Imagine it&#8217;s 75 degrees and sunny, you&#8217;re outside with friends, <a href="https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/l-r-martin-rowe-jr-130317651.jpg?resize=1200,800&amp;quality=75&amp;strip=all">gumbo</a> sizzlin’ on the cooker, cold Modelo in hand. Not a care, not a job, not a clue. You just registered to vote by scratching a few signatures on a pamphlet, cast a ballot for God-knows-who, and, for your devout civic duty, you are rewarded with a cigarette.
Inhale, exhale. The smoke blows across the pavement and eventually dissolves into the view of ethereal skies and the rolling, smoggy silhouette of the Hollywood Hills.
That, folks, is a typical Monday for a homeless crack junkie in Los Angeles.
Last week, the L.A. mayoral race was officially called, and to voters&#8217; consternation, Mayor Karen Bass and City Councilwoman Nithya Raman will advance to the November 3 runoff, as neither candidate cleared 50% of the vote. Spencer Pratt, the Angeleno whose house burned down during the Palisades Fire, who was running as an independent to prevent further destruction from devastating the city he cares so deeply for, was edged out of the race a week after Election Day.
<a href="https://nypost.com/2026/06/08/us-news/nithya-raman-widens-lead-over-spencer-pratt-in-la-mayor-race/">Monday&#8217;s count </a>added another 33,378 votes to Raman&#8217;s total overnight, while Pratt gained only 14,672 and Bass added a further 25,121. Raman now sits at 28.5%, Pratt at 26.7%, and Bass at 34.7%, with 93% of votes counted. Pratt lost by a whisker. And he lost it to a ballot-harvesting machine that has been humming along, legally, for years.
This is enraging for a plethora of reasons. The two victorious candidates are radicals who would each continue grinding the once-angelic city to a sadistic pulp.<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/los-angeles-county-measure-er-election-day/"> A tax-increase measure</a> on the ballot also passed. And the entire election process looked about as legitimate as a three-dollar bill, corroding what little public trust remained in California&#8217;s voting systems.
But the cherry on top of this feces-pie? The homeless. The thousands of homeless people plaguing the streets of L.A. voted in bulk for the communists and to raise your taxes.
Yes. The drug addicts who cannot make salient life decisions, and as a result are unhoused, as the idiots say, are playing a consequential role in how California is governed.
It’s a simple and ingenious scheme, if you&#8217;re into large-scale <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DZYOe76v7PI/">legalized fraud</a>.
Candidates like Nithya Raman funnel money, reportedly in the form of <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/06/08/us-news/nithya-raman-widens-lead-over-spencer-pratt-in-la-mayor-race/">$60,000 checks</a>, into homeless shelters where hundreds of people are registered to vote. Democratic NGOs host voter registration drives at those same centers, coerce the residents into signing up, help them fill out the paperwork, and cast ballots on the Democrats&#8217; behalf. Then a useful idiot collects the stack and drops them off at a ballot drop box on behalf of the coke zombies.
This isn&#8217;t speculation. The California Post reported that 1,160 voters were registered to vote at the Midnight Mission in Skid Row, a shelter whose website lists a capacity for just 84 men and 36 women. One homeless man living on that skidmark street told reporters that voter registration efforts have been active in the area for years, and that in the past, he helped out in exchange for cigarettes.
Inhale. Exhale. Democracy.
These people have no idea who is even on the ballot. They are doing, ingesting, saying anything for drugs and a little cash. They have no idea they just propelled a Cuban Marxist-trained communist and her even further Left friend into the next round of the mayoral race.
They also have no idea their ballots helped push through the Essential Services Restoration Act, a countywide general sales tax measure that is now passing with 50.35% of the vote. It raises the sales tax rate from 9.75% to 10.25%, stacked on top of whatever cities are already picking from your pocket. The billion dollars expected to be grabbed go into the general fund.
Great. So they can spend more of your money &#8220;generally&#8221; transing the kids and &#8220;generally&#8221; handing out heroin needles to crack addicts.
The measure was losing. Then, a week after election day, just enough tax-enthused mail-in ballots materialized to flip it. Funny how that keeps happening.
For those more confused than Gavin Newsom trying to read a book, here is the legal fraud playbook, written a long time ago in California, and only now getting the outrage it deserves.
In 2016, ballot harvesting was expanded and made fully legal. So John Democrat Doe from down the street can walk into a homeless shelter, scoop up a couple of hundred ballots from willing methheads, and dump them at the polls on their behalf.
In 2021, universal vote-by-mail was permanently enshrined, mandating that every active registered voter receive a ballot by mail automatically. You fill it out, sit on it, and drop it off whenever you feel like it. And as Steve Hilton pointed out, you fill in the date yourself. So if you&#8217;re a day or two past election day and need to backdate things a little, well, who&#8217;s really gonna know?
In 2024, Newsom signed Senate Bill 1174, banning local municipalities from enacting their own voter ID requirements.
Hilarious. They literally banned voter ID. They don&#8217;t want to know who you are or what you are. Only that you are welcome here, rainbow sunshine, as you are.
Maybe they&#8217;d warm up to the idea if we just mandated everyone to put their pronouns next to their name.
And to top it all off, California refuses to clean its voter rolls. People are casting ballots on behalf of folks like <a href="https://x.com/nickshirleyy/status/2063731800334021085/video/1">Dorris</a>, who is registered as a 126-year-old and has apparently voted in 51 elections without her knowledge. There’s a good chance that a portion of Raman’s voters weren’t alive to see her win. Bummer.
By 2024, upwards of 87% of voters were casting their ballots by mail.
This is the environment. And into that environment, unions and nonprofits like the Democratic Socialists of America have sent their organizers armed with <a href="https://x.com/mottsmith/status/2064032442043043862/photo/1">explicit instructions</a> on how to harvest as many Democratic votes as possible. The operation generates thousands upon thousands of ballots for their preferred candidates, systematically, election cycle after election cycle.
But showing up to a voting booth in a MAGA hat? That would be insane.
This is legalized corruption, unfolding in plain sight. It is resulting in homeless zombies unknowingly making decisions that affect your tax dollars, your family, your safety, and your governance. It is resulting in increasingly radical, far-left candidates seizing the levers of power in one of America&#8217;s largest cities.
Democrats love to hurl the &#8220;undemocratic!&#8221; stone from their glass Marxist mansions.
The ballots are being harvested. The rolls are rotting. The shelters are stuffed with registered voters who couldn&#8217;t pick Nithya Raman out of a lineup. And every cycle, the machine gets a little more efficient, a little more brazen, and a little harder to stop.
It&#8217;s time we did something about it. Starting by demanding the basic election-integrity safeguards that every other functioning democracy on earth takes for granted. Voter ID. Clean rolls. An end to ballot harvesting. California doesn&#8217;t want those things, and now you know exactly why.

