In roughly three years, Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has established herself as one of the most recognized members of the Supreme Court — and not in a good way.

Despite being the most junior justice on the high court, Jackson has regularly gone out of her way to thumb her nose at her colleagues for upholding America’s constitutional framework. Whether it be through public comments or poorly written opinions, the Biden appointee has shown little respect for the longstanding traditions and collegiality that have defined SCOTUS for generations.

The latest example of this came on Thursday, when the Supreme Court temporarily stayed (in part) a lower court block on the National Institutes of Health’s bid to terminate DEI-related contracts. The court’s ruling was 5-4, with Jackson joining Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in siding against the Trump administration.

In addition to signing onto Roberts’ opinion, Jackson penned a 21-page screed — which is longer than all the other justices’ opinions combined — denouncing the majority’s decision to partially grant the Trump administration’s request to pause the lower court’s order. Employing the writing style of a left-wing activist, the Biden appointee claimed that her colleagues’ decision is the “newest iteration” of the high court’s “lawmaking on the emergency docket.”

“Stated simply: With potentially life-saving scientific advancements on the line, the Court turns a nearly century-old statute aimed at remedying unreasoned agency decisionmaking into a gauntlet rather than a refuge,” Jackson wrote.

While it’s not uncommon for justices to explain their disagreements and problems with the opposing side’s legal rationale in their opinions, Jackson’s dissent (and this isn’t the first time) takes on another level of snide that’s unbecoming of a junior justice. She went on to effectively accuse her colleagues in the majority of abandoning all semblance of proper jurisprudence and respect for the law in order to bend over backwards for the Trump administration.

“This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist,” Jackson wrote. “Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.”

It’s pretty telling that none of the other justices in the dissent signed onto Jackson’s tirade. While they may share ideological similarities, even Sotomayor and Kagan recognize the importance of respecting and getting along with their conservative-leaning colleagues — especially given that these are lifetime appointments.

But for Jackson, that seemingly matters very little.

What’s become vividly clear is that Jackson isn’t writing about her “feelings” to persuade her colleagues — or more importantly, the American people. She’s writing for a wholly unethical media that practically worships the ground she walks on.

The more ill-informed and incoherent her opinions get, the more fawning coverage the media provides her.

Contrast this apparent mindset with that of Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, who has often spoken about how his primary audience when authoring opinions is the American public. During a 2018 interview at the Library of Congress, for instance, the George H.W. Bush appointee emphasized the importance of using language in his opinions that is accessible to the everyday American, as they have a right to understand how the Court is ruling on any given subject.

“One of the things I say … is that genius is not putting a … 10-cent idea in a $20 sentence. Genius is putting a $20 idea in a 10-cent sentence. It is to make it [as] accessible as possible to average people,” Thomas said. “I think we owe it to people.”

That’s an example Jackson would be wise to adopt if she ever wants to be taken seriously as a justice. Until then, Americans will continue to treat her rambling temper tantrums as the jokes that they are.

The more ill-informed and incoherent her opinions get, the more fawning coverage the media provides her.

Contrast this apparent mindset with that of Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, who has often spoken about how his primary audience when authoring opinions is the American public. During a 2018 interview at the Library of Congress, for instance, the George H.W. Bush appointee emphasized the importance of using language in his opinions that is accessible to the everyday American, as they have a right to understand how the Court is ruling on any given subject.

“One of the things I say … is that genius is not putting a … 10-cent idea in a $20 sentence. Genius is putting a $20 idea in a 10-cent sentence. It is to make it [as] accessible as possible to average people,” Thomas said. “I think we owe it to people.”

That’s an example Jackson would be wise to adopt if she ever wants to be taken seriously as a justice. Until then, Americans will continue to treat her rambling temper tantrums as the jokes that they are.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

President Trump went on a late-night attack against NBC and ABC News on Sunday, deriding them for what, in his view, was “biased” coverage and said he would be in favor of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revoking their licenses.

The Republican president said the news outlets had given him negative coverage on “97%” of stories.

It wasn’t clear from where Trump was citing the “97%” figure. A study released earlier this year by the conservative media watchdog group, Media Research Center (MRC), found that coverage of the president’s first 100 days in office was “92% negative.”

“IF THAT IS THE CASE,” Trump wrote in his characteristic use of all caps, “THEY ARE SIMPLY AN ARM OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AND SHOULD, ACCORDING TO MANY HAVE THEIR LICENSES REVOKED.”

Trump said he would be “totally in favor” of the move because – according to him – these outlets are “so biased and untruthful, an actual threat to our Democracy.”

