats in Congress today.

Carlson closed out his rant by accusing anyone who defends Israel of defending genocide.

“We’re against genocide, we’re against book burning, that’s what we learned from the Nazi period,” Carlson said. “And all of a sudden you wake up and we’re like, ‘No, no, genocide’s totally fine, as long as Israel’s doing it.’ In fact, if you call it genocide, you’re the bad person.”

From there, Carlson’s rhetoric went from conspiratorial to unhinged. He called the defense-technology partnership a “generational disaster” and framed it as proof Americans no longer control their own country.

“It’s the definition of treason,” Carlson said. “This is treason. This is acting against your own nation, on behalf of a foreign nation.”

Then came the real bombshell. Carlson wants President Donald Trump and the Republicans who support the NDAA provision put on trial for it.

“The idea that the Republican Party would support merging U.S. and Israeli intelligence, IDF and Pentagon is so deranged that you have to root for treason trials, for Nurnberg trials at some point,” Carlson said. “And the president could veto it; he won’t because he’s a slave to Israel.”

Let’s be honest here. Comparing a defense-cooperation bill to the crimes of Nazi Germany while demanding war-crimes-style tribunals against your own president isn’t principled dissent. This is full-on loony talk here. He sounds no different than the socialist candidates running for Congress nationwide… and, let’s be honest, some Democrats in Congress today.

Carlson closed out his rant by accusing anyone who defends Israel of defending genocide.

“We’re against genocide, we’re against book burning, that’s what we learned from the Nazi period,” Carlson said. “And all of a sudden you wake up and we’re like, ‘No, no, genocide’s totally fine, as long as Israel’s doing it.’ In fact, if you call it genocide, you’re the bad person.”

I don’t know what happened to Tucker. I remember being excited when he started his show on X, but now, he’s become indistinguishable from far-left crazies. Calling for treason trials against a sitting president over a defense bill is the sign of an absolute meltdown.

A possible workaround would be vehicles that use CNG, but self-service would then probably go out the window unless we developed a fill interface that requires no human intervention.

My problem with CNG vehicles is not the physical science, but the political science. Not too long ago the Dims were promoting using “clean burning natural gas” to save us from our carbon sins. And we saw CNG/LNG vehicles like busses and utility trucks appear. The same with Obama’s EPA forcing my power company to shutter a nearby coal plant (admittedly it was 100 years old and probably a pollution nightmare) and replace it with power produced by “clean burning natural gas” fueled power plants, not newer and cleaner coal plants. Our power bills shot up to pay for that.

Only for Biden in his first week to issue multiple EO’s to make it harder to drill for natural gas and oil. Why? Because the Dims’ narrative had changed in a few years and they hated on natural gas like it was killing us all.

That taught me that there’s no pleasing the Dims and their global warming doomsday cult policies. So I installed decentralized solar on the home in May 2021 to play with it for a year to see first hand its strengths and weaknesses, relative to both my climate and my power consumption habits. The next year I converted my two natural gas appliances to electric, upgraded the solar, and replaced my wife’s old gas crossover with an EV one.

I agree with fellow conservatives on the physical science of hydrocarbons being better than most alternative sources (save perhaps hydropower). (Note that I call it “alternative” energy, not “green” energy because I don’t see anything eco-friendly about my solar or EV.) But I promise you, if it’s feasible and practical for your situation, there’s great reward in removing the POLITICAL SCIENCE from most of your energy consumption. And that happens only with the word DECENTRALIZED in front of my solar (the EV extends that homemade power use out onto the road too, at least for local driving). When 80% of all the power we consume in our now all-electric home comes from homemade power, pulling only 20% from the grid, the politicians’ energy policies and/or trade policies don’t have much direct impact on my budget. Again, that’s not a “green” energy vs hydrocarbons argument. That’s my push for anything we as individual Americans (or families) can do to be more self-sustaining so that the political class has regulatory power over us.