Former Rep. Cori Bush is attempting a political comeback in the 2026 midterms, hoping to reclaim Missouri&#8217;s deep-blue 1st Congressional District from the Democrat who unseated her two years ago.
Bush, a former member of the far-left Squad, is challenging Rep. Wesley Bell (D-MO) in a rematch of the expensive 2024 Democratic primary. Because the St. Louis-area district is overwhelmingly Democratic, the winner of Tuesday&#8217;s primary is heavily favored to return to Washington in January.
The race has become yet another test of whether the Democratic Party&#8217;s recent leftward shift — fueled by victories from left-wing and Democratic-Socialist candidates in cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Denver — extends towards one of the movement&#8217;s most recognizable national figures.
Bush&#8217;s campaign also revives one of the Democratic Party&#8217;s most contentious internal divides: support for Israel.
When <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/wesley-bell-backed-by-aipac-defeats-squad-member-cori-bush-in-st-louis-distrct-primary">Bell defeated Bush in 2024</a>, the race became one of the most expensive House primaries in American history after pro-Israel groups, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee&#8217;s United Democracy Project, poured $9.3 million into the contest. Bush had become one of Congress&#8217; most outspoken critics of Israel after introducing one of the first congressional resolutions calling for a ceasefire following Hamas&#8217; October 7, 2023 terrorist attack.
Bell has continued backing military assistance for Israel while arguing the United States must support allies confronting hostile regimes. &#8220;I think we have to support our allies not only in Israel, but in Taiwan and in Ukraine,&#8221; Bell said during a recent <a href="https://www.stlpr.org/government-politics-issues/2026-07-29/missouri-primary-bush-bell-democrat-litmus">joint appearance</a> with Bush. &#8220;They are on the front lines of our sworn enemies.&#8221;
Over the past year, several insurgent Democratic candidates who criticized party leadership and took hard-line positions against U.S. support for Israel have won competitive primaries, leading progressives to argue that voters are increasingly rewarding candidates willing to challenge the Democratic establishment.
For their part, establishment Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) have endorsed Bell&#8217;s reelection. Bell has argued that his first term demonstrates he can effectively work within Congress while delivering results for the district, particularly following the devastating tornado that struck St. Louis in 2025.
Bush has countered that Bell has failed to provide the aggressive leadership voters expected, criticizing what she characterizes as an inadequate response to the tornado recovery effort and arguing the district needs a more confrontational representative willing to challenge both Republicans and Democratic leadership.
&#8220;The fight does not end because I got my feelings hurt,&#8221; Bush <a href="https://19thnews.org/2026/07/cori-bush-missouri-primaries/">told supporters</a>. &#8220;If you&#8217;re a true fighter, you get knocked down, and I got back up.&#8221;
Bush first rose to national prominence as an activist during the 2014 Ferguson protests following the police shooting of Michael Brown before defeating longtime Democratic Rep. William Lacy Clay in 2020. During her two terms in Congress, she became one of the most recognizable members of the Squad alongside Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
Her tenure frequently put her at odds with Democratic leadership. Bush opposed former President Joe Biden&#8217;s bipartisan infrastructure package, advocated defunding police departments, slept on the Capitol steps to protest the expiration of the federal eviction moratorium, and became one of Congress&#8217; earliest and loudest critics of Israel.
Bell continues to support military assistance for Israel while Bush remains committed to cutting it off, making the issue one of the few major policy differences separating the candidates, who agree on many domestic issues.
For the left, a Bush victory would mark the return of one of the movement&#8217;s original national standard-bearers and suggest the Democratic Party&#8217;s activist base continues moving leftward after several high-profile primary victories around the country.
For Democratic leadership, another Bell victory would reinforce the coalition that removed Bush from office in 2024 and demonstrate that establishment-backed incumbents can still withstand challenges from the party&#8217;s activist wing.
The Missouri primaries are scheduled for Tuesday, August 4.

