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President Trump ‘Losing Patience’ With Iran Leaders. Alleged New York Stabber Shouts ‘Allahu Akbar.’ Wonder What Got Into Him? Knives Out for JD. Odyssey Week! More

TGIF. We got through the week with the good news that New York’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani “arrest Bibi” meme was just an empty campaign promise. Lettuce, on the other hand, had a terrible week (here and here). 

Friday brings us tidings that President Trump is “losing patience” with Iran’s leaders, whoever they might be:

President Trump was fed up.

During a recent meeting in the Oval Office, he launched into a tirade against Iranian leaders, calling them scumbags and lunatics, and unleashing a series of expletives, according to a person who heard the comments.

As the war in Iran enters its fifth month, Trump is increasingly frustrated that a conflict he once thought would be over in a matter of weeks has dragged on with no end in sight, administration officials and others close to the president said.

Some of Trump’s advisers now worry that the war—which has resulted in higher prices, falling approval ratings and the deaths of more than a dozen U.S. servicemembers—is consuming his presidency and damaging Republicans’ already dim prospects in the coming midterm elections.

The president is depicted as “skeptical of diplomacy” and in “revenge mode.”  Ditto Ms. Must. Meanwhile, Yemen’s Houthis, tribal terror clients of Iran, are trying to block Saudi oil in the Red Sea. The Houthi card, according to a Wall Street Journal editorial, is designed to make President Trump blink, as oil prices went above $100. The Houthis are accidentally making the point that “ceding Hormuz to Iran will be a damaging precedent for global commerce and American deterrence.” Trump is “weighing a massive attack on Iran,” which the New York Post cover summarizes as “Go Big and Come Home.”

The New York Post editorializes: “Bomb threat from the Trump admin will force Iran to the negotiating table.” Ms. Must hates to be a party pooper, but it’s bombs, not blustery “bomb threats,” that carry weight. What does the U.S. hope to get out of negotiations this go-round? U.S. foreign policy is the subject of an online conversation between New York Times columnist and War Department official Elbridge Colby.

The Other War. Michael Barone has a good piece about the Ukraine War. Wars remake war, Barone argues, and the Ukraine War is remaking war once again.

Here we go again—yet another baffling search for an elusive motive.

Whatever could have gotten into this guy?

A suspect is in custody after allegedly yelling “Allahu Akbar” while stabbing two men in what officials are describing as an apparent antisemitic attack in Manhattan’s Upper West Side Thursday afternoon.

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said one of the victims is Jewish and that witnesses reported hearing the suspect yell “Allahu Akbar” during both assaults, which took place near West 84th Street and Central Park West, a large Jewish community.

Investigators are evaluating whether the reported attacks should be classified as a hate crime and identified the suspect as Raul Morales, 51, in both assaults

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani was slow to respond to the incident, leaving a City Council member to criticize him. We may never know the motive of the alleged stabber. The (satirical?) Babylon Bee looks on the bright side:

New Yorker Being Stabbed on Street Corner Glad to Know Mamdani Focused on Bringing Netanyahu to Justice

Meanwhile, Mayor Mamdani turns his attention to the more congenital issue of class warfare. Rob Henderson of The Free Press remarks on Mamdani’s contention that anyone who makes less than a million a year is working class. “The socialist mayor says anyone earning less than $1 million a year is working class. In reality, the label has little to do with how much money you make,” counters Henderson.

This makes Joel Kotkin’s “Socialism for the Elites” in Spiked Online especially illuminating:

Socialism is au courant in America today, though in its 21st-century form, it is less a rebellion of the proletariat than a by-product of the capitalist elite. Through its continued efforts to decrease the returns to human labour and by financing the very groups and ideologies increasingly dedicated to its overthrow, socialism has found fertile ground.

A Washington Post headline signals a possible rough patch for Vice President JD Vance: “Knives are out for Vance in the GOP. His allies say it’s a coordinated ‘op.’” Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel counters that Vance “minions” have their knives out for her (“How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, by JD Vance“). It started with Strassel’s column last week that was critical of Vance:

Most telling as to how this crew operates was the Federalist’s Sean Davis, who accused me of “pulling” an “obvious little stunt” against Mr. Vance, “whose wife just gave birth.” This appeared above my headline, “President Vance Goes AWOL.” The implication was that I’d criticized the vice president for taking a day of paternity leave. But as Mr. Davis knew, Usha Vance didn’t bear little Alec—mazel tov—until five days after Mr. Vance’s controversial absence. What Mr. Davis also knows is that online mobs don’t check facts, and he got his desired result: hundreds of posts slanging me as not just a traitor, but an unfeeling ass.

Also as a “deep state” “Marxist” “liberal” “corrupt” “billionaire lackey,” an “intellectually dishonest” “uniparty mouthpiece,” who is little more than a “scumbag propagandist,” and “anti-Trump,” and who lives for the “donor class.”

If they think that’s bad, they should hear what my kids call me.

Can Mr. Vance possibly think this is smart?

The AOC for President meme had a pretty good week. AOC’s rival Governor Gavin Newsom, on the other hand, was accused of pushing California to the brink. The accusation was in a wide-ranging sound piece in the Washington Post featuring Kate Andrews and Victor Davis Hanson. 

