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The Steps to Establishing Marxism — And How the U.S. Is Slipping Left

Since the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution that brought Vladimir Lenin to power in Russia, every communist system has ultimately failed. From Russia to North Korea, Laos, Cuba, Cambodia, Eastern Europe, and China, communism promised to make everyone equal but, in effect, made nearly everyone equally poor, except for a handful of wealthy party cadres at the top.

To maintain this unnatural system of collectivization, every communist country became a totalitarian dictatorship. In order for the Communist Party to remain in power, restrictions on normal freedoms, such as freedom of speech, assembly, the press, religion, and political affiliation, were enforced by secret police, coupled with centrally controlled courts, prisons, and gulags.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ 1848 Communist Manifesto laid out ten measures for abolishing capitalism. Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek’s 1944 book The Road to Serfdom argued that even well-intentioned central economic planning tends to erode political liberty and personal freedom. In 1958, W. Cleon Skousen published The Naked Communist, which included a list of 45 goals he said represented a communist strategy for the gradual takeover of the United States. On January 10, 1963, Rep. A. S. Herlong Jr. of Florida read the list into the Congressional Record.

Across the United States, there are examples of nearly every one of these steps toward communism. California and New York are the most obvious examples, but the militant left, the extreme left, and Democratic Socialists are pushing similar policies at the state and federal levels.

These include state-run enterprises that undercut private businesses, direct price controls in place of market pricing, government seizure of private real estate, confiscatory taxation of accumulated wealth, and jurisdiction-level withdrawal from uniform federal law enforcement.

They also include organized ideological movements capturing the leadership of core public institutions, coalition networks linking avowedly socialist organizations to mainstream advocacy groups, federal proposals to nationalize parts of strategic industries, the political normalization of these ideas beyond the socialist fringe, and the rebranding of confiscation, nationalization, and seizure under administrative or otherwise benign-sounding terminology.

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Mamdani admin. denies that shoppers will need state photo ID or face mandatory door checks to buy food at upcoming city-run grocery stores

A national political firestorm erupted on Monday following viral social media claims that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani would require shoppers to present identification to purchase food at proposed municipal grocery stores, prompting sharp criticism from conservative leaders, left-wing New Yorkers and a subsequent clarification from City Hall.

The controversy stems from comments made during a press conference addressing the Mamdani (D-N.Y.) administration’s new flagship “food affordability program.” Last week, Mamdani announced a $70 million initiative to open five city-owned, publicly subsidized grocery stores — one in each borough — offering a 30% discount on essential kitchen staples like meat, produce, and pantry goods.

During the press conference, which transpired in late July, a reporter asked the mayor, “How are you going to keep people from taking advantage of that deal, basically? And is there going to be a limit on the number of items that someone can take that are discounted at that level from that essential basket?”

“So our RFP (Request for Proposal) makes very clear this is a program for New Yorkers to be able to put food on the table, not a program for people to be able to make a quick buck through reselling,” Mamdani responded.

Jeanny Pak, the CFO of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, then floated the idea of a residency verification mechanism, mentioning a potential “library card-esque thing” or looking into state IDs to manage buyer eligibility and target local New Yorkers.

However, following the social media buzz, Mamdani’s office later issued a statement denying that shoppers will need to present a state photo ID or undergo door checks to enter or buy food at the proposed city-owned grocery stores.

Regarding the current official status, the Mamdani administration has not formally enacted a mandatory ID policy. They stated they are “still exploring options” to verify local residence, but no final decision has been made ahead of the planned 2027 opening in the Bronx, New York officials emphasized.

Nonetheless, prior to the clarification, video clips of the exchange circulated rapidly across political circles online, sparking immediate accusations of political hypocrisy. Prominent Republican figures seized on the clip to draw comparisons between food access policies and federal election laws.

Billionaire Elon Musk posted to X calling the situation ironic, while Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) labeled it hypocritical, arguing that advocating for residency verification at city grocery stores while opposing mandatory voter ID bills was inconsistent.

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Mexican Town Set Ablaze After Military Arrests Terrorist Cartel Leader

Members of the United Cartels set fire to a town in the Mexican state of Michoacan following a military raid where authorities arrested one of the top leaders of the terrorist organization. That leader had previously been a top official within the Michoacan state police forces and still held sway over local law enforcement.