Hollywood Blvd

How Homeless Drug Addicts Just Voted To Raise Your Taxes

California Elections

DW Opinion

Election Fraud

Homelessness

Spencer Pratt

Fifteen cameras. Two German Shepherds. Three legal guns.
That’s not a man preparing for the apocalypse. That’s a Tuesday afternoon in Los Angeles.
Doug Ellin, the creator of Entourage — the show that made L.A. look like the greatest party on Earth, that made a generation of young men throw their belongings in a truck and chase the dream West — had his home invaded by masked intruders. His response wasn&#8217;t a therapy session or a sternly worded letter to his city councilman. It was a small arsenal, a <a href="https://x.com/Jules31415/status/2061337093247283455">viral</a> meltdown, and the kind of raw honesty that makes comfortable people deeply uncomfortable.
&#8220;I meet people all the time that moved here because of the show that I f*cking created,&#8221; Ellin said, &#8220;and they hate it here now. HATE.&#8221;
He&#8217;s not talking about traffic. He&#8217;s not talking about high rent. He&#8217;s talking about the specific, suffocating dread of a city that has turned on its own people.
Picture the L.A. Ellin once sold to the world: rooftop pools, warm nights, the electric possibility that the next party could change your life. Now picture the Los Angeles his neighbors actually inhabit: floodlights burning at 3 AM, Ring cameras covering every blind spot, security guards on rotating shifts because the police — defunded, demoralized, and politically neutered — aren&#8217;t coming fast enough. Or at all.
&#8220;Everyone in my neighborhood has got the same problem: they&#8217;re f*cking all putting cameras and high-end security guards because we&#8217;re all getting broken into,&#8221; Ellin said. &#8220;This city has collapsed in the last 5 years. There is no f*cking denying it unless you have an agenda.”
Unfortunately, they all do. This is the agenda: remain as politically braindead as the heroin addicts terrorizing the city, vote blue until they&#8217;re bluer in the face than the zombie coke heads sleeping next to the ballot boxes, and endure the deteriorating quality of life in the name of social justice and pro-socialist &#8220;lesser evil&#8221; voting.
To discover where that agenda leads to, try walking down streets that once hosted Oscar parties. The tent cities stretch for blocks. Fentanyl zombies sway at intersections while dashcam footage of daylight smash-and-grabs floods social media. Film production, the oxygen of L.A.’s economy, the industry that built the dream, has ditched the city of angels and moved to Georgia and New Zealand. The lots are quieter. The crews are gone.
<a href="https://x.com/i/status/2052981973409513626">Six to seven people overdose and die</a> in Los Angeles <a href="https://x.com/i/status/2057564330158387374">every single day.</a> This isn’t a war zone. This isn’t a developing nation. This is the city with the most expensive real estate on the continent. A city whose mayor just spent billions to solve homelessness and produced nothing but a $1 billion deficit and a <a href="https://x.com/i/status/2060469288474210420">metastasizing crisis</a>.
Karen Bass, the incumbent mayor, promised to end those very street encampments. She failed. Then, she <a href="https://x.com/FilmThePoliceLA/status/2061108205636522046">presided</a> over the most destructive wildfire in the city&#8217;s history. She <a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/sb-79-housing-bill-newsom-los-angeles-oppose-karen-bass/3789876/">opposed</a> housing bills. She oversaw an exodus of film production that gutted the middle class of her own creative economy. She claims crime is down. It&#8217;s not. The <a href="https://x.com/zarathustra5150/status/2057807103834591247">reporting</a> of crime is down because victims don&#8217;t bother calling a defunded police force, and because officers are quietly pressured to reclassify felonies into misdemeanors.
The LA Times recently ran the <a href="https://x.com/latimes/status/2058565710159216840">headline</a>: &#8220;L.A. is safer than it&#8217;s been in decades.&#8221; Doug Ellin read that from behind his 16th security camera.
The paper of record and the people on the ground are living in different cities. Only one of them is real.
But journalists, politicians, and their eager ballot beavers can&#8217;t run on ideas and empty promises forever. Eventually reality catches up, far later than it does for the citizens they&#8217;ve already hurt, but eventually nonetheless.
Take Nithya Raman, the socialist third-wheel of this race. She spent years cheerfully <a href="https://x.com/i/status/2048915656385744911">telling</a> other people, smaller people, less connected people, that homeless encampments within 10 feet of their child&#8217;s school were perfectly acceptable. The progressive vanguard demands sacrifice, and she was very comfortable demanding it from everyone but herself. Until the encampments moved near her two-million-dollar gated home and her children. Then, suddenly, she found the concept of proximity unacceptable.
The word for this is cowardice. The political word for it is Democrat.
Doug Ellin was perfectly willing to bypass President Donald Trump and vote for the soft-on-crime candidate until his home was robbed. Now he has two frightening watchdogs, security cameras out the wazoo, and a shotgun at the ready.
Apparently, all it takes is a masked intruder, a drug zombie in the front yard, a slap in the face by reality, and one good dose of common sense to wake people up to the horrors of progressive policy. Otherwise, they sit idly behind the fences of their compounds, quite content to let the city rot around them.
Unfortunately, Spencer Pratt still has an uphill battle ahead of him. Though he’s simply promising cleaner streets, safer neighborhoods, and a better quality of life, L.A. progressives aren’t smart enough to see through the fog of woke war. When asked simple questions about Bass’s basura (trash) policies, they go mute, but she is black! So … #blackpride, according to <a href="https://x.com/i/status/2060385677485744469">this</a> young woman.
The same way people are ardent supporters of Graham Platner, the Nazi tattoo guy, Zohran Mamdani, the terror-sympathizer, and Bernie Sanders, the useless leech on the (B)ass of society, they will show up for Karen Bass, a Marxist-style leader who will undoubtedly Make LA Worse Forevermore.
The Left isn&#8217;t voting for a person or a policy. They&#8217;re voting for whoever imbibes from the grievance well, ignorantly abides by collectivist ideology, and cozies up to the soft Marxism that has made every city it touches worse. And they can do so while living behind gates and op-ed pages.
But for most Angelenos, the Entourage reality no longer exists in the City of Demons.
Tuesday will be telling. Los Angeles will discover whether it wants to change that or is content to watch the dream it once sold to the world collapse, one camera at a time.

Street scene of a homeless on the walkway on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Democrats Made A Living Hell Out Of The City Of Angels

Karen Bass

Los Angeles

Former MTV reality television star Spencer Pratt is the first to admit that he has no political experience — but he says he does have a plan to help the homeless in Los Angeles if he&#8217;s elected mayor, and it&#8217;s modeled on a veteran training center in Arkansas.
Pratt, speaking with CNN&#8217;s Elex Michaelson, said that he wanted to build a rehabilitation center for homeless addicts — a move that he argues would swiftly and dramatically cut down the number of homeless in L.A. — similar to a training center for military veterans operating in Bentonville, Arkansas.
&#8220;You don’t get off these drugs with beds,&#8221; Pratt said, digging at incumbent Democratic Mayor Karen Bass, whose plan was to throw more money, clean needles, and shelters at the problem. &#8220;You need support. You need a real solution. And what’s happening? We’ve done it now, what, for 10 years. Their plan does not work. Their experience is complete failure. This is not Spencer saying this. This is every single person with eyeballs driving around L.A.&#8221;
Instead, Pratt argues that the treatment should be mandatory and that those in treatment should be pushed not just toward recovery but toward the skills and discipline that will help them succeed.
&#8220;If they want to come back to the city, we have a job for them — not just a bed off Skid Row,” Pratt explained. “They’re sober off fentanyl for two days, they go into a bed, they come out right back on to where all the drugs [are]. We need to actually help these people and get that back into society.&#8221;
The model is the <a href="https://uhp.com">University of Health and Performance (UHP)</a>, a 19-day immersive training program designed to help veterans transition from military to civilian life. Tuition, meals, health and fitness instruction, and lodging are all free — and veterans leave with the confidence and skills to build a new civilian life.
Pratt told Michaelson he was eyeing property in &#8220;beautiful nature&#8221; and had already approached several people about helping fund the project. In addition, he said he wanted to bring in &#8220;top doctors&#8221; to make sure he was doing things the right way, because he wanted the center to become &#8220;a shining light of hope.&#8221;
&#8220;You need to offer people a chance,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s going to be somewhere where people will go, and they will say, &#8216;Thank God for Spencer.'&#8221;
Pratt <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/reality-tv-star-spencer-pratt-obliterates-leftist-policies-in-heated-l-a-mayoral-debate">squared off</a> with his opponents during a recent televised debate, arguing that Bass had done little to solve the problem and that Democratic socialist Councilwoman Nithya Raman&#8217;s offer of help was likely to be met by violence from addicts just looking for another fix.
WATCH:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lJVQeeeFJck?si=khDoAVcVTwRoHHBz&amp;start=945" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>

me-spencer-pratt-south-la

Spencer Pratt Thinks He Found The Fix For L.A.’s Homeless Disaster

Spencer Pratt's Plan To Help Homeless Is Modeled After Red State Veteran Training Center

