Category Archives: history

We Are the Guardrail

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The men who wrote the Constitution, ratified 238 years ago, had a lot on their minds. There had never before been a complete, written national constitution anywhere. They were not sure a government which derived its authority from the people it governed could succeed. Some would have gladly declared George Washington King of the United States were he willing to accept the position.

Some feared the people were not qualified to govern. They believed there was a natural ruling class who should be in charge. Some wanted a strong central government. Others wanted power to remain with the individual states, as it had been since the revolution twelve years earlier.

The result was a document in many ways a revolution itself, describing a government of the people, but one purposedly designed to contain the compromise, confusion, and purposeful ambiguity that reflected the debate between the authors. With the addition of 27 amendments, it has survived all this time.

For those who slept through civics class, the Constitution separated the central government into three branches, the legislative, the executive, and the judicial. Each had a list of powers. Each had a method of checking the operation of the other two branches. There were important omissions. Items on which the authors could not agree and so left for future generations to sort out. But it has held together for all these years. That says something.

What the authors feared most was that power would corrupt. That malevolent leaders would destroy the nation in search of personal advantage. This was John Adams’ nightmare. In my lifetime, I have never seen anything as corrupt as the current administration. Nor have I found one this corrupt in my study of American history. I mean corrupt not just in a monetary sense, although the avarice of Donald Trump and his family is astounding. I mean also corrupt in what Trump has done to the institutions of government and the rule of law.

That one man could be so misguided is not surprising, although the fact that 77 million voters cast their ballots for him in 2024 is. What is surprising is the degree to which the checks and balances have collapsed. The guardrails have failed.

This is due to the abdication on the part of the legislative branch, which has ceased to provide any meaningful oversight of the executive, failed to enforce its decisions on taxation and spending, and consented to the appointment of some of the most unqualified and actually destructive individuals to positions of power throughout government. There have been 306 calendar days in the year to date. The House of Representatives has been in session for 133 of them. Nice work if you can get it.

The judicial branch has not just abandoned its responsibilities. It has openly ceded its authority to the executive branch. While many lower court judges have blocked Trump’s unlawful excesses, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has more often than not knocked down those guardrails, allowing Trump to proceed with his executive power grab. With those actions, the Court has greatly tipped the balance of power in the government, allowing for an autocracy at the helm.

The outlook is bleak. But there is one last hope.

We are that hope. We, the people. We, the voters, have now an opportunity to change the direction of the nation. But only if we get off our rears and go out and vote. In the United States, voter turnout for true “off-year” elections (held in odd-numbered years for local and municipal offices) typically falls between 25% and 40% of eligible voters. There are indications this year the turnout will be much greater.

That is a good sign. If you are happy with the way things are going, by all means go out and vote Republican, ensuring that Trump will be unfettered in the next two year. But if you are unhappy with the current state of affairs, vote for Democrats who will raise the guardrails. They will not have the power to reverse the current state of affairs. That decision comes in 2028. But Democratic majorities in Congress will slow down the Trump onslaught and place a spotlight on the abuses of the administration.

We are the final guardrail.

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Evicting the Press

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Donald Trump has talked about replacing the press briefing room with an indoor swimming pool. That scoop comes from Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, White House reporters for The New York Times. These two have written a terrific and at the same time depressing book about the first year and a half of the second Trump administration, Regime Change, and they appear to have pretty good sources. At least, while Trump complains about their writing, he rarely says their information is wrong.

None of this is surprising. Trump’s hatred for members of the press who fail to toe the party line is well known. What you might find surprising is that I think this would be a great idea.

I have not been in that press room for many years. I visited several times when the relationship between press and president was one of respectful tolerance. Each party knew the other had a job to do, even if they didn’t like how it was being done.

While working for Chicago’s WBBM-TV I produced a profile of Illinois native James Brady. Brady was President Ronald Reagan’s Press Secretary. I got to follow him around the West Wing, record a photo event as Reagan opened his first cabinet meeting, and even got to meet and talk briefly with the president. I saw the cabinet room and the Oval Office.