The riotous acts of destruction took place over the weekend in the town of Los Reyes and nearby communities, when cartel gunmen set up numerous blockades and torched vehicles and buildings in response to a military raid targeting their leader, Alfonoso “Poncho La Quiringa” Fernandez Magallanes. Fernandez is a known drug lord wanted by the U.S. Department of Justice, which offered a $5 million reward for his capture.

The raid took place on Saturday afternoon, when Mexican military and federal police forces arrested Fernandez and several of his close allies with Carteles Unidos. Soon after the arrest, his gunmen set up blockades, torched vehicles and buildings throughout Los Reyes and surrounding communities in an attempt to pressure Mexico’s government into releasing the man known as La Quiringa. While the tactic had worked in the past, this time, Mexico’s federal government did not budge.

Soon after, Mexico’s top security official, Omar Garcia Harfuch, announced Fernandez’s capture. On Sunday, his staff released additional information about the wanted drug lord and his organization. According to authorities, La Quiringa has been one of the leaders behind the hiring of Colombian terrorists and guerrilla fighters, as well as the use of drones to drop explosives on their rivals and military forces.

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Trump demands oil companies lower gas prices for American consumers

President Donald Trump has taken to Truth Social to criticize Chevron CEO Mike Wirth following a television interview in which the executive touted his company’s success.

On Monday, the president argued that in the interview with Fox Business, Wirth failed to credit the administration’s efforts to assist oil companies, which the president said provided necessary strength and stability to the U.S. energy sector.

“The only thing he conveniently forgot to mention is that, without the genius, foresight, strength, and stability, of the TRUMP Administration, the Oil Industry, and our Country itself, would be DEAD!” Trump wrote.

Trump pointed to Chevron’s operations in Venezuela as an example of the administration’s influence, before calling on oil executives across the industry to lower fuel prices for consumers immediately.

“Get your consumer (retail!) Oil Prices DOWN, NOW!” the president stated.

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The Pentagon’s Hidden Housing Scandal: Outsourcing Duty Of Care

Sen. Jon Ossoff released a report on July 8 documenting lead exposure in a newborn, mold-related emergency room visits, and a cockroach infestation living inside a family’s oven, all in privatized military housing at Fort Benning and Fort Stewart. Read it and you’d think it was written in 2022. It wasn’t. That’s the scandal: the Pentagon outsourced a duty of care to private landlords and never enforced the contracts meant to keep it intact.

I’ve spent thirty years in institutional investment management and now serve as an expert witness in fiduciary litigation. The pattern is one I recognize immediately: an institution hands a core obligation to a private operator, collects a fee for oversight it doesn’t actually perform, and treats the delegation itself as if it discharged the duty. It didn’t. Outsourcing a duty of care doesn’t outsource the duty.

Congress created the Military Housing Privatization Initiative in 1996 to fix decrepit on-base housing without loading the capital cost onto the Pentagon’s books. Private companies would own, renovate, and maintain the homes under leases running as long as fifty years, with servicemembers’ Basic Allowance for Housing flowing straight to the landlord as rent. The Pentagon would keep oversight, backed by incentive fees for good performance and penalties for bad. On paper, a clean alignment of interests. In practice, a guaranteed revenue stream with an oversight function nobody actually staffed.

Fort Stewart’s housing has been run by Balfour Beatty Communities since the base was privatized. In December 2021, Balfour Beatty pleaded guilty to one count of major fraud against the United States, agreeing to pay more than $65 million in criminal fines, restitution, and a related civil settlement. The company’s employees falsified maintenance records and destroyed resident comment cards between 2013 and 2019 to fraudulently collect incentive fees they hadn’t earned. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said the fraud was “a consequence of BBC’s broken corporate culture” that put profit ahead of servicemembers’ welfare.

Four months later, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found the conduct hadn’t stopped. Its bipartisan staff report on the mistreatment of military families in privatized housing documented that Balfour’s post-2019 behavior mirrored the misconduct behind its guilty plea; in the same period the company was under active federal investigation. A company can plead guilty to defrauding the government over housing conditions and keep collecting Basic Allowance for Housing checks from the families living in the homes it failed.

