Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected US President Donald Trump’s 15-point plan for Gaza, stating that no military pull-out will happen until Hamas is “genuinely” disarmed.
Trump’s Board of Peace said last month it had reached an agreement for the “complete disarmament” of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.
But Hamas said handing over its heavy weapons was contingent on Israel ending “all forms of aggression” and withdrawing its forces from Gaza.
Israel has continued to carry out strikes on Gaza since agreeing to an initial ceasefire in the territory last October.
“Israel rejects the 15-point document,” Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting on Sunday.
The Israeli military “will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is genuinely disarmed and will continue to thwart threats against our forces and our citizens”, he added.
A Hamas official told the BBC on Sunday the group “reaffirms it commitment” to the agreement and it was ready “to engage seriously and responsibly in implementing” the 15-point plan.
They called on mediators to ensure “that all parties comply with what has been agreed”.
Israel’s rejection signals another blow for Trump’s Gaza peace plan which was announced in September last year.
The plan included the creation of the Board of Peace to oversee the agreement’s implementation, as well as the disarmament of Hamas, withdrawal of Israeli troops and reconstruction of Gaza.
Netanyahu’s statement does not come as a surprise.
But he has taken some time to make it, perhaps reflecting the difficult position the Israeli leader is in.
He clearly is unhappy with Trump’s plan but at the same time he will not want to upset his closest ally.
It’s just over a week since Trump announced what he called a “monumental step toward lasting peace and security” – that Hamas for the first time had agreed to disarm, on condition that Israel withdraws its forces from Gaza.
On Sunday, Netanyahu was clear that was not going to happen under his watch. He said Hamas had to disarm first, adding that it couldn’t be some “fictitious disarmament” – it had to be real.
The reality is any disarmament and withdrawal of Israeli forces would likely need need to be phased.
Netanyahu said he was now in discussion with US officials about how to go forward.
“They have ideas; some of them are acceptable to us and some are not, and we know how to stand our ground on these matters,” he said.
But just months before Israeli elections and under pressure from members of his right-wing coalition to take a tough stance on Gaza, he is unlikely to want to make concessions.
He has faced calls from far-right parts of the coalition to hold a new cabinet vote and end the Gaza plan, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir who dismissed the draft as “not acceptable”
According to the United Nations, about 1.9 million people – 90% of Gaza’s population – have been displaced in the territory since the war in Gaza started.
The war was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.
Israel responded to the attack by launching a military campaign in Gaza, during which more than 73,000 people have been killed, according to the territory’s health ministry, whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.
WASHINGTON, Aug 8 (Reuters) – U.S. House Democrats preparing for a possible return to power are developing a broad investigative strategy targeting companies and financial firms surrounding President Donald Trump, instead of trying to impeach him immediately, according to four people familiar with the discussions.
Senior Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives and committee aides have discussed using hearings, subpoenas and document requests to obtain records from entities tied to Trump’s political and business orbit, the sources said. It is a bet that investigating private companies and outside financial players will prove more fruitful than directly confronting a White House they expect to resist oversight, they said.
The approach reflects both Democratic caution and a lesson many in the party say they learned during Trump’s first term: that impeachment proceedings can consume Congress while allowing Trump to cast himself as the victim of a partisan campaign.
Instead, Democrats involved in the planning envision using House investigative powers after November’s midterm elections to scrutinize the administration’s decision-making and examine whether Trump used his power to benefit himself, allies or donors.
“We’re not going into this to impeach,” said a senior Democratic aide, describing the thinking among party leaders and committee staff. “No one wants a failed vote on day one. The focus is on building a body of evidence through investigations that can hold Trump accountable.”
Republicans hold a narrow House majority, and polls favor Democrats regaining the majority in November. Winning control would give Democrats the power to issue subpoenas, compel testimony and documents, hold public hearings and pursue contempt proceedings.
Democrats expect the White House to fight or ignore requests aimed at the executive branch, making companies, contractors and financial firms working with the administration an important route for obtaining information, the sources said.
The White House said in a statement that Trump has worked to thwart the “radical left’s agenda” and remains committed to preserving Republican majorities in Congress. A White House official said the administration is “prepared to respond to oversight requests, no matter who is in the House or Senate.”
