Tag: new york
Zohran Mamdani

New York Republicans Beg Trump To Deport Zohran Mamdani

New York’s Young Republican Club has urged President Donald Trump's administration to revoke Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s U.S. citizenship and deport him under the Communist Control Act after his win in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday night.

The New York Republican club wrote a post on the social platform X Wednesday, urging President Donald Trump’s aides to take action.

“The radical Zohran Mamdani cannot be allowed to destroy our beloved city of New York," the post read. It added: "The Communist Control Act lets President Trump revoke @ZohranKMamdani’s citizenship and promptly deport him."

"The time for action is now — @StephenM and @RealTomHoman, New York is counting on you," the tweet read, tagging the official handles of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and immigration advisor Tom Homan.

Mamdani, a 33‑year‑old democratic socialist and New York state legislator, defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary Tuesday. The race drew national attention thanks to his progressive platform centered on rent freezes, free public transit, universal childcare and city-run grocery stores.

Born in Uganda and naturalized as an American citizen in 2018, Mamdani represents a generational and ideological shift in New York politics, energizing younger voters and gaining endorsements from leading progressive figures like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT.).

The nature of the New York Republicans' deportation demand — which would hinge on the 1954 Communist Control Act — means it has virtually no legal basis, given Mamdani’s clearly documented U.S. citizenship. The Communist Control Act of 1954 is a U.S. federal law that formally outlawed the Communist Party and criminalized membership in or support for communist organizations.

This is not the first time Mamdani has faced such an attack from Republicans.

Earlier this month, Republican City Council member Vickie Paladino also called for his deportation in a post on X.

Mamdani responded forcefully, condemning the demand as part of a broader wave of “Donald Trump’s authoritarian administration” rhetoric that has included death threats and Islamophobic attacks.

“This is what Trump and his sycophants have wrought," Mamdani said in a statement to reporters at the time.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

With Trump, It's A New War -- And Always Another Lie

With Trump, It's A New War -- And Always Another Lie

If there is one thing we have learned about Donald Trump over the last 10 years – for New Yorkers, over the last 50 – it is that you cannot believe anything he says.

Anything.

If he said he was going to give Iran a chance to come back to the negotiating table and he would mull things over for two weeks, the Iran attack was going to happen in two days. If he called Saturday’s bombing Iran “a spectacular military success,” it was something less than that. If he said Iran’s nuclear sites were “obliterated,” they weren’t. If he said Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear weapon has been ended, it hasn’t.

Trump toyed around with whether or not he was going to order the attack, telling reporters on the White House lawn on Wednesday, “I may do it. I may not do it. Nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

That was a lie, but it wasn’t a lie lie. It was a strategic feint. Any leader who is planning an attack on an enemy is going to try to seem like it’s either not going to happen, or the planning is in an early stage, when actually it is almost complete. That was the case with Iran.

Planning for the attack had been going on for weeks, and Tehran knew it. They probably started moving the centrifuges necessary to enrich uranium, and the uranium they had already enriched, away from their three nuclear weapons development sites when Trump was elected last November. By the time he started bellowing that he would “never” allow Iran to build a nuclear weapon, their nuclear material was safe somewhere else.

Trump tells so many lies every day, we only half listen to him. We have gotten used to tucking his lies away in mental rabbit holes so we can get ready for his next bunch of whoppers. But you want to know who has been recording every syllable that comes out of his mouth? The Iranians. They have spent years slowly accumulating enough partially enriched uranium that they have been within a year, or even within months according to some intelligence estimates, of being able to produce a bomb. Do you think they were going to let all that work go to waste just because the Americans were stupid enough to put the international clown, Donald Trump, back in the White House? Not a chance in hell. They were ready. They’ve been ready for months.

With Donald Trump, nothing is ever as it seems. Why does he tell so many lies? Is it because he can’t help himself, that it’s pathological? Not even close. He tells lies to keep his opponents guessing, out of step, off their game.

Even the war he just started with Iran is a lie, in that it has another purpose. I read somewhere over the last few days that all wars are started as much for domestic reasons as for their stated foreign policy goals. Why did George Bush start his war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq? Did he really believe that Iran had its own secret nuclear weapons program, or that they had developed a stockpile of WMD, weapons of mass destruction? No. He needed a war, and Afghanistan was not enough, so he ginned one up against Saddam.