More Golden State News. A hot mic caught Sacramento’s Mayor and Vice Mayor candidly strategizing after the public sent a public discussion of immigration off the rails:

“We should go over this disruptions thing, because if we want to ban somebody in the future, like to take them out, we have to point out specifically…” Vice Mayor Karina Talamantes is heard saying.

A Wall Street Journal editorial isn’t sold on the Stop Insider Trading Act:

Congress’s anger entrepreneurs are—who would have guessed?—honking upset. For months they’ve raged that the Capitol is full of legislators making corrupt fortunes from “insider trading” in the stock market. This isn’t reality. But the House responded to public concern Wednesday by passing, in a 232-198 vote, a bill called the Stop Insider Trading Act….

The Stop Insider Trading Act is best understood as an attempt to forestall greater populist nonsense. But no one should expect it will somehow make Congress more ethical. It will mainly make it safer for lawyers and career politicians.

It Just Slipped Up on Me. The redo of the White House Correspondents Association Dinner is tonight. The traditional black-tie dinner in April was abruptly ended when Cole Allen allegedly attempted to assassinate President Trump.

This was Odyssey Week. For what it’s worth, I loved it. So did Rich Lowry (“Sorry, haters, Christopher Nolan’s Odysseus is no wimp — but a hero for our times”):

The most fevered critics of the movie on the right suggest that Christopher Nolan seeks to subvert the Western tradition.

If so, the director — who has renewed interest in a Western classic and ends with a paean to the Western zest for exploration — has a funny way of going about it. 

While finding the movie “rudderless,” First Things found “much to like” in it. Me too.

Glitch-Gate: More on NJ’s Pesky ‘Noncitizen’ Voters. What If Mamdani Had Arrested Netanyahu? Scrappy WNBA Femme Fatale Sophie Cunningham Stands Up for Women’s Sports. Gazaholics. And More

Jersey Mikie can’t be happy.

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill was quick to dismiss the “glitch” that registered more than six thousand “noncitizens” to vote in New Jersey. But maybe not so fast?   

“Software vendor says NJ knew 6,600 noncitizens registered to vote — and approved them anyway,” an inconvenient New York Post headline blares:  

The software company that New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill blamed for 6,600 noncitizens getting put onto the voter rolls insists that local officials were responsible for illegally registering the immigrants.

Sherrill (D) claimed Tuesday that a “serious software error” in the state’s Motor Vehicle System involving French tech company IDEMIA caused the mishap, which led to some 400 noncitizens voting.

But IDEMIA said that the state had access to data showing that those individuals were not citizens — but apparently registered them to vote anyway.

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal doesn’t even insinuate that government officials, including Sherrill, who wasn’t even in office at the time, were complicit but instead uses glitch-gate to suggest that it’s time for blue states to clean up their voter rolls:

New Jersey’s screw-up is another reminder that illegal voting isn’t a myth, and vigilance is important. On the other hand, this also isn’t the conspiracy that Mr. Trump likes to conjure in the minds of his supporters.

The risk of vote fraud is highest in local races with small numbers of ballots, and getting away with even that isn’t easy. Last year three Pennsylvania men were sentenced to federal prison for trying to steal a mayoral election in Millbourne by falsely registering “nearly three dozen” out-of-towners to addresses in the borough.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice is demanding answers on New Jersey’s voter rolls scandal.

Mamdani’s Foiled Plot to Kidnap Netanyahu,” by Paul Mauro (the former NYC cop and Fox Contributor), writes that if New York Mayor Zohran had followed up on his campaign promise to arrest Israel’s Prime Minister, it might have been the Z-man who would have ended up in handcuffs. Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen makes the same point.

“Mamdani’s Netanyahu backtrack marks another broken promise as mayor prioritizes ideology over running NYC: critics” is the New York Post take:

“He should start focusing on the people of his city instead of meddling in matters he doesn’t understand.”

The socialist mayor, who repeatedly harped on the Israeli leader on the campaign trail and in his curated online profiles, was finally forced to admit he doesn’t have the juice to lock up Netanyahu when he visits the city — but continues to flash his disdain for the Jewish state.

Writing at The Free Press, Douglas Murray explains why Mamdani wants to make an enemy of one of the U.S.’s closest allies:

Sometimes you wonder why a person went into politics. Other times, you know exactly why they did. For Zohran Mamdani, yesterday was a case of the latter.

On Tuesday evening he released a two-minute video of himself, seated behind a desk, flanked by the flags of the United States and New York. He had arranged this posture—for posture it was—to announce a development in the case of Zohran Mamdani vs. Benjamin Netanyahu, otherwise known as Mamdani vs. the State of Israel. Attacks on Israel have been central to Mamdani’s political rise. He has spent his life marinating in postcolonial politics, Third Worldism, and anti-Zionism, and brings agitation, certainty, and ignorance to debates about the Middle East.

Mamdani and his comrades hurl the “genocide” accusation at Israel to justify their lethal animus against the world’s only Jewish state. “False accusations of genocide are nothing new,” a fascinating Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined “Rwanda, Israel and the Inversion of ‘Genocide.’” Anthropologist Adam Louis-Klein argues that when Hamas defenders accuse the Jewish state, they “follow a trail the Hutus blazed in 1993.” Lodging the vile accusation apparently doesn’t promote human happiness, as Brendan O’Neill exposes the “staggering joylessness” of those he dubs Gazaholics.