A few weeks later I rushed from Chicago back to Washington. As I got on the airplane, I was pretty sure the President had been shot but was still alive but that Brady was dead, having been fatally hit in the attempt to assassinate Reagan. Brady did survive, although crippled by a shot to the head.

I mention all that to let you know what while I haven’t been there for many years, I know the space fairly well. The entire West Wing is small, the offices are small, and while some members of the press might gloat that working out of the White House press room has a particular cachet, the proximity to the Oval Office is really meaningless. The president’s press staff is on the other side of the door off the stage of the briefing room, now named for Brady. And yes, the Oval Office is only about 30 feet away. But there are plenty of guards between the press and that office. You don’t go through that door without an appointment and an escort.

The first reporters assigned to cover the president did so from outside the gates. President William McKinley allowed some work indoors at a designated table in a second-floor corridor, and presidential secretaries began regular routines of communicating with journalists. President Theodore Roosevelt moved executive offices out of the main residence into the newly erected Temporary Executive Offices. Those temporary spaces are now known as the West Wing. Removing the press would allow for expansion and modernization of the president’s offices.

The truth is you don’t get important information by sitting in the briefing room and being spoon fed by press secretaries. Many press groups have their own offices elsewhere in Washington. The National Press Club Building, just a short walk from the White House, houses several. The best journalists cover the president without hanging around the White House.

In 2006 the briefing room was shut down for a year for remodeling. The press worked out of the White House Conference Center. This is a secure government facility within the White House security parameter. There was some grumbling, but the press survived. A little remodeling, and the press and the communication’s staff will have a modern facility with more space.

There is also the possibility of moving the press into what is now called the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. That is where most of the president’s staff actually works. That building is just across a small, private street separating it from the West Wing entrance. It is also within the security zone.

I did a quick survey. Truthfully, I asked my AI to do it.

In the United Kingdom, the prime minister’s residence, 10 Downing Street, has no media office. Press briefings are held next door at the 9 Downing Street’s Press Briefing Room. In France, the president is in the Élysée Palace; No media office; press service manages access and briefings. In Russia, the Presidential Administration has no media office; press service manages access and briefings. Of course, in Russia the press prints what Putin wants it to print. Trump wishes he could do that too.

I actually think it is kind of cute that Trump wants to replace the press area with a swimming pool, because that’s exactly what it was. President Franklin Roosevelt added it in 1933 as therapy for his polio-afflicted legs. President Richard Nixon later covered it over to make room for the news media. The briefing room is next door to the small workspace.

As recently as last month, Trump shared a pair of images on Truth Social showing the briefing room as it is now, captioned “Fake News,” alongside another that shows the space reimagined as a gilded swimming pool, captioned “FDR Pool.” The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Trump had repeatedly discussed getting the press out of the White House.

Although I think it is a good idea for the press to move, I doubt Trump will go through with it. He relishes his little public battles with the press too much. He wants the press near for a quick gaggle when he is headed to his car or helicopter. Move them out, and he’ll lose his captive audience. I don’t think so.

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Genocide Libel

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I could never have imagined, three years ago, as I listened to the horrific news coming out of Israel, that I would be writing a post such as this.

For the many who seem to have forgotten, On the morning of October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists broke through the fence separating Gaza and Israel and killed roughly 1,200 people, many teenagers attending a music festival, and dragged 251 hostages back into Gaza. There they were met by cheering crowds of Gazans. It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. By the next day, Israel was already being accused of “genocide” on social media and in the streets, even though Israel’s ground operation into Gaza had not yet started.

The “Gaza Genocide” is one of the biggest lies of the 21st century. It was generated and promoted by anti-Zionist and antisemitic networks following the October 7 Massacre to prevent Israel from saving its hostages, to delegitimize the Jewish state, and to fuel global antisemitism. Three years after their murderous attack, the people of Gaza claim to be the victims.