Three sources said Apple, Alphabet, Palantir, Blackstone, BlackRock and companies owned by Elon Musk, such as Tesla, have surfaced in discussions because of their contracts, regulatory exposure or administration dealings. The sources said no final target list has been established and no formal investigations have begun.
The sources provided no further details about the investigations. Reuters could not determine if they face any accusations of wrongdoing.
Alphabet, Palantir, Blackstone and BlackRock declined comment. Apple and Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.
Democrats are expected to examine Department of Homeland Security contracts, financing for Trump’s planned White House ballroom, corporate donors and alleged pay-to-play arrangements, two sources said. They also plan a probe of Trump-linked financial vehicles including 1789 Capital – a venture capital firm where his son Donald Trump Jr. is a partner – and foreign sovereign wealth funds whose investments in Trump family-linked entities could raise questions about administration influence, the sources said.
1789 Capital did not respond to a request for comment.
Because foreign funds may be harder for congressional committees to reach, Democrats are discussing seeking records from U.S.-based firms and funds tied to Trump’s family and other intermediaries, the two sources said.
LAYING THE GROUNDWORK
Democrats have already begun laying the groundwork for investigations, two of the sources said.
Party leaders are sending letters to companies, contractors and other organizations connected to potential investigations, they said. The requests seek records and pave the way for subpoenas if Democrats win the House, the two sources said.
Representatives Robert Garcia from California and Jamie Raskin from Maryland, the top Democrats on the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, respectively, said existing investigations would expand if Democrats win the House.
“From sketchy Pentagon contracts lining the pockets of the president’s sons, Trump’s crypto billions, and the shady backroom deals for Trump donors, we will ensure we combat corruption when Democrats take back the House in November,” Garcia said in a statement.
The letters include requests for information from media company Paramount Skydance over its dealings with the Trump administration and the proposed Warner Bros. Discovery deal as well as video platform YouTube and parent company Alphabet over the company’s $24.5 million settlement with Trump in September. Letters have also been sent to private prison operator GEO Group and security firm Salus Worldwide Solutions for their contracts with the DHS as well as commodity traders Vitol and Trafigura over the administration’s sale of Venezuelan oil, the two sources said.
Alphabet and Trafigura declined comment. The others did not respond to requests for comment.
The companies can ignore the requests while Democrats are in the minority. But the letters put potential targets on notice and signal records Democrats could subpoena, the two sources said.
IMPEACHMENT NOT FIRST MOVE
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in June on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Democrats haven’t ruled out impeaching Trump if they win back the House but that the party’s focus would be on pocketbook issues.
Democrats involved in the planning say impeachment remains an option if investigations uncover evidence of an impeachable offense, but not as a first move.
The calculation reflects the party’s experience during Trump’s first term, when he became the first U.S. president to be impeached twice by the House before being acquitted by the Senate each time.
“If investigations uncover evidence that we believe meets the threshold, we will not hesitate to move forward,” said the senior Democratic aide.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Deepa Babington)
An Iranian military spokesman said Saturday that Tehran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz is “irreversible,” warning that the United States must accept the new status quo or face even greater costs.
“The Iranian order prevailing over the Strait of Hormuz is irreversible,” Iranian army spokesman Brig. Gen. Amir Akraminia said, according to Iran’s Fars news agency.
“Today, the Iranian order prevails in the Strait of Hormuz, and the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran stand firm until this order is fully established,” Akraminia said.
He said Iran’s armed forces have the will and military capabilities necessary to enforce Tehran’s position.
“The United States has no choice but to accept the status quo, otherwise it will incur costs far greater than in the past,” Akraminia said.
His comments came as Iran said Saturday it was close to reaching an agreement with Oman on a new shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz, although Tehran said a deal alone would not be enough to fully reopen the strategic waterway.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Iran and Oman were “very close” to an agreement on a temporary route while technical and legal issues surrounding a permanent arrangement are resolved.
But Araqchi said reopening the strait would depend on other conditions, including compensation from the United States.
The United Arab Emirates also said Saturday that Iran had attacked a carrier affiliated with its state oil company with a missile as it transited the strait. No injuries were reported. Iran did not immediately comment on the accusation.