The U.S. military has completed the 12th straight night of strikes on Iran. Powerline endorses what it sees as a new Trump policy of hitting Iran harder. Oil prices are rising this morning because of claimed Houthi attacks on the Red Sea. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal argues that reconciliation 3.0 is the best chance Republicans have to shore up defense. Yet another WSJ editorial calls President Trump’s nuclear deal with the Saudis “a mistake”:

Why does Saudi Arabia need to enrich uranium on its home soil? The answer isn’t complicated: It doesn’t unless it would like to establish the rudiments of a nuclear-weapons program as a contingency. The more difficult question to answer is why the Trump Administration is going along with it….

The stakes are high. The risk of nuclear-weapons catastrophe increases each time nuclear enrichment spreads. That’s why the bipartisan U.S. consensus has been to stop the spread of the most dangerous processes and capabilities to enemies and allies….

The Trump Administration says it has devised a bilateral safeguards agreement of its own. But we doubt the Saudis rejected the standard protocol in favor of even stricter inspections. They are bound to be weaker, establishing the precedent that each U.S. ally can push for its own preferential monitoring….

The U.S. needs Arab allies, and it has much to offer oil-rich Saudi Arabia as it diversifies its economy. But the Saudis don’t need a path to a nuclear bomb to match Iran. Mr. Trump and the U.S. military have been making sure of that. Why undermine that success now?

Karl Rove asks what is the most important question in American politics (and indeed our civilization): “Will Democrats Disavow the DSA Platform?” Rove writes:

The Constitution is also on the chopping block. “Building a new society from the ground up”—France 1792 and Russia 1917, anyone?—entails making the District of Columbia a state, expanding the size of the House and instituting ranked-choice voting. Also abolishing the Senate and the Electoral College—though the latter wouldn’t give way to the popular vote. Instead, the platform calls to “replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.”

On a more practical level, USA TODAY columnist Ingrid Jaques writes that Democrats have made another mistake in Maine by putting up a second unvetted Senate candidate. Meanwhile, Senator Elizabeth Warren, an ardent admirer of Maine’s Nazi tattoo candidate, has found her Nazi red line:

OK: Having a Totenkopf tattoo, cavorting with Holocaust revisionists. Not OK: Honoring your Nazi grandfather on Veterans Day.

Sophie Cunningham is causing quite a stir in the MSM by saying that she doesn’t favor men competing against women in women’s competitions:

WNBA star Sophie Cunningham sent shockwaves in the ongoing culture war over the WNBA and trans athletes in women’s sports on Tuesday after revealing her stance on the issue to ESPN.

Cunningham’s recent statements sparked debate on social media after she revealed she is in support of protecting women’s sports.

“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,'” Cunningham said.

The Washington Free Beacon hails Cunningham as a Superstar and Scrappy Feminist Standing Up for Women’s Sports. Uh oh: The Beacon said something about Ms. Cunningham that you’re not supposed to say:

She found success in a league that has historically excluded attractive white women. Now she’s using her platform to ‘protect young girls’ from ‘biological men.’

New York Post’s aptly named columnist Miranda Devine makes a habit of saying what you’re not supposed to say. Her column this morning is headlined: “The Smithsonian reeks of communist ideologies that our Founding Fathers would be ashamed of.” She writes:

If you wondered how communism has grabbed a foothold in the United States of America of all places, look no further than the Smithsonian Institution.

The world’s largest and most influential museum has been hijacked by Marxist ideology to teach self-loathing anti-American woke propaganda to its 20 million annual visitors plus 20 million students a year.

The Smithsonian teaches that “politeness,” “punctuality,” “objectivity” and “hard work” is white supremacy, and that Mickey Mouse is a form of blackface, while devoting not one major exhibit to ­George Washington or any of the Founding Fathers.

Irresistible. Senator Ossoff of Georgia certainly ought to be, given this Free Beacon scoop:

Jon Ossoff Spends Thousands on ‘Makeup Services’ from Artist Who Worked on Hollywood Blockbusters Like ‘The Notebook’

Make-up maketh the man.

Oopsie! New Jersey Voting Rolls Boast Six Thousand ‘Non-Citizens.’ Republicans Pounce. Smithsonian Museum Head Declines to Say Whether Men Can Become Women. Will Trad Dems Be First Casualties of the Revolution? More

Who REALLY has “zero credibility” in the scandal of New Jersey’s having more than 6,000 non-citizens on its voter rolls?

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill attempted to minimize the disgrace by blaming a convenient target:

Approximately 400 non-citizens cast ballots illegally in New Jersey elections since 2023 after more than 6,000 immigrants were wrongly added to the Garden State’s voter rolls, Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill admitted Tuesday.

Despite the mortifying disclosure, Sherrill managed to use her press conference about the fumble to take a swipe at President Trump.

She added that Trump “has zero credibility on the issue of election integrity.”

Only 400 noncitizens voted? Sherrill also cast aspersions—by name—on her predecessor, Governor Phil Murphy, who was in office when the suspicious noncitizens were added to the voter rolls.

Sherrill could not have liked the New York Post Cover. “Jersey Devil,” it screamed, reiterating the damning numbers. Axios says that what it calls a “software glitch” “could fuel President Trump’s unsupported claims of mass voter fraud that critics say threaten to undermine trust in elections.”

You better bet the “glitch” fuels claims of voter fraud. The GOP would be seriously remiss if it didn’t pounce. Brianna Lyman of The Federalist writes:

New Jersey is one of more than 20 states the Department of Justice has sued for refusing to turn over voter rolls to be “cross-checked effectively for improper registrations.”