House-Oversight-Democrats-Hold-Discussion-On-Supreme-Court-Ethic

The Cori Bush Comeback? Ex-Squad Member Hopes To Ride Left-Wing Wave Back To Congress

anti-Israel

Cori Bush

House Democrats

House of Representatives

Israel

Leftism

Palestine

Pro-Palestinian

Radical Left

The Squad

U.S. House of Representatives

Secretary of State Marco Rubio&#8217;s State Department released a sweeping <a href="https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Cuba-Report.pdf">99-page report</a> on Monday portraying communist Cuba as the Western Hemisphere&#8217;s foremost engine of Marxist subversion, arguing that the island nation has spent decades cultivating revolutionary movements inside the United States and across the globe.
The report, released alongside a statement from the State Department, casts the Castro regime not simply as a geopolitical adversary, but as the ideological nucleus of what it describes as the modern radical Left. 
&#8220;For more than six decades, the Cuban regime has been the leading sponsor of radical leftism and Third Worldism in the United States,&#8221; Rubio wrote on <a href="https://x.com/SecRubio/status/2079190191160348777">X</a>. &#8220;The State Department is exposing the full history of Cuban espionage and subversion in our country. The American people deserve to know.&#8221;
The document, which reflects a longstanding priority of Rubio&#8217;s foreign policy agenda, argues that Cuba&#8217;s greatest success has not been military or economic, but ideological. &#8220;For nearly seven decades, the Cuban regime has waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States,&#8221; the report states. &#8220;It is a campaign that has infiltrated the highest reaches of the U.S. government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists, backed an unprecedented wave of Left-wing terrorism on American soil, and carried out one of the most durable and damaging foreign intelligence penetrations in American history.&#8221;
According to the report, Havana developed an unconventional strategy centered on espionage, infiltration, proxy networks, and ideological influence rather than conventional warfare. &#8220;In contrast to every other aspect of Cuba&#8217;s failed state, this model has yielded remarkable success,&#8221; the report says.
The report alleges that Cuba trained and armed Left-wing guerrilla groups around the world, provided sanctuary to American fugitives convicted of terrorism, and successfully infiltrated senior levels of the U.S. government, including the State Department, Pentagon, and National Security Council.
Much of the document focuses on what it calls Cuba&#8217;s enduring influence over modern Left-wing activism in the United States.
The report claims Havana helped shape and support organizations ranging from the Black Panthers and the Weather Underground during the Cold War to more recent movements including Antifa. It further alleges that Cuban influence continues today through &#8220;leftist nonprofits, anti-ICE collectives, socialist groups, and Marxist militant organizations.&#8221;
&#8220;From its earliest years in power, the Cuban regime has believed that its own survival and strategic interests were inextricably linked to the advance of the revolutionary Left inside the United States,&#8221; the report argues. &#8220;The Cubans have always seen revolution in America as an end unto itself.&#8221;
Rather than characterizing Cuba as merely a Soviet satellite, the report argues the Castro regime developed its own distinct form of Marxism centered less on class struggle than anti-Western and anti-American revolutionary ideology.
&#8220;While the collapse of the Soviet Union &#8230; largely rendered the Soviet model of communism extinct, the Cuban Marxist project not only survived, but thrived,&#8221; the report states. &#8220;By the turn of the twenty-first century, Havana had solidified its place as the ideological capital of the modern radical left.&#8221;
The report also links Cuba to several of America&#8217;s most recent episodes of civil unrest. It argues that &#8220;many of the most significant upheavals in recent American political history — from the George Floyd riots to the rise of Antifa to the explosion of pro-terrorist activism on American college campuses — can be linked, in some way, shape, or form, to Cuban influence.&#8221;
The report further warns that Cuba remains an active intelligence threat, alleging the regime maintains networks inside American institutions while simultaneously serving as a staging ground for Russian, Chinese, and Iranian intelligence operations.
The report concludes by arguing that Cuba&#8217;s strategy has always been to undermine America from within rather than confront it directly. &#8220;The regime&#8217;s method was never primarily premised on kinetic warfare,&#8221; the report states. &#8220;It was subtler, and far more dangerous: to attack the United States not from without but from within — to turn Americans into instruments of their own nation&#8217;s undoing.&#8221;
The publication comes as the Trump administration has significantly increased pressure on Havana through sanctions, diplomatic measures, and renewed scrutiny of the communist government&#8217;s ties to hostile foreign powers. Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has long been one of Washington&#8217;s most outspoken critics of the Castro regime and has repeatedly argued that the United States has underestimated Cuba&#8217;s role in exporting revolutionary ideology throughout the Americas.