Fast-forward to this month. Fort Stewart is still Balfour Beatty’s. Fort Benning’s housing is run by a different company, the Michaels Organization’s Villages of Benning. Ossoff’s report found nearly identical failures at both: mold, lead, cover-ups, families told their complaints were handled when they weren’t. That detail should stop anyone from treating this as one bad company. Two operators, two installations, the same pattern. The failure sits in the oversight structure, not the logo on the leasing office.

The government’s own auditors have said as much. In an April 2023 report, the Government Accountability Office made 19 recommendations to improve DOD’s oversight of privatized housing, including a priority recommendation that the Pentagon set clear, consistent, department-wide home inspection standards, after finding that comparable maintenance problems were getting graded differently depending on who held the clipboard. As of GAO’s most recent public status update, that priority recommendation was still open, with DOD not expecting signed guidance until mid-2025 at the earliest. Congress had to legislate the fix GAO had already recommended.

This is the same structural failure I’ve written about previously in public pension governance, wearing a uniform instead of a suit. A pension trustee who delegates asset management to an outside manager doesn’t delegate away fiduciary responsibility for the outcome; the law is explicit that the duty stays with the trustee. The Pentagon’s relationship with its housing contractors works the same way as a matter of principle, even though the enforcement mechanism is a lease rather than ERISA. Both share the same defect: an incentive-fee structure that pays out on paperwork instead of results, and an oversight office too thin to catch the difference until a senator’s staff does the job for it.

That fix is now in the books. The Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act, signed in December, directs the Secretary of War to establish a standard inspection and audit program for privatized and government-owned housing using independent, qualified inspectors, and separately tightens the rules on when a housing company may close a maintenance work order. Falsified paperwork closed BBC’s work orders and inflated its bonuses for six years before anyone with subpoena power looked at the underlying data; an inspector who doesn’t answer to the landlord closes that loophole.

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Report: Colombian Marxist Terrorists Using TikTok to Recruit Children

Armed narco-terrorist groups in Colombia are utilizing TikTok and other social media platforms to push recruitment videos targeting young children and teenagers, the Colombian newspaper El Colombiano reported on Monday.

According to El Colombiano, armed groups such as the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) terrorist group and the Clan del Golfo are engaged in a scheme described by the newspaper as “Recruitment 2.0.” The strategy sees the use of social media platform algorithms to push content towards Colombian children and teenagers in vulnerable economical situations, seeking to entice them into joining said insurgent organizations.

El Colombiano pointed out that the tactic specifically targets demographic groups of children as they are deemed more “influenceable” and because local criminal laws are more lenient towards children in the event of a future arrest.

The contents, which El Colombiano affirmed are mostly found on TikTok, entice Colombian minors with promises of future riches and luxuries. Other pieces of content reportedly used in the recruitment scheme involve deceitful offers such as false “talent-seeking” soccer tournaments and fake job offers promising competitive wages, all with the same goal of luring victims to join their ranks.

El Colombiano explained that it created a fake TikTok profile for the purposes of its report. Within “one hour,” the newspaper said, the TikTok account’s “For You” section began displaying videos of raspachínes coca leaf collectors, young people in camouflage clothing flaunting their affiliation with guerrilla groups, and individuals showing off cars, motorcycles, liquor, and luxuries, accompanied by ninja emojis — a “recurring visual code across various armed groups.”

Although TikTok has allegedly placed content filters blocking certain guerrilla-related keywords, El Colombiano explained that armed groups are completely bypassing the filters by simply using abbreviations instead of the group’s full name, such as “EP” as a replacement for FARC — the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia Marxist terrorist group, which attaches the EP (“People’s Army”) suffix to its initials.

“TikTok blocked the word ‘gaitanistas,’ for example. That is why digital recruiters tend to be more sophisticated and use coded language involving emojis,” Juan David Velasco Montoya, advisor at the Investigation and Prosecution Unit (UIA) of Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction of Peace (JEP), told El Colombiano. The Clan del Golfo sometimes refers to itself as the “Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.”

