At The American Spectator’s 56th Robert L. Bartley Gala, guests were treated to a sit-down discussion between editor Paul Kengor and former presidential nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  From leaving the Democratic Party, to being denied Secret Service protection, to suspending his presidential campaign and supporting Donald Trump, RFK Jr. has been consistently antagonized by the Left. In this discussion, RFK Jr. shared his thoughts and experiences regarding his life and the challenges he’s experienced throughout his campaign. (READ MORE: The American Spectator’s Gala Provides a Glimpse Into the Kennedy Family) Kengor opened the discussion by reading an excerpt from American Spectator founder R. Emmett Tyrrell’s book, How Do We Get Out of Here?: Half a Century of Laughter and Mayhem at The American Spectator―From Bobby Kennedy to Donald J. Trump, which begins with Tyrrell’s chance encounter with RFK Jr.’s father, Robert Kennedy Sr. In response to Kengor’s question about upholding the Kennedy legacy, RFK Jr. discussed the political atmosphere regarding the Vietnam War, and how the Kennedy family viewed the Democratic Party as the “party of peace.” “My dad, my uncle, the Democratic Party, as a Rand [Paul] said, was traditionally the party of protecting the First Amendment, the cornerstone of all our rights,” RFK Jr. said. “They know that the free flow of information is the sunlight, the soil, the water, the air, the fertilizer for democracy. If you strangle free speech, democracy also dies today with this party.” RFK Jr. touted a recent endorsement for Trump by former CDC director Robert Redfield, who called Trump “the right man for the job” in handling the American health crisis.  RFK Jr. continually criticized the current state of the Democratic Party. “The Democrats spent tens of millions of dollars not only defaming me [and] making me look like a crazy person, but then they ended the primaries. They wouldn’t let me run against them,” RFK Jr. said.  Kengor then touched upon RFK Jr.’s being denied Secret Service protection, despite it being a practice that started with the assassination of his father in 1968. RFK Jr. shared how he was not provided security despite giving the Secret Service 68 pages of documentation on the threats and attacks made against himself and his family. “Each time they refused, and they clearly were doing it because the agency was politicized…. They knew that we were spending $1 million a month on security, and I knew that this was a way to bleed me dry,” he said.  RFK Jr., who is aligning his efforts in support of Donald Trump in the presidential election, praised Trump’s commitment to integrating the platform “Make America Healthy Again” into his campaign.  When asked what he would like to do in the Trump administration should Trump win the presidency, RFK Jr. responded, “I would like kind of a roving portfolio, unravel corruption in various agencies.”  WATCH the conversation between Paul Kengor and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. here:  The post ‘The Democratic Party Left Me’: A Fireside Chat With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Well, for you folks it might have been a tough week. And particularly for you folks in Florida who have had to get ready for Helene, that sky-monster due to pound the length and width of your state, you have my sympathies. Here in Louisiana, we had one roll through a couple of weeks ago, and though Beryl was a relatively benign hurricane as hurricanes go, there were nonetheless lots of people with flooded cars, flooded houses, roof damage, and power outages. All of which sucks. That said, this has been a pretty good week for us here at The American Spectator. After all, Tuesday night was our 56th annual Robert L. Bartley gala, and we had two political titans come forth to address the crowd — Sen. Rand Paul, whom I also had the pleasure of interviewing for this week’s Spectacle Podcast, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Paul Kengor’s 45-minute sit-down with Kennedy at the gala, which was a tour de force of an interview, is well worth your time. So yep. We’re pretty happy in this quarter. We’re a lot happier than, say, Eric Adams… 1. He Didn’t Know It’s Bad to Get a Visit From The Turk In NFL lore, a visit from The Turk is another way to say that you’re about to be cut from the team. You don’t want to get a visit from The Turk. Eric Adams, New York’s just-indicted mayor, might be finding out that a visit from The Turk is not a good thing even if you’re not in the League: New York City Mayor Eric Adams was indicted Thursday on federal charges alleging that he secured bribes from foreign nationals and illegal campaign contributions in exchange for favors that included helping Turkish officials get fire safety approvals for a new diplomatic building in the city. Adams, a former captain in the New York City police department, faces conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery charges in a five-count indictment that describes a decade-long trail of crimes. At a news conference announcing the charges, Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for Manhattan, said Adams had a duty to disclose gifts he received, but year after year “kept the public in the dark.” At a separate news conference outside Gracie Mansion, meanwhile, Adams said he doesn’t plan to resign from his job running the country’s largest city, telling