Try watching some of the footage from Hamas GoPro videos which they shared with pride, so the world would see the barbaric genocide they committed against Israelis and non-Jews in Israel. Victims don’t take hostages and start wars. Hamas did exactly that. The videos have been vetted. They are horrific. Israel is showing an extended edit of the Hamas generated videos in a documentary titled, Bearing Witness to the October 7th Massacre. Excerpts and reports from people who have viewed it are on YouTube although, as of this writing, the entire video is not.

The word “genocide” means to deliberately and systematically kill or persecute a large number of people from a particular national or ethnic group, with the aim of destroying that nation. But Gaza officials themselves report a population decline of about 10% since the start of the war in 2023, mostly through displacement. More than two million remain. That’s not a genocide.

And there are nearly two million Arab Palestinian Muslims who are Israeli citizens, descendants of those Arabs who stayed when the United Nations created the Jewish state in 1947. These citizens of Israel live, work, practice their religion, raise families, hold government positions, serve in law enforcement, serve in the military, and vote in Israel. To accuse Israel of genocide is absurd.

Has there been death and destruction in Gaza since October 7? Of course. Is that tragic? Yes. But this is as willed by Hamas, the duly elected government of Gaza. This is war. Hamas knew their slaughter of Israelis on October 7 would provoke a massive response. What, if you were running Israel, would you have done? The greatest trick Hamas pulled was to build 500 km of bomb shelters, provoke a war, refuse to let Gaza civilians take shelter, and convince the world to blame Israel for their deaths.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, says, “The scale of killing in Gaza is unlike anything I’ve witnessed in my years as Secretary-General.” Really? Since he took office in 2017 120,000 have been killed in Syria, 150,000 killed in Sudan, 162,000 killed in Ethiopia, and 200,000 killed in Yemen. In Gaza, according to Hamas’s own reports, there have been about 70,000 deaths. More than half of the dead were Hamas fighters. That is what happens when you start a war. But different standards apply to Israel at the UN.

In sum, 3% of Gaza’s population, mostly male combatants, have died in a war they started. That is not genocide. 96% of Jews in Poland were murdered by the Nazis. That is a genocide.

If Israel wanted to kill every single Palestinian, it could have. It is a nuclear power. Why did it distribute polio vaccines to the children of Gaza? Why did it allow any food in at all? (The food is frequently stolen by Hamas fighters). Why does Israel continue to supply water and electric power to Gaza? Why did Israel drop leaflets in different neighborhoods, repeatedly saying please get out of this neighborhood because Hamas solders are operating there and we are going to attack?

Of course, Israel’s actions can be questioned. Israel will consider these issues itself when it votes for its legislature at the end of this month. But to call its actions in Gaza a genocide is a libel. It runs along with the claim that Israel is intentionally starving Palestinians (the famine libel, disproven by the UN’s own reports) or deliberately murdering Palestinian children (the child-killer libel, from a UN document with no evidence or source). I will not forget politicians or others in the public square who equivocate, justify, or excuse Hamas.

The genocide charge fails from its sheer implausibility, combined with the moral offense of accusing Jews of the very crime that had been inflicted upon them in the Holocaust, as well as a still-resilient Western cultural memory and a robust liberal consensus. It must not become established as fact now.

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Trump’s Obsession

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Mental health practitioners, of which I am not, tell me it’s called Megalomania: An obsession with the exercise of power, especially in the domination of others. Plastering a country with one’s face is a direct manifestation of grandiosity, an inflated belief in one’s supreme importance, omnipotence, and unique historical destiny.

Reporters who have spent decades reporting on the activities of Donald Trump, of which I am, know it has been one of his most visible traits throughout his career. New York is replete with examples of the Trump name on projects from one end of the city to the other. Most of these, and I inspected most of them in my Manhattan apartment hunting days, are mediocre at best and overpriced without exception.