Domestically, Trump is not in trouble, but he’s not in great shape. He can’t get interest rates down. He hasn’t whipped inflation. His Big Beautiful Bill is in trouble. His attempt to use Elon Musk and his DOGE-niks to conquer the budget deficit and save trillions in spending was an abject failure, with recent stories saying the whole thing is going to end up costing more than it saved. And his big plan to get tariffs to solve everything has failed miserably.

All the stories about tariffs now lead with how Chinese President Xi Jinping has played him like a violin. He can’t even get his big ICE roundup of undocumented immigrants up to speed. There were reports early this month about Trump’s immigration hatchet man, Stephen Miller, “yelling” at Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, ordering them to triple their arrests.

Trump’s war against Iran isn’t just about preventing them from developing a nuclear weapon. Like everything else, the war is about Donald Trump. He was going to drop that gigantic Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb from the moment he learned it existed. He needed that bombing campaign the way he needs golf courses and Diet Cokes and well-done steaks. He needed the White House appearance last night backed up by his war puppies, Vance, Hegseth, and Rubio. He needed his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon this morning giving out the numbers – 125 aircraft, 24 Tomahawks, seven B-2 bombers, 14 bunker busters – complete with map headlined with the mission moniker – this is so perfect, it’s all Trump – “Operation Midnight Hammer.”

You know what he’s doing, because he’s done it so many times before: Hey, look over here! Not only a big shiny object, a big shiny BOMB…which he puts in ALL CAPS every time he uses the word.

Because why? Because Donald Trump. The whole thing was Donald Trump all the time, all the way, from beginning to end. And it’s going to stay Donald Trump. You want to know why? Because now will come the analysis that the attack wasn’t as successful as he said, and he’ll be able to attack anyone who questions his genius. He’s already started, going after the lone Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who strayed off the reservation by claiming that the attack was unconstitutional. Trump started up a new SuperPAC to back anybody who wants to run against the poor guy. And woe be unto anyone who questions Trump’s assertion that Iran’s nuclear ambitions are done for. He’ll be able to throw around the T-word, “traitor,” if you dare point out inconvenient facts like reports that there was no measurable radiation produced from the bombing of the three nuclear sites. Not even a roentgen, according to the IAEA, was emitted from the destruction done to the Iranian nuclear facilities.

But Trump’s war puppy at the Pentagon was jubilant: "Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated," Hegseth crowed at an 8 a.m. press conference at the Pentagon this morning. "The operation President Trump planned was bold and it was brilliant."

There could be good reasons for the peculiar lack of radiation from the damage done to three nuclear weapons sites. Maybe at Fordo, where satellite photos show six craters that look like someone stabbed the earth with an ice pick, the bombs went off so deep and caused such a collapse underground that they sealed off all the radiation. Maybe the same thing happened at Natanz, where another neat hole has appeared in the middle of an open field surrounded by a curving two-lane road.

We won’t know until the Pentagon does its BDA, battle damage assessment, and maybe not even after that, because which Iranian official is going to allow anyone onto any of the top-secret sites to check out the holes and maybe put a Geiger-counter on the gray dust?

Which is exactly the way Trump likes it. Who is going to question his chest-pounding assertions about his “brilliant” attack that has “obliterated” Iran’s dream of nuclear weapons?

Well, the Russkis, for one. Former Russian President Dimitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, got on his Telegram account this morning and announced that other countries are "ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads." He didn’t go into any details, but presumably that would mean Russia and its new war-buddy North Korea.

And then there is this possibility that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere, so I’ll just put it out there right now: What if Iran has already succeeded in producing a nuclear weapon? They haven’t let the IAEA near their nuclear facilities for a while, so what if Iran cranked up its 60 percent uranium to “weapons grade” 90 percent, and they went ahead and made one? And having made it, then squirrelled it away far from where they knew the U.S. would come a-bombing-when-they-come.

While we’re at it, let’s throw in this hideous tidbit. What if the Ayatollah, at age 86, is sufficiently infirm and hidden away that some Republican Guard maniac up and decides, hey, let’s lob our nuke at Jerusalem and see what happens?

Every military expert who can get himself or herself on the TeeVee has been yapping about how easy wars are to start, but goodness me, how hard they are to end. Well, I’m not on the TeeVee, but I’ll agree with the experts on that one.

But I haven’t heard many of them talking about what wars have this extra added little tendency to produce every time you start one:

Unforeseen consequences.