reporters he hopes New Yorkers will wait to hear his legal team’s defense before making any judgments. Adams’ reaction to the indictment was passionate, and he’s pulling zero punches in claiming that this is political retaliation for his having trashed the Biden administration’s atrocious border policies. The guess here is these things aren’t mutually exclusive. Adams can be a crook — and he probably is — and still be persecuted for his heterodoxical opposition to Dirty Joe’s migrant invasion. Which he probably is. Unless this is the start of some Merrick Garland Justice Department crusade to clean all the crooks out of America’s big blue cities. I’ll raise a glass to that, and say happy hunting, but we all know that urban graft and corruption goes wholly unpunished in this country up until the point when it becomes inconvenient for the Democrats. And that’s Eric Adams’ great sin. Nevertheless, you do want to stay away from the Turk. 2. Ted Cruz Just Firebombed Colin Allred This ad caught my eye, because of a couple of things. First, it’s absolutely true. And second, the likely reaction to it will magnify how true — and relevant — that it is. It’s an ad about how Cruz’s opponent for reelection, a wacko leftist congressman named Colin Allred who’s a bit like a poor man’s Beto O’Rourke — he’s somehow palatable to dumb upscale white chicks — is a big fan of men competing against women. The ad points this out in a way that is not kind to Allred: NEW AD Colin Allred could have stopped men from competing in girls’ sports, but instead he voted against our daughters and stood with the radical left. What kind of man does that? Colin Allred is too extreme for Texas. pic.twitter.com/MlwC2RKTOL — Truth and Courage PAC (@tandcpac) September 26, 2024 Cruz is almost certainly going to win that race, but he might not win it by a lot. He’s simply not the kind of politician who wins races by a lot. And that’s OK, because you need people willing to be the guy who has to slug it out in every race. It’s harder to be that guy than to be Good-Time Charlie who wants to be liked by everybody. The Democrats are throwing a massive amount of money at Allred in hopes they can save the Senate by knocking Cruz off. Maybe running somebody who doesn’t want to victimize female athletes in the name of transgender ideology would yield better results. 3. Kamala’s Just Not a Great Interview, Is She? Stephanie Ruhle is a joke, of course. You don’t get to host a show on MSNBC unless you’re a joke. And her infomercial-in-interview-form of Kamala Harris this week was a joke. Don’t take my word for that. The New York Post put this pretty succinctly: Since Ms. Harris began granting more interviews in recent days, her media strategy has been to sit with friendly inquisitors who are not inclined to ask terribly thorny questions or press her when her responses are evasive. Nothing about that changed during her interview with Ms. Ruhle before her audience on MSNBC, the liberal cable channel whose viewers overwhelmingly favor Democratic candidates. […] Ms. Ruhle joined Ms. Harris in attacking Mr. Trump (“His plan is not serious, when you lay it out like that”) and avoided posing tricky questions about positions Ms. Harris supported during her 2020 presidential campaign or what, if anything, she knew about Mr. Biden’s physical condition or mental acuity as his own campaign deteriorated. Which is perhaps why Ms. Harris agreed to the interview in the first place. Whoops! Sorry. That was the New York Times’ take on the interview. This was the Post’s review: How utterly vapid is VP Kamala Harris? She just flunked an interview with a “journalist” who’d announced days before that demanding to know where the veep actually stands on policy is as unreasonable as wanting to live in a state of nirvana. Under mild questioning from MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, Harris still managed to flop and flail and word-salad her way into ever greater depths of inanity. Consider this sample exchange on the subject of how Harris will pay for her estimated $1.7 trillion spending plan: “If you can’t raise corporate taxes, or if the GOP takes control of the Senate, where do you get the money to do that? Do you still go for those plans and borrow,” asked Ruhle. A key question, one that every candidate should have a detailed answer ready for. Harris’ response: “Well, but we’re going to have to raise corporate taxes.” Ruhle let this nonsense pass with zero meaningful probing. But things somehow got even more sycophantic from there: Ruhle simpered, “You have laid out policy in great detail.” To which Harris gave an utterly mendacious “Yes.” That’s literally the one thing Harris hasn’t done — including in the interview Ruhle was conducting at the time, the first solo interview the candidate has given a major network so far. There’s a reason the legacy corporate media is going to seed. Here’s hoping the GOP has enough gumption that if things go well in November, enough power exists to break up the media oligopolies that prop up these failing “news” organizations and force them to compete in the marketplace. Kamala Harris should have been exposed as the nincompoop she is by now. Tulsi Gabbard did it in a debate. Instead, she’s been coddled and protected by jokes like David Muir and Stephanie Ruhle. Which tells you something. Rand Paul said a hundred times more meaningful things in a 19-minute interview I did with him than Harris has in any of these hagiographic exercises she’s consented to. It’s a damn shame. 