By John Horvat II

The Left always likes to portray itself as the angry party. It defines itself by its ability to champion causes that recall the French Revolution’s trilogy of liberty, equality, and fraternity and the mob storming the Bastille.

Wherever there are restrictions — even legitimate ones — the Left calls for liberation and license. Where differences appear — even natural ones of talent or effort — the Left denounces them as injustice and demands absolute equality. The angry party is always looking for a good revolution to incite or a crisis not to waste.

However, this angry party image is now in trouble in America. Since the last election, the Left has been rudderless, disoriented, and uninspired. It has gone from being the party of clamor to that of whining. There is no thunder on the Left, only incoherent rants.    

A Global Populist Movement

This lack of direction is a sign that something major has gone awry. It is not a matter of tweaking, framing, or remessaging. Some observers suggest that the world is transitioning from one historical epoch to another. The debate shifted, and the Left was left behind.

The New York Times editorial writer David Brooks, who himself shifts from Left to Right as the mood seizes him, describes the current phenomenon as “a world-shifting political movement” affecting both the Left and the Right. He compares it to the Communist Revolution, the New Deal, the Sixties, feminism, the LGBTQ+ revolution and other key movements that marked modernity.

He calls this massive shift the “global populist movement.” It is characterized by a general distrust of social structures, governmental programs, and institutions. People consider everything to be “rigged, corrupt and malevolent.” They question everything, harbor social resentment and demand signals of trust. 

A Failure to Adapt

Brooks thinks conservatives have taken note of this new movement and begun to adapt. However, most rank-and-file leftists did not get the memo and cling to old, exhausted models and rhetoric that no longer reflect how things have changed. 

Between lattes, the Left’s wealthy liberal elites are still looking for downtrodden masses to hail. They are stuck with outdated leftist scripts that are too worn to refresh. They claim to speak in the name of “the people,” with whom they rarely associate.

The Wrong Focus

Angry leftist narratives have always focused on attacking power structures based on the erroneous Marxist idea that everything can be reduced to power and money. They automatically divide society into haves and have-nots. Every problem can be resolved by taking money away from those who have too much and throwing it, as government funding, at those they deem have too little.   

Since the sixties, the Left has concentrated on infiltrating and conquering the institutions of power: academia, media, industry, culture, and government. It has succeeded fabulously and used its new-found power to redistribute wealth and suppress the Right.

The problem with taking over institutions of power is that one becomes identified with them. Together with power, the Left also assumed complacent and bourgeois attitudes.

Thus, the Left neglected the “proletariat” of ordinary Americans and adopted a new, more learned and sophisticated one with an alphabet soup of LGBTQ-type causes associated with identity politics. From its positions of influence and control, the Left became woke and imposed a cancel culture on all who stood in their way.

Responding to Cancel Culture

In response, the Right complained bitterly of this oppression, took up the cause of working (not woking) class Americans, proposed credible alternatives and won elections. It spoke to voters in a language they could understand and reassured them that they mattered.

However, from the comfort of its ivory towers, movie studios, and corporate C-suites, the Left’s response to electoral defeat has been to return to its tired and spent rhetoric. The problem is that the Left cannot return to its angry politics against the establishment because it is that establishment.

This leftist establishment is disconnected from the American reality and mesmerized by an alternative woke reality. To put it bluntly, in 2024 electoral terms, the Left now represents they/them, not you.

Return to the Culture

Thus, conservatives have successfully shifted the debate from the economic field to the cultural one. Accordingly, before the Left can propose anything credible in the economic field again, it will need to reconnect with the culture first. David Brooks claims, “The Left can’t get a hearing until they get the big moral questions right: faith, family, flag, respect for people in all social classes.”

In other words, what Brooks is saying is that if the Left ever wants to win again, it must stop being yesterday’s angry Left. In this historical movement of resentment and distrust, the Left has become the easy target of an army of forgotten and aggrieved voters.

The only way to placate them is for the Left to change. It must speak to voters in soft, reassuring, and patriotic language to earn the trust of the man on the street. Its radicals need to tone down their message and pronoun usage. They must eat less organic avocado toast and more apple pie.