In other words, our elections are insecure and vulnerable to foreign election interference. Noncitizens can (and do) register to vote, and they also can (and do) illegally vote in our elections. In fact, The Federalist previously reported that voter rolls from at least eight of the state’s 21 counties show several instances in which noncitizens were registered to vote, with several stating they did “not understand” how they became “registered through the Department of Motor Vehicles, allegedly.”

Meanwhile, primaries in Arizona gave President Trump good news as Rep. Andy Biggs “sailed” to the Republican nomination to run against Governor Katie Hobbs:

Now comes the more difficult task for the five-term conservative firebrand in his quest to defeat Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs: winning over needed independents without straying too far from the White House.

Arizona is one of the most hotly contested swing states in the country, but in several Republican primaries this year the experts have warned Trump-endorsed contenders will have a tougher time in the general election.

What’s it with high-powered representatives of the DC elite culture being afraid to say what’s different about men and women? Another one has joined the Ketanji Club:

Smithsonian National Museum of American History Director Anthea Hartig appeared stumped by a basic question on sex and gender from Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C.

During a House hearing on alleged “extreme political activism” on display at the Smithsonian, Mace asked Hartig, “Do you believe that men can become women?”

Hartig hesitated before answering, “Ma’am, as the director of the museum, that’s not relevant in this case.”

Ms. Hartig was testifying before a House subcommittee that questioned her about a White House report that the museum under her direction has been “captured” by ideology and attempts to “erase” America’s heritage. So, maybe it is relevant whether Hartig believes men can become women? Just asking.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Louis XIV of Science, is likely to get a grilling when he testifies before Congress, considering new Slack messages that Rep. Rand Paul has released. According to the new material, the authors of key documents on the origin of Covid, harbored doubts about what they told the public. Fauci, who has been accused of manipulating scientific data to exonerate the Wuhan lab, is scheduled to testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, of which Paul, who has relentlessly pursued the Covid origins story, is chairman.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth went before the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday to field questions about the Department of War’s $67 billion supplemental budget request, a large portion of which is intended to fund military operations in Iran. The Washington Post reports that the Secretary faced “bipartisan scrutiny.”

Latest combat deaths show risk has shifted to troops far from Iran’s borders. Iran’s ballistic missiles are proving a continuing threat. A fourth American soldier, Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad, 28, of Ozone Park, New York, is believed to have been killed. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal says that the President has “acquired a new target”:

President Trump’s attention has turned to Pickaxe Mountain, the deep-underground potential nuclear enrichment site long familiar to readers of these columns. “We’ll be hitting that area pretty soon,” the President said Tuesday. “There’s not a thing they can do about it.”

Let’s hope he’s right on both counts. The U.S. passed over the facility during Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025 and this year’s Operation Epic Fury. … You don’t build a facility like the one at Pickaxe Mountain merely to store centrifuges. This is the enrichment site of the Iranian regime’s dreams, the perfect place for a nuclear breakout to weapons-grade uranium. It’s deeper even than the Fordow site that the U.S. struck with precisely targeted 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators.

Hence the need for U.S. action.

In related developments, President Trump approved a landmark nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia, David Ignatius of the Washington Post cheers President Trump’s attention to Lebanon, and Speaker Mike Johnson says it’s time to “wrap it up” in Iran as president rejects midterm influence on war.

What are traditional Democrats doing to save their party from the newly empowered socialists/communists? Nothin’ much, it appears. “Democrats are completely blind to the DSA’s brazen party coup — so the rest of us must step up,” New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz argues in her latest column:

Someone has to be first up against the wall when their revolution comes — and it’s going to be the same Democrats who are refusing now to fight back.

It’s way past the time for Democrats to say: These are bad ideas that have harmed millions of people, and we won’t stand for them in our party.

The rest of us can’t wait around and watch them try communism just one more time because the Democrats are scared to come off as uncool.

What the Movement Taking Over the Democratic Party Wants” is a symposium at The Free Press that features thoughts from Victor Davis Hanson, Natan Sharansky, Bhaskar Sunkara, and more on whether the movement sweeping Democratic primaries is communism, socialism, or something else entirely.

Who are the people who want to take over the Democratic Party? “The DSA sweet spot: highly educated, downwardly mobile” is the headline on Nate Silver’s Substack column:

Based on this grid, what is the most Democratic voting group in America? It’s voters with postgraduate degrees but lower-to-middle household incomes of $30K to $60K per year.

This is very much also the sweet spot for the DSA. In the group’s most recent member survey in 2021, 80 percent of members aged 25 or older had bachelor’s degrees, but 45 percent had household incomes below $60,000 per year.

This is unusual, because education and income are usually substantially positively correlated. In the composite CES data, only 19 percent of Americans with bachelor’s degrees or higher had household incomes of $60K or below. The DSA rate is around twice that.4 These voters aren’t necessarily “blue collar” in the sense of working with their hands. But that doesn’t mean they’re privileged. Common occupations among DSA members include teachers, non-profit workers, social workers, and public sector employees.

Meanwhile, the standard bearer for this contingent of voters, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, has realized that New York can’t arrest Israeli PM, Bibi Netanyahu. All he can do is pout and call Netanyahu bad names. Meanwhile, Senator John Fetterman calls the Z-man “a total clown.”

