Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Andrew Cuomo is the lesser of two evils

New York City politics has rarely offered voters a clean choice. This year, with Eric Adams out of the mayor’s race, the city faces one of its grimmest dilemmas yet: Andrew Cuomo or Zohran Mamdani.Let’s be clear – this is not an endorsement of Cuomo. The former governor has baggage that most voters can recite from memory. But politics isn’t about picking saints; it’s about survival. And when survival is on the line, sometimes the only responsible thing to do is choose the lesser of two evils.Cuomo may be corrupt, arrogant and heavy-handed. But at least he governs from a place of pragmatism.

Eric Adams

Will America outlaw Sharia law?

Florida Representative Randy Fine and Texas Representative Keith Self introduced the “No Sharia Act” last weekend in the U.S. House of Representatives “to ensure that no U.S. court, public agency, or legal institution can ever enforce or legitimize Sharia law. On X, Congressman Fine wrote, “You don’t get to come to this country and demand that our legal system accommodate your oppressive laws.” Meanwhile, Texas has operated as ground zero for the fight. On September 12, Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared on September 8 that Sharia law was illegal in Texas. In a post on Facebook the Governor wrote: “In Texas, we believe in equal rights under the law for all men, women, & children. Any legal system that flouts human rights is BANNED in the state of Texas.

Greg Abbott
Zohran Mamdani

Why black voters won’t come around to Mamdani

When Zohran Mamdani took the pulpit at Brooklyn’s Bethany Baptist Church last Sunday, he had a golden opportunity. He could have spoken to the hopes of black New Yorkers, their resilience, their aspirations for safer neighborhoods, better schools and paths to prosperity. Instead, the first thing he brought up was police shootings. There is nothing wrong with addressing police shootings. They are tragedies that wound communities deeply. But it is telling that when Democrats step into black churches, their reflex is to start with pain. They do not speak to us as whole citizens with complex desires. They reduce us to our wounds, assuming that the surest way to earn our votes is to rehearse our traumas.This is what I call “pain politics,” and frankly, I am tired of it.

Gavin Newsom

Gavin Newsom’s fossil-fuel flip-flop

Gavin Newsom once touted California as the fossil fuel industry’s “foe.” In 2024 he declared energy workers “the polluted heart of the climate crisis.” Together with Attorney General Rob Bonta he famously filed an outlandish climate lawsuit in 2023 demanding oil majors pay the costs of climate change. And under Newsom anti-energy lawfare has been coupled with burdensome environmental regulations, delays in permitting and punitive legislation such as a pledge to end oil drilling across the state by 2045. But now, a decade since the madness started, the strategy has turned out to be a dud. The “bold” climate plan has produced no reliable or affordable alternatives to oil and gas – and has even forced major refineries to up and leave.

Ilhan Omar

Did Ilhan Omar marry her brother?

In as Trumpian a fashion as it gets, the president has rekindled the years-long debate: Did progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) marry her brother? Shortly after conservative icon Charlie Kirk was assassinated in cold blood by a deranged leftist, Omar reposted a video on X that called Kirk a “reprehensible human being” who was “spewing racist dog whistles” in his “last, dying words.” Republican lawmakers saw an opportunity to censure the “Squad” member and remove her committee assignments. The motion failed by a 214-213 vote.Nevertheless, some conservatives are demanding Omar’s denaturalization and deportation to Somalia. Denaturalization is allowed in cases of “concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation.

Retribution looms for the NeverTrumpers

"My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump," says James Comey, the former FBI director, in a video statement on – naturally – Bluesky. "We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either." The Resistance is strong in that one. To a dwindling number of hardcore NeverTrumpers, Comey is a sort of godfather figure. He seems to love the attention, too. He wrote a self-aggrandizing memoir called A Higher Loyalty, about his fall-out with Donald Trump and the start of the Trump-Russia, Russia, Russia business. Earlier this year, moreover, he was even accused of elliptically threatening Trump’s life, when he posted and then deleted on Instagram an image showing the numbers "86 47" written in seashells on a beach.