The Left must rein in its woke activists who, like trans athletes, are running unfairly and far ahead of a public that only wants normalcy. It must get its pseudo-champions to return their ill-gotten trophies.

Such a dramatic shift might mean throwing corrupt union cronies, border haters, tree huggers, and police defunders under the bus.

Brooks argues that mastering such contradictions is what it will take for the Left to navigate “the tectonic shift” that lies ahead.

That is why the Left is in big trouble. To survive, it must rewire its DNA. The party born of rage that feeds on unbridled passions must now go lite. It is an existential challenge. Brooks is asking the Left to come up with a new identity and grand narrative that will “take decades.”  

This new image that Brooks prescribes as a remedy will make many angry leftists angry. It is not only that they see no need to change, but they also don’t know how to make it happen. They will double down on their old turf of Marxist boilerplate. The Left cannot understand why David Brooks says that, at the height of power, having full mastery of the institutions and believing itself victorious, it must “think anew.”

What Brooks did not mention is that the anger of the radicals might turn to despair when they finally realize the Left has nothing new about which to think.

By John Horvat II, American Thinker

Former Clinton pollster Mark Penn appeared on Fox News Thursday to describe how the New York City primaries were manipulated to benefit Socialist Democratic New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.

With 88% of ballots counted, Mamdani was ahead with 43.5% of first-choice votes, while former Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo trailed with 36.3%. During an appearance on “The Ingraham Angle,” Penn said the timing and structural shifts in the election process have significantly benefited far-left candidates at the expense of moderate Democrats.

“This is a big problem, and there is a lot of panic, I think, in New York, generally, in terms of what can they do? How can they get someone in the general election? Remember, these primaries were played with,” Penn told host Laura Ingraham.

Penn said that only around 400,000 votes determined the outcome.

“This used to be in September. And there would have been a runoff between Zohran and Andrew Cuomo in the old system with much higher turnout. Right now, you have a city of 8 million people, 400,000 votes one way or the other here is determining an extreme move to the left, with a voting system nobody could figure out,” Penn said.

Penn said the revised voting system confused voters and further suppressed turnout.

Geopolitical turmoil has prompted price hikes for long-term storage survival food. Heaven’s Harvest is the exception because their all-American food is sourced locally. Use promo code “Patriot” for a nice discount today!

“This has been played with and moved to the dead of summer when turnout is going to be low, and activists can win the day. So, we need to get our election system back. And right now I think this is a really bad turn for the Democratic Party if something isn’t figured out here before Election Day,” Penn said.

The primary election system in New York City was moved from September to June, which Penn believes led to a significant decrease in voter turnout.

If Mamdani maintains his lead, he will face Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa in November as well as incumbent Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who is running for reelection on independent ballots after skipping the Democratic primary. Unlike the primary, the general election for mayor will not utilize ranked-choice voting.

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CAMBRIDGE, MA — The Department of Homeland Security announced that a massive terrorist sleeper cell was discovered hiding just outside of Boston, Massachusetts.

Authorities found the large group of infiltrated terrorists after a routine patrol around a well-known university’s infamous quad uncovered dozens of Iranian sleeper cell operatives.

“We’ve never seen anything like it,” FBI spokesman Agent Dale Johnson said. “On the outside, they appeared to be dressed like college students and faculty, but every single one of them was a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer. We have reason to believe that the entire campus is, in fact, a terrorist training site.”

Suspicions mounted after local law enforcement and Homeland Security agents began seeing concerning news stories coming out of one of the nation’s oldest and most respected universities.

“We started to receive calls that groups of so-called ‘students’ were chanting ‘Globalize the intifadah!’ right here on campus, out in the open,” Agent Johnson continued. “Then we started learning that individuals were harassing Jewish students and yelling at white people, and we put things together and discovered this massive cell of terrorist operatives living right here in the United States. It’s the largest sleeper cell bust in history.”

At publishing time, over 15,000 sleeper cell agents had been arrested at the site, with authorities saying they suspected many terrorists trained at the school had already infiltrated corporations and institutions throughout the country.

Babylon Bee

By Olivia Murray

What radicalized me? Oh gee I don’t know, maybe stories like this one?

Per a report at Fox News, township officials in the unincorporated community of Cranbury, NJ are in the process of seizing a historic family farm that has been under the family’s ownership for 175 years—that means since 1850—because they want to use it for a welfare housing project.