Cuba – Cienfuegos: Old cyclist and revolutionary propaganda with picture of Fidel Castro on house wall.

Rubio Reveals How Cuba Is Trying To Undermine America

Communism

Cuba

Marco Rubio

Marxism

State Department

The nation&#8217;s largest teachers union — which is also the largest labor union in the United States — has unveiled a wish list of new business items so far Left that even some of its own members might raise an eyebrow, including a formal push to oust President Donald Trump before the midterms, taxpayer-funded &#8220;reparations&#8221; initiatives, and a plan to hand out cards instructing members how to stonewall ICE agents.
Item 10 on the wish list, backed by 50 delegates out of California, calls on the National Education Association to demand Trump&#8217;s &#8220;impeachment, conviction, and removal&#8221; from office and to organize a mass march on Washington to force him out before November&#8217;s midterms, school choice advocate Corey A. DeAngelis <a href="https://x.com/DeAngelisCorey/status/2073932569557794850?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2073932569557794850%7Ctwgr%5E8f2dae850539a78239fe96656250ba35f8d486e2%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.dailywire.com%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost.php%3Fpost%3D1128929action%3Dedit">reported</a> on Sunday. The rationale warns darkly of a &#8220;MAGA mob&#8221; staging another &#8220;coup attempt&#8221; if Republicans lose badly at the polls — a hypothetical scenario used to justify a real-world call to remove a sitting president. The price tag on the wish list item is a jaw-dropping $5.2 million.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
&#8220;The National Education Association will call for the impeachment, conviction, and removal of Donald Trump from the US Presidency.&#8221;
They want a &#8220;National March on Washington D.C. to remove Trump before the November 2026 midterm election&#8221;
The business item would cost $5,236,193. <a href="https://t.co/46kwokpA4m">pic.twitter.com/46kwokpA4m</a>
— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) <a href="https://x.com/DeAngelisCorey/status/2073934433615589591?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 6, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Item 24 has the National Education Association president lobbying the Congressional Black Caucus to push &#8220;Educational Reparations,&#8221; which backers claim would wipe out student loan debt, funnel cash to HBCUs, and blow up property-tax-based school funding entirely.
Then there&#8217;s Item 46, which would have the union print and distribute so-called &#8220;Red Cards&#8221; — multilingual materials designed to help educators and students&#8217; families evade Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The union frames it as protecting scared families, but critics are likely to see it as an official taxpayer-adjacent institution instructing staff on how to obstruct federal immigration enforcement. Cost: nearly $219,000.
The union isn&#8217;t shy about wading into foreign policy, either. Item 85 would have NEA Today, the union&#8217;s official magazine, publish articles defending teachers who bring lessons on &#8220;genocide in Palestine&#8221; into their classrooms, complete with language about &#8220;generational trauma&#8221; — a $222,000 initiative delegates say is necessary because educators are being &#8220;disciplined, doxxed and fired&#8221; for airing their views on the Israeli-Hamas war.
Gender ideology also gets heavy play. Item 20 would rewrite the union&#8217;s family emergency planning guides to include instructions for transgender individuals on legal name changes and &#8220;affirming healthcare,&#8221; while Item 78 would post state-by-state &#8220;legal risk&#8221; maps for transgender people and promote a &#8220;Trans Youth in Sports Conversation Guide,&#8221; at a cost of $12,500.
Rounding things out, Item 42 asks the union to build a $314,000 &#8220;Culturally Responsive Teaching&#8221; library pushing &#8220;gender equity matters&#8221; and multilingual instruction into classrooms nationwide.
All told, the proposals would cost the union more than $6 million combined — money delegates admit isn&#8217;t in the current budget — while pushing the 3-million-member organization deeper into hot-button political territory far removed from the classroom basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Protest-against-ICE-at-Department-of-Justice

Teachers Union Calls For Trump’s Removal, Reparations, And ICE ‘Red Cards’