Before the war, roughly one-fifth of global oil and gas shipments passed through the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict began with U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28.
Akraminia portrayed Iran’s position in the strait as a result of the country’s resistance to the United States, saying it had elevated Iran’s standing internationally.
Democratic socialist candidate Melat Kiros shocked Colorado’s Democratic establishment when she defeated 15-term incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette in the state’s June primary. The double-digit win exposed a growing rift over the party’s values that has left some Democrats stunned and questioning the future of the party.
“If you had told me this woman would have won by 13 points, I would have bet my house against that,” Doug Friednash, a veteran political strategist in Colorado, told Fox News Digital. “I never would have thought we would have seen a victory of that magnitude here in Denver.”
Friednash has tracked Colorado’s political shift from red to deep blue over the past three decades, previously serving in the state legislature representing House District 10 in Denver. He later served as Denver city attorney and chief of staff to former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, and he currently works as a partner at Brownstein, a prominent legal and lobbying firm in the region.
Kiros’ victory was one of dozens of wins for far-left candidates in Democratic primary elections this cycle as socialists continue to ascend across the country. The far-left’s rise in the party has alarmed seasoned Democrats like Friednash.
“It was one thing watching this happen in New York … But when it happens in a state like Colorado, which is really the gateway to the West, it tells me that this issue is going to spread and may be a cancer to the Democratic Party if they don’t figure out what our values are,” Friednash said.
He noted that Kiros’ victory did not happen in a vacuum, pointing out that DSA-backed candidates have successfully captured seats in the state legislature and city councils over the past few years.
Weddings are a joyous occasion, and I’ve heard of at least three in my social circles in the upcoming months. But two of these weddings are diverting from the norm of a weekend celebratory affair, choosing instead to hold their nuptials on a weekday.
“A weekday?!” one might well say. “How inconsiderate! I can’t take a whole day off from work just to attend a wedding!”
But perhaps that’s the whole point – not to be inconsiderate, of course, but to trim costs. After all, setting a wedding for a weekday reduces the costs of venues, caterers, florists, and other services, while also automatically lowering the wedding guestlist – not through invites from the couple, but through each guest’s own decision on how far they are willing to go to be available on the big day.
This trend isn’t just in my social circles, however. As a recent article in Elle explained, the younger generation is riding the pendulum away from the millennial trend of bombastic, Instagram-worthy weddings, opting instead for small, quiet, budget-friendly ceremonies that rely on dresses from grandma’s attic and a friend with a film camera.
“In many ways, this shouldn’t come as a surprise,” author Rowan Beaird writes. “Gen Z has lived most of their lives amid periods of profound economic precarity, and the idea of spending thousands and thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars on a single day seems absurd.”
Beaird believes these young couples are onto something, asking, “What would it mean for us to think of these celebrations not as a performance, but as simply what they are at their core: traditions, rituals, ceremonies marking the start of a marriage?”
Wait, weddings that are traditions, rituals, and ceremonies to mark the start of a marriage? What a novel idea!
Except … that’s exactly what a wedding was always supposed to be: a solemn pledge which marks two lives coming together symbolically and physically, promising to love and to cherish one another in sickness and in health, not a big party that celebrates a physical relationship that’s already started – and may even be on the rocks soon given the debt required to make the party bigger and better than the one the Joneses had last year.
For in my estimation more permanent & genuine happiness is to be found in the sequestered walks of connubial life, than in the giddy rounds of promiscuous pleasure, or the more tumultuous and imposing scenes of successful ambition.
Washington was writing more about the daily aspects of married life more than he was speaking of wedding ceremonies, but I believe his advice speaks to the trend away from over-the-top weddings. Essentially, Washington saw that a happy marriage isn’t necessarily one which has all the bells and whistles, the sights and sounds, the smells and the tastes that make a wedding Instagram perfection. Those things all appeal to the senses – the “giddy rounds of promiscuous pleasure” and the “imposing scenes of successful ambition.”
Instead, it is the quiet solemnity – those “sequestered walks” – of a simple marriage ceremony surrounded by family, old traditions, and even homemade cake, that tend to create true happiness. For such events are not spectacles of eye candy that fool guests into thinking the couple has it all together; rather, they are humble attempts to focus on the people and realities of life – the stuff that all marriages are really made of in the end.