One For the Road. Senator Darline Graham surprised everybody by deciding to run for the late Senator Lindsey Graham’s Senate seat. Byron York writes about “The unknown Darline Graham.”

Meet the New Vanguard of the Proletariat: Trust Fund Socialists. Is Michigan Most Important Senate Race? Senator Darline Graham Throws Her Hat in Ring. Hewitt’s Iran Update. U.K. Has Another New PM. More

Here is how The Free Press characterizes the political legerdemain that is providing Maine Democrats with a senatorial candidate who is to all appearances bereft of Nazi tattoos:

The oysterman is out; a logger, Troy Jackson, is in. Platner built a powerful movement brimming with anger.

The Dems must feel their search for the elusive white working-class male has been rewarded: a logger! A supporter of Graham Platner, Jackson is the presumptive Dem nominee to challenge GOP moderate Senator Susan Collins. If anger was a criterion to succeed Graham Platner, Jackson seems to brim with it too:  

Troy Jackson, a powerful Maine legislator now running for Senate, once angrily threw a water bottle in a meeting after he couldn’t persuade a lawmaker to vote his way.

He yelled at another lawmaker, prompting her to post on social media that straight men were “too emotional” to be in politics. And he cursed and shouted in a meeting with the speaker of Maine’s state House, until she kicked him out of her office.

During the six years Jackson presided over Maine’s Senate, until he left office in 2024, his temper was a feature of his leadership, and one that Democratic lawmakers discussed among themselves as a problem and even raised with the governor.

Jackson is a progressive Democrat who advocates “Medicare for all” but—intriguingly—was formerly against abortion and same-sex marriage. He has since redeemed himself. Five things to know about Mr. Jackson. Graham Platner remains a factor. Peter Savrodnik of The Free Press writes that from immigration enforcement to the war in Gaza, the young leftists inspired by the Maine Senate candidate are still steering their party’s direction.

The Maine Senate seat is key to Dem hopes for taking the Senate. The Examiner’s Joe Concha, however, makes the case that the most important Senate race in decades is happening in Michigan. Abdul El Sayed is running against a prominent former Obama official in the Aug. 4 primary:

El Sayed has called for defunding the police in the past. He wants to dismantle Immigration and Customs Enforcement now. He believes private health insurance should cease to exist and that the government should run the entire healthcare system. 

If this were el Sayed’s platform while running in New York City or Seattle or Denver or Washington, D.C., he’d have an excellent chance of winning. But this is Michigan, a state President Donald Trump won twice and narrowly lost in 2020. It’s the perfect test case for socialism succeeding statewide in a purple state.  

Polls currently have el Sayed trailing former Obama administration official Haley Stevens by four points in the RealClearPolitics average. But he is favored to win the nomination on the betting market Kalshi by a 66% to 34% margin. Polymarket also has el Sayed as the favorite.

El Sayed has a Jill Biden feature—he calls himself a doctor but, like Jill, doesn’t have a medical license. But that’s a side issue. El Sayed has campaigned with Hasan Piker, who said that America deserved 9/11. Either El Sayed, who won Senator Elizabeth Warren’s endorsement, or Stevens will oppose Republican Mike Rogers, who narrowly lost a Senate race to Senator Elissa Slotkin in 2024, in the general election. All in the Family: El Sayed is graced with a sis who spits at cops.

What we are seeing is the “The Brave New Age of Trust-Fund Socialism,” or wealthy anticapitalists are transforming the Democratic Party, profiled in this highly recommended Free Beacon exposé. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s “working costume” seems to be fraying. What is distressing is that the rise of the socialists is being discussed primarily in terms of the midterms—not its long-range ramifications.

While Democrats search for ways to end U.S. attacks on Iran, Hugh Hewitt argues, “America is winning its battle with Iran. It’s only a matter of time.” But do the Iranians have more tolerance for pain than we do? The U.S. is taking casualties, including 100 wounded, which makes the war harder for the public to stomach, but some are daring to ask what a post-Islamic Republic would look like. President Trump will attend the dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base of the bodies of two American soldiers killed in an Iranian attack in Jordan over the weekend, 1st Lt. Tyler Feehan and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales.

Saying she wants to be “more than a caretaker,” Senator Darline Graham Nordone, appointed to fill the remainder of her brother the late Senator Lindsey Graham’s term, threw her hat into the race to succeed Graham on the Hannity show. The field already is crowded.

More Politics. “Vance vs. Rubio: The Shadow Primary” is the headline on a WSJ “Free Expression” piece by Matthew Hennessey. Hennessey writes that both men have begun putting down markers on issues like the economy, capitalism, and communism. Hennessey critiques Vice President Vance’s appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast and says that to run at all, Secretary of State Rubio would have to give up his current jobs in the administration.

Hilarity Ensued. Former CNN host Don Lemon says that people have been asking him to run for President, and he just might take them up on it. Lemon claims MAGA people are “Nazis, but Without the Holocaust Stuff.” As Townhall quips, that’s like saying someone is Catholic without the transubstantiation stuff.

The Constitution, Birthright Citizenship, and a Self-Governing Republic,” by Linda Denno, in Civitas Outlook, summarizes Trump v. Barbara. The birthright citizenship case that made it to the Supreme Court this way: “The decision in Trump v. Barbara represents a missed opportunity for the Court to reaffirm that citizenship is a fundamental aspect of national sovereignty.”

