Tag: politics

Behind Zohran Mamdani, an Experienced Soros-Obama Operative

Reading the New York Times coverage and Zohran Mamdani’s social media, you’d get the idea that the 33-year-old Israel-hating socialist is a new face, a breath of fresh air, and a foe of billionaires.

Now that Mamdani has won the Democratic nomination for mayor, the news has finally come out that a key figure behind his campaign was Patrick Gaspard. Gaspard, 57, is a former political aide to Barack Obama. He also served from 2017 to 2020 as president of George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Soros is 94.

Gaspard surfaced in New York Times coverage of the campaign but was identified as a neutral party. A June 10 Times article reported that Mamdani “has also quietly met with former officials for advice, including…Patrick Gaspard, an adviser to mayors and presidents,” but noted that Gaspard was “also speaking with other candidates.” A June 13 Times article quoted “Patrick Gaspard, a top adviser to Democratic mayors and presidents who has not taken sides in the race.”

Yet in a July 1 piece, “How Zohran Mamdani Stunned New York and Won the Primary for Mayor,” the Times offers a new and different account of Gaspard’s role. Now the Times says Gaspard “quietly helped guide Mr. Mamdani” and says Gaspard participated with Mamdani in a dinner with New York Comptroller Brad Lander in which the two agreed to cross-endorse in the mayoral race. The Times reports, “The day before the final debate, Mr. Lander and Mr. Mamdani sat down at Yara, a Lebanese restaurant in Midtown, with campaign aides and Mr. Gaspard. Over plates of fattoush, hummus and eggplant, the two candidates decided they would cross-endorse each other to defeat Mr. Cuomo.”

The Times describes Gaspard as “adviser to mayors and presidents,” but the more relevant information is that he is a Soros person. Don’t just take it from me: his bio on X says, “Forever @OpenSociety.” Open Society’s tax filings indicate the $5.9 billion foundation paid Gaspard, identified as its former president, $2.2 million in 2021.

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After Losing Their Minds for Months Over ‘Project 2025’ Democrats Are Now Crafting Their Own ‘Project 2029’

A year ago, when the 2024 presidential election was getting into full swing, Democrats and the media were freaking out about Project 2025, a conservative agenda that had been put together by think tanks on the right. Trump wasn’t even talking about it, but the left used it to try to panic voters and tie it directly to Trump.

Now, the same people are putting together their own version of it called ‘Project 2029.’

The left does this all the time. In 2004, they said they needed their own Drudge Report. In 2010, they said they needed their own Tea Party. In 2016, they started saying they needed their own Donald Trump. In 2024, they said they needed their own Joe Rogan.

Now they need their own Project 2025.

From FOX News:

Democrats take page from conservative playbook with new Project 2029

Democrats are taking a page from the conservative playbook.

A group of leading Democratic Party thinkers is beginning to collaborate on a policy agenda for their eventual presidential nominee in the 2028 election cycle.

And, as first reported by the New York Times, they’re calling it Project 2029. It’s an obvious play on the notorious Project 2025, the more than 900-page policy blueprint assembled by the conservative powerhouse Heritage Foundation think tank for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nominee.

Democrats repeatedly attacked Project 2025 during the previous White House race as a far-right threat to the nation. Then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and his campaign distanced themselves from the document, even as many Trump allies helped draft it.

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Revealed: Communist Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani Made an Embarrassing Mistake While Devising Scheme to Fund City-Owned Grocery Stores in New York City

Communist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has struck fear in the hearts of New Yorkers with his radical plans to ruin the most famous city in America. Fortunately, the residents may be spared thanks to his incredible ineptitude.

A report has revealed that Mamdani made an embarrassing mistake while devising a plan to pay for one of his signature policies.

As TGP readers know, Mamdani has said he wants the Big Apple to have five government-owned grocery stores. He sees this as a solution to lowering the cost of food despite the fact that the idea has been tried before and failed miserably .

Mamdani, though, says that because the city is already subsidizing private grocery stores with $140 million, he can take just under half of the money ($60 million) and fulfill his dream.