JEP is a Colombian transitional justice mechanism established nearly a decade ago after FARC and the administration of former Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos signed a “peace deal” in 2016 that allegedly saw the “dismantlement” of FARC. In reality, FARC remains active in Colombia ten years after its supposed dismantlement, committing numerous terrorist attacks over the past decade.

A UIA report cited by El Colombiano documented a 66-percent surge in the recruitment of children by Colombian insurgent groups on social media between 2022 and 2025. According to the UIA report, 44 percent of all child recruitment cases documented by the group in 2025 occurred on social media.

UIA reportedly described TikTok as the “most problematic” of the social media platforms for said recruitment. The content allegedly published by the groups on TikTok mainly targets teenagers and predominantly feature messages of money, weapons, and a “life of party and excesses.”

In 2024, Colombian authorities denounced that FARC had been using TikTok to publish content enticing minors to join the Marxist terrorist group. El Colombiano affirmed on Monday that, although Colombian authorities established guidelines to reduce the risk of recruitment by minors last year, “no concrete action has been taken” by the Chinese social media platform.

On the other hand, the recruitment content allegedly published on Facebook targets young adults instead of minors, while content allegedly published on YouTube are instead of a “political” tone. Instagram is allegedly used by Colombian armed groups to push content related to “armed confrontation and the handling of drones turned into weapons.”

UIA also reportedly found that, in addition to organizing the content’s type by platform, the posts also target boys and girls differently by “reinforcing gender stereotypes.” El Colombiano explained that, for example, content seeking to entice girls reportedly centers around the “glorification of physical beauty, dancing, and posing,” while content targeting boys highlights “strength, virility, financial means, weapons, and alcohol as a status symbol.”

According to the UIA report, the group projects that, if the situation were to continue existing as-is, Colombia could face roughly 2,321 new cases of child recruitment between 2026 and 2030 — at an average rate of one new minor every 12 hours.

Luis Fernando Quijano, director of the social services group Corporation for Peace and Social Development (Corpades), explained to El Colombiano on Monday that his organization has been documenting the alarming social media recruitment phenomenon for months.

In some cases, Quijano warned, the recruitment offer is “direct,” with some of the contents directly asking for minors between the ages of 12 and 13 to send a direct message if they want to join an insurgent group. In other cases, the recruitment enlists for international conflicts instead.

“It is recruitment through handouts, through images of young women and young men, and by portraying the illegal military life as very appealing. That is an open invitation for children and adolescents to go there,” Quijano said.

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Children’s Hospitals To Begin Offering Restorative Care For Detransitioners

When Texas Children’s Hospital’s “detransition clinic” opens in Houston, it will become the first facility of its kind, giving patients who regret life-altering procedures a chance at restorative care.

The facility, which has yet to announce an opening date, is part of an agreement with state and federal authorities to halt “gender-affirming care” at children’s hospitals while offering help to those who transitioned medically.

A 10-page settlement term sheet, recently obtained by The Epoch Times through an open records request to the Texas attorney general’s office, showed that services at the clinic will focus on multidisciplinary care.

Services are to include endocrinology, surgery, fertility counseling, psychiatry, psychotherapy, and speech pathology, among others.

In May and June, the Department of Justice (DOJ), along with the attorneys general of Texas and Ohio, secured settlements with large hospitals over allegations of fraudulent insurance billing practices related to “gender-affirming care” for children.

The hospitals denied wrongdoing in their billing practices or standards of care.

These agreements require the hospitals not only to cease transitioning procedures, but also to offer discounted or free restorative medical care to detransitioners.

Attorneys representing detransitioners and their clients praised the efforts of the DOJ and the states to assist those suffering from the consequences of life-altering medical changes.

Detransitioners are those who stopped or reversed a medical gender transition they started earlier in life.

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Newsom’s tax returns show annual income between $1.7M and $2M

The long-awaited release of California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom’s tax returns has been heavily criticized after it was revealed that he and his wife made $1.7 million to $2 million annually from 2022 through 2024 and paid half a million a year in federal and state taxes, according to the tax returns released by his office.

The criticism surrounding the release of Newsom’s (D-Calif.) tax returns stems primarily from the tightly controlled manner in which the documents were disclosed, the lack of itemized details regarding his business holdings, specific deductions, and the omission of his most recent tax filing.