The president followed up with another post attacking both outlets as “FAKE NEWS” and “two of the absolute worst and most biased networks anywhere in the world.”

Trump questioned why both entities aren’t “paying Millions of Dollars a year in LICENSE FEES.”

“They should lose their Licenses for their unfair coverage of Republicans and/or Conservatives, but at a minimum, they should pay up BIG for having the privilege of using the most valuable airwaves anywhere at anytime!!!” Trump wrote. “Crooked ‘journalism’ should not be rewarded, it should be terminated!!!”

Fox News Digital has reached out to both ABC and NBC News for a response to Trump’s posts.

Being national networks, ABC and NBC News do not hold FCC licenses for news content but provide programming for local affiliates across the country.

TV stations pay fees and annual regulatory fees based on station type and market, while cable outlets pay their own regulatory fees. Only congress has the authority to impose and collect such fees, which are deposited in the U.S. Treasury. 

Any move to revoke licenses based on real or perceived news bias would run afoul of First Amendment protections. Similar attempts in the past have been struck down by the courts. 

This is not the first time Trump has attacked broadcast outlets or threatened to strip their licenses. Last year, Trump settled a defamation suit against ABC for $15 million, and he famously hosted “The Apprentice” on NBC before entering the world of politics. 

And earlier this year, Paramount Global and CBS agreed to pay out a settlement over the president’s election interference lawsuit against the network.

Bradford Betz, FoxNews

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian

The accusation that Israel is committing a “genocide” in Gaza has become pervasive on the Left, and particularly in academia. I think that the accusation is absurd, so much so that until now I haven’t thought it worthy of a response. However, the accusation has recently arrived on my own website. In the comment thread on the prior post, one of the commenters (regular readers can guess who) has leveled against President Trump the charge that he “is sending weapons to Israel for the genocide in Gaza.” Really? It’s time for a response.

In my opinion, what’s going on in Gaza is not a genocide, but a war. Deaths in war are not a genocide. On October 7, 2023, the governing entity of Gaza, Hamas, conducted an unprovoked attack on Israel, killing approximately 1,200 people, and taking some 250 hostages. Israel has responded with a military action. This is a classic war. The norm in war is that the parties fight until one of the parties surrenders, or there is an armistice. When the parties are fighting, the whole idea is to kill as many of the enemy as possible. Hamas could end the war by surrendering. It has not done so. Moreover, it continues to hold hostages. Therefore, the normal expectation of war would be that Israel will continue to kill as many of the enemy as possible until there is a surrender.

You may disagree with my characterization that the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel was “unprovoked.” It doesn’t matter. Assume that the attack was provoked. This is still a war. In war, it is entirely the norm that a party that has been attacked tries to kill as many of the enemy as it can until the enemy surrenders.

Is there any other example of the term “genocide” being applied to a full-scale military response to an armed attack by an enemy state actor that has not surrendered? If there is, I don’t know of it.

Consider, for example, the Russia/Ukraine war. In this case I would say that Russia’s attack and invasion were unprovoked. The Russian version of events of course differs, and accuses Ukrainian of provocations that caused the conflict. But again, even if Russia’s invasion was completely unprovoked, the conflict is still a war between enemy state actors, where neither has surrendered. Unlike Israel, which makes extensive efforts to minimize civilian casualties, Russia regularly sends drones to bomb civilian targets and residential buildings in Ukrainian cities. But does anyone call Russia’s conduct toward Ukraine a “genocide”? Not that I’ve seen. Contrast this with the conduct of the Soviet Union toward Ukraine in the 1930s, when it imposed an intentional famine in which millions of innocents starved to death. There was no war going on; Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. That was a genocide.

Or consider World War II. Today that conflict is quickly fading out of living human memory. But it provides some obvious guideposts to distinguish between “genocide” and deaths from combat in war.

During World War II, Hitler and his minions engineered the deaths of some 6 million Jews and others, selected largely by racial and ethnic criteria, who were noncombatants and residents of either Germany or conquered territories. That is the classic “genocide.”

But there were far more deaths from fighting in the war. Here is a quote from a famous speech given by U.S. General George Patton to the Sixth Armored Division of the U.S. army (under his command) on May 31, 1944 (a few days before D-Day and the Normandy beach invasion):

We’ll win this war, but we’ll win it only by fighting and showing the Germans that we’ve got more guts than they have or ever will have. We’re not just going to shoot the bastards, we’re going to rip out their living g[-]damned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We’re going to murder those lousy Hun c[***]suckers by the bushel-f[***]ing-basket.