4. Thank You, John Stossel Thursday, I had a post at The Hayride, and I wanted to give this a little larger airing here, about the evisceration that John Stossel laid on Robert Reich in his latest podcast: Reich is a prolific podcaster and social media influencer, as well as a contributor on the various cable news networks. This is the case despite the fact that he’s almost universally wrong in every particular – from his unhinged Trump Derangement Syndrome attacks on the Republican presidential nominee to his stupid pronouncements about the economy. He’s a fundamentally unlikeable figure, which is probably a good thing; if Reich were more charismatic, there is a danger that more people would take him seriously. But the stupid things he says – it’s corporate greed and not government spending which causes inflation, billionaires ought to be outlawed, foreign trade exploits black and brown people in the Third World – are echoed by others who do have some charisma. And that’s unfortunate. It’s also dangerous, particularly when the people who would otherwise correct these idiocies and blow Reich out of the water are so often suppressed by social media platforms. Stossel, fortunately, doesn’t get suppressed, or at least not universally. So it’s good to see him annihilate Reich for being wrong about more or less everything. And here’s the annihilation: I do take issue — somewhat — with Stossel’s doctrinaire position on free trade, in that when you’re dealing with a communist country like Cuba where you literally cannot find a trade partner there who isn’t an arm of the Castro regime, or an effectively fascist country like China where there is some nominal private sector you could buy from or sell to but not without a great deal of “input” from the regime, the trade might be free on your side but it won’t be on the other side, and as such, you’re going to get some perverted results from the trade relationship. And I talk a bit about that in the Hayride post. But otherwise, Stossel nails Reich to the wall. For which he deserves thanks. Melissa and I have been going back and forth about how best one or both of us could take a shot at that irritating little lunatic, and along comes Stossel to do some of that work for us. Much obliged, John. 5. The Critical Drinker Likes The Penguin (And Rightfully So) Last weekend, HBO dropped the first episode of the new Colin Farrell–led Batman spinoff series, The Penguin, and it was somewhat surprising how understated the hype was for it. Maybe it’s that the comic book/superhero genre is fading out and everyone knows it, and as such, the investment in marketing another property within that genre would justifiably be smaller. Or maybe it’s that The Penguin was always something of a minor villain within the Batman story; he’s a freaky character with less panache than the Joker or Catwoman or even the Riddler. On film, Danny DeVito’s portrayal in Batman Returns (1992) was well done as far as it went, though DeVito wasn’t given a great deal to work with: It’s not really a shock that, as the Critical Drinker says, this series wasn’t all that heralded. But something interesting has happened. I’ll let him take it over from here: He’s right. The ambiance of the show carries over from the last Batman flick, The Batman, which was quite well done even though for me the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight movies will always be the real Batman productions. Actually, The Penguin wouldn’t be all that out of place in Nolan’s telling, either, and the portrayal of Gotham is pretty much the same. What’s best about this show, of course, is Farrell’s portrayal of the lead — to me, Colin Farrell is the funny Irish hit man in In Bruges or the depressed, rejected friend in The Banshees of Inisherin, or the lover in A Winter’s Tale, and this is pretty much a 180-degree change from those roles. Then again, Farrell played the Penguin in The Batman, so the massive makeup job and the completely different voice aren’t anything new. He was good in the role then, and he’s even better in this. Give Farrell credit — the guy has some serious range as an actor. But The Penguin offers something else. The Drinker noted the similarities to The Sopranos, and that really hits home. This is a slightly comic-booky version of that massive HBO hit, and I’d say it was an exceptionally good choice to go in that direction with this series. Oz Cobb, which is a lot more believable name for the character than the Oswald Cobblepot DeVito was stuck with, turns out to be a pretty complex character. He’s ugly and he’s deformed and he’s a villain mostly because life dictated that he had to be, but he’s human in a way that James Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano was human. He’s also ambitious, strategic, and ruthless only when he has to be. In other words, identifiable, as is the situation he finds himself navigating in the first episode. This has the makings of a show worth watching, as the Drinker notes. It might just be the oasis in the television desert we find ourselves subjected to at present. READ MORE from Scott McKay: Villains, Villains Everywhere Further Examinations: From Hellmarsh With Love Ep. 3 The Spectacle Ep. 149: Israel’s Exploding Pagers Send a Warning Message About Future Weaponization The post Five Quick Things: Eric Adams, Jive Turkey appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Amazing. Pennsylvania’s Democrat senator — Robert P. Casey Jr. — is in a hot race for reelection with Republican businessman Dave McCormick.  