Benji Farraro reports that in April, Andy and Christopher Henry, the two brothers who currently own the farm, received a letter that informed them that Cranbury would be seizing all 21 acres, but government officials have now decided that they’ll make do with just half of the farm, and benevolently leave the house for the Henry family—now the Henry family gets to be neighbors with the third world foreigners who will no doubt be taking up residence in the “affordable housing” units built on Henry land! (Kind of reminds of when Abraham Lincoln spitefully directed the federal government to seize land that belonged to Mary Custis Lee as retribution for her husband’s allegiance to country over the Union, citing a “tax” dispute.)

The only thing I found surprising was that one of the owners of the farm was “shocked” that the government would operate in such an evil way:

‘It makes me feel terrible,’ Henry said. ‘It was a shock. We are surrounded by warehouses, been turning down developers for years. We just wanted to be left alone and take care of our place like my ancestors did before us.’

I’m sorry sir, but where in the he** have you been?

The entire system is built on theft, murder, and all other evils.

Operation Northwoods? Operation Paperclip? MK-Ultra? Ruby Ridge? Waco? Tuskegee experiments? Poisoning in St. Louis? Testing Big Pharma drugs on foster children? Operation Mockingbird? Fauci and the beagles? Lockdowns for “non-essential” businesses? Mandated participation in experimental drug trials? Legalized abortion? State-sponsored kidnapping when parents don’t want their children to be trans-ed? The inability to actually prosecute the Epstein buyers? The mass importation of violent and anti-American third world forgners? Two-tiered justice systems? The ATF gunwalking scandal? Intelligence officials conspiring to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop to help cheat Joe Biden into office?

Don’t the Henry brothers pay income taxes? Property taxes?

I’m limited on my word count, so for brevity’s sake, I’ll stop there—but there’s literally no shortage of examples.

As Andrea Widburg commented, eminent domain was only ever intended for infrastructure projects like roads, dams, and railways. (I still think it’s criminal.) It was not a vehicle for social justice experimentation though.

But, thanks to a state mandate, New Jersey must build “146,00 affordable housing units by 2035.” Isn’t socialism just utterly horrendous?

Of course I get it that the Henry brothers just “want to be left alone”—we do too—but the side that wants to win will always beat the side that doesn’t realize they’re in a war.

Olivia Murray, American Thinker

It has been many years since a political party was cast as far into the wilderness as the Democrats of 2025. Fresh off their second defeat at the hands of their mortal enemy, Donald Trump, it was reasonable to assume that the party would realize the need to abandon the progressive policies that repelled the broad center of the electorate. Instead, it appears that the opposite has occurred, as proven in both the response to President Trump’s strike on Iran and Tuesday’s (June 24) Democratic mayoral primary in New York City.

Democrats Doubling Down Democratic Party leaders must understand by now that they need to offer the public more than virulent opposition to Trump and every move he makes. They must realize that being branded a socialist party is a formula for electoral disaster. That’s why they put their thumbs on the scale to ensure that Bernie Sanders would not be their presidential standard bearer in 2016 and 2020 and why they ruled out a Kamala Harris candidacy until Joe Biden’s late withdrawal from the race left them no other choice. But how must their brand look to ordinary Americans now that avowed anti-Israel socialist Muslim Zohran Mamdani has been nominated to represent the party in the city with the larget Jewish population in the world outside of Tel Aviv?

As a New York state assemblyman, Mamdani introduced legislation to crack down on non-profits sending money to Israel. According to Fox News and the antisemitic watchdog group Canary Mission, he became prominent in anti-Israeli protests in the city shortly after the Oct. 7 massacre. A native of Uganda, Mamdani is the son of parents who have long been outspoken anti-Israel activists. His father is a “Marxist” professor at Columbia University, ground zero for post-Oct. 7 protests in the United States, and is “known for his anti-Israel views and obsession with ‘colonialism.’” The election of Mamdani would undoubtedly empower pro-Palestinian activists and throw gasoline on the fire of rancorous disputes raging between New York’s pro- and anti-Israel advocates. His vow to offer universal health care, free childcare, free public transit, rent controls, and a $30-per-hour minimum wage, all paid for by increasing taxes on the usual suspects – corporations and the rich – would certainly drive many people out of such a high-tax environment. His pledge to create a Department of Community Safety that would replace the police in responding to many 911 calls seems sure to negatively impact public safety.