Drugs

Veterans

Los Ángeles Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt vowed to bring in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) if elected, saying it would be necessary to rid the streets of &#8220;medieval diseases.&#8221;
Pratt, speaking with David Friedberg on &#8220;The All In&#8221; podcast, said that he&#8217;d give the lawless in L.A.&#8217;s streets &#8220;three weeks, or maybe we&#8217;ll even do two weeks, maybe people will want it faster&#8221; before he set to work cleaning things up.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨 JUST IN: LA mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt announces Los Angeles criminals and homeless degenerates will have 2-3 WEEKS after he gets into office before MASS ARRESTS ensue
&#8220;First 3 weeks: signups, no nakedness, no drug use, no robbing, no dog abuse.&#8221;
Love this guy MORE AND… <a href="https://t.co/exoqW3j28e">pic.twitter.com/exoqW3j28e</a>
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) <a href="https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2053600568938291544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 10, 2026</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;First three weeks, signs up across the city: &#8216;No more nakedness, no more drug use, no more robbing, no more —'&#8221; Pratt began.
&#8220;No more burning dogs in the street,&#8221; Friedberg interjected, referencing reports that dogs had been abused in the streets.
&#8220;— No more dog abuse,&#8221; Pratt agreed. &#8220;Very — on every sign, everywhere, so that — and we&#8217;re going to go around, we&#8217;re going to warn everybody, &#8216;you got three more weeks of this, clock&#8217;s ticking,&#8217; just keep telling — so that people are aware that, oh wow, there&#8217;s a new mayor in town.&#8221;
&#8220;They may start leaving,&#8221; he added with a shrug. &#8220;And then when the three weeks, or maybe we&#8217;ll even do two weeks, maybe people will want it faster. And then once we start enforcing the laws, BOOM! Streets will be back.&#8221;
&#8220;You know how else I&#8217;m going to bring in? The CDC, because there&#8217;s medieval diseases in these encampments. They&#8217;re not swabbing these encampments, they&#8217;re not swabbing the streets! People are just living in feces and drug use and dogs burning, and body — we need these streets cleaned!&#8221;
Pratt sparred with current Democratic Mayor Karen Bass and Democratic socialist city council-member Nithya Raman over how to deal with the issue of homelessness, and both of them argued in favor of offering treatment and beds at city expense. Pratt <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/reality-tv-star-spencer-pratt-obliterates-leftist-policies-in-heated-l-a-mayoral-debate">pushed back</a>, citing statistics indicating that many of L.A.&#8217;s homeless were abusing drugs.
Speaking specifically to Raman, he volunteered to go with her to offer treatment to homeless people in the city, and warned they were likely to attack her rather than accept her help.

Spencer Pratt Visits “Fox & Friends”

Spencer Pratt Promises To Bring In CDC To Rid City Of ‘Medieval Diseases’

Politics

Spencer Pratt ripped into his far-Left opponents during the Los Angeles mayoral debate on Wednesday, hammering their policies on everything from homelessness to firefighting. 
Pratt faced off against Mayor Karen Bass and socialist Councilwoman Nithya Raman on a stage where they clashed on how to best lead the city of 3.8 million. The former reality TV star said during the debate that he would crack down on crime, improve the city’s fire response readiness, and move away from the city’s ineffective efforts to combat homelessness. 
“The good news is when I enforce the law and clear the streets of the drug addicts that have taken over 40 blocks of downtown L.A., abandoned buildings that have drug addicts just lighting them on fire every other day, I will have potentially 20,000 units available to build,” Pratt said. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Spencer Pratt DESTROYS Los Angeles’s Communist mayoral candidates Karen Bass and Nithya Raman:
“The good news is, when I enforce the law and clear the street of the drug addicts that have taken over 40 blocks of downtown LA, abandoned buildings that have drug addicts just… <a href="https://t.co/FsXKD22lMC">pic.twitter.com/FsXKD22lMC</a>
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) <a href="https://twitter.com/SteveGuest/status/2052201186577588367?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 7, 2026</a></blockquote>
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Pratt, whose home was burned down in the Pacific Palisades fire, accused Bass of denying money requested for fire engines just weeks before the blaze. He also accused her of using water reserves for fire fighting for drinking water. Bass claimed that Pratt was spreading &#8220;inaccurate&#8221; details of her response to the L.A. fires and said the reservoirs in question &#8220;have been for drinking water&#8221; for decades. The mayor also accused Pratt of spreading false information on the wind speeds during the fire outbreak, which L.A. authorities said were too high for firefighting aircraft to respond to the fires.
&#8220;She&#8217;s an incredible liar,&#8221; Pratt responded, urging the audience to research what weather stations reported on the wind speeds in the early days of the blaze. The debate moderators cut him off and told him he could not engage in &#8220;name-calling.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
NEW: Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt fires back after the debate moderator accused him of &#8220;name-calling.&#8221;
Pratt: &#8220;[Karen Bass] an incredible liar&#8230;&#8221;
Moderator: &#8220;I have to interrupt you for a minute. I have to interrupt you. No name-calling.&#8221;
Pratt: &#8220;She just… <a href="https://t.co/Z3L5gFPfmi">pic.twitter.com/Z3L5gFPfmi</a>
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) <a href="https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/2052195002659569843?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 7, 2026</a></blockquote>
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During a different exchange, Pratt criticized Raman over her approach to homelessness and said she would get stabbed if she tried to implement her drug treatment plan for the homeless. 
“Councilwoman Raman acts like she doesn&#8217;t have any authority with this homelessness. She was the third most powerful person in city council,” he said. “She runs the homeless housing thing. She acts like this is just Mayor Bass.”
“The reality is, no matter how many beds you give these people, they are on super-meth. They are on fentanyl. The DEA statistics says 93% of this is a drug addiction problem,&#8221; he added. &#8220;Councilwoman Raman’s plan for treatment first — I will go below the Harbor Freeway tomorrow with her, and we can find some of these people she&#8217;s going to offer treatment for.  She&#8217;s going to get stabbed in the neck. These people do not want a bed. They want fentanyl or super-meth. These ideas cost us over $400 million.”
Pratt also accused Raman of favoring squatters over tenants, saying she would sue landlords who try to get squatters out of their properties. 
Moderators also asked the candidates if they would support letting noncitizens vote in elections. 
Pratt said no, while both Bass and Raman said it “depends.” 
“They could have green cards, they could be here perfectly legal, and there&#8217;s a lot of states and cities that do that on very, very local elections,” Bass said. 
Raman accused Pratt of having a “MAGA” vision for Los Angeles and said he was working with Bass to attack her campaign. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Best part of the debate tonight! <a href="https://t.co/HLkwprBcEr">https://t.co/HLkwprBcEr</a> <a href="https://t.co/1qiTGsPA21">pic.twitter.com/1qiTGsPA21</a>
— Barefoot Broadcast (@BarefootBC) <a href="https://twitter.com/BarefootBC/status/2052211109617090952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 7, 2026</a></blockquote>
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“Mayor Bass and I are definitely not working together. I blame this person for burning down my house and my parents&#8217; house and my town, and all my neighbors down,” Pratt responded. “You think it&#8217;s easier to run against the incumbent mayor with all the unions or a random city council member who&#8217;s been a failure for six years? I would much rather run against Councilwoman Raman.” 
The Los Angeles mayoral race is slated for June 2, 2026. If no candidate gets a majority of the vote, the top two candidates will move on to a runoff in November.