Never-Trumpers
ICEblock

Why is Apple hosting an assassin’s app?

ICEBlock is an app that uses real-time information to pinpoint the location of ICE agents in the field. Launched in April in response to Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, it now boasts more than one million users across the country. Among them, until recently, was self-styled “anti-fascist” sniper Joshua Jahn, who killed one person – a detainee – and critically injured two more at an ICE facility in Dallas. The FBI has discovered that Jahn used the app, or one like it, to track his intended victims. In a handwritten note, Jahn, who took his own life, wrote, "Hopefully this will give ICE agents real terror.”ICEBlock claims that its purpose is to help illegal immigrants evade arrest by alerting them to the presence of ICE agents.

Trump’s new pharma tariffs will punish Americans

Donald Trump has punished European pharmaceutical companies by imposing 100 percent tariffs on their branded products unless they are prepared to set up a manufacturing plants in the US. That is one way of putting it, but why is the issue of tariffs so often seen from the point of view of the producers and so rarely seen from the position of the consumers? Besides punishing drugs companies, the President has also whacked the American public – or at least that section of the population which relies on patented medicines made outside the US. The cost of treatment for many of these patients will soar as a result. Does Trump think that people will somehow fail to realize this?

James Comey is not above the law

Days before the five-year statute of limitations was due to expire, the long arm of the law finally has caught up with the slippery former FBI Director James B. Comey. A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, has indicted Comey for leaking and lying about his role in the Russian hoax that President Trump’s enemies tried to hang around his head like a noose even before he was inaugurated in 2016.Count one of the federal indictment charges Comey with making a false statement during a September 30, 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Specifically, Comey claimed he had not “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports” regarding FBI investigations into President Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

James Comey

Trump, Soros and a weaponized DoJ

In 2013, the IRS targeted the Tea Party and other conservative organizations for special scrutiny. Four years later, the federal government reached a settlement and the IRS apologized. Is it about to be déjà vu all over again? The Trump administration is embarking upon a major campaign against leading liberal organizations. The first shot came in late August when President Trump demanded that the liberal billionaire George Soros and his son, Alex, be charged under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act for supporting violent protests across America. The libertarian CATO Institute, a redoubt for decades of free speech advocates, promptly observed that “the call to prosecute may be bluster.” Wrong.

Donald Trump

Don’t execute my mother’s killer, I forgive him

I was 11 years old in 1997 when Geoffrey West shot and killed my mother, Margaret Parrish Berry, while robbing the Attalla gas station where she worked. Mr. West was sentenced to death. His execution date is set for tonight, September 25. He is due to be killed by nitrogen gas. But I do not want the state of Alabama to kill him. That won’t bring my mother back; it will only add to the pain I have lived with since the night she was shot. I believe there is a better way.My mother was the person I loved most in the world. Her absence, and the senseless way she died, has cast a long shadow over my life. Even so, the weeks since I learned that Governor Ivey set an execution date for Mr. West have been some of the most unsettling I can recall. My dearest wish is to meet with Mr. West.

Death penalty

After Comey, who’s next?

Cockburn has awakened from his Russiagate slumber with the news that the Trump administration is seeking to file charges against former FBI director James Comey in federal court within the next few days. The statute of limitations on Comey’s September 30, 2020 testimony about ties between Russia and Trump’s second campaign for president is about to expire, meaning we’re set to re-litigate the Mueller Report. While we’re at it, why not take a look at Solyndra, yellowcake uranium, Whitewater, Iran-Contra, Watergate and Credit Mobilier?   Russiagate is a bit more current, though, and Trump is flinging his prosecutors all over the room.

comey

The Dallas shooting was a political act

Although we are still learning the details of the lethal assault on the ICE facility in Dallas, we already know some important things, thanks to transparency from the Dallas police and the FBI. We know the shooter’s name; we know he committed suicide as police closed in; we know he fired indiscriminately at the ICE facility, killing at least one detainee but no ICE officers; and we know the assassin had a political motive, encoded on unfired rifle shells. He hated ICE. We also know exactly what politicians from each side will say. They’ve said it so many times before. The Republicans have a much stronger, more convincing message here than Democrats.Republicans will say, “This targeted violence against law enforcement and immigration officers has to stop.