In short, a Mayor Mamdani would mean New York would never be the same.

They Can’t Help Themselves Meanwhile, though a few Democrats have applauded Trump’s strike on Iranian nuclear sites, the party as a whole has done everything it can to demean the president. Instead of at least praising those who carried out the audacious and successful mission or remaining silent, the response has mostly been to claim either that Trump is lying when he says he has obliterated Iran’s nuclear program, that his attack was unconstitutional, and/or that he should be impeached. Democrats may be acting in response to polls showing a majority of the American people were opposed to Trump’s action, but that will surely change if peace breaks out in the Middle East or, at a minimum, hostilities between Israel and Iran cease and no further US involvement is forthcoming.

There are times, such as after 9/11, when the country should be expected to come together regardless of everyone’s political differences. Doing everything in the president’s power to eliminate the ongoing and increasing nuclear threat posed by the world’s leading purveyor of terrorism would seem to be one of those times. And yet, the left simply cannot get over its obsession with attacking all things Trump. Progressives continue to dominate the discussion about the evil orange man as if the November election never took place. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), and now Zohran Mamdani have been dominating the headlines about the Democratic party. What this says to everyday Americans is that the party, far from tacking to the center, has actually become even more progressive than it was in 2024.

Is the current dilapidated state of this ever more radical party ultimately a threat to the stability of the country? Is it healthy for one party to be so unpopular that it cannot mount a credible opposition to those in power? And above all, how can Democrats expect the 2026 and 2028 elections to end differently than 2024 if they double down on the very ideology that cost them control of the White House and Congress?

Tim Donner, Liberty Nation

Just because the judiciary chooses to violate the Constitution does not mean the other branches are required to follow suit.

Since returning to office, President Trump has faced what can only be described as a judicial coup. Through the use of overreaching nationwide injunctions, predominantly Democrat-appointed judges have gleefully granted requests from left-wing activists to block enforcement of the agenda 77 million Americans voted for last year.

Yet, despite this egregious affront to America’s constitutional framework, Trump and his administration are neglecting to stop it.

The latest example of the administration’s refusal to uphold separation of powers is its ongoing battle with a Massachusetts-based federal judge over the president’s deportation of illegal aliens to so-called “third countries.” After District Judge Brian Murphy placed a sweeping injunction blocking the policy’s enforcement, the administration appealed to the Supreme Court, which temporarily stayed the Biden appointee’s order on Monday.

In a stunning act of rebellion against the justices, Murphy — seemingly believing his power usurps that of SCOTUS — issued a separate edict hours after the high court’s ruling in which he declared his initial order “remains in full force and effect.” The judge further claimed, “The District Court’s remedial orders [were] not properly before the [Supreme] Court because the Government has not appealed them, or sought a stay pending a forthcoming appeal.”

So, what did Trump and his administration do?

While U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer correctly characterized Murphy’s power grab as a “lawless act of defiance,” the administration continued to grant the rogue judge’s order legitimacy it doesn’t have. Instead of implementing the president’s policy and telling Murphy to pound sand, team Trump went running back to SCOTUS to ask the justices to “clarify” their Monday stay on the judge’s initial injunction.

But there’s nothing to “clarify.” The high court already spoke on the matter, and there’s no logical or legal reason the administration shouldn’t be executing Trump’s directives — irrespective of what Murphy claims.

Trump and his team’s “strategy,” as it seems, is to continue following the same playbook previously disclosed by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. When asked by Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway last month about how the administration plans to confront the judicial coup undermining the president’s executive authority, Leavitt said that the game plan is to “comply with the courts’ orders” and “win on the merits of these cases.”

In other words, the administration is going to continue granting the premise that what these rogue judges are doing is lawful and the notion that the judiciary has the final say on matters of law and public policy in America — otherwise known as judicial supremacy.

Except, that’s not the system of government the Founding Fathers had in mind when drafting the Constitution. If anything, framers like Alexander Hamilton viewed the judiciary as the weakest of the three branches, as it lacks the “sword” of the executive and the “purse” of the legislature and relies “upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.”