“We will redirect city funds from corporate supermarkets to city-owned grocery stores whose mission is lower prices, not price-gouging,” Mamdani claims in one video.

But as the Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney explains, Mamdani has no clue what he is talking about. The money he plans to use to pay for his city-owned grocery stores does not exist.

Carney shared information from The city’s Economic Development Corporation webpage to make his point. The site notes grocery stores have invested $140 million of their own money thanks to a city program called FRESH (Food Retail Expansion to Support Health).

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Lawsuit Aims To Prevent IRS From Targeting Conservative Groups Ever Again

The mechanism that allowed the IRS to deny right-leaning groups legal nonprofit status during Barack Obama’s administration is still on the books, but this week a conservative group is challenging the provision in court to prevent it from being weaponized again.

Back in 2013, when Obama was president and Lois Lerner led the IRS Tax-Exempt Organizations division, Americans learned that conservative groups seeking nonprofit tax-exempt status were being blackballed by the IRS.

A 2014 House Oversight Committee report shows how huge the scandal was when it was discovered: “A May 2013 review of the IRS tax-exempt applications found that not a single group identifying itself as ‘Tea Party’ was approved by the IRS after February 2010, when the new targeting criteria were instated, while dozens of ‘progressive’ groups were approved.”

But 11 years later, the same criteria on the application for a nonprofit 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status remain, leaving the door open to more corruption.

Lex Politica Attorney Chris Gober has been working since then to change the rule on behalf of Freedom Path, a now nearly inactive conservative issue advocacy organization that filed for tax-exempt status in 2011. After the IRS requested a list of Freedom Path’s donors in 2012, and the 2014 Lois Lerner scandal blew over, finally in 2020 — nine years after its application — the IRS denied Freedom Path nonprofit status on the basis of the same “Facts and Circumstances Test” weaponized against conservative groups in the scandal.  

The Trump administration’s Department of Justice is defending the Facts and Circumstances Test as the case returns to court this week for a status report with Washington, D.C., District Judge Jia M. Cobb. Freedom Path is asking the court to declare the Facts and Circumstances Test “unconstitutionally vague.”

The IRS uses the 11-factor Facts and Circumstances Test (seen below) to evaluate whether a group’s advocacy communications, such as advertising campaigns, should be considered “issue advocacy” — which would allow the group to become a tax-exempt nonprofit — or if its communications should be considered a “political campaign intervention,” preventing the group from gaining tax-exempt status.

The test is subjective; results depend on the values of the person evaluating the applicant’s material.

“It has a necessary chilling effect, because conservative groups nationwide will have to self-censor rather than risk IRS retaliation,” Gober told The Federalist.

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Socialists Don’t Understand Motherhood

Self-proclaimed democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani just won New York City’s mayoral primary, and, in a city crawling with Democrats who like free stuff, he’s the favorite to win November’s general election, replacing Eric Adams.

Mamdani—a 33-year-old Bowdoin graduate, with a multimillionaire filmmaker mother and a Columbia-professor father—styles himself a champion for the working class, someone who really understands what they need. 

As such, he advocates for universal child care. “After rent, the biggest cost for New York’s working families is childcare. It’s literally driving them out of the city: New Yorkers with children under six are leaving at double the rate of all others,” reads his platform. “The burden falls heaviest on mothers, who are giving up paying jobs to do unpaid childcare.” He promises to implement free child care for all babies and children aged 6 weeks and above, until they start school at age 5. He wants child care workers to have wage parity with public school teachers

This program could take the form of an expansion of the city’s existing 3K program, or could be an entirely new state-run day care program. It’s not totally clear what he intends. His platform is characteristically heavy on the graphic design, light on the details. 

But Mamdani, and all others who advocate universal publicly-funded child care, mistake the needs that mothers actually have—the things they say they want, the types of child care arrangements they favor—assuming all parents want the state to sublimate their roles. Socialists pretend they want to support mothers and motherhood. But they don’t understand what type of help mothers need at all.