Get ready, because we are in for a few, and they come from a place where Donald Trump, no student of history he, has ever spent much time.

Donald Trump will be learning that it’s a brand new thing to lie yourself out of inconvenient facts like dead American bodies.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter.

Donald Trump

Internet Erupts As Trade Court Strikes Down Unlawful Trump Tariffs

A federal trade court halted Wednesday President Donald Trump's attempt to impose broad tariffs on imports using an emergency-powers statute.

The decision, issued by a three-judge panel from the Court of International Trade in New York consisting of Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama and Donald Trump appointees, followed multiple lawsuits claiming that Trump overstepped his legal authority, destabilized U.S. trade policy, and triggered economic turmoil.

Currently, at least seven lawsuits are contesting the tariffs, which have been a central element of Trump’s trade agenda.

Social media users including legal commentators welcomed the decision. Graham Steele, who is a fellow at Stanford University's Rock Center for Corporate Governance, wrote: "IEEPA grants the President a lot of authority, and this President still found a way to exceed that authority."

"YOU CAN'T WIN IF YOU DON'T FIGHT. ANOTHER EXAMPLE. FIGHT," writer Amanda Carpenter said in a post on the social platform BlueSky.

International Relations professor David Burbach wrote on Bluesky: "This could be gigantic, IIEPA's grant of unilateral emergency trade powers to the President has been the loophole through which they are trying to shove the whole tariff thing. I'm sure this gets to SCOTUS."

Legal journalist Chris Geidner posted one excerpt of the ruling to Bluesky in which the panel ruled that the tariffs were "unlawful to all," writing: "After forcing challengers out of district courts, here’s how the specialty court slaps Trump around."

"Trump’s first-term [U.S. Trade Representative] Bob Lighthizer built a very careful legal strategy to ensure tariffs wouldn’t be overturned in court," tweeted author and Columbia University researcher Eddie Fishman. "Second-term Trump admin hasn’t been so careful."

Small business owner Aaron Rubin wrote on X: "Unless the government wins an emergency stay on appeal, CBP has to stop charging all reciprocal and fentanyl related tariffs and refund any paid duties."

"So if you are a foreign government negotiating with the Trump administration about the IEEPA 'Liberation Day' tariffs, and the tariffs have now been struck down (pending a probable appeal), it may be time to recalibrate your negotiating position," China Trade Monitor co-founder Simon Lester tweeted.

AlterNet reached out to the White House for comment.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Trump's Trophy: A Message From An Unhappy Old Man

Trump's Trophy: A Message From An Unhappy Old Man

On hallowed military ground, Stars and Stripes whipping in the upstate New York breeze, an old man in a red hat toddled on stage and shared some wisdom.

"He ended up getting a divorce, found a new wife. Could you say a trophy wife? I guess we can say a trophy wife," El Presidente said, referring, non sequitur, to the late New York real estate developer Bill Levitt. "But that doesn’t work out too well, I must tell you, a lot of trophy wives, it doesn’t work."

Trump emitted this ramble to a West Point student body that is about 21 percent female. Would “trophy wife” be on their list of career goals yet? Maybe! God only knows what they think their job prospects are in a military currently presided over by an accused roofie rapist, who is on record speaking against women in the military, and an administration that sacked top female military leaders as its first order of trolling-the-libs business.

The West Point trophy wife riff was a tangent off another tangent – about the U.S. military’s job being not to “host drag shows,” but to “dominate any foe, anytime, anyplace.”

There is a certain logic to Trump’s tangents sometimes. Trophy wife. Goals. For both MAGA genders. The transactional relationship ascendant. Everyone has a price. Sugardaddies.com. Young beauty attached to the arm of a rich, powerful old man, pampered in exchange for being value-added in business and politics, submitting occasionally to the desiccated paw.

The freaky gym rat who goes by “Bronze Age Pervert” (eventually outed as poor little rich kid and Ivy league PhD Costin Almariu) blames all Western Hemisphere’s problems on the ascendance of supposedly feminine attributes – encapsulated in what he calls an “obese Mammy” HR overlord policing language – in his bestselling book, Bronze Age Mindset, which calls for the return of Agamemnon, Hercules worship, and widespread slavery.

BAP’s world view, widely shared in Trumpland, assumes that women do not need, want, or naturally exercise agency. It presumes that women are constitutionally, genetically, mentally, physically, in every way, not as capable as men of self-reliance or living with a purpose or a mission beyond childcare. Such creatures, given power and influence, clearly must drag down the rest of society, including the he-men they try to police out of their God-given right to authority.