And when we recognize that true marital success is found in how we handle the simple, foundational things of life – God, family, friends, and resources – then perhaps we’ll have more couples who make it further than a few years after they walk down the aisle.
UPDATE: Kamala Harris has just issued a desperate warning to every American that if the SAVE America Act passes, people have to prove who they are to vote
Kamala warns it will disenfranchise people.
DOES SHE REALIZE WHAT SHE’S ADMITTING?!
“This president is trying to push this SAVE Act, which basically requires for people to register to vote, you need PROOF of WHO YOU ARE!”
😭😭
You don’t have to convince ME! Everyone should prove who they are to vote!
Kamala is an incredible saleswoman for the SAVE America Act.
SEN. ASHLEY MOODY NAILED IT: “The SAVE America Act, indeed election integrity efforts, are grounded in a simple common sense, indeed foundational principle, that only American citizens should vote in American elections. I really am dumbfounded that I still have to come to the floor and have this debate with anybody in this chamber!”
The maximalists wanted regime change, the minimalists wanted nothing, and the doubters see only waffling. Carafano’s answer: the victor gets to define victory — and everywhere you look, the region is moving Trump’s way.
The maximalists wanted regime change, the minimalists wanted nothing, and the doubters see only waffling. Carafano’s answer: the victor gets to define victory — and everywhere you look, the region is moving Trump’s way.
Iran War Turns into Trump Middle East Triumph: We are about to see the biggest reshaping of the Middle East since Moses led the Jews out of Egypt.
Like the pharaoh, who missed every warning sign up to the parting of the Red Sea, the critics and questioners of Trump’s tug-of-war with what’s left of the Iran regime seem obtuse to the prophetic truth that the region will never be the same again—in a good way.
Maximalists. They would only be happy if Trump fought the war they wanted, arguing that nothing less than overthrowing the regime would do. Anything else is a defeat and a humiliation. That’s a perversion of the president’s more limited goals to eliminate the regime’s capacity to bully and destabilize the region—objectives largely accomplished.
Procrastinators. They are impatient and confused by what they see as Trump’s waffling, vacillating between negotiating and punishing the regime, overlooking the deep conviction behind his strategy, a sincere humanitarian streak which abhors needless loss of life—ours and theirs. Since he has largely accomplished our war aims, Trump can take a more measured approach to get to the end-state he wants without unnecessary loss of life and needless destruction. Instead, he is “de-risking—every time the Iranians fail to meet their obligations or retaliate, he takes more capabilities and assets of Iran off the table.” Rest assured, worriers, that while the war may only be over when the enemy quits—the truth is that the enemy has already lost, and now the only prospect they face is that the more they fight, the more they lose.
Theory of Victory
The victor gets to define victory.
Every war leader, in every war, has their detractors. Commanders-in-chief need a better metric to judge their efforts than taking the counsel of discontented doubters.
A good fight has a “theory of victory,” a logical, feasible, suitable, and acceptable means to justify calling a win in war. That guidepost is the best measure of success.
The real test of “is Trump winning” is if there are signs that the long-term peace structure the president is seeking to replace the overshadowing threat of Iran is emerging. Everywhere you look in the region—the answer is yes.
Energy Resilience. Only a year ago, the Iranian regime could threaten to shut down up to a third or more of the world’s oil exports. Even today, while fighting in the Strait of Hormuz still lingers, that is no longer true. Regional exports are rebounding, by some estimates up to two-thirds of pre-war levels. The UAE, for example, is already exporting at 85% of pre-war levels.
Nor is oil rocketing toward $ 200 a barrel like the IRGC hoped. In fact, prices are bobbing below wartime highs. Part of this is because the region is rapidly developing redundant and resilient means to move product through new cooperative initiatives, including potentially a Saudi-Israeli pipeline. The prospects that Iran can hold the flow of the world’s energy hostage are now nil.
Trump Won the Iran War
So, here is the reality check—the inconvenient truth the doubters don’t want to talk about.
If Trump were losing his war, none of these initiatives would be happening. Instead, what is being witnessed is increased American influence, increased partnerships, and more momentum for the framework Trump envisions to bring long-term peace and stability to the region. These are not signs of defeat, but regional transformation on an unprecedented scale.