Dave is a decidedly impressive candidate with a background in both the military and business. He is a seventh-generation Pennsylvanian, a West Point grad, a combat veteran, and he earned the Bronze star. He was also a highly successful businessman in his role as the CEO of Bridgewater Associates and served in government as undersecretary of Treasury and as deputy national security advisor.  Casey is famously the namesake son of the late Democrat Gov. Robert P. Casey Sr. After a longtime career in Pennsylvania politics, fueled in considerable part by the popularity of his dad, this would be Casey’s fourth Senate term if reelected. Living here in the middle of Pennsylvania as I do, I am, along with my fellow Pennsylvanians, swamped with the usual political television commercials.  But what stands out in the midst of all the usual hoo-ha is a specific Casey attack on McCormick. What is that attack? Casey attacks Dave McCormick because McCormick has had the audacity — the nerve! — to say that he is — ready? — pro-life! Ohhhh no! Now, there is something going on here that is above and beyond the usual battle in this day and age between a pro-choice left-leaning Democrat and a conservative pro-life Republican. And what would that be? As mentioned, Sen. Casey is the namesake of his very popular late dad, Democrat Gov. Robert P. Casey Sr. And as for those Pennsylvanians who are old enough to recall, Gov. Casey was decidedly seriously pro-life. Which put him in the headlines with stories like this one in the Los Angeles Times from the 1992 Democratic Convention. ‘92 DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION : Denied Stage, Casey Calls Abortion a Party Litmus Test The Times story reported — and bold print for this story has been supplied for emphasis: NEW YORK —  Pennsylvania Gov. Robert P. Casey, the most prominent Democrat in a state Bill Clinton considers vital to his presidential election chances, complained Monday that leaders of the party’s convention are bowing to wishes of “the radical far left” and denying him a chance to air his opposition to abortion rights here. Casey charged that Democratic leaders have made support for abortion rights a litmus test for participation in party functions. He added that he speaks for a majority of Democrats who oppose unrestricted abortion rights and that it was “politically dumb” for the party to ignore those voters. “I’m trying to get my party to be a mainstream party and not have a radical, extreme position,” Casey said. Then there was this from October 1992 in the New York Times: Protesters Silence Anti-Abortion Talk That Times story reported:  Gov. Robert P. Casey of Pennsylvania, who was not allowed to give his anti-abortion views at the Democratic national convention in July, fared no better last night in Manhattan at a talk co-sponsored by The Village Voice and Cooper Union. Knots of demonstrators in the college’s Great Hall, where Abraham Lincoln spoke on slavery in 1860, prevented Governor Casey from delivering his speech, “Can a Liberal Be Pro-Life?” at the Cooper Union School of Architecture. Nat Hentoff, a writer for The Voice who introduced Governor Casey, repeatedly begged and scolded the demonstrators to let the Governor speak. “Murderers have no right to speak,” demonstrators shouted back, referring to arguments that women will die in illegal abortions if abortion is outlawed. There are infinitely more stories out there recalling the fact that progressives of 1992 went out of their way to try and bully Gov. Casey into silence for being pro-life.  Among other things, they were livid that Gov. Casey was willing to fight for the pro-life cause all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he was famously named in the case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. That case, decided in favor of the pro-choice cause, like Roe v. Wade, was overturned by the current Court in its landmark 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The irony, of course, is that in today’s world, Sen. Casey — who is doubtless where he is in part because he carries his father’s name — is running for reelection by slamming opponent McCormick for holding the same pro-life views that his own father held — and held when he, Gov. Casey, was savaged by pro-choice Democrat “progressives” for being pro-life. Views that Gov. Casey described as “a radical, extreme position.” Now? Now Sen. Casey has not only abandoned his father’s famous stand for the pro-life cause, he is also making a point of spending serious money to flood the Pennsylvania airwaves with a commercial attacking McCormick for holding the same pro-life views as his own father.  Which all by itself shows just how far left the Pennsylvania Democrat Party has strayed since the pro-life supporting Gov. Casey spoke up fearlessly for the unborn. As the saying goes, ya can’t make it up. READ MORE: RFK Jr.’s Fight for Principle Largest US Billboard Company Cancels Catholic Pro-Trump Ads The post Casey Attacks GOP’s McCormick For Holding Father Gov. Casey’s Pro-Life Views appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

