Tag: politics

The Far Right Is Powered by Left-Wing Illiberalism and Hypocrisy

The introduction of the “Groypers” into our national consciousness over the last six weeks has ignited curiosity about what is causing the evident moral and intellectual disintegration of American conservatism. As someone who has been covering this space for years, I do not believe it’s possible to grasp what’s happening on the right without accepting that the left has, for decades now, been on its own illiberal journey—because to a far greater extent than most observers would like to admit, the former phenomenon is a response to the latter. 

If there’s one thing that voters of President Donald Trump and reactionary online personalities alike have made clear, it’s that they’re frustrated by the eagerness of mainstream institutions to excuse left-wing overreach while treating every right-wing infraction as an existential menace to democracy. This has created a boy-who-cried-wolf problem where attempts to sound the alarm about serious threats to the rule of law during Trump’s second term often provoke eyerolls or yawns. 

We need to recognize that there’s a natural tendency to overlook violations of norms and legal procedures by our own side while hyperfixating on our rivals’ transgressions. Human beings are excellent at rationalizing breaches of etiquette and convincing ourselves that extraordinary measures are necessary when they benefit us. Departures from the rules of the game by allies are downplayed or dismissed, and in any individual case that may be defensible—but the cumulative effect is that those on the receiving end sooner or later conclude that playing by the rules is for suckers.

Republican claims of Democratic hypocrisy may sometimes be overblown, but they are decidedly not imagined. The activist left in particular is guilty of helping to create the conditions for our toxic political moment. Consider the following ways in which left-of-center politics have, over the last generation or two, effectively repudiated liberal values.

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The Bipartisan War on Prices Is Coming for Your Credit Card

In a scene that perfectly captures the strangeness of American politics today, President Donald Trump, a billionaire and self-styled champion of American business (at least the ones he likes) was all smiles during an Oval Office visit from Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist and mayor-elect of New York City.

For months, the two men traded the harshest of insults. Mamdani was a “communist” and “radical left lunatic”; Trump a “fascist” and “despot.” Yet with New York’s mayoral election over and cameras clicking, the insults were on hold. The men praised each other as “rational” and “productive.” Trump even joked that Mamdani might “surprise some conservative people.”

Give them points for collegiality, just don’t be surprised. Trump and Mamdani are only the latest example of the right and the left converging on economic issues. One likes price floors, the other likes rent control. They’re both waging the same “war on prices,” as the Cato Institute’s Ryan Bourne calls it. And this war enjoys rising bipartisan support.

Take legislation introduced earlier this year by what would have once been an unlikely duo: Sens. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) and Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.). Their “10 Percent Credit Card Interest Rate Cap Act“—also reflecting a Trump idea from the 2024 campaign—sounds compassionate. Who enjoys paying 25 percent interest?

In practice, price controls of all sorts are disastrous. Credit card interest rates are high because unsecured consumer lending is very risky. They’re the price for the lender taking a chance on a person. If the government artificially caps rates far below the market rate, banks will stop lending to riskier borrowers. That doesn’t just mean broke shopaholics. It includes the working single parent using a financial last resort before payday.

Just as rent controls can create a housing shortage by reducing the attractiveness of supplying those homes, interest-rate caps can create a credit shortage. They put millions of working-class Americans—the people proposals like these are supposed to protect—at risk of being “debanked.” Stripped of their credit cards, some will turn to payday lenders, loan sharks, and pawn shops, whose charges are far higher.

It gets worse. A cap this low wouldn’t merely shrink credit availability; it would invert it. At 10 percent, banks would only lend to the safest, highest-income borrowers. Credit cards would become a luxury product for the affluent—a financial advantage while everyone else is pushed into the financial shadows.

Then there’s the fact that millions of small businesses rely on credit cards. According to a Federal Reserve survey of small businesses, half of employer firms use them to fund operations. Cards function as unsecured working-capital lines for firms that lack collateral or a long credit history. A 10 percent cap would push them toward far costlier and riskier alternatives.

And forget about travel miles or cash back. Those programs are funded by interest charges, which a 10 percent cap would wipe out. When lenders cannot price risk through market rates, they shift the cost to higher fees, shorter grace periods, and more hidden charges. Consumers don’t necessarily pay less; they just pay differently and more opaquely.

Finally, because credit cards are the primary way tens of millions of Americans build credit histories, a cap would destroy a crucial ladder into the financial mainstream.