Donald Trump

Nation Education Association

A far-left activist network tied to teachers unions and left-wing advocacy groups has been distributing a detailed training manual encouraging K-12 students to organize disruptive political protests and school walkouts, according to documents obtained by Defending Education and provided exclusively to The Daily Wire.
The 36-page “Direct Action Training: School Walkouts” toolkit, <a href="https://defendinged.org/investigations/a-k-12-school-walkout-toolkit-encourages-rule-breaking-and-class-interruptions-to-achieve-social-justice-demands/">uncovered</a> by the watchdog organization, explicitly instructs students on how to organize demonstrations, disrupt school operations, avoid oversight from administrators, and pressure institutions through coordinated acts of “non-cooperation” and “civil disobedience.”
The packet was distributed through activist training webinars connected to the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, a coalition backed by major left-wing education and activist organizations including the National Education Association, Journey for Justice Alliance, Center for Popular Democracy, and Schott Foundation for Public Education.
The training materials themselves were produced by Alliance for Educational Justice, an activist group that has received financial support through leftist nonprofit networks connected to the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Tides Foundation, and other left-wing grantmaking organizations.
The document openly encourages students to engage in actions designed to disrupt schools and force administrators into political concessions. “Direct action is how everyday people use their collective power to force change when systems aren’t listening,” the packet states. It describes walkouts as a tactic intended to “interrupt business as usual and demand accountability.”
The guide specifically promotes tactics including “school walkouts,” “boycotts,” “strikes – No School, No Work, No Shopping,” and even “class takeover,” which it describes as interrupting classrooms for “student-led discussion, training, or teach-ins.”
In one section, the packet explains how students can transform “absence into power” by creating enough disruption that school officials are “forced to respond.”
“When large numbers of students leave together, classes cannot operate normally and school leaders are forced to respond,” the guide states. “Ignoring a walkout often brings greater attention from families, the media, and the wider community.”
The packet repeatedly frames schools as political battlegrounds and encourages students to view disruption as leverage.
It also includes instructions on recruitment, messaging strategy, protest organization, media engagement, and “walkout leader roles.” Another section titled “Out Reach Safety” advises students to use VPNs because “a VPN can make tracking harder,” while encouraging students to refuse questioning from school officials without a parent or lawyer present.
Though the guide insists direct action is “not about causing chaos,” many of the tactics outlined are explicitly designed to undermine normal school operations and pressure administrators through coordinated unrest.
Defending Education warned the materials reflect a broader trend of activist organizations using schools and students as vehicles for political organizing. “Activists have realized they can use students to advance political agendas, and too many schools either won’t push back or will quietly enable it,” Paul Runko, Defending Education’s senior director of strategic initiatives, said to The Daily Wire.
“Parents need to understand that students are increasingly being recruited as foot soldiers in the culture war, and they should have intentional conversations, especially with teens, about how to respond when friends, teachers, or outside groups encourage them to participate in protests or walkouts,” he added.
The materials also reveal how activist infrastructure aimed at adults increasingly filters down into K-12 environments through affiliated nonprofits, education coalitions, and youth organizing initiatives that outwardly present themselves as community advocacy groups.
The document argues that young people are uniquely positioned to pressure institutions because adults are constrained by jobs, caregiving responsibilities, or fear of arrest. Students, meanwhile, are encouraged to use their position inside schools to “step forward when systems refuse to listen.”
Defending Education’s findings come amid a growing left-wing youth activist class and worries from parents over the political activism increasingly embedded in some educational environments, particularly as outside organizations gain influence through partnerships, webinars, and activist training programs directed at students.

St. Paul, Minnesota student anti-ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) demonstrations, January 2026

Action Backpacks And VPNs: Are Left-Wing Groups Training Your Kid To Be A Political Activist?