The spin doctors can spin whatever the damn well please, but the historians are going to write that Trump is the most consequential force in reshaping the Middle East in modern memory.
About the Author: Dr. James Jay Carafano
James Jay Carafano is a national security expert and a 25-year Army veteran. His most recent books are Cold Combat: Mountain Warfare in Italy and the Battle of San Pietro, 1943, and Digital Dominance: Winning in a Socially Networked World. He is a 19FortyFive Contributing Editor.
North Carolina elementary school is facing backlash after parents discovered a transgender music teacher was educating students while wearing a dress, causing a bitter divide.
Middle Creek Elementary School in Apex, near Raleigh, went back to school on July 30, where students were met with a new music teacher, who is a ‘transgender biological male, who dresses as a woman,’ State Representative Erin Paré said in a statement.
At a school board meeting on Tuesday, many parents said they were unaware of the new hire, with many finding out via social media, after popular creators, such as Libs of TikTok, posted about the teacher.
Heagarty said the district is ‘following the guidance of the United States Constitution and our US courts system,’ which dictated that school dress codes ‘must be gender neutral and non-discriminatory.’
Many parents and board members spoke in support of the teacher, including board member Jennifer Job, who accused parents of using the educator to propel their political agenda.
‘People online and in this room are willing to sacrifice this person’s love for their job for their culture war,’ she said at the meeting.
Many parents and community members said the addition of a transgender teacher promoted diversity, and attacking the educator was only showing children to discriminate based on appearance and identity.
‘We have a responsibility as a county to serve students of all diverse backgrounds and their families,’ Anna Crollman, who formerly taught in the district, said at the meeting, according to The Observer.
However, some parents have formed a coalition called Middle Creek Parental Rights, which is led by Aaron Driver and his wife.
The group is demanding the school release the hiring records for the transgender teacher and said parents should not have found out about the educator via social media.
He said young students have come home with ‘big questions’ about gender identity.
Arecent article in City Journal by Heather MacDonald argued that street homelessness is fundamentally an addiction and mental health crisis disguised as a housing shortage.
I’ve been saying the same thing for a number of years. The romance of the poor homeless on city sidewalks being there because of capitalism, unfair equity practices, poverty, or racism is over. Yet the Left continues to pursue this romantic fiction, despite it being a lie.
Once, there was an element of truth to this myth. The phrase, “Lift them up!” was a favorite among Philadelphia homeless activists.
The truly homeless — people not addicted to drugs who want to get off the streets as soon as possible — are able to obtain housing and move on. But the men and women who make the streets their home, cannot be said to be “homeless.” They are vagrants, 100% of them victims of addiction. Many are superficially “nice” people who panhandle, shoplift, and even rob their fellow vagrants for one reason only: to get money for drugs.
When chronic vagrants are offered housing, they refuse it. They cannot manage the housing application process because their addiction to Xylazine (or tranq), mixed with Fentanyl, keeps them unconscious half the day. They nod out in the street as fellow vagrants go through their pockets and steal what little they own.
The housing process means rules; it means forced rehab; it means giving up the freedom of the streets, where one can roam, score, panhandle, steal, or shoplift. Bicycles are a major theft item. The vagrants hunt for unlocked bicycles in front of convenience stores, or tucked away on city porches.
A charitable soul might give vagrants warm blankets, heat up milk and feed it to them in a bottle, wash their hair, give them a hundred dollars, cook them dinner or take them out to Applebee’s, but in a few hours’ time, they’ll be right back where you found them: drugged out, broke, and looking as if they are on the verge of death.
MacDonald describes a scene in New York City:
The [homeless outreach] workers leap from their van, arms piled with blankets and jackets and food, and race toward her, painfully eager to please.…She declines an appointment for free medical and psychiatric care: ‘I’m bad at keeping time. I’m bad at adulting.’
MacDonald describes a scene in New York City:
The [homeless outreach] workers leap from their van, arms piled with blankets and jackets and food, and race toward her, painfully eager to please.…She declines an appointment for free medical and psychiatric care: ‘I’m bad at keeping time. I’m bad at adulting.’
The new vagrants do not want a house; they want your untethered bicycles, Amazon packages, and… copper wire.