Contrary to claims made by Chief Justice John Roberts, the courts are not supreme to the other two branches. And just because its members choose to violate the Constitution does not mean the executive and legislative are required to follow suit.

As president, Trump has an obligation to abide by the nation’s founding document. It is he who is granted Article II authority to execute the nation’s laws — not rogue judges seeking to usurp such powers.

As Justice Samuel Alito recently observed, federal matters involving nationwide injunctions “may take two or three years before it could come up” to the Supreme Court to be fully adjudicated. That would mean that by the time cases involving the Trump administration reach the high court for final rulings, Trump’s second term would effectively be over.

The longer Trump continues to play along with leftists’ judicial coup, the longer the votes of those who supported him last year will be rendered meaningless, thus ending a presidency before it could even begin.

Shawn Fleetwood, The Federalist

Citing new intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, said that Iranian nuclear facilities have been destroyed by U.S. airstrikes and that if the Iranians attempted to rebuild those facilities it would likely take them years.  

The new Gabbard statement comes as a separate early intelligence assessment found that the United States failed to destroy core component of the Iranian nuclear capacity. According to details of that assessment which were leaked to CNN Tuesday, the strikes only set back Iran by a matter of months.

That report was a product of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the intelligence arm of the Pentagon. The White House has sought to downplay it as “incomplete intelligence,” noting that the assessment was of “low confidence.”

The kerfuffle comes after American B2 bombers dropped 14 30,000-pound GBU-57, or Massive Ordnance Penetrators, on two nuclear facilities buried deep underground in Iran and decades after the U.S. War on Terror, which sowed public doubts about intelligence failures. For his part, President Trump has said unequivocally that the facilities were “obliterated.”

The Israel Atomic Energy Commission said in a statement that the American strike on the reinforced Iranian nuclear site at Fordow “destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable.”

Asked about the origin of the intelligence that Gabbard cited, an intelligence official told RealClearPolitics that “this is new U.S. intelligence.”

Gabbard slammed what she described as “the propaganda media” for trying to undermine what was otherwise heralded as a historic bombing campaign and “President Trump’s decisive leadership.”

On this front, the administration was momentarily on the backfoot ahead of the strikes. Testifying before Congress in March, Gabbard said that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.” Asked about the testimony aboard Air Force One, Trump replied, “I don’t care what she said.”

Less noticed in the press, however, was testimony from Gabbard that Iranian “enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.” The White House told RCP that Trump ordered the strikes under Article II authority to defend the United States against anticipated attacks.

“President Trump and the administration have always been right to say that if Iran chose to make a nuclear bomb, they could do so within weeks,” Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, told reporters last week, “which obviously poses an imminent threat to the U.S. and the world.”

Now that ability has been destroyed. On this point, and at least publicly, all parties seem to agree, even the Iranians. “Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that’s for sure,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told Al Jazeera.

Three facilities were struck by the United States last Saturday – two centers where enrichment was performed, the Natanz and Fordow facilities, and a third center, Isfahan, where enriched uranium is converted into weapons grade material. Overseas at the NATO Summit in the Netherlands, Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphasized the latter.

“You can’t do a nuclear weapon without a conversion facility,” said Rubio, who also serves as national security advisor. “We can’t even find where it is, where it used to be on the map,” he continued, speaking of the conversion facility. “The whole thing is blackened out. It’s gone. It’s wiped out.”

Any debate over the nuclear capacity of Iran is beyond the pale, according to Vice President JD Vance. “President Trump has obliterated the Iranian nuclear program,” he wrote on social media. “The American media seems destined to obliterate their own credibility on this fake story.”

Philip Wegmann is White House correspondent for RealClearPolitics.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Newsmax on Wednesday that Zohran Mamdani’s Democratic primary victory over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is a “nightmare,” calling it proof of communist influence overtaking the city.

In a fiery reaction on “Finnerty,” Giuliani denounced Mamdani’s shocking defeat of Cuomo. Mamdani, 33, would become New York City’s first Muslim mayor if elected in the general election.

“This is a nightmare,” Giuliani said. “I moved out of New York City about a year ago. I still love it more than any city in the world. I’m in mourning for my city.”