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Jasmine Crockett’s Finances Exposed – Subject to Personal Liens While She Spends $50k-100k of Taxpayer Cash on Limos, Luxury Hotels Just This Year

If the new congressional maps enacted by Texas Republicans stand until 2026, which it appears that they will, Rep. Jasmine Crockett would likely be out of a seat.

To everyone else, this is pretty much a win-win; I’m going to assume that this includes Democrats, who must be tiring of her antics by now, particularly given her lack of substantive support to the party’s caucus in the lower house. For Crockett, it’s a big lose — because not only will she be out of the corridors of power, but out of ways to spend the taxpayer’s money, as well.

And boy, does she spend it. That’s why her Senate run is so important to her, and soon to be loathed by the Democrats. Not only does it put the left’s one big potential upset of 2026 out of reach for them, most likely, but it also means that Crockett’s profligate spending — while she had a three-grand lien on her condo, no less — is going to be front-page news for a while.

So, in case you missed it (no shade; keeping up on all things Jasmine-related has shaved at least 5 IQ points off my poor, addled brain), Rep. Crockett announced Monday that she was running for GOP Sen. John Cornyn’s seat in the upper chamber.

“Trump, I know you’re watching, so let me tell you directly,” Crockett at her announcement event, according to CNN. “You’re not entitled to a damn thing in Texas. You better get to work because I’m coming for you.”

Dun dun DUN! Be scared, Donald. Be very scared.

Actually, the environment is probably one of celebration rather than anxious celerity on the part of state Republicans. Unlike the usual Democratic saber-rattling about turning Texas purple, this time they looked like they actually had a shot. A divided GOP is likely to mean that Cornyn doesn’t emerge from his own primary as the nominee, with state Attorney General Ken Paxton leading the way in polls.

Paxton is a little bit more MAGA but a lot more controversial than the other Republican challengers, and while he does well in a GOP primary he’s not necessarily the candidate you want to go into a general election with.

On the other hand, pretty much every character issue you can bring up about Paxton goes out the window the moment Crockett gets the Democratic nomination — which she instantly becomes the favorite for. Paxton could be accused of the most abhorrent thing you can think of — do it on live TV, even — and he’d still be considered a near-lock to win the general election.

To that end, too, Crockett has shoved the one candidate who’s remotely electable out of the running — former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred — leaving Crockett to duel it out with James Talarico, a progressive state representative who once said during a floor speech that “God is nonbinary” and somehow managed to dodge the ensuing lightning bolt from the empyrean.

But let’s not talk about the gift that is Crockett’s statewide unelectability. Let’s instead take a look at the gift that is Crockett’s finances for a moment.

According to Fox News, the Dallas County Clerk’s website shows that Crockett — who makes $174,000 a year in her position as a congresswoman — is currently behind on her payments to the Westside Condominium Association by $3,047.79.

The unpaid lien notice dates from over a year ago.

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Liberals want to control what you watch online

New regulations from the Liberal Government’s Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) are trying to apply ‘Canadian content’ (CanCon) requirements to online platforms like YouTube and Spotify.

What could this mean for your online experience?

Will content that the Government doesn’t designate as sufficiently ‘Canadian’ disappear from your streaming platforms? Could companies like Netflix decide to pull out of Canada altogether rather than try to comply with onerous requirements?

Host Kris Sims is joined by longtime journalist and former CRTC vice-chair Peter Menzies to discuss what it all means.

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Crockett’s Senate Run Was Engineered By Republicans

Rep. Jasmine Crockett. (D-Texas) officially launched her campaign for the U.S. Senate on Monday, and Republicans appear to have played a major role in that happening. 

According to a report from NOTUS, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) was “actively worked behind the scenes to encourage Rep. Jasmine Crockett to jump into the Senate Democratic primary in Texas, believing she will be the easiest opponent to beat.”

With Sen. John Cornyn facing a tough three-way primary and Democrats fielding two strong candidates, Republican strategists reportedly were concerned the race would be tougher than expected. They feared a draining fight could leave the nominee wounded before the real battle against the Democrats even began.

Back in July, the NRSC commissioned a private poll that “by design” included Crockett’s name among the Democratic contenders. Her numbers surprised everyone: she topped the field. Instead of treating it as an internal curiosity, GOP operatives moved fast. 

“When we saw the results, we were like, ‘OK, we got to disseminate this far and wide,’” a source told NOTUS.