Lucky’s Montecito 25th Anniversary

Reality TV Star Spencer Pratt Obliterates Leftist Policies In Heated L.A. Mayoral Debate

California

Palisades Fire

Blue America is best for families. For years, America’s elites have insisted that <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/32782">blue states</a> — with their higher incomes, better-<a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/32782">educated residents</a>, and expansive public services — are the best places to raise a family. Progressive policies such as paid family leave, childcare subsidies, and gender-neutral bathroom mandates, we were told, would draw parents in droves. Such policies prove “that one major party cares about children and families, and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/30/jd-vance-childless-cat-ladies/?itid=lk_inline_manual_27">the other does not</a>,” according to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/30/jd-vance-childless-cat-ladies/?itid=lk_inline_manual_27">liberal journalist</a> Catherine Rampell. 
But the data tell a different tale. Across the country, families are packing up and leaving blue states for red states. They are also more likely to have children in red states to begin with. 
The <a href="https://familystructureindex.org/">2026 Family Structure Index</a>, just released by the Center for Christian Virtue and the Institute for Family Studies, tracks family health across all 50 states. It focuses on three measures: marriage rates, fertility rates, and the share of children raised by married parents. These factors shape everything from child poverty to the health of the American Dream. 
What it reveals is a growing divide in where families are choosing to live — and where they are choosing to start a family.
Call it the Great American Family Sort.
Married couples with children are increasingly moving to red and purple states. From 2019 to 2024, 840,000 married families with children moved from blue states to red ones, while 470,000 moved in the opposite direction — a net gain of 370,000 such families for red states. 
Red states also enjoy higher fertility rates, all of which helps explain why red states have <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-lefts-family-problem-marriage-and-kids-cratering-among-liberal-young-adults">seen</a> a 7.3% increase in their child population since 2000, while blue states have seen a 7.1% decline. That shift is another indicator that Red America is proving more hospitable to family life.
In other words, <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-blue-state-family-exodus-families-are-migrating-to-red-and-purple-states">blue states</a> long seen as the best places to raise children by liberal elites — states like California, Massachusetts, and New York — are steadily losing them.
Why? Start with what families actually need: jobs, homes, and safe neighborhoods. On each of these fronts, many red states are delivering. Over the past decade, states like Texas, Florida, and South Carolina have seen strong job growth, especially in sectors that support middle-class life. When young adults can find steady, well-paying work, they are more likely to marry and start families.
Housing is just as critical. Affordable single-family homes provide the space and stability families <a href="https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/homes-for-young-families-a-pro-family-housing-agenda">want</a>. Yet in many blue states, especially on the coasts, restrictive zoning and high costs have pushed homeownership out of reach for young families. In much of red America, that dream remains attainable.
Taxes also shape family <a href="https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/americans-moving-to-states/">migration</a>. Lower tax burdens in many red states leave families with more room in their budgets, whether for childcare, a good private school, or saving for the future.
<div id="attachment_1073407" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1073407" class="size-large wp-image-1073407" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-864x576.jpg" alt="San Francisco, CA, USA - August 17, 2020. Image of a moving truck parked in San Francisco's Nob Hill neighborhood." width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/04/GettyImages-1329602381-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />James Rice. Getty Images.</div>
Safety matters as well. Parents want to raise children in communities where they feel <a href="https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/homes-for-young-families-a-pro-family-housing-agenda">secure</a>. States and cities that keep crime and public disorder low have a clear advantage in attracting and retaining families, even as many blue states are “plagued by homelessness, crime and dysfunction,” all of which are turnoffs to families, as even the liberal columnist Nick Kristof has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/15/opinion/progressives-california-portland.html">admitted</a>.
Still, economics alone does not explain what is happening. Family culture also matters. In many red states, there remains a stronger expectation around marriage and family formation, often stemming from deeply held religious beliefs. Social norms shaped by churches, civic life, and local leadership still influence how people live. Faith remains a powerful driver of American family life.
The <a href="https://familystructureindex.org/">Family Structure Index</a> underscores this point. Frequent religious attendance accounts for 57% of the variance in fertility rates across states. States with high religious attendance, such as Utah and Mississippi, have far higher birth rates than states like Vermont or Massachusetts, where churchgoing is rare.
None of this suggests that red states have solved every problem. Marriage and fertility are down nationwide, and no region is immune. But the trend is clear: families seem more likely to thrive in some states rather than others. That should tell policymakers something important. If states want to attract and keep families, the formula is straightforward: make housing attainable, foster job growth, keep communities safe, and support a culture that encourages marriage and child-rearing. 
The deeper lesson is harder to accept. For too long, liberal elites have assumed that higher incomes and more government spending automatically lead to better outcomes for families. The evidence suggests otherwise. Public safety, good jobs, affordable homes, and culture matter just as much, if not more.
The Great American Family Sort is more than a demographic shift. It is a signal. Families are making their priorities clear through where they choose to live and have children. The question is whether the rest of the country is paying attention.
* * *
Aaron Baer is president of the Center for Christian Virtue. 
Brad Wilcox is Distinguished University Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies.

Asheville and Johnson City exit sign on highway in Tennessee on interstate 81 road

Turns Out Families Are Voting With Their Feet And Headed In One Direction

Blue States

Conservatives

Crime

Democrats

family

Florida

Jobs

Opinion

Red States

Social Issues

Tennessee

Texas

In New York City, there&#8217;s been a gigantic freeze, a freeze that has not only beset New York City but also the rest of the East Coast.
In Washington Square Park, a group of people started <a href="https://abc7ny.com/post/nypd-officers-hit-snowballs-injured-responding-washington-square-park-manhattan/18641766/">hurling snowballs</a> at several NYPD officers responding to a call. Not playfully either. They were actually trying to hurt them. They hurled objects at the police officers.
Every one of these individuals should be identified, arrested, and sent to jail — every single one of them. Hurling objects at police officers, assaulting police officers, mobs of people, some of them masked, trying to assault police officers — this is 1970s-style disorder in New York City.
And yes, it has been prompted and promoted by people like Zohran Mamdani. The attitude that governance has toward people who are hoodlums in the streets has a marked impact on whether or not people act like hoodlums in the street.
Forget about the broken windows theory. How about this: Attack a cop, you go to jail.
Pretty simple.
But the rising level of disorder and chaos we now see in the country is a direct result of governance decisions being made in blue cities, particularly by the people who actually run those blue cities. Does anyone think it has no impact on how people think of the cops that Zohran Mamdani has spent his entire career — prior to being elected mayor of New York — ripping on the cops and suggesting that they are a nefarious force for viciousness?
Of course, it has an impact.
Every single one of those people pelting the NYPD with snowballs should go to jail. Those are full-grown adults, by the way. Those are not kids. You&#8217;re not talking about misbegotten 15-year-old juvenile delinquents who get frisky with the cops.
If you look at the video, you can see people standing there, and when the cops arrive, they start hurling objects at them.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2373-candace-owens-is-evil-trash?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Jessica Tisch, who is the commissioner of the NYPD, put out this statement: “The NYPD is aware of certain videos taken earlier today in Washington Square Park showing individuals attacking cops. I want to be very clear: the behavior depicted is disgraceful, and it is criminal. Our detectives are investigating this matter.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
The NYPD is aware of certain videos taken earlier today in Washington Square Park showing individuals attacking cops.
I want to be very clear: The behavior depicted is disgraceful, and it is criminal.
Our detectives are investigating this matter.
— Jessica S. Tisch (@NYPDPC) <a href="https://twitter.com/NYPDPC/status/2026128921905803638?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 24, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @NYPDPC/X.com
The Patrolmen&#8217;s Benevolent Association stated, &#8220;This is the environment that NYC police officers are up against. Our police officers are being treated for their injuries, but the case CANNOT end there. The individuals involved must be identified, arrested and charged with assault on a police officer. And all of our city leaders must speak up to condemn this despicable attack.&#8221;
The fact is, this attitude toward the police has become commonplace in the United States. 
Beginning in 2014, you had the Ferguson riots, justified by the president of the United States. Americans didn&#8217;t like that; Donald Trump was elected. You saw a reversion to a law-and-order attitude at the top, but in 2020, the anti-police attitude broke out anew on a much bigger scale.
Now you have blue cities that are being taken over by people who are effectively defund-the-police advocates.
Those advocates may turn around and claim they want to work with the cops, but it&#8217;s too late: message received.
This disorder comes from the top. It does not come from the bottom. A disordered government leads to a disordered citizenry. 
There&#8217;s a reason that we use the phrase “law and order.” It&#8217;s not just law; order also has to be implemented. 
Speaking of Zohran Mamdani — who has totally changed the policy in New York City with regard to getting people off the streets in the middle of blizzards, and then a bunch of people died — he&#8217;s saying that people actually died from overdoses, not because they were freezing. 
You&#8217;re doing a great job, Mayor Uselessness. 
“We have more than 500 homeless outreach workers who have been traversing the five boroughs looking to connect homeless New Yorkers with services and support,” he declared. “And what we&#8217;ve also learned is the tools that were effective over the course of the prolonged cold period —again, a historic period of subfreezing conditions — those are ones we&#8217;ve employed from the very first day of our response to this one. I&#8217;ll give you one example. A number of those New Yorkers who lost their lives. The preliminary indications came that it was from an overdose-related death.” 
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/friendly-fire?utm_campaign=dwplus&amp;utm_content=20260224_sotu_aa_desktop&amp;utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=banner" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Watch the State of the Union with The Daily Wire! Live coverage from the nation&#8217;s capital begins at 7:45 ET.</a>
It might have helped if he had forced those people to go inside. Perhaps if he didn&#8217;t let people sleep outdoors at all —regardless of the weather —people would die less often of drug overdoses on the street. 
But Mayor Smarmy over there grins at the camera. 
Always. 
And then through that gritted, smarmy smile, he utters the most inane platitudes. 
New Yorkers: You broke it.
You bought it.