There are less than 40 days until the election, and Americans are growing increasingly concerned about the atmosphere of political violence and the recent assassination attempts targeting GOP candidate and former President Donald Trump.  On this episode of The Spectacle Podcast, host Scott McKay and special guest Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) discuss the Secret Service’s inept response to the threats against Donald Trump’s life and the continued incitement of violence from public figures on the left. Sen. Paul also explains his proposals to lower the deficit and his stance on tariffs. Tune in to hear their conversation! Listen to The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Spotify. Watch The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Rumble.  The post <i>The Spectacle</i> Ep. 150: Rand Paul on Violence Against Trump, Balancing Budgets, and Tackling Tariffs appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Pundits highlight the first indictment of a sitting New York City mayor as though primarily an imputation of Eric Adams and not prosecutors who historically allow corruption to flourish when committed by their friends. Progressive prosecutors, particularly ones located in New York, move aggressively when perceived malefactors offend not the law but their politics. Adams offered a “help is not on the way” characterization of the December meeting held with President Joe Biden regarding the illegal-alien crisis. Earlier this year, Hizzoner admitted: “The national government has turned its back on New York City.” When you announce seeing the turned backs of the powerful, they tend to pirouette for the purpose of not ballet but bulldozing. The bulldozers showed up at 6 a.m. Thursday at Gracie Mansion, where federal agents seized Hizzoner’s cell phone and inflicted other humiliations. These included the indictment, released later that day, which indicated a quid pro quo scheme in which Turkish interests plied money into Adams’s campaign in exchange for opening a consulate in the city without the hassles of red tape and that bureaucrat from Ghostbusters shutting down their project. It further alleges that Adams received these foreign donations through straw donors. Since New York City matches Big Apple campaign contributions, Adams, the feds say, in effect cheated the system by collecting these public subsidies for his campaign. Beyond this, they claim he received travel and accommodations gratis from these foreign well-wishers. Adams regards the indictment as the quid pro quo in that feds punish him for criticism of them. “I always knew that if I stood my ground for New Yorkers that I would be a target — and a target I became,” Adams told the New York Post in a statement in which he vowed to fight on to serve as mayor and fight the effort for him to serve time. More than 90 years ago, Adams’ predecessor Jimmy Walker dramatically absconded on the S.S. Conte Grande rather than face any potential charges. The differences between the mayors extend beyond the Irish exit. The flamboyant mayor brought 43 suits on an earlier trip to Europe, flouted the law by conspicuously drinking in Prohibition-era speakeasies, and frequently cavorted with dancers, to include Ziegfeld Follies showgirl Betty Compton, for whom he left his wife. Adams, like Walker before him, upset the wrong man — the titular leader of his party. In the case of Walker, who became the national posterchild for urban corruption, Democratic presidential nominee Franklin Roosevelt orchestrated his “resignation” ahead of the 1932 presidential election and that prolonged European stay. Adams, for his part, repeatedly criticized the Biden administration for passivity in dealing with the flood of illegal immigrants draining city services in New York and other metropolises. Now Biden’s Justice Department sics its prosecutors on him. Hmmm. This, really, comes as the first sitting mayor in the city that gave us Tammany Hall to find himself facing felony charges? Big government results in big corruption. When a politician fast-tracks a construction project, he necessarily commits the unforgivable sin of preventing graft opportunities long enjoyed by inspectors and other lower bureaucrats. Campaign finance laws, ostensibly designed to even the playing field, instead, as demonstrated here, act as a scheme to reward cheaters and encourage, a la tax law, creative means of avoidance. And do-gooder schemes to provide matching funds to politicians, as though the people allocating public money require public money to bankroll their ambitions, represent one more opportunity for the powerful to rip off the public. Possibly Adams committed all the offenses the Justice Department assigns to him. One cannot help but find it curious that not a mayor with a bag man grabbing millions but one accused of campaign finance violations and taking in-kind gifts finally attracted the feds to a mayor of New York City. Of course, if you believe law-breaking motivated the feds here, then Eric Adams has a bridge in Brooklyn that he, along with some Turkish gentlemen, wish to sell you. READ MORE: Ryan Wesley Routh, Do-Gooder Will the Real Threats to Democracy Please Stand Up? The post Eric Adams Has a Bridge in Brooklyn to Sell You appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