Trump has also plastered his name on a wide variety of companies selling everything from steaks to vodka. He put his brand on a casino, an airline, and a university, among others. In my role as a reporter, I joined him at many a ribbon cutting for these various ventures. I also attended, while he was conspicuously absent, many of the bankruptcies of these projects.

The president’s obsession with the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is in keeping with his desire to remake the nation’s capital, the White House, the parks, the wide boulevards and open spaces, to his own gilded, ostentatious, self-serving taste.

While it hasn’t drawn nearly as much attention as the destruction of much of the White House, the US Institute of Peace, wreck of the reflecting pool, and the plans for a triumphal arch, I find the picture above to be the most frightening of all.

The banner shows Trump, he of the woeful countenance, scowling down on everyone who enters the building generally known as “Main Justice.” That’s the Washington headquarters of the US Department of Justice. This is the part of the national government most involved with the protection of the laws and the Constitution. The message of the banner is clear. This is Trump’s DOJ now, run by Trump’s attorney, Todd Blanche, now Attorney General of the United States. Similar banners have appeared at other government buildings in Washington.

When I see that picture, all I can think about is “Big Brother.” That’s a reference to the all-powerful, intrusive authority or government that constantly monitors and controls its citizens featured in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, “1984.” In the book, Big Brother is the leader, the supreme dictator of the totalitarian state of Oceania. Public posters display his face alongside the warning: “Big Brother is watching you”.

I am also told an obsession with naming things after oneself is called toponymic narcissism. In political behavior and history, this practice is also associated with building a cult of personality, where a leader uses omnipresent branding, imagery, and naming to achieve cognitive saturation and project total control over the state.

Trump is now appearing in television commercials featuring his image and voice and cheering on his supposed achievements. The ads say they are paid for by the US government. This is the mark of one sick cookie.

In China, Mao Zedong‘s image became a permanent institutional fixture. His massive portrait famously overlooks Tiananmen Square on the Tiananmen Gate, and during the Cultural Revolution, his likeness was mandated across all public infrastructure, factory floors, and schools.

In Russia, Lenin’s image remains a permanent fixture in all public buildings. However, the portraits of current leaders, like President Vdlamir Putin, are relegated to standard, framed photos inside administrative offices and schools rather than dominating public building exteriors.

And perhaps most infamously, there was Adolf Hitler. Hitler’s portrait was explicitly required and heavily displayed on public and state buildings throughout Nazi Germany. While the Nazi regime did not pass a formal law forcing private citizens to hang his picture at home, state regulations mandated that government offices, schools, and state-run facilities prominently display his likeness.

The Trump administration used at least $50,000 in taxpayer dollars to create the large banners featuring the president’s face or policies, according to a new report released by Senator Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) office. Schiff calls the move illegal, saying the banners amount to “propaganda” mirroring “totalitarian dictators.” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Axios the “report would only be valuable as toilet paper” and declined to comment on the specific claims Schiff’s office made.

After thinking of Big Brother, I move on to thinking of “Fearless Leader.” That was the dictator from the fictional country Pottsylvania, and the employer of the inept spies Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale. These were all comedic characters who appeared in many television and film projects featuring Jay Ward creations Rocky and Bullwinkle.

The difference is Rocky and Bullwinkle were meant to be amusing. Trump is no laughing matter.

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9-11 at 25

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Empty holes. Water flows into them like fountains into a bottomless pit. Names of the dead engraved in the stone ringing the perimeter. It is quiet, almost serene.

This is where the twin towers stood. Until the morning of September 11, 2001.

It is not quiet at the moment. As I watch the scene on television, the plaza is packed. The grieving are reading the names of the 2,977 people who died that day at the hands of 19 terrorists who commandeered two airplanes and drove them into the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. They also hijacked two other planes and drove them into the Pentagon in Washington, 184 died there, and into a field in Pennsylvania, where 40 died.