Together, these factors have led political opponents, media commentators and other transparency advocates to argue that the release fell short of genuine public disclosure.

First, the method of release drew immediate pushback from media commentators and political watchdog groups. Rather than publishing the tax documents online for direct public inspection, the governor’s office restricted access to a select group of journalists inside a controlled environment. Reporters were required to review the 700-page filing using only pen and paper, without the ability to take photographs, make digital copies or release the raw files.

Second, the structure of the returns obscured important financial details about Newsom’s business empire. While the filings showed that the bulk of the couple’s multimillion-dollar income flowed from hospitality, restaurant and winery enterprises held in a blind trust, tax returns only report aggregate income.

Third, opponents highlighted major personal deductions revealed in the returns, including tens of thousands of dollars spent on high-end designer apparel and nearly two hundred thousand dollars allocated for his own personal household staff.

Finally, the pages provided to reporters covered only tax years 2021 through 2024, as the governor and his wife filed for an extension on their 2025 returns through October. While requesting an extension is standard tax procedure, political adversaries pointed out that the omission leaves his most recent financial activity unexamined as he lays the groundwork for a prospective 2028 presidential campaign.

Reporters from outlets like The New York Times and Politico were reportedly permitted to view the documents using only pen and paper, agreeing to hold their reports until Friday morning, as Newsom faced increasing pressure to publicize the records.

These disclosures mark Newsom’s first tax release since 2022. While his salary as governor pays around $200,000 per year, the bulk of his income is generated by winery and hospitality businesses he placed into a blind trust upon taking office.

The only exception occurred in 2021, when the family earned about $800,000 by selling a Marin County home for nearly $6 million. Their total earnings reached $4.2 million that year, resulting in over $1 million paid in combined federal and state taxes. In 2022, their income dropped back to approximately $2 million.

Noethelsss, the governor’s office later argued that there was nothing unusual in the filings.

U.S. Representative James Gallagher (R-Calif.) told The Post, “Newsom’s transparency is a lot like his homelessness policy — it leaves a lot to be desired … He talks big about things about never actually delivers. This is another instance of that — only allowing select people and only pen and paper. This isn’t real transparency. There are still a lot of questions where Gavin’s money comes from,” he declared.

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Judge Blocks New York’s Law Prohibiting Federal Officers From Wearing Masks

A federal judge on Monday blocked New York’s law prohibiting federal officers from wearing face masks.

ICE agents and other federal officers wear masks to conceal their identities because of the increased attacks from the violent left.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, DHS law enforcement has experienced more than 180 vehicle attacks since Trump took office.

ICE officers are being doxxed and attacked.

“ICE officers are facing a 1,300% increase in assaults, a 3,200% increase in vehicle attacks, and an 8,000% increase in death threats,” ERO Miami Field Office Director Matthew Elliston said last month.

US District Judge Mae A. D’Agostino, an Obama appointee, said New York does not have the authority to regulate federal law enforcement activity.

New York’s corrupt Democrat Attorney General Letitia James said she is “reviewing all legal options.”

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New Forever Chemicals Coming to US Farms

If the goal is truly to Make America Healthy Again, then the latest decision from the Environmental Protection Agency raises serious questions. According to the article you sent, the EPA has approved two new fluorinated pesticides, diflufenican and epyrifenacil, for use on some of America’s most important crops, including corn, soybeans, and wheat. Neither chemical has previously been approved for use in American agriculture.

Environmental groups argue these compounds qualify as PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” under internationally recognized scientific definitions because they can persist in the environment and eventually degrade into trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), an extremely persistent fluorinated compound found in groundwater around the world. The EPA disputes that characterization, maintaining the products do not meet its regulatory definition of PFAS and that they can be used safely according to their labels.

Diflufenican has already become controversial in Europe. Denmark banned its use in part because of concerns that it contributes to TFA contamination of groundwater, while German monitoring has detected TFA in a large percentage of tested wells. Epyrifenacil has reportedly never received approval for agricultural use within the European Union. Whether those regulatory decisions ultimately prove right or wrong, they demonstrate that this is hardly an uncontested scientific issue. Governments around the world are reaching different conclusions about the same chemicals, yet American consumers are expected to assume there is nothing to debate.

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