Northeast Storm Knocks Out Power, Cancels Flights

Snowballs, NYPD, And Mamdani’s Smarmy Disorder

Ben Shapiro

Democratic Socialism

New York City

NYPD

Snow

Winter storm

Zohran Mamdani

In an early show of his leftist bona fides, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani ordered police and sanitation workers to stop dismantling the city&#8217;s homeless encampments. Now that 18 people have died on the streets amid record cold temperatures, Mamdani is reversing course.
The mayor is expected to reinstate homeless encampment sweeps — which were standard under his predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams — as early as Wednesday, <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/01/29/us-news/nyc-cops-sanitation-workers-told-to-stop-taking-down-homeless-encampments-as-crisis-spirals/">according</a> to the New York Post. It&#8217;s a major reversal for Mamdani, who <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/01/29/us-news/nyc-cops-sanitation-workers-told-to-stop-taking-down-homeless-encampments-as-crisis-spirals/">claimed</a> that the city&#8217;s primary responsibility was &#8220;connecting [homeless] New Yorkers to housing.&#8221;
New York&#8217;s Department of Homeless Services will lead encampment sweeps by issuing notices to homeless individuals to clear their encampments within one week. During that period, homeless outreach workers will make repeated visits to connect individuals with shelters and supportive services.
Curtis Sliwa, the leader of New York’s Guardian Angels, a volunteer organization that conducts homeless outreach, told The Daily Wire that homeless individuals are reluctant to enter shelters for a number of reasons. 
“First off, they’re not in control of their mental faculties,&#8221; Sliwa said. &#8220;Number two, they fear going into a shelter where they&#8217;re going to be preyed upon, where what few, few items that they may have will be stolen from them, where they can be sexually abused and physically harassed, and just again turned into a human piñata.” 
Sliwa also said many individuals who are struggling with addiction resist shelter rules, including a 10 p.m. curfew. Some, he said, believe they are better off in a jail cell than in a shelter. 
Before reversing his stance on encampment sweeps, Mamdani converted city buses into temporary warming centers during the cold streak. However, the initiative drew criticism after reports surfaced that the warming buses were difficult to locate. Mamdani took responsibility for the communication failures. “I think at the end of the day, that is the responsibility that I have as a mayor,” Mamdani said. “It’s never a moment to pass the buck to anyone else.” 
Some of the buses, which had 40 seats, were reportedly not operating at full capacity. Norman Siegel, a civil rights attorney who leads a volunteer group called the Street Homeless Advocacy Project, <a href="https://gothamist.com/news/mayor-mamdani-takes-the-rap-for-mishaps-around-warming-buses-for-homeless-people">blamed</a> inadequate signage. “As the cliché goes,” he said, “Sometimes the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.” In an attempt to address the problem, Mamdani’s team committed to additional signage in more than <a href="https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-sent-a-warming-bus-to-a-hub-for-homelessness-those-who-needed-it-had-no-idea">ten languages</a>. 
With the homeless on the streets and not in shelters or warming buses, New York City has received more than 3,300 complaints about encampments, according to 311 data.
Mamdani&#8217;s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the encampment sweeps are a winter-only effort or a lasting policy change.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani Holds Press Conference At Deno’s Wonder Wheel On Coney Island