On September 11, 2001, I was the Bureau Chief for public television’s Nightly Business Report. Our newsroom and studio were on Trinity Place, two blocks south of Tower #2. I lived on Rector Place in Battery Park City, a community built on land reclaimed from the Hudson River using landfill from the excavation of the Trade Center site. A view of the south side of Tower #2 filled my bedroom window.

Today I regularly teach students who had not yet been born in 2001 or were so young 25 years ago that they have no direct memory of what was the most traumatic day of my life. One third of the people living in the United States today were not here on that day.

I have written about these events several times. I will not do so again now. The memories bring back images that produce nightmares. I talk to someone about that. I’ve also put down my thoughts as well as I will ever be able to and you can, if interested, read them here.

The US stock markets never opened for trading that day. Since market news accounted for half of the content of our broadcast, we canceled our report that night, which allowed the PBS NewsHour, based in Washington, DC, extra time to produce an expanded report. But in midafternoon, before the police ordered us to evacuate our office building, we were able to get a transmission link to DC, and we transmitted the pictures our brave camera crews had recorded of the disaster.

Then we turned on the lights, and I sat down on our set, looking well worn, and described what I had seen in an interview with the NewsHour‘s Ray Suarez. As it turned out, that interview was the last transmission we made from that lower Manhattan location. You can watch the entire NewsHour program here. My interview is at 24:30. Six months later, I filed an expended look back, and look ahead, for Nightly Business Report, which I’ve uploaded here.

The rebuilding which I talked about in that six-month story, did take a very long time. But it did succeed. Lower Manhattan is booming and there is little, save for the memorial at the actual Trade Center site, to remind one of the tragic events of that day. A single new tower, One World Trade Center, is as of this writing the tallest building in North America and the Western Hemisphere. Battery Park City is revitalized and renewed, and in great demand. My wife and I moved to New Jersey in 2002. We lived for twenty years in Montclair. We are now in Princeton.

I still reflect on the events of that day from time to time. Here are several disjointed observations.

There was an amazing sense of unity in the nation following the tragedy. The political parties came together in a unified way pledging to rebuild and reform. As the process proceeded, we lost much of that unified spirit. The use of federal funds to help New York City recover dissolved into the usual partisan battles. Why, some wondered, should the nation have to “bail out” New York City? That question ignores that fact that it was not New York City’s foreign policy that had drawn the ire of the terrorists who perpetrated the attack.

The attack itself has changed in our collective memory. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in an internal memo leaked to the media advised its reporters not to refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as “terrorist attacks” without attribution. This political correctness is absurd.

The 9-11 attack was perpetrated by the Islamic terrorist organization al-Qaeda. The ringleader, Mohamed Atta, flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower. The Central Intelligence Agency informed President George W. Bush that its Counterterrorism Center had identified the attacks as having been the work of al-Qaeda under Osama bin Laden. In 1996 bin Laden issued the first of two fatwās (Arabic: “religious opinions”) declaring a holy war on the United States. His goal was to draw the US into a large-scale war in the Muslim world that would overthrow the existing order and establish a single Islamic state.

Intelligence services from around the world, including Russia, helped the US locate bin Laden. He was in Afghanistan and believed to be in a mountainous area known as Toro Boro. Yet he managed to escape. Bin Laden was finally located in Pakistan in 2011. He was killed there by US Special Forces. Al-Qaeda released a statement publicly acknowledging bin Laden’s death and vowing revenge. They are still out there. We should not forget.

In the wake of the 9-11 attacks, the US received unprecedented support from nations around the world. NATO invoked for the first time and only time to date its Article 5, acknowledging that an attack on one was an attack on all. This is the same NATO Donald Trump consistently ridicules, threatening to leave the alliance.

When the US closed its airspace on 9-11, Canada, in what came to be known as Operation Yellow Ribbon, took in between 225 and 240 flights at 17 airports and cared for passengers. One town, Gander, on the island of Newfoundland, took in 38 planes. Gander at the time had fewer than 10,000 residents. Yet it welcomed more than 6.,500 passengers and crews from around the world. This is what friends do, even if Trump insists on treating the Canadians as an enemy today.