The U. S. Treasury stopped nearly $100M in taxpayer money from going to dead people after a new gov’t measure was implemented, according to a New York Post exclusive:

The department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service discovered the money set to go to ghosts after a review of an eye-popping 885 million payments worth a total of nearly $2.7 trillion.

Since March 2025, the screening has identified more than 4,900 disbursements, worth approximately $99 million, associated with deceased payees, according to the Treasury. 

The payments going to the dead – often indicative of fraud – were returned to the originating federal agencies for review before any funds were disbursed, the department said. 

The $99 million figure is a tiny fraction (0.0036%) of the $2.7 trillion the department reviewed as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on waste, fraud and abuse — but more than triple what Treasury discovered going to the deceased in the days before President Trump took office last year.   

“Treasury has delivered on a key promise of President Trump’s mandate to stop improper payments and fraud before money leaves the Treasury, and strengthen the integrity of the federal payment system,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. 

You’ve got to love “often indicative of fraud.”

Everybody is talking about The Odyssey, including Megan Cox Gurdon, who has a fine piece on the movie and the World Cup which have united Americans. Don’t miss Ms. Gurdon’s “Return of the Monoculture.” I don’t know if normal, everyday people are talking about Vogue magazine, but I recommend Julie Burchill’s delightfully sulphuric takedown of the “magazine’s woke makeover [that] has proven its downfall.”

I almost forgot: the U.K. has another new Prime Minister. A Telegraph podcast hails PM Andy Burnham’s “mandate.” Ouch.

Andy Burnham Is Mad for It” is the headline on Dominic Green’s WSJ “Free Expression” welcome for Mr. Burnham. I gather Mr. Burnham is mad for Manchester, where he was until recently the Mayor:

The conquering hero of Labour politics is bringing Manchesterism to London. Nobody knows for sure what that means.

Gareth Roberts, meanwhile, says that Burnham is “stuck in the 1990s.” Raising the question: How long will he be stuck at 10 Downing?

We started on socialism this morning. So why not end on it (before it ends us)? Don’t miss City Journal’s “Why Socialists Want to Shut Down Prisons.” “Far-left, extremist ideology prevents an honest interpretation of crime and incarceration data,” explains the subhead. Also, Ms. Must suggests that they might have a hard time telling good people from bad people.  

What If Iran Had a Nuke? Alec Neel Vance: First Baby Born to Sitting Veep in 150 Years. Pollster: It’s Not Socialism—It’s Distrust. Workers of World Not Uniting Behind DSA. Washington Socialites Wonder If It’s Safe Now. More

We’re back at war.

Although the Washington Post only has it that the U.S. “teeters on all-out war with Iran,” Jordan has become a new flashpoint in the conflict:

Iran has been stepping up its missile and drone attacks on U.S. forces in Jordan as it seeks to produce American casualties and deter Washington from escalating its test of wills with Tehran, current and former officials say. …

The military announced Sunday that seventeen U.S. service members have died in Iran. Three were killed in an Iranian attack on Jordan. The Pentagon has identified two of our fallen heroes who lost their lives in Iranian attacks over the weekend.  

An Iranian billboard threatens that President Trump is the “next one,” after the sudden death of Senator Lindsey Graham.

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal notes that former Trump advisor John Bolton, also targeted for death by Iran, unlike the president, does not have Secret Service protection. The Editors also address Qatar’s nifty gifty, a new Air Force One, which apparently has been put in storage because of security concerns.

The Islamic Republic with a nuke is truly a metaphysical idea.

After that, we need some happy news. Congratulations to Vice President JD Vance and Second Lady Usha, who welcomed a new baby Sunday morning:

“We are excited to announce that our baby boy, Alec Neel Vance, was born this morning,” the couple wrote. “Usha and the baby are happy and healthy, and our kids are overjoyed to meet their little brother.”

Alec Neel, the fourth Vance child, is the first child born to a sitting Vice President in150 years. Here’s a picture of Alec Neel being held by a big brother and sister.

Vice President Vance also got another present—not as sweet as Alec Neel, of course, but nice. Bill Maher said he could see himself voting for Vance in 2028:

Maher told ABC News’s Jonathan Karl on “This Week” that the Democratic Party is being “taken over.”

Would Vance succeed Trump as MAGA chieftain? The U.K. Telegraph sees Vance “breaking ranks” in a “gamble for power” as the veep is “positioning himself” to lead MAGA.

Is Nothing off Limits? Spain defeated Argentina for the World Cup. Ms. Must can’t pretend she knows about sports, but it sounded like fun. But guess what? In New York, the World Cup final becomes a Gaza proxy war:

“Israel genocide type shit,” screamed a young Latino man on a Times Square subway platform to a group sporting Argentina jerseys. “Got a problem, eat my sack.” As dusk fell on Manhattan Spanish football fans chanted, “Free Free Palestine” to celebrate their team’s World Cup victory. The game had taken place just hours before, a few miles across the Hudson River at MetLife Stadium — or “New York New Jersey Stadium,” as it is now branded by FIFA.

In recent weeks, social media has settled on a curious narrative: Argentina as the pro-Israel team and Spain as the pro-Palestine one. …

The U.S. World Cup host cities, meanwhile, saw a surprise economic boost from the games. File this under “evils of capitalism.”