Dallas shooting

Kamala blames race when it suits her

When Kamala Harris sat across from Joy Behar on The View, the exchange revealed more than just political spin. Behar insisted Harris’ struggles on the campaign trail were largely about racism and sexism – that she “really lost” because of prejudice, not performance. Harris replied, “I’m not naive; race and gender do play a factor... I have never run as a woman or as a person of color. I have run because I believe I am the best to do the job.” That answer might sound polished, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Harris has built her career on identity politics. She was polling below four percent in the Democratic primaries in 2019 – a campaign so weak it collapsed before a single vote was cast.

Kamala Harris

Kimmel makes the case for free speech

After a few days in politically-induced time out that felt like a decade, Jimmy Kimmel made a triumphant return to late night TV on Tuesday. “I’m not sure who had a weirder 48 hours,” he said. “Me, or the CEO of Tylenol.” Given that Tylenol is a brand name and has no actual CEO, let’s say Kimmel, who Disney/ABC pulled off the air last week under political pressure from station ownership and the chairman of the FCC after he made a bad-taste joke about Charlie Kirk’s assassin.  Kimmel suddenly became the most famous man in America not named Donald Trump, and his audience met his return with a roaring standing ovation, chanting “Jimmy! Jimmy! Jimmy!

Kimmel

No, Trump has not changed course on Ukraine

President Trump has once again played the global foreign-policy commentariat for fools. They have taken a startling statement from Trump’s Truth social-media account on Tuesday as a sign of a new policy – or at least a new attitude – toward the Russia-Ukraine war. Yet what Trump actually wrote says nothing of the sort.  If Trump really were newly committing himself to Ukraine, why would say, as he’s so often said before, “I wish both countries well”? One country has invaded the other; wishing one of them well means wishing defeat on the other. Wishing them both well indicates indifference.

Trump Ukraine

Trump admonishes the United Nations

Was there a plot against President Trump at the United Nations? Upon his arrival, the escalator apparently stopped working. Next his teleprompter failed. Small wonder that Trump was in less than a concessive mood as he delivered his speech denouncing the UN itself as a colossal failure. The result was the kind of talk he would give to a political rally – except it was to an unreceptive, if not hostile, audience. Throughout, Trump made it clear that his estimation of his abilities is very different from his view of the UN. “I’m really good at this stuff,” he declared. “I’ve been right about everything.” As for everyone else: “Your countries are going to hell.

Donald Trump
spiritual

Go to church

It’s often noted that American society is becoming ever more politicized and polarized. Those who once imagined themselves uninterested in politics find themselves dragged into America’s culture wars. Small children now carry placards and attend political marches. Max Horder and Danit Sara Finkelstein explain the extent to which social media has played a part in this growing radicalism, not just because of the ideological echo chambers we now inhabit, but due to the mindset online algorithms create: rewarding outrage, encouraging extremism. Nuance and balance are anathema; shock and division set each day’s tone.

Iryna Charlie Kirk

The masses have had enough

Nearly everybody I know has experienced crime in our cities or had a family member threatened. A few years ago, my pregnant wife was walking in San Francisco when a deranged homeless man repeatedly asked her if she wanted to be raped. This is not unusual in America. Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, was murdered, aged 23, on the subway in North Carolina just recently. The man responsible had been charged and released 14 times under a broken system. A judge who’d never passed the bar, a city council that ignored public safety and Governor Roy Cooper’s Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice all made it harder to keep repeat offenders like Iryna’s killer off the streets.