Education

Schools

The judge who apologized to the gunman accused of attempting to assassinate President Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner released a man who attacked a member of Congress and has &#8220;devoted&#8221; his career to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. 
Public backlash is now intensifying against Judge Zia Faruqui who grilled jail officials on Monday over the conditions Cole Allen, the suspect, has faced behind bars.
“I’m sorry,” Faruqui told Allen, who was reportedly held in solitary confinement. “Whatever you’ve been through, I apologize for the prior week,” <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/judge-issues-stunning-apology-to-accused-trump-assassin?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Jacob+Wheeler&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=0&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=Judge+Issues+Stunning+Apology+To+Suspected+Wannabe+Trump+Assassin">The Daily Wire previously reported</a>. 
Jail officials placed Allen on a temporary suicide watch that required 24-hour-a-day placement in a padded cell. The judge complained that those measures were <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/04/cole-allen-dc-jail-00905294?gpp=DBAA">punitive and not based on a medical assessment</a>. 
&#8220;Welcome to Washington, DC, where U.S. Magistrate Judge Faruqui believes a defendant armed to the teeth and attempting to assassinate the president is entitled to preferential treatment in his confinement compared to every other defendant,&#8221;<a href="https://x.com/JudgeJeanine/status/2051399246776021500?s=20"> Pirro posted on social media. </a>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Welcome to Washington, DC, where U.S. Magistrate Judge Faruqui believes a defendant armed to the teeth and attempting to assassinate the president is entitled to preferential treatment in his confinement compared to every other defendant. <a href="https://t.co/EPtqJgXjnb">https://t.co/EPtqJgXjnb</a>
— Jeanine Pirro (@JudgeJeanine) <a href="https://twitter.com/JudgeJeanine/status/2051399246776021500?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 4, 2026</a></blockquote>
&#8220;Will Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui be visiting the WHCA shooter in jail to offer him a cold beverage?&#8221; Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) <a href="https://x.com/BasedMikeLee/status/2051488538034577703">asked</a> on X. 
Faruqui’s conduct on the bench has sparked intense outrage and is now prompting some elected officials to scrutinize his judicial record.
&#8220;This is the same judge who tried to release the man who beat up Congresswoman Angie Craig despite 25 bench warrants,&#8221; Senator Tim Sheehy said on social media. &#8220;Judge Faruqui should be in jail, not on the bench.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
This is the same judge who tried to release the man who beat up Congresswoman Angie Craig despite 25 bench warrants. Judge Faruqui should be in jail, not on the bench. <a href="https://t.co/gKVMnfWaNS">https://t.co/gKVMnfWaNS</a> <a href="https://t.co/EgIHHhYO1a">pic.twitter.com/EgIHHhYO1a</a>
— Tim Sheehy (@TimSheehyMT) <a href="https://twitter.com/TimSheehyMT/status/2051481366705971309?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 5, 2026</a></blockquote>
In 2023, Faruqui, against the wishes of prosecutors, ordered the release of a man accused of assaulting Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) in her Washington, D.C., apartment elevator. 
Kendrick Hamlin allegedly punched Craig in the chin and grabbed her by the shoulder in an early morning attack. The Democratic congresswoman escaped after pouring hot coffee on the suspect, <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/04/08/us-judge-orders-the-release-of-rep-angie-craigs-suspected-attacker-to-hospital/">according to the New York Post</a>. 
“To say this is a close call is not doing it justice. This is an extremely close call,” Faruqui said at the time. 
Faruqui, who has also presided over January 6 cases, bemoaned that the White House Correspondents&#8217; Dinner shooting suspect was being held under harsher conditions and treated more severely than those defendants, who were housed in a lower-security section of the jail known as the Central Treatment Facility.
“A lot of people have seemed to forget about Jan. 6, but I have not,” Faruqui said, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/04/trump-cole-allen-jail-jan-6-judge-whcd.html">according to CNBC</a>. “Pardons erase convictions but do not erase history.”
Couy Griffin, a former New Mexico county commissioner who founded the political group &#8220;Cowboys for Trump,&#8221; was sentenced to 14 days behind bars for a misdemeanor trespass charge. Griffin entered a restricted area on January 6, 2021, but never entered the Capitol, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/gop-official-new-mexico-election-standoff-avoids-jail-time-jan-6-rcna34199">according to NBC News</a>. 
&#8220;This same judge fought to keep me locked up in solitary confinement on a misdemeanor trespass charge where I stood peacefully OUTSIDE The Capitol,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/CowboyCouy/status/2051410205959962928?s=20">Griffin said of Judge Faruqui.</a>
&#8220;He is evil!&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/CowboyCouy/status/2051456921446777250">Griffin said in another social media post</a>. &#8220;I was sentenced to two weeks yet spent three weeks in solitary confinement. All because of him!!&#8221;
Before becoming a magistrate judge, Faruqui served as an assistant U.S. attorney from 2008 to 2020, according to his public LinkedIn profile. He earned his bachelor’s and law degrees from Georgetown University. <a href="https://georgetownpakistanconclave.org/index.php/judge-zia-m-faruqui/">The Georgetown Pakistan Public Policy Conclave</a> and the <a href="https://www.mubany.org/featured-events/how-did-i-get-here-judge-zia-faruqui-and-developing-good-judgment">Muslim Bar Association</a> of New York have pages highlighting Faruqui’s career. 
&#8220;As the first Muslim Judge to be appointed to the Federal Court in Washington D.C., Judge Faruqui has also devoted much of his career to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts,&#8221; <a href="https://wclawyers.org/our-work/advocacy/recent-advocacy/advocacy-on-judicial-nominations/letter-in-support-of-the-honorable-zia-faruqui-nominee-for-appointment-to-the-united-states-district-court-for-the-district-of-columbia-january-17-2023/">reads a letter from the Washington Council of Lawyers</a> supporting his nomination to the District Court of Columbia. 
The 2023 letter states that Judge Faruqui has &#8220;led efforts to reform the criminal justice system.&#8221;
Monday’s hearing is not the first time Faruqui has tussled with the Department of Justice. Seven months ago, he claimed the DOJ had lost credibility under the Trump administration, which provoked a fiery response from U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro. 
“Judge Faruqui has never really met someone with an illegal gun that he hasn’t felt some compassion for,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pl2cp-cd84">Pirro said at the time.</a> “He should do his job as a judge and leave his politics out of it.”
Authorities say Cole Thomas Allen, 31, was armed with a shotgun, handgun, and knives when he charged through a security checkpoint inside the Washington Hilton Hotel, where the WHCD was being held.
One floor above the ballroom packed with government officials and reporters, Allen discharged one of his weapons, striking a Secret Service agent before falling to the ground.
If convicted, he faces life in prison.