Speaking of which, we’re seeing the rise of an anticapitalist movement that seems to go from strong to stronger. Lee Carter, the pollster, suggests a counterintuitive reason. In “Why I believe collapsing trust, not ideology, is reshaping American politics“:

The real story is that millions of Americans have lost confidence in the institutions they once trusted to solve problems, create opportunity and make government work. And when confidence in institutions collapses, voters don’t necessarily move left or right. They become far more willing to embrace candidates who promise to disrupt the status quo.

Gallup’s latest polling should be a flashing warning light. Confidence in America’s institutions remains near historic lows. Congress commands the confidence of just 9% of Americans. Confidence in the criminal justice system, organized religion, higher education, big business and many other institutions Americans once relied upon has eroded dramatically over the past generation.

The trust theme is strong in Joe Abraham’s Real Clear Politics story titled “The Moral Test of Self-Government.” Mr. Abraham is the father of Katie Abraham, 20, who was killed by a drunk illegal alien behind the wheel of a vehicle. The driver had been deported previously but was back and the recipient of an Illinois state driver’s license.  

Whatever the cause of the socialist surge, Miranda Devine’s column is sobering—The headline: “Mamdani and his DSA comrades have one goal — a communist revolution in America.” Mamdani’s numerous invocations of international law against other countries have an obvious pattern—all have been directed at Israel. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is trying to invoke “international law” against Israel, according to a City Journal piece by Eugene Kontorovich:

Just days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a major U.S. policy to “dismantle” the International Criminal Court because it threatened American sovereignty, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani mused about the possibility of arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the basis of an ICC warrant. …

Mamdani’s numerous invocations of international law against other countries have an obvious pattern—all have been directed at Israel. … Mamdani’s repeated comments reveal how accusations of international law violations have become a special way of speaking about the Jews, much as terms like “global elites” or “cosmopolitans” have been used before. What makes international law so powerful as a tool to talk about Jews is its esoteric nature.

Workers of the World Won’t Unite—Behind the DSA” is the headline on Rich Lowry’s latest column:

What did the country ever do to white college graduates to make them feel so disaffected from its economic and political system?

The wave of socialist victories in Democratic primaries is being driven by well-educated white voters who are more extreme than the rest of the Democratic coalition.

Lowry particularly examines the demographics of support in Michigan’s Democratic Party’s senatorial primary race between Haley Stevens, a “goofy white woman,” and Israel-hating DSA POC Abdul El-Sayed.

Much to the chagrin of the Left, an appeals court has ruled that the USPS can require states to turn over voter rolls before mailing out ballots:

That is why Democrats like Gov. Newsom object to it. They see accurate, efficient, and timely delivery of mail-in ballots as a very real threat.

While we’re mentioning California Governor Gavin Newsom, we don’t want to be sexist and exclude his wife from today’s Musts. The Washington Free Beacon has a story about her endeavors:

Documentaries produced by California’s “first partner,” Jennifer Siebel Newsom, promoting fringe views on gender have been shown to over 2.5 million K-12 students, with an accompanying lesson plan that forces teens to publicly disclose their sexual orientation to their peers and identify which of their classmates violate gender norms and may be labeled “fags,” “pussies” and “nasty butches.”

Come Out! Come Out Wherever You Are. Washington social chronicler/doyenne Sally Quinn says it’s safe now. She writes, “It’s No Longer So Much Fun to Be MAGA in Washington.” Cave Dwellers, a name for old-line Washington society, having hibernated for one of the most fascinating periods of American history, can creep out from their crepuscular existences. Or so they think. Read the piece find out what Kellyanne said to Sally!

The Week that Was. President Trump’s China Syndrome. Wheel of Fortune: Marco Up/ JD Down. For Now. DSA: the Party that Parties. What Does It Want? If You See Paul Pelosi Behind the Wheel: Run! More

With apologies to the BBC, this was the week that was.

We started the week with the sudden and shocking loss of Senator Lindsey Graham and are ending with “a new normal of increased strikes against Iran ‘to break the impasse’ over Strait of Hormuz.”

And President Trump went there. President Trump delivered a much-anticipated White House address last night. USA TODAY puckishly remarked on the president’s timing:

With 110 days to go before crucial midterm contests, President Donald Trump was naturally focused on the election in his primetime address to the nation.

The election six years ago, that is.

Joking aside, the president made the serious charge that U.S. elections are “riddled with vulnerabilities that hostile foreign actors and unauthorized immigrants are exploiting.” Axios, which is not sympathetic to the president, reports:

President Trump alleged Thursday that U.S. intelligence agencies covered up information about alleged Chinese efforts to influence the 2020 U.S. election.

The document release is likely to renew scrutiny of Trump’s claims about foreign interference in the U.S. election and the government’s past intelligence assessments.

The documents release allege that foreign adversaries — including Russia, China and Iran — were viewed as real threats to U.S. elections. Multiple released documents say large-scale manipulation of U.S. voting systems would be difficult to accomplish without detection.

The New York Times says that the documents the president presented “fall short” of proving his case. An Unherd story frames this in a different way: “As is typical of Trump’s favorite targets, the evidence of some wrongdoing is not entirely ludicrous. The scope of it, however, is what will matter to voters.”

Your response to the president’s address will likely hinge on how you feel about Trump. The New York Times sees it as “a Trump obsession that carries a cost for democracy.” For Townhall, the president last night “revealed what we all suspected about the 2020 election.” You may read the entire address here.