For the past week, my team at America 2100 and I have been in Charleroi, Pennsylvania — a downwardly mobile, 4,000-person town in the southwestern part of the state. We went to Charleroi to document and report on the flood of thousands (now well over 2,000, according to one Charleroi borough councilman) of primarily Haitian immigrants into the town over the past few years. Charleroi — already a vulnerable working-class town — has seen its immigrant population grow “by over 2,000% in just the last two years,” according to a March report from a local outlet. Springfield, Ohio, was never a one-off; there are now dozens of stories just like it, in towns across the country. The new weight bearing down upon the town is palpable. Car crashes are soaring. The schools are overwhelmed. Public services are strained. Houses — some packed with 15 to 20 Haitians at a time — are falling into disrepair or worse. The budget can’t keep up — and nobody at the state or federal level seems particularly interested in lending a helping hand. Charleroi, as one resident told us, is “a place that time forgot” — “nobody cares about Charleroi, Pennsylvania.” An unfashionable little town, filled with unfashionable little people, is of little to no concern to political elites in either party. If the businesses around Charleroi want to transform the town forever in pursuit of their unquenchable thirst for cheap foreign labor, who are we to stop them? “Where’s [Pennsylvania Governor Josh] Shapiro?”, Larry Celaschi, a Charleroi borough councilman, wondered out loud to us last week. It was a question we heard repeatedly from locals. Shapiro — like most of the political class ostensibly elected to represent Charleroi — hadn’t seen fit to even acknowledge the crisis. That changed today, when Shapiro finally saw fit to at least weigh in … during an interview with a left-wing New Republic journalist, Greg Sargent. In an interview today, Sargent noted that Donald Trump — following on our reporting last week — had “attacked the population of Haitians that have moved to Charleroi in the southwestern part of the state” and suggested “towns and villages across PA are ‘inundated’” in a rally earlier this week. Shapiro responded by trashing the claims as “bulls**t,” adding: Charleroi is a wonderful community in Washington County, Pennsylvania, a community that has seen migrants contribute to their economy, contribute to their community. You’ve heard that from residents in the area. Charleroi is also a community that’s facing serious economic challenges. Instead of actually offering something that’s going to help them address their economic challenges, Donald Trump goes and s**ts on the community. It’s not only disrespectful, it’s really dangerous. When Donald Trump creates a kind of “others” in our community, he puts people at risk and he makes us all less safe. That is really, really dangerous and destructive. I’ll tell you the other thing. They do have, as I said a moment ago, serious economic challenges with plant closures and other things. As governor, I’m working with the community to help lift them up, to help address that. I’d love to have elected officials and wannabe elected officials like Donald Trump actually do something constructive that helps the community instead of tearing them down. I can’t speak for the residents of Charleroi, but I’m glad Shapiro appears to have finally noticed they exist. (After all, that — reminding America that they exist, and matter — was the central goal of our reporting). But I can’t say I’m surprised he took the opportunity to essentially imply that the town’s native population — at least, the ones who object to the top-to-bottom transformation of their community — was racist. Sure, he’ll claim he was only talking about Trump. But the vast majority of locals we spoke to agreed with Trump’s assessment. It’s notable that all the mainstream media reports on Charleroi since it entered the national spotlight have relied heavily on a handful of sources in local office — most notably, the borough manager and the two liberal members of the borough council — who share the media’s opinion on immigration. The average local, by and large, does not. Shapiro might have known that, had he ever taken the time to go to Charleroi and talk to them himself. READ MORE: The Rightward Rebellion: Why Young Men Are Flocking to Conservatism Was It Worth the Empanadas? The post Oh, Now Josh Shapiro Cares About Charleroi? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

At a recent campaign rally in Detroit, Vice President Kamala Harris was interrupted by people chanting, “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide! We won’t vote for genocide.”  She swiftly shut the protests down: “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” Some Michigan voters evidently took her seriously. This week, Amer Ghalib, the Yemen-born mayor of Hamtramck, endorsed President Donald Trump less than 50 days before the election, signaling a potential opportunity for the former president to pick up votes in Michigan.  Hamtramck Mayor Endorses Trump Elected in 2021, Ghalib became the town’s first Muslim mayor. Once a majority Polish enclave of Detroit, Hamtramck became the first Muslim-majority city in the country in 2013. Ghalib’s victory against incumbent mayor Karen Majewski ended Hamtramck’s century-long streak of Polish American mayors. That same year, Muslim candidates won all six city council seats for the first time. Today, Polish Americans make up just 5 percent of the town’s population.  With 93 percent of American Muslims voting for President Joe Biden in 2020, Hamtramck should be an easy win for Democrats. But the Israel–Hamas war has made strange bedfellows for some Muslim voters in Michigan.   