In 2022, the think tank Institute for Family Studies asked mothers of children under 18 what their “ideal situation” would be, in terms of time spent with kids vs. working. They found that 42 percent of mothers wanted to work full-time; 32 percent had an ideal of part-time work; and 22 percent would ideally choose no paid work at all. A Pew Research Center survey from three years prior found much the same: Half of moms said it would be “best for them” to work full-time, with 30 percent choosing part-time work and 19 percent choosing none at all. As of 2018, the majority of mothers with kids under 18—55 percent—are engaged in full-time work, up from 34 percent in 1968. And the share of mothers with little kids—those who have not yet entered school—in the work force went from 8 percent in 1940 to over 60 percent by 2000. It has only risen since. 

Of course, “in the work force” isn’t necessarily the same as “not engaged in the daily labor of childrearing.” The advent of remote work has enabled more creative arrangements than ever before, with parents increasingly using the shift system and staggering work hours. Socialists don’t give much credit to the many ways companies accommodate working parents—whether corporate overlords mean to or not—when they allow greater flexibility in the workday and for different people to work at different paces and in different shifts. What can benefit the company can also benefit the family.

“An ideal childcare system,” writes Ivana Greco, a writer/homeschooler/lawyer-by-training with four kids, “takes into account the full range of ‘childcare,’ including parents, extended family, friends, and neighbors.” It “considers and respects the wishes and needs of individual families, which will be different both from family to family and from time period to time period.” It should allow for flexibility, which means it should provide “access to drop-in, part-time, or irregular hours” child care. It’s “mindful of cost, broadly speaking, including second-order effects and non-economic costs.” 

Mamdani’s proposal meets zero out of four of Greco’s criteria. Socialists, in general, don’t tailor to such criteria—or even necessarily understand it or wish to honor it—when crafting plans for universal child care.

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Elon Musk indicates he’ll donate to Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican who has been excoriated by Trump

Business tycoon Elon Musk indicated that he will donate to Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.

Massie, a fiscal hawk who was one of the two House Republicans who voted against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that cleared the House of Representatives in May, also labeled President Donald Trump’s strikes against Iran last month as “not Constitutional.”

“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame! And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” Musk declared in a post on X.

Former Rep. Justin Amash replied by urging Musk to back Massie.

“Please support @RepThomasMassie. The establishment is working to primary him because he’s a genuine fiscal conservative and opposes the Big, Bloated Scam,” Amash wrote.

“I will,” Musk replied.

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A Big Beautiful Bill for the Military-Industrial Complex

The US Senate worked through the weekend on the “Big Beautiful Bill.” The goal was to pass it quickly to ensure the House will then pass it and send it to President Trump’s desk before the July 4th holiday.

However, disagreements among Republican Senators over reductions in spending on programs including Medicaid and food stamps as well as language in the bill eliminating “clean energy” tax credits were preventing Senate Republican leadership from getting enough votes to pass the bill.

Also, some Republicans disagree with other Republicans in both the House and Senate on increasing the state and local tax (SALT) deduction. Many conservatives see this income tax deduction as encouraging states to maintain high taxes to fund big governments.

One item in the BBB that few Republicans are objecting to is the bill’s increase in military spending. The House version of the BBB added 150 billion dollars to the Pentagon’s already bloated budget. The Senate bill gave the military-industrial complex 156 billion dollars.

Increasing military spending contradicts President Trump’s promise to stop wasting money on endless wars that have nothing to do with ensuring the security of the American people.

Some of the BBB’s military spending will be used to put troops on the border. I support strengthening border security. However, I do not support using the military for domestic law enforcement, which includes enforcing immigration laws. Soldiers are trained to view people as potential enemies, not as innocent civilians to be protected. Introducing this mindset into domestic law enforcement will lead to abuses of liberty.

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Trump says DOGE may “go back and eat Elon”

President Trump said Tuesday that DOGE could investigate Elon Musk, the latest indicator that his patience with the Tesla CEO is running thin.