Judge Zia M. Faruqui

Woke Judge Who Apologized To Wannabe Trump Assassin Has A Radical Leftist Record

Judge Faruqui

WCHD Shooting

Political activist George Clooney and his wife, Amal, were major donors to the ultra-left nonprofit advocacy group, Southern Poverty Law Center, which was just indicted on suspicion of funding the same white nationalists it claimed to be fighting against. 
Clooney has not made a public statement in the wake of the bombshell allegations against SPLC. 
In an indictment <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/lefty-anti-hate-group-paid-white-supremacist-to-plan-infamous-charlottesville-rally-indictment">made public</a> on Tuesday, the SPLC stands accused of secretly using donated funds to pay leaders within racist groups. One of the SPLC’s informants was a member of the leadership team of a white supremacist group that planned the rally in Charlottesville, according to the Justice Department.
The informant was paid more than $270,000 by the SPLC between 2015 and 2023 and was part of a group chat created for those who were planning the “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 — which included neo-Nazis and Klansmen. 
That rally in Charlottesville has long been used as proof that white supremacy is still rampant in the United States — and was even cited by former President Joe Biden as the reason he felt compelled to run for president in 2020 — but the indictment spurs questions about how much of the &#8220;threat&#8221; was actually bought and paid for by the very people claiming to fight against it.
Clooney donated a whopping $1 million through his Clooney Foundation for Justice in an effort “to combat hate groups” in the wake of the Charlottesville incident, SPLC noted at the time.
“We are proud to support the Southern Poverty Law Center in its efforts to prevent violent extremism in the United States. What happened in Charlottesville, and what is happening in communities across our country, demands our collective engagement to stand up to hate,” the Clooneys said in a statement in 2017.
“Like George and Amal Clooney, we were shocked by the size, ugliness, and ferocity of the white supremacist gathering in Charlottesville,” SPLC President Richard Cohen echoed in a <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/resources/stories/clooney-foundation-justice-gives-1-million-grant-help-southern-poverty-law-center-combat/">news release</a> at the same time. “It was a reflection of just how much Trump’s incendiary campaign and presidency has energized the radical right. We are deeply grateful to the Clooney Foundation for standing with us at this critical moment in our country’s fight against hate.”
The SPLC is charged with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of making false statements to a federally insured bank, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.