Mamdani Abandons Key Leftist Policy As Homeless New Yorkers Freeze To Death

Mamdani Reverses Encampment Policy Amid Rising Winter Death Toll

Eric Adams

Homeless

mamdani

Professor Gad Saad coined the term &#8220;suicidal empathy&#8221; to describe a kind of empathy so extreme it ends up harming you. 
A prime example would be the way the West has approached immigration from third-world countries. You feel bad for people. You open your borders. A plethora of people come in and harm your civilization.
But now, it seems like we are moving beyond suicidal empathy into what I would call “homicidal empathy.” That would be exemplified by your empathy for someone getting them killed.
There’s a good example in New York City with Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who promised, “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
That collectivist warmth is manifesting in people freezing to death on the streets of New York City. Despite all of Mamdani’s photo ops showing him shoveling the snow (for a man who cannot bench press 135 pounds once), I don&#8217;t think the people of New York can count on his shoveling skills.
What he usually shovels is horse crap.
Mamdani has embraced a hands-off policy with regard to homelessness. This was the policy in California. It remains the policy in places like Los Angeles. This policy is empathetic toward the homeless to the point where you&#8217;re killing the homeless.
The policy argues that they should be able to live out on the streets, that it is a form of cruelty and intolerance to involuntarily commit people who are usually drug-addicted or schizophrenic, people who can&#8217;t take care of themselves. Somehow, it is more empathetic to leave them out on the streets to get scabies or to die in the cold.
This seems to be the way the left-wing brain is working in Mamdani-land, California, and other liberal areas of the country. 18 people have died in the cold snap that has hit New York City.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2367-mamdani-leaves-homeless-to-freeze-to-death?elementPosition=5&amp;row=6&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Brian Stettin, who served as a senior advisor to former Mayor Eric Adams in his administration, told the New York Post, “When a person is in imminent danger, there&#8217;s no debate. Whatever ideological divides we have should not have any impact on these policies during a Code Blue.”
A mumbling homeless woman who braved some Antarctic temperatures was featured on the front cover of the Post on Monday.
The Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/02/08/us-news/mumbling-homeless-woman-left-to-spend-night-on-nyc-sidewalk/">reported</a>:
<blockquote>The unidentified woman was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, slippers and two blankets as she clipped her nails, put lotion on her hands and talked to herself while hunkered down on East 34th Street across from NYU Langone Hospital as temperatures neared 0 degrees early Sunday. She refused repeated offers for help from EMS workers and cops — who explained to The Post they had to leave the shivering vagrant in the extremely dangerous bone-chilling weather because she could answer basic questions — a factor that helps meet the threshold of Dem Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s controversial homeless policies.</blockquote>
That’s Mamdani&#8217;s shtick: If you can answer basic questions such as “What day of the week is it?” “What is your name?”, then they will leave you out on the streets to freeze. 
Mamdani held a press conference over the weekend. “Stay warm. Stay inside if you can. And please, stay safe,” he said.
“You&#8217;ve implored the people on the streets who feel more comfortable on the streets to come inside. But what happens if they don&#8217;t at this point? &#8230;20 minutes out in the cold could lead to a fatality. So are you not using as a last resort at this point to bring them inside and volunteer, even if just a few hours doesn&#8217;t lead to a placement?” a reporter asked.
“Involuntary transport continues to be used in the same manner it was as the prior administration,” Mamdani replied. “And thus far, we have seen clinical determinations of a number of New Yorkers who have been deemed to be a danger to themselves or to others. And sometimes that designation comes from an assessment that a New Yorker is not adequately clothed, given the weather that they are living through in that moment. And that is going to continue to be part of the assessments that outreach workers are making over the course of tomorrow or the next day.”
Mamdani’s last resort policy says that you can only be forced indoors if you are deemed a danger to yourself or others. The problem, of course, is that if you are Zohran Mamdani and you have spent your entire career ripping down cops and treating people as though they&#8217;re committing a human rights violation by pushing people indoors, people might be a little hesitant to actually take responsibility for calling somebody a “danger to themselves or others.”
The New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/02/10/us-news/mamdani-wont-budge-on-involuntary-removal-of-homeless-new-yorkers-from-streets-as-cold-deaths-reach-18/">reported</a>:
<blockquote>Down in Baltimore, Mayor Brandon Scott — whom Mamdani once praised for his crime reduction efforts — late last month called the cold a life-or-death issue and ordered the police department to take people off the streets even if they were refusing services. “That direction order came from me because we cannot allow folks to be out in this kind of weather,” Scott said.</blockquote>
The fact that this has become a matter of public controversy is totally insane.
Zoran Mamdani apparently has so much sympathy for people. I&#8217;m going to put it out there: If you are out on the streets sleeping on the sidewalk, that is not a housing problem in the middle of a cold snap. That is a crazy problem if other options are given to you. No sane and rational person, by definition, who is not a danger to themselves, is sleeping out on the street in zero-degree weather. That is not a thing that sane and rational people do unless they are Arctic explorers of some type.
This comes down to Mamdani’s bizarro world empathy that legitimately gets people killed. This sort of policy, when you apply it to crime, leads to more criminals on the streets. When you apply it to homelessness, it leads to more homeless people on the streets.
The empathy that you have for the purported victim of America&#8217;s “evil, racist, abusive” system leads to the very people you are supposedly trying to help sometimes dying.
On February 6, the New York Post reported that Mamdani was still refusing to clear homeless camps and forcibly remove people from the streets, despite a rising death toll and a fresh snap of deadly deep freeze. Instead, he implored people to come inside.
If people refuse to come inside in the middle of zero-degree weather while living on the streets, it will not be solved by you imploring them.
City Journal <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/zohran-mamdani-homeless-deaths-cold-weather">reported</a>:
<blockquote>During last year’s campaign, Mamdani promised to end a program initiated by his predecessor, Eric Adams, that deploys clinicians, backed by police officers, to assess people’s ability to care for themselves and, if necessary, to transport them involuntarily to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation. He repeatedly said that involuntary commitment was a “last resort,” preferring instead an approach that would have civilian workers “help that person navigate their housing options.” He has also disavowed dismantling homeless encampments. </blockquote>
That was a proactive move by Adams to determine whether somebody ought to be on the streets or not. And Mamdani wanted to kill that. I guess the presumption was that unless they were in the throes of some sort of crime, they should never have an engagement with law enforcement.
The message being sent to the homeless is, basically, you have a right to live on the streets. And the message being sent to public service workers, cops, and mental health professionals is that you&#8217;re going to be called on the carpet if you make the mistake of bringing somebody in.
It&#8217;s nuts, it&#8217;s bad, and it&#8217;s stupid.
It&#8217;s indicative of a deeper brain rot that has set in large parts of the Left: That empathy amounts to humoring people in their delusions, even if it’s dangerous to them.

New York Governor Hochul Holds Press Conference Highlighting Her Administration’s “Let Them Build” Agenda