In June news broke that Texas Democrats Colin Allred, James Talarico, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and Rep. Joaquin Castro met to discuss the 2026 election.

Operatives at the NRSC realized that Crockett — whose political stock had been rising — wasn’t included in that meeting and also hadn’t been included in any credible poll. So they decided to change that.

Following the NRSC’s polls, other surveys began to include Crockett and showed similar results: She was surging in the primary.

The NRSC then worked to amplify those polls and is taking credit for helping “orchestrate the pile on of these polling numbers to really drive that news cycle and that narrative that Jasmine Crockett was surging in Texas,” the source said.

And Crockett took the bait.

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House Democrat Files Impeachment Articles Against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Turning ‘His Back on Science’

Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who is running for Senate, filed articles of impeachment on Wednesday against Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., saying he has turned “his back on science.”

“Today, I formally introduced articles of impeachment against Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. RFK Jr. has turned his back on science and the safety of the American people. Michiganders cannot take another day of his chaos,” the Michigan Democrat wrote in a statement.

Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for HHS, dismissed the articles of impeachment as a political ploy.

“Secretary Kennedy remains focused on the work of improving Americans’ health and lowering costs, not on partisan political stunts,” Nixon said.

Stevens is the second Democrat to recently move to impeach a Trump cabinet official; Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) just filed articles of impeachment against Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Thanedar has cited the Trump administration’s strikes against vessels that were allegedly taking part in drug trafficking.

“Pete Hegseth has been using the United States military to extrajudicially assassinate people without evidence of any crime,” said Thanedar.

He added, “Former military attorneys have come out and asserted that his conduct constitutes war crimes. We cannot allow his reprehensible conduct to continue, which is why I have filed these articles to impeach him.”

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Socialist Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani Appoints a Convicted Armed Robber to Lead His Criminal Justice Team in New York City

New York City’s incoming socialist mayor is already proving exactly why voters should be worried.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has tapped a convicted armed robber to help shape the city’s public-safety and criminal-justice agenda, according to new reporting from Fox News.

Mamdani appointed Mysonne Linen, a 49-year-old rapper, activist, and former Def Jam signee who spent seven years in prison for two violent taxi-driver robberies, to serve on his City Hall transition team.

According to court records and reporting from Fox News, citing the New York Daily News, Linen was convicted in 1999 for two separate armed robberies of taxi drivers:

• In June 1997, Linen and accomplices robbed cab driver Joseph Exiri, smashing him in the head with a beer bottle during the attack.
• In March 1998, prosecutors said Linen held up another cabbie, Francisco Monsanto, at gunpoint, stealing cash and a ring before fleeing into the night.

Both victims took the stand and identified Linen as one of their assailants.

Linen faced up to 25 years for the violent crimes and ultimately served seven years. At the time, his defense argued he had no motive because he was writing songs for Lil’ Kim and Mase

The announcement wasn’t made in a City Hall press release, but instead through an Instagram post from the radical social-justice organization Until Freedom, where Linen serves as a leader.

“We are proud that Until Freedom leaders have been chosen to serve on Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition team on committees for public safety and criminal justice respectively.

This is a testament to our decades of work advocating on behalf of Black and Brown communities and our expertise in gun violence prevention, legislative advocacy and criminal justice reform.

We are building something different.”

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Grab Your Popcorn: Jasmine Crockett Is About to Crash and Burn

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) is expected to shake up the Senate race with a Monday announcement that she plans to run for the seat that Republican John Cornyn holds. If she officially files, Crockett will face off in the March 3 Democratic primary against state Rep. James Talarico. Meanwhile, Colin Allred, who ran against Sen. Ted Cruz two years ago and had hinted at another Senate run, is exiting the race to return to the House.

Whoever emerges from the Democratic primary, and polls suggest Crockett is likely to do so, will face the winner of the GOP primary between incumbent Cornyn, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Rep. Wesley Hunt.

“Voters are looking for someone who’s unapologetic in defending our values and who is plain spoken and knows how to speak the language of the everyday person,” said Kardal Coleman, chairman of the Dallas County Democratic Party, according to the Dallas Morning News. “All of them are going to be skilled campaigners and skilled communicators, but the person who can really exemplify what it means to be a Texas Democrat is going to have the most success.”