George Clooney Amal Clooney

George Clooney’s $1M Donation To SPLC Now Tied To Funding The Hate He Meant To Fight

Charlottesville

Department of Justice

George Clooney

Southern Poverty Law Center

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

White Supremacists

On Monday, the New York Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD)—which enforces housing laws on private landlords—released a video that was a photo-op for Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Mamdani accompanied inspectors as they toured a private apartment building. The resulting video—a textbook photo-op—captured the mayor and inspectors pointing out minor infractions like faulty window balances and flower pots on fire escapes. While Mamdani framed the event as a victory for &#8220;accountability,&#8221; critics see it as a calculated distraction from the catastrophic state of the city’s own housing empire and a precursor to a massive, taxpayer-funded spending spree.
Mamdani’s rhetoric was unmistakable. Urging residents to flood the 311 system, he promised to &#8220;hold landlords accountable&#8221; for every broken plaster patch.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
What does an HPD inspection look like?<a href="https://twitter.com/NYCMayor?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NYCMayor</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/ZohranKMamdani?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ZohranKMamdani</a> stepped in for a day and identified six violations now being issued to the landlord.
If you see unsafe conditions, call 311. We’ll inspect and hold owners accountable. <a href="https://t.co/FhaqHKBnrn">pic.twitter.com/FhaqHKBnrn</a>
&mdash; NYC Housing (@NYCHousing) <a href="https://twitter.com/NYCHousing/status/2046360618068742252?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 20, 2026</a></blockquote>
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This aggressive posture toward the private sector is a cornerstone of the Mamdani administration, which has effectively declared war on private property through its &#8220;Rental Ripoff&#8221; hearing series. Led by Director of Tenant Protection Cea Weaver—who has infamously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/marxism-in-the-metropolis-nycs-new-tenant-czar-has-targeted-white-homeowners-private-property?utm_source=chatgpt.com">labeled</a> homeownership a &#8220;tool of white supremacy&#8221;—the administration appears less interested in urban planning and more focused on what some describe as &#8220;Soviet-style collectivism.&#8221;
The irony of Mamdani’s crusade against &#8220;private slumlords&#8221; is the staggering state of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). While the mayor hunts for missing window guards in private buildings, NYCHA—the city’s own public housing system—was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dozens-of-nyc-govt-employees-arrested-by-feds-most-single-day-bribery-arrests-in-doj-history?utm_source=chatgpt.com">buckling</a> under a $78 billion repair backlog as late as 2024. Residents there aren&#8217;t just dealing with flower pots on fire escapes; they face chronic infestations, lead paint, and broken elevators.
Mamdani’s attitude with NYCHA is one of &#8220;throwing money at the problem&#8221; while ignoring the rot within. In 2024, federal prosecutors <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/nyregion/nyc-public-housing-corruption.html">charged</a> 70 NYCHA employees in a massive bribery and extortion scheme—the largest single-day bribery takedown in Department of Justice history. These officials allegedly took $2 million in kickbacks for maintenance contracts.
Rather than addressing this &#8220;culture of corruption,&#8221; Mamdani has consistently framed NYCHA&#8217;s failure as a mere lack of &#8220;public investment,&#8221; ignoring that the agency collected a record-low 65% of charged rent in 2022.
Landlords, particularly those managing rent-stabilized buildings, warn that Mamdani’s policies are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of decay. With financing costs skyrocketing and rental revenue frozen by city mandates, major providers like the Pinnacle Group have already been <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/after-weeks-of-one-sided-open-mic-complaints-mamdani-eyes-housing-power-grab">forced into bankruptcy</a>.
The message to New Yorkers is clear: the administration intends to squeeze the private market until it breaks, then step in with &#8220;collective&#8221; solutions funded by a city budget already facing a $12.6 billion gap.
While Mamdani &#8220;imagines&#8221; a better city for the cameras, the reality for many remains piles of rat-infested trash and a public housing system that remains the city&#8217;s most negligent landlord.