The speech was part of the president’s push to pass the Save America Act. A report in The Federalist that “More Than 250,000 Noncitizens Are Registered to Vote in Four States” is germane.

I think we have to say that Vice President JD, Father of the MOU, has been going through a rocky patch. “ JD Vance is wrong to blame Israel for his Iran peace deal’s failure thus far,” according to an editorial in the New York Post. Et tu: Then the Veep’s  (former?) good buddy Rod Dreher writes in The Free Press of “JD Vance’s Time for Choosing.” The subtitle: “Stab-in-the-back theories about Israel will only accelerate America’s Weimar spiral.”

As if that is not enough, Kimberley Strassel writes that “President Vance Has Gone AWOL“—Vance is President of the Senate, from which he’s absent to push his new book—and Matthew Continetti writes that “Vance has a steep climb to the White House.”

By contrast, Vance’s chief rival for the White House, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is walking on water just now (though as you know, reversals of fortune are dizzying in our nation’s capital). Fresh from advocating the dismantling of the noxious International Criminal Court, Rubio is winning plaudits for his warning on the rise of left-wing terrorism:

For far too long our counterterrorism doctrine has had a blind spot — a blind spot when it comes to extremist violence from the political left.

Even today, the very idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream, or worse, as a dangerous fascist conspiracy. It’s treated this way by many in the press, by many in academia and our universities, and by many of our legacy institutions. You will no doubt see the dogma rear its head in the coverage of this very conference.

In spite of the clear and the undeniable reality, in spite of the objective numbers and statistics, in spite of the fact that in this room today there are representatives from across the political spectrum, we will hear this organized — that this kind of organized violence and terror will be dismissed. It will be dismissed as a partisan fiction.

What DSA Wants” is the alluring headline on Examiner Chief Political Correspondent Byron York’s column:

They want to destroy the government of the United States as it was created in the Constitution. They want to destroy the U.S. capitalist economy, the most powerful in the world. And they want to destroy the way millions of Americans live their lives. The DSA’s astonishingly destructive goals are laid out clearly in the organization’s just-released 2026 national platform.

The document starts by describing a DSA “future without capitalism.” What would life be like for a person of working age in DSA world? “You enjoy your work; it’s interesting to you, and you’re well trained for it,” the platform says. “You work as much as you are able and no more than needed, and you would control your own labor and see it going to good use. It’s not just a job to pay the bills.”

But the DSA is fun. It’s the party that parties. From its hootenannies to book clubs, it attracts young people. Kendall White has been to quite a few DSA soirees:

At the new-member social, I sipped a seltzer while conversing with fellow travelers in a spacious apartment. A copy of Mao’s “Little Red Book” and a Russian fur hat with a Soviet red star sat together on a bookshelf. The communist paraphernalia was mirrored by a collection of Mamdani campaign signs on the opposite side of the room. Comrades cracked open a Riesling that retails for nearly $100 a half-bottle.

It’s not just the Riesling that’s expensive. It’s the DSA agenda that’s costly. Do they know what their fantasy programs would cost? Think of retirement in France, where pensions consume 14.1% of GDP, and are not getting any less burdensome.

New York’s Ban on the Future” in The Free Press deals with Governor Kathy Hochul’s ban on data centers, which “will hurt New Yorkers and help foreign adversaries—while stifling progress in AI.” Stu Smith, meanwhile, takes us “Inside the Rise of the Anti–Data Center Movement“:

Resistance to the facilities has become a left-wing rallying point,linking environmentalism, anti-Big Tech politics, immigration activism, Native American issues, and “anti-imperialism.”

Meanwhile, there’s resistance to scientific knowledge. In “Gender Medicine’s Regulatory Capture” in City Journal, we read about the Health Council of the Netherlands, which backed a controversial transition protocol against best evidence. The Health Council is a hotbed of conflicts of interest:

Six of the twelve members of its Advisory Committee were either directly or indirectly involved with providing endocrinological interventions to dysphoric minors. While two of these advisors lacked voting rights, they still possessed the ability to shape the nature of the conversation. The heavy representation of gender medicine practitioners on the committee, Dutch law professor Lodewijk Smeehuijzen argued, effectively amounts to asking the field’s practitioners to evaluate both their own work and that of their friends and colleagues.

Goodness! I don’t want to slight former President Joe Biden, whose memoir is imminent. It’s titled “Promise Me, America.” I can do no better than quote from Nellie Bowles’ review in her “TGIF” column:

I keep repeating the title out loud to sort of understand the tone. I guess it’s supposed to be like, promise me you’ll do good. Like a “keep your head up, kid, I’ll be watching from the sky.” But it reads more like, “America was promised to me on my Christmas list.”

Anyway, he released a video announcing the book, and it’s very sad to watch. Biden has declined further, as happens in life. The camera cuts every two seconds. His voice is slurred and hushed. Some of his longer words are barely intelligible. After 80, why even be on camera? Who is the one saying “we need him to be doing more on-camera stuff”? And why do I feel like Dr. Jill is gearing up to get him onto Dancing with the Stars?

I hope I won’t be accused of ageism because my next item is about hard-driving dude Paul Pelosi, 86. The ex-Speaker of the House’s hubby has had another mishap with his car.

Should Paul Pelosi be on the road?” the London Spectator asks:

When President Trump refers to Nancy Pelosi as “Nervous Nancy,” you might assume he’s talking about her policies or leadership style. But maybe she’s just worried about her husband’s driving.