(Quoted in Michael Walsh’s recent book A Rage to Conquer.)

In other words, with a war going on, we are going to kill the enemy, and as effectively as possible. And Patton was only talking about killing enemy soldiers. The U.S. and allied war effort was by no means limited to killing soldiers. For example, in 1943 and 1944 the U.S. and England carried out saturation bombing campaigns directed at German cities like Dresden, Bremen, Essen and even Berlin itself. There were many military targets, but these campaigns essentially leveled the cities, with very large numbers of civilian casualties. Indeed, a large part of the reason for these campaigns was the attempt to undermine civilian support for the Nazi regime. Nobody thought that the U.S. or England were under any obligation to deliver food aid to the suffering German civilians.

And then there were the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed in these bombings. Shortly thereafter, Japan surrendered unconditionally, at which point the indiscriminate killings ended immediately.

I have no idea how it is that new rules seem to have emerged, applicable only to Israel (or maybe to only Israel and the United States) whereby any civilian casualties in war are now deemed “genocide.” The use of the term seems to be directed at appealing to soft-minded and historically ignorant students and academics in Western countries. But endless repetition of an inapplicable term cannot change a classic war into something else.

Hamas can end the deaths in Gaza by the simple expedient of unconditional surrender. Until then, it can expect large numbers of deaths, many of them civilians.

My office is exactly eleven steps from the waiting room. About a minute ago, I found myself standing out there; utterly clueless as to why I went in the first place. Whatever my perfectly good reason had been for taking those eleven steps simply vanished into thin air. I skulked back to my office and decided to turn my annoyance into something useful — like this week’s column.

Everyone has endured the elusive password, the vanishing keys or that pesky oven that might – or might not – be on. Or the front door that might or might not be locked. What is it about our mental storage and retrieval system that can be so exasperating?

As we try to do more and more in less and less time, what we call “multitasking” actually works against our ability to remember things. For something to be remembered, it has to be exciting or special. Throwing keys on the table is not exciting. Whatever I needed in the waiting room was, I guess, not very special. Based on this, we can come up with some useful tricks for improving our memory.

Dr. Zaldy Tan, author of “Age-Proof Your Mind,” offers a suggestion for episodes like my waiting room incident: Retrace your steps. By walking back to where you started, it’s possible you’ll remember what triggered your decision to go there in the first place. Indeed, pressuring yourself to remember something actually interferes with the recall process.

If I retrace my steps and still come up with nothing, I just tell myself, “Relax. It’ll come back.” This releases the immediate pressure and allows me to go back to other things.

As a mental health professional, I spend countless hours talking with people. In the course of these discussions, many clients will stop and say something like, “I don’t remember what I was going to say.” I remove the pressure by suggesting: “Don’t worry. It’ll come back.” It almost always comes back before the hour is over. Why? Because the stress is released and the subconscious has a chance to retrieve the lost thought, which most likely connects to our conversation.

What about situations where you lose your keys? Or your wallet? You don’t have the luxury to simply “forget about it.” In these more urgent circumstances you obviously have to retrace your steps. In this case, the resulting pressure helps you persevere in your search. If you constantly lose important items, then you’ll need to focus on prevention. Take psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Edgerly’s advice. “If you put your keys [or whatever] in the same place every day, you’ll always, without fail, know where they are.” The more you do something the same way, the more likely you are to remember it.

Association is another memory-enhancing technique. Do you ever worry that you didn’t lock the door? Or that perhaps you left the oven on? There are few things more annoying than going back, only to discover (in 99.99% of cases) that you did do what you thought you didn’t.

Associating something distinctive with an action can be helpful in remembering it. For example, singing a silly tune to yourself as you lock the door will help you remember it later. Dr. Edgerly points out that most people are visual learners, which explains why we rarely forget faces but often forget names. When you meet a new person, she suggests repeating the name to yourself and then using it at least once in conversation. “So, Murlene, how long do you plan to be in town?”

Memory problems can sometimes be a sign of increased stress. In these cases, you have to unlock the underlying causes to help open the door to a better memory and a less anxious life.

Door! Unlock! I just remembered why I walked out into the waiting room!

I left my keys in the front door.

Michael J. Hurd, Life’s a Beach

“How do we keep our inner fire alive? Two things, at minimum, are needed: an ability to appreciate the positives in our life – and a commitment to action. Every day, it’s important to ask and answer these questions: ‘What’s good in my life?’ and ‘What needs to be done?”