Domestically, it was determined that failures by many in the US intelligence community to share information crippled efforts to detect the threat which led to 9-11. With little objection, lawmakers vastly overhauled the laws, eliminating restrictions on information sharing, creating a new super intelligence bureaucracy, and a Director of National Intelligence.

It also created a new national police agency, the Department of Homeland Security, moving into one department virtually all the federal police agencies in the nation. It also provided for an expansion of federal policing efforts to create a domestic police force which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Federal Emergency Management Agence (FEMA), the US Coast Guard, and the US Secret Service.

DHS employs more than 240,000 people. Its very existence reflects a new culture of anxiety and fear in the nation on which Bin Laden waged war. I would not go so far as some and say he won that war. But while he may be dead and gone, he has had a profound impact on the United States. We are different post 9-11. We are, for good or bad, forever changed.

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Mayor Mamdani of Hamas

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There he is, Zohran Mamdani, Mayor of New York City, appearing in a video produced with all the trappings of a State of the City address or another important civic event and at taxpayer expense.

If Mamdani looks annoyed, it is probably because he is. He found himself forced to admit one of his major campaign issues was a promise that he could never deliver. In other words, he had to admit he lied. Throughout his campaign Mamdani promised voters he would arrest Benjamin Netenyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, should he ever have the temerity to show up in New York City. Netenyahu is expected to do just that to make his annual speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September.

In his high-profile video address, Mamdani admitted that New York City lacks the legal authority to arrest Netanyahu. That is true and was well known even while Mamdani was scoring political points with his pledge. When he threatens the Israeli prime minister, Mamdani references an arrest warrant issued for Netanyahu by the International Criminal Court. But the United States is not a party to the ICC and does not recognize its jurisdiction, a fact which makes the warrant worthless in the U.S. The ICC’s selection of targets to investigate is demonstrably political and biased. And its leadership faces severe allegations of sexual assault and misconduct. A 2002 law broadly prohibits US cooperation with the ICC.

In addition, the United States is a signatory of the United Nations Charter, and to the “host country agreement,” No. 147 in the United Nations Treaty Series. The charter and the agreement guarantee access by diplomats to the UN Headquarters in New York City. Delegates to the UN also enjoy diplomatic status and diplomatic immunity. This is binding under federal law. Heads of state visiting the US are under protection of the Secret Service. Did Mayor Mamdani imagine that when Mr. Netanyahu’s motorcade leaves the UN, the NYPD can pull it over and kidnap a head of state? The idea is preposterous.

So why did Mamdani make his promise?

It might be that the new mayor of the nation’s most populous city is just ignorant of these details. A New York City mayor need not be schooled in the art of foreign policy. But Mamdani is an intelligent man. He is well-schooled. He is a charismatic speaker. His words are well chosen.

No, ignorance does not explain this. The explanation is much simpler. Mamdani is obsessed with Jews. His head is filled with Jews. Mamdani hates Jews. He has, in fact, made a career out of exploiting his hatred of Jews before, during, and after his election. And he channeled his hostility toward Israel and its people by attacking Netanyahu in front of the world.

His video statement makes his position clear. Mamdani called the Israeli Prime Minister a “war criminal” and “the architect of a horrific genocide against the Palestinian people”. He accused Netanyahu of the deaths of over 73,000 people, targeting hospitals, blocking humanitarian aid, and starving civilians. He demanded that the United States federal government step in, join the ICC, and execute the arrest warrant itself.

“Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in New York City, nor is any other war criminal at large,” Mamdani said. “While we cannot end the genocide on our own, we can decide whether our silence will become another weapon, and we can examine every tool we have to defend the humanity and dignity of all people.”

Each claim is simply the reiteration of the antisemitic tropes Jews have been subjected to for millenniums. And by far better men than Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani tries to make a distinction between Jew, Israeli, Zionism, and antisemitism. Those who believe that is possible have a fundamental misunderstanding of what each term means.