Trump met privately with Ghalib ahead of a rally in Flint, Michigan, on Sept. 17. A few days later, Ghalib endorsed the former president in a post on Facebook:  President Trump and I may not agree on everything, but I know he is a man of principles. Though it’s looking good, he may or may not win the election and be the 47th president of the United States, but I believe he is the right choice for this critical time. I’ll not regret my decision no matter what the outcome would be, and I’m ready to face the consequences. Trump told Breitbart that he was “very impressed” with Ghalib, who “was a very big fan of the Trump administration because he saw no wars.” Muslim Voters: Politically Homeless? The Israel–Hamas war has made for strange bedfellows — Ghalib among them. Support for Trump doesn’t always correlate with Republican policy positions. Earlier this year, Ghalib and the Hamtramck city council voted unanimously to divest from Israeli companies. “For now, the city will do its best to refrain from buying, investing or contracting with companies that support the Israeli genocide,” the mayor said.  In March, Ghalib renamed a major street in Hamtramck “Palestine Avenue” in a show of solidarity with Palestinians. Referencing the protesters’ outburst at Harris’ rally in Detroit, Ghalib posted on Facebook in August that Kamala could finish her speech when “Netanyahu finishes his genocide.”  That Trump was a close ally of Israel throughout his presidency and maintains a “good relationship” with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has apparently not affected Ghalib’s support for the former president.  But Muslim Americans in Michigan aren’t a perfect ideological fit with Democrats either, despite voting nearly unanimously for progressive candidates. As a self-described “conservative Democrat,” Ghalib doesn’t agree with progressive liberal ideology. In 2023, he supported a resolution banning the display of LGBTQ flags on city property in Hamtramck. In nearby Dearborn, Muslim parents have made headlines for their opposition to sexually explicit LGBTQ books in school libraries.  “Thank you for changing the perception that all Muslim Americans are default ticket to Democratic Party,” Dearborn resident Khalil Othman said after Ghalib endorsed Trump.   A number of Muslim voters in Michigan like Ghalib are defecting because “the Biden-Harris administration is ‘directly contributing to the death and destruction of our home country and of our relatives overseas,’” says Soujoud Hamade, an Arab American living in the area.  For Hamade, Vice President Dick Cheney’s endorsement of Harris — and her embrace of his endorsement — was the last straw. “These aren’t the values that we as Democrats stood for. We were not the party of war,” she told the Midwesterner.  Similarly, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian American whose district is just south of Hamtramck, has refused to endorse Harris in opposition to the vice president’s stance on Israel. Putting Michigan’s Muslim Vote in Perspective Throughout the election cycle, Muslim voters have made their discontent clear: Democrats need to earn their support. Harris has made some headway in her two months on the campaign trail, earning endorsements from far-left squad members Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But the vice president hasn’t fully earned the trust of Muslim voters. In Michigan, where Biden beat Trump in 2020 by 150,000 votes, Harris can’t afford to lose the support of traditionally Democratic voters. Recent polling from the Council on American Islamic Relations found that 12 percent of Michigan Muslim American voters plan to vote for Harris, with 18 percent supporting Trump and 40 percent planning to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.  Currently, polling shows Trump and Harris neck and neck in the state as Election Day approaches. Though the shift in support among Muslim voters is an exciting development, the population might not be big enough to truly threaten Harris’ chances at victory in the state.  Using data from the 2020 Religion census, political scientist Ryan Burge analyzed Michigan’s Muslim population and cast doubt on the hope that their votes could change the outcome of the election. Despite the high concentration of Muslims in Southeast Michigan, they make up only 2 percent of the state’s overall population. Considering immigration status and age, the population of eligible Muslim voters shrinks further, especially given the relative youth of America’s Muslim population. Burge estimates that Muslim voters will cast about 1.8 percent of all ballots in Michigan this November, or just over 100,000 votes. With those votes split between the candidates, there’s no guarantee that support for Trump among Muslim voters like Ghalib will tip the scales in the GOP’s favor. But in a two-party system, the enemy of an enemy quickly becomes a friend.  Mary Frances Myler is a contributing editor at The American Spectator. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022.  READ MORE by Mary Frances Myler:  Can the GOP Win Back the Senate?  