Giuliani, who gained national recognition as New York mayor for his handling of the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, explicitly linked Mamdani’s progressive platform to communist theory and criticized voters for their decision.

“This is about the most insane thing the residents of the city could do,” Giuliani continued. “This man [Mamdani] wants to do everything he can do to ruin our government and our civilization. He is exactly what Karl Marx wrote about 150 years ago. He’s the culmination of years and years of communist influence on our city, on our schools, and on our government.”

Mamdani, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist representing Astoria, Queens, in the New York State Assembly, campaigned on progressive initiatives, including reduced funding for law enforcement and opening publicly funded grocery stores.

These policies drew Giuliani’s sharpest criticism.

“All of the communists that planned this, his policies would destroy us,” Giuliani warned. “It would destroy New York City. Any one of them defunding the police alone would, to the extent they did it for just a little while, [and] we had a terrible crime wave.”

Giuliani credited current Mayor Eric Adams for restoring some order after the crime wave that gripped the city after earlier cuts to police budgets. He asserted that Adams had made improvements “by applying our old strategies,” referencing Giuliani’s tenure as mayor when he pursued tough-on-crime policies.

“Adams has straightened some of it out. We’re still feeling it,” Giuliani acknowledged. “But this would be free… free grocery stores?”amdani’s victory, seen by his supporters as a transformative step forward for the city, has sparked controversy due to his outspoken positions on economic equality and policing. Considering broader conservative concerns, Giuliani framed Mamdani’s ascent as symbolic of a long-running communist effort to influence the city.

“They must be turning over in their graves, extremely happy,” Giuliani said of communist ideologues, suggesting Mamdani’s win fulfilled long-standing Marxist goals.

Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.

Los Angeles and California never cease to amaze. I can say that with absolute certainty.

Just when you think things are simmering down, those folks out there come up some off-the-wall freakin’ crap that just so mind glowingly unreal, you have to check twice to make sure you read it right.

And then it’s still unbelievable.

That daffy, worthless, Communista LA mayor is still doing her posing and not much else regarding the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity that hasn’t paused while LA’s coddled illegals go through the motions, acting out during their tantrums in the streets.

STOP THIS LAW STUFF RIGHT NOW

“Mayors across the L.A. region and the country have spoken out unequivocally against these reckless raids and the Trump administration’s chaotic escalation here in Los Angeles,” said Mayor Karen Bass. “When you raid Home Depots and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you deploy troops to our streets, you’re not trying to keep anyone safe – you’re trying to cause fear and panic. These raids must stop.”

Okay, whatever.

It seems the problem in Los Angeles is that they’ve left these people to do their own thing for so long, unimpeded, and lately, completely protected and indulged with state benefits and freebies, that they must not have realized the percentage of the population that actually was never citizens.

That’s the Pollyanna version.

The cynical take is that these businesses were all hiring illegals under the table the entire time because it was cheap and they knew the state would never do a thing to stop them.

I choose Door Number Two.

Well, welcome to a world where your fellow Americans expect everyone in the country – not just certain red states – to follow what’s known as ‘federal immigration law.’ And now that it’s come to California all these slack butt employers who’ve been making out all these years are finding out they have a labor shortage – everyone is scared to come to work in case the place gets raided.

You’re only scared if you’re illegal, right?

Anyway, all these businesses and the unions who make big money off of the illegals who work in union shops and pay those schweet, schweet union dues in places like hotels, etc., are now bent out of shape that these folks are hiding out at home.

If they’re at home, there are two problems. They’re not at work earning any money, they’re not out spending the money they earned, and the employer has no workers earning that money to keep his business running.

This has caused a massive ‘waah’ to rise up.

WHAT TO DO WHAT TO DO

In classic Los Angeles fashion, the answer that businesses, the always progressively-minded community leaders, and unions came up with is ‘Let’s get the city to not to make anybody pay rent.’

Several unions are calling on the Los Angeles City Council to vote for a rent moratorium on the basis that deportation operations have severely shut down business activity.

The community groups say that businesses have been crippled by the loss of workers as well as consumers who are fearing detainment from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

On Tuesday, representatives of the Los Angeles Tenants Union held a press conference with the Coalition of Labor Union Employees and the SEIU to demand the rent moratorium.