The street affords them the freedom to cut almost endless amounts of copper wire from streetlamps, old Verizon telephone poles, abandoned factories, and underground tunnels, where the wire can be as big around as octopuses.
The underground wires will rake in thousands of dollars from a local scrapyard. The amoral scrapyards will take anything, no questions asked, although some have rules allowing only scrappers driving vehicles to cash-in; walk-ins with shopping carts are prohibited. The scrappers on foot, however, often pay the guys in vehicles a percentage to take in their stuff.
The scrapyard dealers are often a lot like the corner drug dealers/cartels in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood—no qualms about who they’re doing “business” with.
With the neighborhood cartels, the police may orchestrate a newsworthy raid and arrest a bunch of criminals. While the raid may make the national news, within 24 hours all of the arrested dealers will be replaced by new dealers. Think of an endless series of Russian Nesting Dolls. In this way, the police never get at the root of the problem. They make one big arrest, get a fabulous news story, but the problem remains unsolved.
Cutting wire and then stripping it to cash-in the copper underneath is big business among vagrants. Women are typically not involved in copper wire extractions because it is dangerous. A basic daredevil approach to electricity is necessary. A first-timer could easily be electrocuted. Recently, in the city’s Port Richmond area, there was a news report of a man setting himself on fire.
The news account mentioned no details; it was up to the reader to guess the facts, but a vagrant I interviewed—and with whom I sometimes share a coffee—told me the man in question was a regular panhandler at the local Wawa who was cutting wire for the copper but cut a live wire by mistake and it blew up in his face. He survived, but was badly burned.
He needed the copper wire, not to save for a house, but to take to the scrapyard to get money for Xylazine and Fentanyl.
I haphazardly “follow” the lives of four or five addicts in my neighborhood. Sometimes I’ll buy them a coffee or something to drink. They are constantly dehydrated; they can’t go one hour without something to drink. They drink endless quantities of milk and soda.
All of them say they like living in the street. Some have even told me, “Once you get used to it, living on the street is fine and you’ll never want to go into a shelter again.”
These men shoplift compulsively, mostly at the local Wawa where the security guards aren’t paid enough to engineer a confrontation. They rationalize their thefts from stores as affecting heartless corporations, rather than hurting individuals.
“I would never steal from a person, especially an old lady,” I’ve heard many say. “Wawa means nothing to me. The dollar store throws out much of its merchandise anyway; it winds up in dumpsters behind the store.”
Given the liberal policies of Democrat Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner, Wawa security guards look the other way as vagrants help themselves to large coffees, cold sandwiches, two or three cold drinks, and walk away while normal customers stand in long checkout lines.
Sometimes for effect, a guard will yell, “Hey you!” but it ends there. They’re not paid enough to go chasing after them. The vagrants also hit the local dollar store, where they take whatever they want, then walk out.
The dollar store employees watch them steal but don’t do anything. Like the guards at Wawa, they are not paid enough to get involved. Sometimes a manager will chase a shoplifter through the parking lot, but this is more theater than actual police tactic.
The real police want nothing to do with this sort of petty crime. They rarely prosecute. Nobody seems to care, except of course those drug cartel neighborhood dealers, who expect you to have the right amount of cash for drugs, will accept no change during the transaction, and who will hunt you down mercilessly if you cheat them in any way.
Living on the street is an intentional lifestyle, rooted in criminality, and it’s time we stop confusing it with genuine homelessness.
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Progressive candidate Abdul El-Sayed — beloved by the now blossoming Democratic Socialists of America — won his primary Tuesday night against the more moderate Democrat in his Michigan race, one many consider a pivotal shift for the party. He faces off against Republican Mike Rogers in a seat Democrats could fork over to Republicans in a year when they hope to take the Senate.
But El-Sayed isn’t the only far-left candidate taking the country by storm, and neither is socialist Zohran Mamdani, the handsome New York mayor trying to figure out how to run a government grocery store. Adorable young Democratic Socialists are gaining traction from coast to coast as Democrats face a civil war within their own ranks.
Some Republicans have watched the rise of socialist candidates across the country with a grin from ear to ear. Certainly this means demise for Democrats come November, right? The Senate is secure! Even with the Iran war and Tucker Carlson’s rebellion, maybe the House can be saved, or so they think.