The big picture: The two men have engaged in a war of words in the past 24 hours, with Musk taking to X to vent his objections to the president’s “big, beautiful bill” and the estimated trillions of dollars it would add to the national debt.

  • Trump posted to Truth Social overnight that DOGE may need to take a “good, hard look” at Musk’s companies, and he doubled down on the notion when he spoke to reporters Tuesday.
  • “We might have to put DOGE on Elon. You know what DOGE is? DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon,” he said before boarding Marine One.

Zoom out: When asked if he would consider deporting Musk, Trump said he didn’t know.

  • “We’ll have to take a look,” he said.

Worth noting: Musk is a naturalized U.S. citizen. While the Justice Department has recently directed attorneys to prioritize denaturalization in cases where naturalized citizens commit crimes, Trump did not suggest that Musk had committed any crime.

The other side: Musk swiftly responded Tuesday morning, writing that while it is “[s]o tempting to escalate this,” he would “refrain for now.”

Friction point: The relationship between Trump and his former chainsaw-wielding DOGE head publicly unraveled last month, as Musk aired an avalanche of grievances over the president’s signature tax and spending bill.

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Zohran Mamdani: End Goal Is ‘Seizing the Means of Production’

Self-proclaimed socialist and Democrat nominee for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, said in 2021 that his “end goal” is “seizing the means of production,” despite recently claims that he is not a communist.

Mamdani, a New York state assemblyman and member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), shared his method to “win socialism” while appearing virtually at a DSA conference to mobilize young people in February 2021:

What the purpose is about this entire project — it’s not simply to raise class consciousness, but to win socialism. And obviously, raising class consciousness is a critical part of that, but making sure that we have candidates that both understand that and are willing to put that forward at every which moment that they have … We have to continue to elect more socialists, and we have to ensure that we are unapologetic about our socialism.

Naming other issues that socialists “firmly believe in,” Mamdani went on to highlight the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and the “end goal of seizing the means of production, where we do not have the same level of support at this very moment.”

“Organize for what is correct and for what is right, and to ensure that over time, we can bring people to that issue,” the mayoral candidate continued. “The ramifications of victory here is the difference between life and death for so many of our brothers and sisters and family beyond the binary across this borough of Queens.”

He added that socialism will bring policies like “sex work being decriminalized.”

Advocating for “seizing the means of production” is a cornerstone of Marxist and communist thought, as it was popularized by philosopher Karl Marx.

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“I Just Want to Go Home. I Missed Our Entire Trip to the Beach” – John Fetterman Moans About Having to do His Job in the Senate

Senator John Fetterman was already fed up on Monday morning before the all-day Senate vote-a-rama, complaining to reporters that he missed his beach trip because he had to stay in Washington to cast votes on amendments to the Big Beautiful Bill. 

“Oh my God. I just want to go home,” he griped in the Capitol basement. “I’ve missed our entire trip to the beach. My family’s going to be back before me.”

The Senate proceeded to the floor to vote on amendments to the Big Beautiful Bill, which the President wants sent to his desk by Friday, after spending the weekend advancing the bill and ironing out the details.

Fetterman said this is not what he signed up for and that legislators shouldn’t be required to stay “till some ungodly hour.”

“I’m going to vote no. There’s no drama. The votes are going to go. In fact, the only interesting votes are going to be on the margin, whether that’s Collins, or Johnson, and those, but all the Democrats, we all know how that’s going to go,” he told reporters.

WATCH:

Reporter: Did you get any clues on the floor about what time this might wrap?

Fetterman: Oh my God. I just want to go home. I’ve missed our entire trip to the beach. My family’s going to be back before me. So, and again, I’m going to vote no. There’s no drama. The votes are going to go. In fact, the only interesting votes are going to be on the margin, whether that’s Collins, or Johnson, and those, but all the Democrats, we all know how that’s going to go. And I think, I don’t think it’s really helpful to put people here ’till some ungodly hour.

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