Harris and ABC Lied About Late-Term Abortions As Students Return, So Do Pro-Palestinian Protests The post Mayor of Majority-Muslim City in Michigan Endorses Trump appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Higher education has been a cesspool of anti-Americanism, censorious leftism, and cultural radicalism for longer than I have been alive. The moral rot is, and always has been, particularly acute at Ivy League or otherwise putatively “elite” institutions. The pro-Hamas “protests” that have rocked university campuses since Oct. 7 are indicative: One cannot help but realize that the jihadi anarchy on display at Harvard Yard hasn’t been replicated at red-state public schools such as Alabama or Ole Miss. But every so often, something happens at an “elite” university that manages to shock our already jaded consciences. For instance, there was the triumvirate of “elite” university presidents who testified before Congress last December that the permissibility of campus calls for the genocide of the Jewish people “depends on the context.” There was also Judge Kyle Duncan’s March 2023 struggle session at Stanford Law School, where a baying left-wing mob — egged on by then-“DEI” Dean Tirien Steinbach — prevented the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals jurist from delivering his remarks. But perhaps the single biggest disgrace to rock academia in recent years has been the University of Pennsylvania’s yearslong crusade against its own tenured law professor, Amy Wax. In 2017, Wax coauthored an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer that lamented the decline of traditional bourgeoisie values across American society and suggested this decline is blameworthy for many of America’s present social maladies. Almost immediately, 4,000 people signed a petition calling for Wax’s ouster; 33 of her Penn Law colleagues also condemned her instantaneously. Wax, a vocal critic of mass migration and skeptic of multiculturalism, admirably refused to be silenced. She ruffled more feathers when she observed that, in her two decades of teaching experience, Black students rarely finish in the top half of graduating law school classes. Statistics, it seems, are racist. For two and a half years, a period spanning successive Penn Law deanships, Wax has been subject to a probe into her alleged wrongthink and misdeeds. The investigation has depleted valuable funds that Penn Law could have used to foster free speech or — how’s this for an idea? — actually train students to practice law. The probe has been exorbitantly expensive, forcing Wax to retain counsel; thankfully, a GoFundMe legal defense fund for the embattled professor has raised nearly $200,000 since its July 2022 launch. The witch hunt, as Aaron Sibarium observed for the Washington Free Beacon, has also “made Penn a pariah among academic freedom advocates.” The judgment finally came this week: Penn Law suspended Wax for a year, reduced her pay for that year by 50 percent, permanently stripped her of her endowed chair and summer pay, and publicly reprimanded her. Interestingly, as Sibarium scooped, Penn Law had previously offered Wax a settlement that would have lessened her penalty on the condition that she not “disparage the University,” not sue Penn, and not publicly disclose the exculpatory evidence she had presented during the yearslong probe. Translation: Shut your mouth and this problem will go away quickly. Chairman Mao would have nodded right along. Penn Law, in the most recent version of the oft-cited U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, is tied for fourth place. High-achieving law school applicants (rightly or wrongly) seek to enroll there, and high-end law firms (rightly or wrongly) seek to recruit from there. When such an institution allocates immense time and resources to punish and humiliate one of its own faculty members, the goal is clear: to send a message. In this particular case, the message could not be clearer: You must bend the knee. Wokeism, unlike the liberalism of old, brooks no dissent. Free inquiry must yield to the stifling intellectual conformity that leftists delude themselves into thinking is “progress.” On the substance of Wax’s comments, to merely speak of race-based outcomes and speculate as to the underlying social phenomena that might have affected those outcomes is verboten. Anyone who does not toe the line, condemn America as a bastion of “systemic racism,” and endorse everything from reparations to race-conscious admissions practices is, in turn, deemed a racist him/herself. To call this spectacle “Orwellian” would risk understatement. The Amy Wax struggle session ought to be an inflection point in our higher education wars. College students should stop applying to Penn Law. Employers — from law firms to individual judges — should stop hiring from there as well. And Congress should pass a new law placing a hard condition on the disbursement of higher education funding: No private university that punishes a tenured professor for engaging in First Amendment–protected speech will receive a single penny in public funding. Wax is vowing to fight on. Perhaps she will sue Penn Law. Perhaps she will prevail in that suit. But as is so often the case, the process is the real punishment. And the indignity is the whole point. To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM READ MORE: Why Are the Nutjobs Trying to Kill Political Opponents All Left-Wingers? Do Republicans Still Buy Sneakers Too? The post The Amy Wax Inflection Point for ‘Elite’ Higher Education appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

The Amy Wax Inflection Point for 'Elite' Higher Education