― Nathaniel Branden, psychologist & author

The German economy contracted 0.3% on a quarterly basis, according to the Federal Statistics Office. Germany’s stronghold on manufacturing is at risk. The government implemented new provisions to bypass the constitution and spend in perpetuity on the incoming war. Spending is up, revenues are down—the German economy is in a recession.

Annual GDP reached 0.2% in Q2, a 0.1% decline from Q1. Around 10% of all German exports are sent to the US, and some are blaming tariffs for the downfall without seeing that the trend was already in motion. Germany’s economy has been in a multi-year downturn caused by ignorant economic policies that directly damaged Germany’s mercantile stronghold in Europe.

German Net Worth

Politicians suffocated automobile manufacturing through net-zero regulations. Sanctions on Russia caused Germany to lose 50% of its oil imports. Its willingness to bend to Brussels has reshaped the demographic landscape with a spike in the population due to migration.

Lawmakers have adopted a war posture and are pushing to increase military spending while abandoning their austerity policy. Germany may be the wealthiest nation in the European Union, but individual households are not experiencing any benefits. In fact, the average German has far less than those living in countries with a smaller GDP. The cost of living has never meaningfully dropped since the pandemic and lockdowns.

Germany has not experienced such economic weakness since post-World War II. Estimates believe that the economy will decline 0.3% for the year or remain stagnant at best. Manufacturing has dropped 10% below pre-pandemic levels. Construction has shrunk by around 3% in recent quarters due to high costs. Exports, which are 34% of Germany’s GDP, are down as demand from the US and China wanes.

If Germany tanks, then the entire European Union will sink, as Germany alone comprises nearly a quarter of the Union’s entire GDP.

Martin Armstrong, Armstrong Economics

Thursday, the Supreme Court announced its opinion in National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health Association. The case involved the fate of approximately $783 million in NIH research grants that were tied to DEI initiatives rather than to general scientific research. By a 5-4 vote, the court ruled that a single federal judge could not compel the federal government to spend nearly $1 billion on nonsensical pseudo-research it no longer wished to fund.

This case may ultimately prove more important than the money it saved because it indicated the Supreme Court was losing patience with inferior courts and with one of its members.

Neil Gorsuch used a concurring opinion that effectively read the Riot Act to lower courts.

Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them.  In Department of Ed. v. California, 604 U. S. ___ (2025) (per curiam), this Court granted a stay because it found the government likely to prevail in showing that the district court lacked jurisdiction to order the government to pay grant obligations. California explained that “suits based on ‘any express or implied contract with the United States’” do not belong in district court under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), but in the Court of Federal Claims under the Tucker Act. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 2) (quoting 28 U. S. C. §1491(a)(1)).  Rather than follow that direction, the district court in this case permitted a suit involving materially identical grants to proceed to final judgment under the APA. As support for its course, the district court invoked the “persuasive authority” of “the dissent[s] in California” and an earlier court of appeals decision California repudiated. Massachusetts v. Kennedy, ___ F. Supp. 3d ___, ___ (Mass. 2025), App. to Application 232a (App.).  That was error. “[U]nless we wish anarchy to prevail within the federal judicial system, a precedent of this Court must be followed by the lower federal courts no matter how misguided the judges of those courts may think it to be.”  Hutto v. Davis, 454 U. S. 370, 375 (1982) (per curiam).

He concluded with this summary:

If the district court’s failure to abide by California were a one-off, perhaps it would not be worth writing to address it. But two months ago another district court tried to “compel compliance” with a different “order that this Court ha[d] stayed.” Department of Homeland Security v. D. V. D., 606 U. S. ___, ___ (2025) (KAGAN, J., concurring) (slip op., at 1).  Still another district court recently diverged from one of this Court’s decisions even though the case at hand did not differ “in any pertinent respect” from the one this Court had decided. Boyle, 606 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 1). So this is now the third time in a matter of weeks this Court has had to intercede in a case “squarely controlled” by one of its precedents.  Ibid. All these interventions should have been unnecessary, but together they underscore a basic tenet of our judicial system: Whatever their own views, judges are duty-bound to respect “the hierarchy of the federal court system created by the Constitution and Congress.”  Hutto, 454 U. S., at 375.