“We know that many tenants will not be able to pay their rent come July 1,” said Kenia Alcocer of LATU, who said she is also an illegal alien.

HOLY SMOKING CHECKBOOK

It’s too scary out there right now for lawbreakers to keep breaking the law. They want to stay home and break the law for free.

Community groups say too many families are living in fear amid immigration raids across Southern California, and they are calling on the Los Angeles City Council to take action.

The L.A. Tenants Union, SEIU 721 and the Coalition of Labor Union Employees joined forces for a press conference and rally on Olvera Street Tuesday morning.

They want the City Council to pass emergency protections for people impacted by the raids, including an eviction moratorium. The unions say renters make up more than 60% of L.A. residents and many now face the fear of deportation, and many families may not be able to cover rent if a family member was taken into ICE custody or if they have family members choosing to stay home from work out of fear.

They add that the immigration raids are creating unnecessary fear, and there’s a deepening economic crisis fueled by COVID, fires and now ICE raids.

You know – until the bad ICE men go away.

As you might imagine, landlords have a different opinion.

…Landlords, however, worry that another moratorium could crush them.

“Over 85% of rental property owners in the city of Los Angeles are independent moms and pops who, for the most part, are already struggling to pay their bills,” said Daniel Yukelson, Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles. “I understand that people are very scared and rental property owners are very sympathetic to that. But, as I said, you know, property owners are very dependent on receiving timely rent payments just to make ends meet.”

 They prefer to have the rent paid, having already suffered through first the COVID-era rent and eviction moratoriums, and then the one imposed after the recent fires. Landlords are pretty much over providing free housing at the county’s say-so.

…The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a countywide eviction moratorium in response to the January wildfires, prohibiting evictions for qualifying tenants through July 31, 2025, while discussions on rental assistance funding for unpaid landlords continue. 

Despite efforts to refine the measure, an amendment aimed at improving the ordinance failed in a 3-2 vote, with Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Holly Mitchell in support. Supervisors Janice Hahn, Lindsay Horvath and Hilda Solis voted against truly helping those in need and failing to protect property owners.  The board has committed to further discussions on rental assistance and funding allocations in follow-up meetings. 

Now these people are demanding the county deliver a rent freeze and eviction moratorium because they’re scared.

Somehow, it all makes sense for LA.

…L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has described the raids as a “body blow” to the L.A. economy. Some tenant advocates think the city should respond with a moratorium on evictions.

Tony Carfello, an organizer with the L.A. Tenants Union, said a pause on evictions is necessary because immigrant workers are facing “two crisis situations at once.” L.A. rent puts them at risk of eviction, while ICE raids put them at risk of deportation if they keep working for rent money.

The way Carfello sees it, many immigrant renters are in a double bind: “Am I going to be picked up and deported without due process,” he said, “or am I going to be sent out on the streets?”

All this angst comes down to a simple fact: the ‘due process’ part they love to squawk about was forfeited when they crossed the border illegally and then chose to stay.

Beehe Welborn, Hotair

With the nation watching, the host on Iranian state television asked the question that so many people in Iran — from the political elite to people on the street — were wondering.

“People are very worried about the supreme leader,” the host said to an official from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s office on Tuesday. “Can you tell us how he is?”

He noted that viewers had sent a flood of messages asking the same thing. But the official, Mehdi Fazaeli, the head of Mr. Khamenei’s archives office, did not give a straight answer.

Instead, Mr. Fazaeli said that he, too, had received numerous inquiries from officials and others worried about the ayatollah after the furious bombing campaign by Israel and the United States.

“We should all be praying,” Mr. Fazaeli said.

“The people who are responsible for protecting the supreme leader are doing their job well,” he added. “God willing, our people can celebrate victory next to their leader, God willing.”

,..Sanam Vakil, the director for the Middle East and North Africa at Chatham House, a research group, said that Mr. Khamenei’s absence was notable and a sign that Iran’s leaders were being “extremely careful and security-minded.”

“If we don’t see Khamenei by Ashura,” an important religious procession for Shiite Muslims observed in Iran in early July this year, Ms. Vakil said, “that is a bad sign. He has to show his face.”

New York Times