I have generally avoided getting into the discussion of those tropes mainly because I have found that people who repeat them are not willing to discuss history, facts, or even grammar. They have a view that rejects civilized debate. I should probably knock them down in future posts. For this post I’m going to stick with what Mamdani says and does. His words and actions show what he is and has always been.

Mamdani took office on January 1, 2026. You might think he would address New York City’s challenges. Housing affordability is a real issue with market-rate rents near historic highs. The rising cost of living is squeezing families, small businesses continue to struggle, and public safety concerns are on the rise, including an increase in reported sexual assaults. These are the things a mayor should focus on.

Instead, on that first day, he found it necessary to officially revoke Executive Order 52, which had formally adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. That stripped away key protections for Jewish New Yorkers amidst rising hate crimes. He has since boycotted cultural events involving his Jewish constituents like the city’s Israel Day Parade.

In July Mamdani announced appointments to an 18-member Advisory Committee on the Judiciary, which screens and recommends judicial candidates for local courts. Mamdani did not appoint a single Jewish lawyer to the committee. He apparently could not a Jewish lawyer he felt was qualified. He did find Muslims to appoint.

Hate crimes against Jews have risen on Mamdani’s watch. NYPD officials reported 205 confirmed hate crimes against Jews between January and July 2026, up from 189 during the same period last year. Jews were targeted in more than half of all hate crimes, or 57%.

On August 14, 2026, a 46-year-old man named Larry Montes violently disrupted a Friday night Shabbat service at Central Synagogue in Manhattan. He shouted antisemitic slurs, struck a 63-year-old female congregant in the face, and assaulted a security guard. On July 23, 2026, a 51-year-old man named Raul Morales targeted and stabbed a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke near a synagogue on the Upper West Side. The attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” during the violent episode.

Yet Mamdani issued his first mayoral veto against a bipartisan City Council bill intended to combat antisemitism by expanding protest security around schools. He argued the bill would suppress free speech and harm labor, reproductive rights, and pro-Palestinian student demonstrations. He lifted the restriction on boycotting Israel. Nothing had happened yet. No crisis had landed on his desk. He walked in, and this is what he reached for first.

Manmdani has always had a perverse definition of “genocide.” While quick to apply the term to Israel, during a July 2026 press conference, he explicitly declined to label the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, as a genocide. As a New York State legislator, he formalized his alignment with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and openly accused Israel of genocide in Gaza. He has denied Israel’s right to exist as a specifically Jewish state.

Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, has been active on social media since she was a teenager posting in 2015, “Tel Aviv shouldn’t exist in the first place.” She apologized when those posts resurfaced. Watchdog groups and publications like Jewish Insider reported that Duwaji’s personal account had “liked” multiple Instagram posts that appeared to cheer on or celebrate the Hamas attacks on Israel in which 1,200 Israeli civilians were slaughtered, and 251 hostages were abducted and taken into the Gaza Strip.

Mamdani’s father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a academic whose work on colonialism and Israel has faced severe allegations of antisemitism. A Columbia University professor, Mahmood Mamdani’s academic writings, which his son Zohran has credited as a major influence on his own political worldview, frequently center on the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

We are not asked our ethnicity or religion when we vote in the United States. But exit polls consistently showed roughly 33% of Jewish voters supported Mamdani in the November 2025 election, with 63% supporting independent Andrew Cuomo, and about 3% for Republican Curtis Sliwa.

Go figure.

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Yearning to Breathe Free

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The poem on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor is a sonnet titled “The New Colossus,” written by American poet Emma Lazarus in 1883. Its famous lines, “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” transformed the statue from a monument of generic liberty into a worldwide symbol of immigration, refuge, and hope.

Lady Liberty was the first thing millions of immigrants saw as they arrived in the New World. “Her name,” the poem declares, is “Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome.”

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