Red State

By Susan Quinn

The Democrats and many Republicans are crying foul over the raid on John Bolton, former National Security Advisor to Donald Trump during his first term. They say that these actions are retribution for the nasty things that Bolton has said; that he included classified information in his book; and that he is being punished for alienating President Trump:

Federal investigators went to Bolton’s house in Bethesda, Md., at 7 a.m. in an investigation ordered by FBI Director Kash Patel, a Trump administration official told The Post. Agents later went to Bolton’s office in downtown DC, but did not enter until a judge signed a warrant for that location late Friday morning.

‘NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission,’ Patel said in a cryptic post to X shortly after the raid began. 

Although people are pointing to Bolton’s use of classified information for his book, the reasons identified for the raid are speculation. Another suggestion was made for the probe:

Investigators reopened a dormant probe into Bolton’s alleged use of a private email to send classified national security documents to his wife and daughter from his work desk before his dismissal by Trump in September 2019, according to a senior US official.

‘While Bolton was a national security adviser, he was literally stealing classified information, utilizing his family as a cutout,’ this person charged.

The probe was initially opened in 2020, and continued into the Biden administration, which froze the investigation.

People are prepared to criticize Trump for almost anything, but I think, so far, they are barking up the wrong tree. There is much speculation for the raid on Bolton’s home and office, but the facts are not available. It is true that both men disliked each other — hated, might be a more accurate term — but that premise still misses the point: If there is reason to think a person has broken a law, then an investigation is warranted. It doesn’t matter how much they hate each other.

As more andeople are investigated, Trump will probably suffer more attacks. For example, Adam Schiff is being investigated for mortgage fraud. So is Letitia James. So is Lisa Cook on the Federal Reserve Board. Eventually, the DoJ will probably look into Alvin Bragg’s outrageous case against Donald Trump. Are these retribution, too?

It would be difficult to deny that Trump must be getting some satisfaction from these pursuits. Would anyone feel inclined to defend any of these people? Does anyone think that they are innocent of the charges or implications of their acts?

Democrats shouting “retribution” don’t surprise me; they are mainly projecting their own reactions onto Trump, whom they would love to endure more prosecutions. But it is time, at least for Republicans, to acknowledge that even if you are a Never Trumper, sometimes pursuing the truth and justice and the facts are more important than taking revenge.

It would be difficult to deny that Trump must be getting some satisfaction from these pursuits. Would anyone feel inclined to defend any of these people? Does anyone think that they are innocent of the charges or implications of their acts?

Democrats shouting “retribution” don’t surprise me; they are mainly projecting their own reactions onto Trump, whom they would love to endure more prosecutions. But it is time, at least for Republicans, to acknowledge that even if you are a Never Trumper, sometimes pursuing the truth and justice and the facts are more important than taking revenge.

More than that, has anyone noticed that these actions are putting cracks into the edifice of the Deep State?

If you take a careful look at the decision of a New York appellate court today to throw out the unconstitutional and disgraceful $500 million penalty on President Trump and his businesses…

And then you keep your nose in the newspapers and watch New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, getting busted for mortgage fraud…

And then you go back a bit and look at all the declassified documents released by Tulsi Gabbard and John Ratcliffe and Kash Patel that show the entire Russiagate hoax was quarterbacked by President Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton…

And then you just think about this whole rotten sequence — what you see is the collapse of the legal and Deep State forces against Mr. Trump.

In many ways, you could argue it’s the collapse of the Democratic Party.

Not only because the Deep State couldn’t bust Mr. Trump, and the forces of treachery and sedition couldn’t break Mr. Trump, and the prominent liars are themselves now facing criminal indictment, and making it all worse for that crowd — Mr. Trump himself was re-elected.

Which was the Obama-Clinton Deep State’s worst nightmare.

And as far as the Deep State goes, it appears that all of those people who participated in the Russian hoax and various other phony trials — well, they’re getting fired from their jobs. And they’re all lawyering up.

And on top of all that, here’s Mr. Trump running a vastly successful administration — in terms of economic policy, domestic policy, foreign policy, you name it.

Wait a minute, though, don’t forget the president is going to inspect Washington, D.C., this evening — so let’s add law and order to that list.

And he closed the wide open border.

So that adds to the Deep State’s nightmare.

Not only could they not put him in jail for 750 years… Or bust his businesses… Or throw him off the ballot… Or tie him to the so-called Russia hoax…

The worst thing of all for the lawyered up Deep State crowd, though, is that Mr. Trump is succeeding in virtually every initiative he’s put forward.

And, not to rub it in, but I want to quote Mr. Trump’s Truth Social post today: “a great win for America” — which describes his victory in the New York appellate court.

It’s a great win for America for many different reasons.

What comes to mind to me, though, is that it shows that eventually, the American judicial system works.