BAP and his male fans like to refer to the current supposedly egalitarian enforcement system, also labeled by them as “wokeness,” as “the longhouse.” Here is how “L0m3z” (another former online anon, outed as California creative writing instructor turned neo-fascist literature publisher Jonathan Keeperman) defined the term in an article published in the trad-Cath, anti-democratic “First Things” magazine:

More than anything, the Longhouse refers to the remarkable overcorrection of the last two generations toward social norms centering feminine needs and feminine methods for controlling, directing, and modeling behavior. ….

As of 2022, women held 52 percent of professional-managerial roles in the U.S. Women earn more than 57 percent of bachelor degrees, 61 percent of master’s degrees, and 54 percent of doctoral degrees. And because they are overrepresented in professions, such as human resource management (73 percent) and compliance officers (57 percent), that determine workplace behavioral norms, they have an outsized influence on professional culture, which itself has an outsized influence on American culture more generally.

Those tiny gains — two percent here, ten percent there …. unacceptable! Think of all the worthy white males with dreams deferred.

BAP and his fans must know that American society is more unequal than ever, and that white men still, by orders of magnitude, run everything from America’s major companies to all of Silicon Valley to the global financial sector to federal and state governments.

But still, women, learn your place.

We are living in a time of Orwellian erasure of women, as Anna Funder recently wrote in Time. Artificial Intelligence is literally hunting for and eradicating government web pages and documents with the word “women.”

This is nothing new. George Orwell himself – and his biographers – managed well to erase the contributions and influence of his accomplished wife, according to a new book, Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life, by Funder. (Kate Zambreno’s book Heroines has a more extensive list of modernist writers who used their disappeared wives for literary material.)

At the heart of the anti-feminist effort to convert younger women into trophy wives and nothing other than trophy wives is the notion that a viable route to success – or perhaps the only viable route, in MAGA men’s perception – is to serve rich, powerful men who need assurance that women are playthings with no agency. This model has been held up by Trump and Melania since he first screamed, “Where’s my supermodel?” as she picked her way onstage and said… literally nothing the whole time.

Melania is clearly the trophy Trump was rather wistfully thinking of when he blurted that it sometimes doesn’t work out. The East Wing is supposedly unstaffed for the first time in modern history. She served a political purpose for sure – the “supermodel” on the arm, value-added.

The late Vogue editor Andre Leon Talley said that Melania Trump was “the most exquisitely moisturized” person he’d ever met. “Melania is very moisturized, groomed, lacquered to perfection. She can stand on those 4-inch heels…“

And that’s it.

The top echelon of the MAGA right is packed with women who – like Melania – are openly engaged in transactional relationships. And now, younger MAGA women have lined themselves up with this model. Steve Bannon’s "War Room" White House correspondent Natalie Winters, who is 23 years old, proclaims she is looking forward to leaving her career so she can get down to the work of finding a husband “to be submissive to.”

If they’re not serving the regime in Washington, young women like Winters, who came of age with this look and lifestyle ascendant, are LARPing on social media as never-been-happier Betty Crocker 1950s tradwife influencers. But, in the case of influencers in particular, the joke is kind of on their guys: Follow the money home and see who really wears the pants.

The greatest difference between Gen Z and the Boomer-Gen X-Millennial cohorts is that while younger women may have been taught the lessons of feminism as children – girl power! – the real world in their living memory has not upheld that promise. Younger women don’t remember the very real restrictions that second-wave feminists eradicated, so feminism seems impotent and useless against new challenges. Submission seems like a viable choice.

A lot of this is camp, theater, and shock jock-ing, a new version of the “female chauvinist pigs” Ariel Levy chronicled in her book in the aughts. But in a time of performative erasure of women’s records of achievement, of purposeful diminishment of women’s cultural relevance, and of state power directed at women’s bodily autonomy, surrender really might seem preferable to struggle.

The White House is busy purging transcripts of Trump’s public verbal rambles from its websites, so you must catch him when you can. At West Point, Trump blurted out the unhappy old man’s truth about the trophy-ization of women.

Hopefully, both male and female cadets were listening.

Nina Burleigh is a a journalist, author, documentary producer and adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has written eight books including her recently published novel Zero Visibility Possible.

Reprinted with permission from COURIER's American Freakshow

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