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The Stages Of A Color Revolution… And Where America Is Right Now

A “color revolution” (sometimes called a “soft coup” or “regime-change operation by non-kinetic means”) is a modern form of orchestrated political upheaval designed to replace an existing government without traditional military invasion or civil war. The term arose from events in the early 2000s, such as Serbia’s Bulldozer Revolution (2000) and Georgia’s Rose Revolution (2003). 

These operations follow a remarkably consistent playbook, refined over two decades by Western NGOs, intelligence-linked foundations, and State Department-affiliated entities (Open Society Foundations, USAID, etc.).

Authors describe seven stages of a color revolution.

The stages include these tactics, which I’ll list in approximate chronological order:

  • Portray the target government as illegitimate, authoritarian, corrupt, or “fascist.”  
  • Front-load allegations: accuse incumbent of planning the crimes the opposition intends to commit (rigging, regression, dictatorship).
  • Fund and train NGOs, student groups, and opposition politicians to repeat a unified message.
  • Create/amplify a unifying symbol or theme (e.g., Orange Man Bad).
  • Manufacture an electoral crisis.
  • Street mobilization.
  • Public appeals to and moral blackmail of the military and police: “You’re with the people, not the regime.”
  • Promises of immunity, future positions for defectors.
  • Threats to those who support target government.
  • Provoke a response, flood media with images of “peaceful protesters” being attacked.
  • International legitimation as foreign governments and media recognizes opposition leaders as “legitimate” authority.
  • Sanctions, frozen assets, diplomatic isolation applied to sitting government.
  • New elections scheduled under international supervision.

We’re approaching the final four stages of this process with the Seditious Six’s “advice” to the military about alleged “illegal orders”, and threats to those who obey the POTUS. These warnings have eroded military cohesion, priming them for institutional resistance against Trump’s policies on immigration enforcement and domestic security.

General Michael Flynn described these actions as part of a coordinated effort to destabilize the nation’s power structure. These actions build on a pattern of Democrat actions that align with color revolution phases. Beginning with the 2016 election, the “Russiagate” narrative served to portray his presidency as illegitimate to erode public trust. Funded investigations, leaks from intelligence communities, and media amplification created an “illegitimacy loop,” where any Trump action was framed as evidence of tyranny.

The accusations of an illegitimate presidency rang out early in Trump’s first term. The cries came from Hillary Clinton on down to elected officials, celebrities, and the rank and file. The two impeachments manufactured crises, positioning Democrats as defenders of democracy (stop laughing!) against a purportedly rogue executive. Street mobilization echoed in the 2020 BLM protests which were leveraged to sustain urban unrest and pressure institutions. These events forced standoffs with law enforcement. More recently, accusations against Trump’s nominees, like Pete Hegseth facing war crime smears, fit the tactic of rapid, scripted attacks to paralyze the administration.

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NYC’s Radical Socialist Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani Posts Video Coaching Illegals on How to Evade ICE – Urges People to ‘Stand Up’ to Feds

New York City’s incoming mayor, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, released a video on X Sunday morning offering step-by-step advice to illegal immigrants on thwarting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

Standing in front of a flip chart labeled “Know your rights,” Mamdani positioned himself as the defender of NYC’s “more than 3 million immigrants,” vowing to protect them from federal raids amid President Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda.

The video comes on the heels of a disrupted ICE raid in Chinatown last weekend, where nearly 200 protesters blocked agents from leaving a parking garage.

“Last weekend, ICE attempted to raid Canal Street and detain our immigrant neighbors,” Mamdani said in the video posted to X on Sunday. “As mayor, I’ll protect the rights of every single New Yorker. And that includes the more than 3 million immigrants who call this city their home.”

Mamdani continued, “But we can all stand up to ICE if you know your rights.”

“ICE cannot enter into private spaces like your home, school, or private area of your workplace without a judicial warrant signed by a judge,” Mamdani said.

“You have the right to say, ‘I do not consent to entry,’ and the right to keep your door closed,” he continued.

Mamdani showed an example of ICE paperwork that may be mistaken for a warrant.

“ICE is legally allowed to lie to you. But you have the right to remain silent. If you are being detained, you may always ask, ‘Am I free to go?’ repeatedly until they answer you,” Mamdani continued.

“You are legally allowed to film ICE, as long as you do not interfere with an arrest,” he stated.

Mamdani also not-so-subtly urged people to protest.

“New Yorkers have a constitutional right to protest, and when I’m mayor, we will protect that right,” Mamdani said.

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