As bad, inept, and corrupt as some of these judges and spies have been, with all of their political biases and weaponization and lawfare against Mr. Trump…

As bad as they are — as the cases moved up the judicial totem pole, Mr. Trump has won them all.

Larry Kudlow is a columnist for the New York Sun. From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business Network.

 Democratic mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani and his comrades at the Democratic Socialists of America want to wipe out the enforcement of all misdemeanor offenses, The Post has learned.

In its most recent platform, the group blasts policing and detention as “instruments of class war” designed to “guarantee the domination of the working class” — and demands an end what it calls “the criminalization of working-class survival.”

“For all of the working class to achieve collective liberation we must constrain, diminish, and abolish the carceral forces of the state — from prisons and police themselves, to their manifestations in all forms throughout society,” according to the national party’s latest platform, adopted in 2021.

On the campaign trail, Mamdani has repeatedly called for police to stop focusing on what he’s referred to as “non serious crimes.”

“Police have a critical role to play but right now we’re relying on them to deal with the failures of our social safety net, which is preventing them from doing their actual jobs,” he said in a campaign video posted to X Wednesday.

The DSA has also pushed to slash arrests, gut prosecutors’ budgets, abolish cash bail and all forms of pre-trial detention, scrap electronic monitoring, and end imprisonment for parole violations.

Mamdani, a Queens assemblyman and member of the NYC chapter of the DSA and its endorsed mayoral candidate, has questioned the purpose of prisons and repeatedly called to roll back punishment on so-called “non-violent offenses” – both as an Albany lawmaker and in his Gotham mayoral campaign.

On the campaign trail, Mamdani backtracked from his prior ‘defund the police’ views in the wake of the Park Avenue massacre, insisting he’d keep the NYPD roughly at its current size and redirect officers to focus only on “serious” crimes.

Critics remain unconvinced he can lead law enforcement and tame NYC crime.

“I don’t buy for a second that he is moderated on any of these policing questions because he has yet to really articulate in any deep way why he’s moderated or how he’s moderated,” said Rafael Mangual, a legal policy expert at the Manhattan Institute. “All he has really said is that he no longer wants to defund the police, even though police and prison and jail abolition are core tenets of the DSA party platform.”

And Mamdani has even tried to challenge the definition of a violent offense.

“What violent crime is – is defined by the state,” he said at a 2021 protest outside the Manhattan DA’s office to nix cash bail and shut down Rikers – a promise he’s still making. ” Violence is an artificial construction,” he said at the time.

The misdemeanors the DSA wants to erase aren’t minor slip-ups. In the Empire State, they include theft or shoplifting up to $1,000, drug possession, assault without a weapon and even driving while intoxicated.

“They’re driving the city into a hole that’s never going to recover,” said Susan Ginsburg, a resident of Greenwich Village, which has descended into a lawless drug den since soft on crime policies created what neighbors have decried as a revolving door of justice.

“People will break the law with impunity. There has to be deterrent for breaking the law,” she said.

“It’s astonishing that we’re even having this conversation,” said Maria Danzilo, an Upper West Side resident who ran in the Democratic primary for state Senate in 2022 and founded the group One City Rising.

Everybody is so sick and tired of this, and we just want to have a normal, functional, reasonable way of getting through our day without worrying about being hurt. This is exactly the opposite of what New Yorkers need right now.”

To end misdemeanor arrests, Albany would have to pass a bill decriminalizing or downgrading those charges.

Gov. Hochul – who has yet to endorse her fellow Democrat – doesn’t back defunding the police.

If elected mayor, Mamdani can’t change state laws, but does have influence over how they’re enforced. He could force the NYPD to deprioritize certain arrests or pressure district attorneys not to prosecute certain cases – much like Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg did in his controversial “day one” memo telling staff to go soft on armed robberies and drug dealing.

“That will create an EZ-Pass for criminals, enabling them to repeatedly commit misdemeanor crimes,” lambasted Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa. “This will make the police even less effective at enforcement. Ultimately, this will cause the quality of life to decline dramatically, leading to a breakdown of law and order and resulting in chaos and disorder.

New Yorkers like Chelsea resident Alexander Kaplan are stunned by the pro-crime push.

“It’s just difficult to imagine how adults in their right mind could come up with it. I’m not exaggerating, I’m completely serious,” he said. “We’re already suffering from terrible crime. This is going to make it a thousand times worse. And perception matters – just the notion of this would embolden criminals.

Gabrielle Fahmy, New York Post