Each socialist young face that pops up seems more ignorant and more radical — than the last. They quite literally are talking about seizing the means of production, impoverishing the middle class, and abolishing the Senate. The Democratic Socialists of America platform goes on at length about “queer liberation” and “fully abolishing the police and prison system.” Any Baby Boomer in my home state of Texas or political staffer at a happy hour in Rosslyn, Va. is tempted to chuckle and smile knowingly at the Democrats’ coming demise this November. Those policies certainly can’t win…
The Monkey’s Paw But I would urge caution for those Republicans. While the rise of socialist candidates likely means better electoral prospects for Republicans this November, it demonstrates a profound shift in the views of our nation. Can this really go on forever without consequences?
We are the last great hope for Republics. Remember Federalist Paper 39? We are the first and likely the last experiment of self-government. A city on a hill. Remember all that? How can a population enchanted with socialism that has forsaken pious faith possibly bear the heavy mantle of American Republican Society? The foundations are being destroyed, and the righteous should weep, not cheer. John Rogers, a top pollster at Cygnal, raised similar concerns in his segment this week on “Washington Watch”:
“I think this is kind of a monkey’s paw scenario where I think we need to be careful about what we wish for, right? I mean, people like Hasan Piker are dangerous, dangerous people, and we don’t want their ideas mainstreamed. In Michigan, in particular, it probably does mean that Mike Rogers, who is going to be the Republican nominee, it will probably improve his chances on winning that Senate seat if El-Sayed is the nominee. … So if Republicans were able to pick off this Senate seat in Michigan, it would be huge for this election cycle. But the rise of the Democratic Socialists and people like El-Sayed is not a good thing for the country.”
Not good at all.
Admittedly, this view presupposes that the rise of socialism is a long-term trend, not a short-lived political moment. I discussed this question with veteran investigative reporter Mark Tapscott and FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter on a recent “Outstanding” podcast, and we all agreed it’s here to stay. The data backs it up. A recent CNN poll found that a third of Democrats identify as Democratic Socialists. On top of that, many Democrats and some non-political Americans are being won over by socialist candidates as the taboo around the “S word” is evaporating at an astonishing rate.
We can, of course, make the case that the socialist-style intervention and subsidization destroys productivity and increases the cost of any industry with which it entangles itself all while running up the federal debt (see university education and health care in America). And we can point to Venezuela, a tropical country that has to ration food, or Cuba, where abject poverty is the norm and corruption is rampant. We can point to the brutality and the failure of the Soviet Union.
But for many, for whatever reason, these arguments fall on deaf ears. Prices are rising faster than wages. They have student debt. They will never be able to buy a house. If they can’t build wealth over time, what do they have to lose? Sadly, they are building the political machine that will devour them. Maybe it is fitting given Silicon Valley is doing the same with AI, but that is a conversation for another article.
Careful What You Wish For Now, I’ve made the point that cheering socialism is bad because it’s bad for the country, and because in some real sense to do so is to take pleasure in the dysfunctional response to real suffering felt by our fellow countrymen, many of them of the younger generations.
But beyond that, celebrating the rise of socialist candidates could be a strategic mistake for Republicans. Remember how Democrats greedily promoted then-candidate Donald Trump leading up to the 2016 election? The leftist media knew he was good for ratings, said outrageous things, and was “certain” to lose to Hillary Clinton.
The most viral example of this may be in 2013 when liberal John Oliver, while guest hosting “The Daily Show,” famously begged Trump to run, repeatedly saying “please” as the audience roared with laughter. Hillary Clinton even famously encouraged this rhetoric in her “pied piper” strategy, thinking Trump would be an easy foe. Soon, Democrats’ dream came true, but it quickly became a nightmare as Trump trounced Clinton.
If Republicans aren’t careful, this election or next, or maybe the one after that, they may wake up with the same dumbstruck shock Hillary Clinton voters felt on Wednesday, November 9, 2016. That won’t feel good. And it will feel even worse once the socialist policies begin gutting the country of its wealth, its identity, and its legacy.
Let’s innovate to solve the economic problems faced by the less wealthy in our country instead of riding their misery to the ballot box.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 