Mamdani Leaves Homeless To Freeze To Death 

Death

New York

In a recent ruling that defies both logic and compassion, a federal judge has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us-judge-blocks-trump-administration-from-altering-homelessness-funding-2025-12-19/">blocked</a> the Trump administration’s effort to reform the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Continuum of Care program — the federal government’s primary funding mechanism for homelessness assistance.
The lawsuit — filed by a coalition of 20 mostly Democratic-led states, local governments, and nonprofit organizations and spearheaded by groups such as Democracy Forward — warns of “funding gaps,” winter instability, and the potential displacement of people currently housed. These alarms are sounded even though HUD includes a nearly 12% increase over last year’s funding allocation.
At the core of the complaint is a <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://democracyforward.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/NAEH-v-HUD-25-cv-636-ECF-5-Motion-for-PI-and-Relief-under-705.pdf*page=74__;Iw!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!xO6geyODkpCcJJLckbboq5Bc5WbRjXwQ1YdJOI3TUHlXy8ViAXC-6FTtOWcF28WV6ZXhtdC73WFG6b0_31aptA$">revealing claim</a>: that reform would “upend longstanding projects that have been thoughtfully developed to comport with evidence-based, best-practices services delivery.”
But HUD’s own data make clear that the evidence on which they have long relied is catastrophically wrong.
Despite a 300% increase in federal spending, homelessness has reached the <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2024-AHAR-Part-1.pdf__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!xO6geyODkpCcJJLckbboq5Bc5WbRjXwQ1YdJOI3TUHlXy8ViAXC-6FTtOWcF28WV6ZXhtdC73WFG6b1tF5NG4A$">highest level ever recorded</a> in the nation’s history. Unsheltered homelessness — the most dangerous and lethal form — has surged. 
<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/07/homelessness-is-lethal-deaths-have-risen-dramatically__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!xO6geyODkpCcJJLckbboq5Bc5WbRjXwQ1YdJOI3TUHlXy8ViAXC-6FTtOWcF28WV6ZXhtdC73WFG6b16yXyxfA$">Mortality</a> among people struggling with homelessness has also peaked. If these outcomes qualify as “evidence-based best practices,” then the phrase has lost all meaning.
The real question is not whether reform is upending but upending to whom.
The organizations positioning themselves as defenders of the homeless are fully aware of the catastrophe that has unfolded on their watch. Yet they are using the courts to block reforms aimed at saving lives, restoring accountability, and reversing a crisis their preferred policies helped entrench.
For more than a decade, Housing First has dominated federal homelessness policy. It prioritizes lifelong subsidized housing — branded as “permanent housing” — while eliminating requirements for sobriety, treatment for mental illness or addiction, or participation in work. Its architects promised stability, lower costs, and an <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/economy/article24585973.html__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!xO6geyODkpCcJJLckbboq5Bc5WbRjXwQ1YdJOI3TUHlXy8ViAXC-6FTtOWcF28WV6ZXhtdC73WFG6b1Wqmbr6A$">end to homelessness in a decade</a>.
Instead, the model guarantees keys to a housing unit while making treatment optional and accountability negligible.
With nearly 80% of the homeless population struggling with mental illness and/or addiction, the result is predictable and deadly: people are placed alone in apartments, isolated from the community and clinical intervention these diseases require. Overdoses go unseen, and help arrives too late.
California — the only state to adopt federally-mandated Housing First with state funding in 2016 — provides a stark case study. Despite an unprecedented <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.auditor.ca.gov/reports/2023-102-1/__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!xO6geyODkpCcJJLckbboq5Bc5WbRjXwQ1YdJOI3TUHlXy8ViAXC-6FTtOWcF28WV6ZXhtdC73WFG6b1UVCip7w$">$24 billion investment</a> from 2019 to 2023, homelessness surged 40%. Encampments have proliferated, public trust has eroded, and taxpayers have seen zero return on their investment.
Yet as desperately needed reform proposals emerge, self-described “homeless advocates” — including several based in California — reflexively resist.
<div id="attachment_1041759" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1041759" class="size-large wp-image-1041759" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2260696041-864x576.jpg" alt="San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team vehicle with city department logo parked on urban street, San Francisco, California, February 5, 2026. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2260696041-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2260696041-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2260696041-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2260696041.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team vehicle with city department logo parked on urban street, San Francisco, California, February 5, 2026. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)</div>
Their concern is not instability for the homeless, but instability for themselves: the potential loss of 12-year guaranteed renewals, preferred status, and the comfort of championing a single, simple — demonstrably failed — approach.
<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.discovery.org/m/securepdfs/2025/11/Local-Jurisdictions-Leverage-Homelessness-Reforms.pdf__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!xO6geyODkpCcJJLckbboq5Bc5WbRjXwQ1YdJOI3TUHlXy8ViAXC-6FTtOWcF28WV6ZXhtdC73WFG6b1YAAbk9A$">HUD’s proposed reforms</a> would rebalance funding toward transitional housing, mandatory treatment for addiction and mental illness, work and recovery expectations, and measurable outcomes — changes designed to promote self-sufficiency, public safety, and life-saving interventions.
The plaintiffs warn of “chaos” if reform proceeds. But chaos is not hypothetical — it is the present reality. Record homelessness despite unprecedented public spending. Sidewalks surrendered to encampments. Tens of thousands dead from overdoses, exposure, and untreated psychosis, including 18 mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers who <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nyc-winter-death-toll-climbs-to-18-as-many-homeless-left-to-freeze-outside?author=Brecca+Stoll&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=NYC+Winter+Death+Toll+Climbs+To+18+As+Many+Homeless+Left+To+Freeze+Outside">died on the streets of New York City</a> in just the past two weeks.
<div id="attachment_1041761" style="width: 869px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1041761" class="size-large wp-image-1041761" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2258376634-859x576.jpg" alt="NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JANUARY 26: A person sleeps on a sidewalk with their belongings January 26, 2026 in the Manhattan borough of New York City. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has pledged to end sweeps of homeless encampments and plans to create a new Department of Community Safety, which will coordinate homeless outreach and respond to mental health crises. (Photo by Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)" width="859" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2258376634-859x576.jpg 859w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2258376634-300x201.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2258376634-768x515.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/02/GettyImages-2258376634.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 859px) 100vw, 859px" />Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images</div>
This is not a system at risk of failure. It has already failed.
The threat these reforms pose is to institutional comfort. The Housing First industry knows it will lose guaranteed funding renewals, protected status, and a model optimized for compliance rather than outcomes, to which it has become accustomed over the last 12 years.
Where is the outrage for those left lining the streets year after year, promised housing that never materializes?
Where is the outrage for those who died waiting for a system to recognize their worth and deliver the help that could have saved their lives?
By collapsing expectations to the bare minimum, Housing First has reduced capable human beings to permanent dependents — managed rather than restored, housed rather than helped — rather than treating them as people worthy of recovery, accountability, and reintegration into society.
True advocacy requires accountable compassion. It demands intervention when people are too sick to choose safety for themselves, and the moral courage to admit when a policy has become lethal.
The court’s injunction jeopardizes urgently needed funding and reform, but it also exposes a grim truth: those fighting to preserve Housing First are defending a deadly status quo. Every day reform is delayed, more lives unravel, and more people die from fentanyl poisoning, methamphetamine addiction, and untreated mental illness.
Those struggling with homelessness deserve far more than containment. They deserve a real path off the streets. They deserve recovery. They deserve the opportunity to rediscover purpose.
Reform is not disruption. It is a rescue mission.
* * *
Michele Steeb is the founder of Free Up Foundation and author of “Answers Behind the RED DOOR: Battling the Homeless Epidemic,” based on her 13 years as CEO of Northern California’s largest program for homeless women and children. She is a Visiting Fellow with the Discovery Institute’s Fix Homelessness Initiative. Follow them on Twitter: @SteebMichele and @ DiscoveryCWP.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Homelessness In New York City

More Spending, More Suffering: The Failure Of America’s Homelessness Policy

Housing and Urban Development

Trump Administration

The following is an edited transcript excerpt from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1904-zohran-mamdani-freezes-16-new-yorkers-to-death?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">The Michael Knowles Show</a>.
* * *
Zohran Mamdani just made a really sad and totally predictable announcement.
When the recent winter cold front made it to New York, it was not nearly as bad as the ice storm Nashville residents experienced. There was very little ice in New York, mostly just snow. Nevertheless, 16 homeless New Yorkers died during that brief little cold snap.
Here is the new mayor of New York:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Mayor Mamdani confirms sixteen deaths during dangerously cold weather in NYC <a href="https://t.co/pQ0L9i5Yzz">https://t.co/pQ0L9i5Yzz</a> <a href="https://t.co/zHAPfvu95u">pic.twitter.com/zHAPfvu95u</a>
— New York Post (@nypost) <a href="https://twitter.com/nypost/status/2018388455508656233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 2, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @nypost/X.com
Mayor Mamdani says,
<blockquote>A severe cold front continues to bear down on our city. Today is our 11th consecutive day of below freezing weather, and we could very well be in the middle of the longest period of consecutive sub-32-degree weather in our city&#8217;s entire history. Without temperatures rising above freezing, snow has hardened into blocks of ice. But the greatest danger posed by the sustained cold is to vulnerable New Yorkers who remain exposed to the elements. As of this morning, 16 of our fellow New Yorkers have passed away outside during this brutal stretch of cold. In 13 of these cases, preliminary findings indicate that hypothermia played a role, and three of these deaths appear to be overdose deaths. We await final results from the medical examiner&#8217;s office and will inform New Yorkers as we learn more. Each of these lives lost is a tragedy. My heart was with the family of those mourning their loved ones.</blockquote>
Mamdani blames the deaths mostly on nature, though he admits a few of them were drug deaths. 
Unlike other areas of the country where recent ice storms knocked out power for weeks, New York City is built for cold weather. Cold weather hits New York every single year. New Yorkers knows how to deal with cold weather, especially when they have competent management and government.
The people who died in New York did not die because their power went out. New York didn&#8217;t lose power. They died because they were left to die on the streets. Why were they left to die on the streets? Is this just some immutable characteristic of New York? What can we do? Throw our arms up in the air? A long-standing problem?
No, it&#8217;s not.
They were left to die on the streets specifically because Zohran Mamdani, who has been in office for just one month now, left them to die on the streets. In fact campaigned to leave them to die on the streets.
Don&#8217;t take my word for it. Here is CBS News.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Mamdani says he&#039;ll end homeless encampment sweeps in NYC" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CWjUfoi6YCg?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Credit: @CBSNewYork/YouTube.com
The reporter states,
<blockquote>Local New York Mayor Alexander Mamdani says that he will end the Adams administration&#8217;s practice of removing homeless encampments from city sidewalks. But advocates argue it will be a step backwards for the city&#8217;s quality of life. Ali Bauman questioned the mayor-elect about this tonight. For the past three years, the NYPD has been systematically removing homeless encampments from New York City sidewalks, a practice mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani vows to end once he takes office — vows to end it.</blockquote>
This is Mamdani campaigning and saying we are intentionally going to leave the homeless — who are almost entirely drug addicts and mentally ill — on the streets. And this is supposedly going to be compassionate. That&#8217;s a change of policy from the previous administration, which just left office.
A little history of New York City during the 1970s and 80s may be helpful. Back then, there were a lot of bums, a lot of criminals, and a lot of homeless people on the streets. Then-mayor Rudy Giuliani came in in the 1990s and got rid of all that. He said, No, no, no — if you&#8217;re homeless, you need to go to shelters or we&#8217;re going to arrest you, but we&#8217;re not going to leave you on the streets.
After he was mayor of New York, Giuliani reiterated the same idea about the Occupy Wall Street protests. When people set up encampments all over the city, he said, No, no, no, you can&#8217;t do this. Sleeping on the street is a dysfunctional act which harms society and the individual.
In other words, letting the homeless stay on the street is contrary to the common good.
It&#8217;s not just that letting the homeless stay on the street is good for the homeless but bad for the rest of the New Yorkers who don&#8217;t want to see them — that&#8217;s how Mamdani is presenting it. The real argument, however, is no, it&#8217;s actually bad for everyone. Because it&#8217;s bad for the law-abiding New Yorkers who don&#8217;t want criminals and drug addicts and crazy people running around the streets all the time.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1904-zohran-mamdani-freezes-16-new-yorkers-to-death?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show</a></h3>
It’s also bad for the homeless because they&#8217;re susceptible to crime — susceptible to being assaulted or raped or killed. And they&#8217;re also vulnerable to the elements. It&#8217;s very, very dangerous to leave them on the streets year round, especially in the winter. And now we see the results.  This is the “warmth of collectivism.”
This is the compassion that Mamdani has promised. Leaving 16 New Yorkers dead during a totally predictable, minor cold front. And he even gives away the game in his speech by trying to mitigate his culpability by saying, “In 13 of these cases, preliminary findings indicate that hypothermia played a role, and three of these deaths appear to be overdose deaths.”
They basically froze like Jack Nicholson at the end of “The Shining.”
He then seems to avoid taking responsibility by saying, “&#8230;and three of these deaths appear to be overdose deaths.”
Like that&#8217;s better. Like it’s good that they chose to die, as if they were consenting adults. First of all, you can&#8217;t consent when you&#8217;re crazy, or when you&#8217;re addicted to all kinds of vices, or when you&#8217;re underage, or when there are all sorts of things that compromise our consent.
So Mayor Mamdani&#8217;s whole policy is based on a misconception of freedom — what freedom really is. Like all liberals, he thinks freedom is just neutrality in choosing. Well, some people choose not to do heroin, but some people choose to do heroin, and who are we to say which is the better choice?
It&#8217;s a misconception of freedom. It&#8217;s a misconception of the common good. It&#8217;s a misconception of what&#8217;s good for everybody. The common good is not just the random collection of all the individual goods of people, some of which are contrary to each other. In this kind of utilitarian calculation that tries to lead to the greatest utility for the greatest number, the common good is what we all share — what is good for all of us, what is not diminished by any individual good.
It’s also a misunderstanding of compassion. It is not compassionate to just ignore people. It&#8217;s funny because the Left accuses the Right of this: you just ignore people. You retreat to your nice neighborhoods and your penthouses and your money, and you ignore your common man. You don&#8217;t think you&#8217;re your brother&#8217;s keeper.
Sometimes the Right is guilty of that, especially the more Libertarian Right. The Left is just as guilty of that. Oh, just leave people to their degradation. Leave people to their vices. Leave people to their destructive behaviors — be it sexual ideologies, be it just license more broadly, be it with regard to living on the street — just leave them there.
It&#8217;s fine. You know, who are you to intervene? Who am I?
Well, I&#8217;m a reasonable person, and I&#8217;m a member of society, and I&#8217;m a citizen. And the consequences of all three of those misconceptions from Zohran Mamdani are that 16 people die on the street, whether from drugs or from exposure. That&#8217;s the “warmth of collectivism.”
What would have been more compassionate for the homeless: Zohran Mamdani, who says all sorts of sweet things about the homeless and leaves them to die on the street, or Rudy Giuliani, who talks a little tougher, who seems a little bit meaner, but who protects those people?
Where&#8217;s the real compassion?
That&#8217;s it. We&#8217;re one month into Mamdani — one month in — and you&#8217;ve got homeless ice cubes lining the streets of New York, some of which also have heroin and fentanyl in their blood.
We&#8217;re in for a real treat with Mamdani.

NYC Mamdani Holds News Conference On Healthcare At New York City Health Clinic

The Deadly Consequences Of Zohran Mamdani’s Homelessness Policy

Liberals

Winter Storm Fern

A viral story about former Nickelodeon child star Tylor Chase, who is now homeless, has taken a turn as his former co-star says he trashed a hotel room he was gifted.
Chase, now 36, captured the attention of the internet when a fan posted a video of him looking unkempt and seemingly living on the streets in Riverside, California. Chase was best known for his role as Martin Qwerly in the Nickelodeon series “Ned&#8217;s Declassified School Survival Guide” in the early 2000s. 
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Tylor Chase &amp; Cookie reunite. Long term treatment needed #nedsdeclassified #danielcurtislee #tylor" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WmPagJMhjxw?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
His former co-star Daniel Curtis Lee <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DSoC8cQgZBl/?hl=en">posted a video</a> of him reconnecting with Chase, buying him a meal, and getting him a hotel room. But then Lee posted an update saying Chase destroyed that room and fled.
“[The motel staff was] upset. The door&#8217;s left open. Why is there a microwave in the tub? The refrigerator&#8217;s turned over,&#8221; Lee <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@danielcurtislee/video/7587848053609090359?lang=en">shared</a> in a TikTok update. &#8220;I feel so devastated. I am at a loss.&#8221;
Lee went on to lament how there’s no way to get help for people who are addicted or mentally unwell despite there being “systems” in place.
When the original video of Chase started gaining traction, a fan started a GoFundMe campaign that was quickly shut down by the former child star’s mother, who said giving him cash would just make the situation worse, The New York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/12/25/entertainment/neds-declassified-alum-tylor-chase-trashed-motel-room-paid-for-by-daniel-curtis-lee/">reported</a>.
Chase’s father was interviewed by the Daily Mail, which shed more light on the family’s effort to help him find treatment for mental health issues and drug addiction.
<a class="c-link c-link--focus-visible c-link--underline" href="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=editorial&amp;utm_campaign=christmas&amp;utm_content=christmassale25" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://get.dailywire.com/subscribe/plus/?utm_medium=website&amp;utm_source=editorial&amp;utm_campaign=christmas&amp;utm_content=christmassale25" data-sk="tooltip_parent">Christmas Sale – Get 40% off New DailyWire+ Annual Memberships</a>
“He’s a wonderful person when he’s Tylor,” Joseph Mendez Jr. <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15410309/tylor-chase-father-Nickelodeon-homeless-addiction-schizophrenia.html">told</a> the Mail. “For over a decade, the family has sought treatment options for Tylor, including support for substance use as well as mental health care,” he said.
He said Chase has been struggling with addiction since he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in 2015.
“He … chose to discontinue medication and resumed substance use,” Mendez said. “His family has been trying for many years to get him the support he needs, but ultimately, he must be willing to accept help,” Mendez said.
Social media commenters noted how the situation highlights the complexities of drug use, mental illness, and homelessness, saying it proves that giving homes to the homeless would not solve the issue in most cases.
“Because you can’t just stick someone homeless in a hotel room and BOOM they’re cured. He needs professional help,” one person <a href="https://x.com/Romanazswb/status/2004346821649613197">wrote</a>, echoing what many others were saying.
The latest update from influencer Jacob ‘Jake’ Harris was that Chase checked into a detox facility on Christmas Day. 
“We finally got Tylor the help he needed,” he <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/DStWjRkEUre/">shared</a> in an Instagram update. “He’s currently receiving medical attention to get him healthy, to get him all better.”

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