NYC Mayor Mamdani Delivers Address On His First 100 Days In Office

Mamdani’s Soviet-Style Photo-Op Targets Landlords While NYC’s Public Housing Empire Crumbles

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Zohran Mamdani

Actress Sydney Sweeney is once again appearing in an American Eagle ad campaign, months after a previous promotion sparked widespread backlash. 
&#8220;What brand am I wearing?&#8221; Sweeney asks in the new commercial while sporting denim shorts. &#8220;Yeah, that one,&#8221; the “Euphoria” star says as the words &#8220;SYD FOR SHORT&#8221; flash across the screen.
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The new ad spot references the original jeans campaign, which made headlines for months and delivered a significant boost to the company&#8217;s sales. 
Last summer, all hell broke loose over the campaign featuring Sweeney in various seductive poses while saying she had “good jeans.” The double entendre with the word “genes” made leftists deem the ad racist, noting that Sweeney is white with blond hair and blue eyes.
In one of the ads, Sweeney says, “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue.”
American Eagle responded to the backlash at the time with a statement defending the campaign. 
&#8220;&#8216;Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans’ is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story,&#8221; the company said. &#8220;We’ll continue to celebrate how everyone wears their AE jeans with confidence, their way. Great jeans look good on everyone.”
Despite leftist calls for a boycott, the denim collection did exceptionally well, with most of the featured pieces selling out. 
American Eagle’s chief marketing officer, Craig Brommers, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2026/04/15/sydney-sweeney-american-eagle-ad-jeans-controversy-new/89605439007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> USA Today that the company’s stock jumped by 22% thanks to that campaign.
&#8220;A vast, vast, vast majority of Americans understood that the campaign was about jeans,&#8221; Brommers told the outlet, crediting Sweeney’s “duality” of being both casual and glamorous as the reason for the campaign&#8217;s success.
&#8220;American Eagle has a store in all 50 states and during that campaign, we saw new customer acquisition grow in every single county in America,&#8221; he added. &#8220;It is a fact that it was the most successful campaign in the history of the American Eagle brand.&#8221; 
&#8220;The world is curious and the world will be talking when we launch the campaign,&#8221; Brommers said. &#8220;As we learned in the fall campaign, there is noise, but there are also facts as well, and we&#8217;re excited to see where this campaign takes our brand.&#8221;

Sydney Sweeney

American Eagle Doubles Down On Sydney Sweeney After Failed Boycott

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This article is part of MI x DW, a collaboration that brings Daily Wire readers exclusive commentary and research from the Manhattan Institute’s world-class team of scholars.
In this piece, originally published in <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-college-florida-gender-studies-activism">City Journal</a>, Colin Wright argues that faculty at New College of Florida continue to advance activist scholarship in ways that undermine the state’s post-woke reforms.
* * *
When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pledged to rein in “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/07/13/1110842453/florida-gov-desantis-is-doing-battle-against-woke-public-schools">woke indoctrination</a>” in public education, he wasn’t bluffing. Over the last several years, he and the legislature have pursued an aggressive legal and governance strategy to push far-left ideology out of taxpayer-funded institutions. The justification is straightforward: the people have the right to demand that public universities not become subsidized activist factories.
Laws can close academic departments and impose subject-area bans on paper, but campuses are still run day-to-day by faculty and administrators who may not be interested in what voters want. When progressive activists dominate a university, they will inevitably try to circumvent the law.
Such efforts appear to be happening at New College today. Though the Gender Studies department was shut down at the Sarasota school, and Florida law forbids the use of state and federal funds to “promote or engage in political or social activism,” faculty continue to oversee work promoting activist pseudoscience, treat opposition to explicit content in K-12 libraries as equivalent to Nazism, and celebrate “queer bibliographies” and “resistance” to elected officials.
Consider a 2025 undergraduate thesis covering the “Evolution of Gender” in drama and fashion.
Nova Myhill, a professor of English and Theater, Dance &amp; Performance Studies at New College, sponsored the thesis, which explicitly lists “Gender Studies” as its “Area of Concentration.”
At a glance, the thesis appears to be a broad, benign survey of gender-expression conventions through fashion in the context of theater. But it quickly advances to extreme activist views of sex and biology. The opening section, titled “Our Idea of Sex,” portrays sex in humans not as “concrete” or “permanent” but as something “closer to being reflections of societal preconceptions than anything based only on ‘biology.’” It claims that the idea that humans have two sexes became widespread only “around the mid-1700s” due to “changing values of what was important within identity, class and gender beginning to take the utmost importance when using clothing as a symbol or sign of identity.” It even asserts that “there was a time when we conceived of the human race as only ‘one-sex’,” and that our “re-envisioning of the sexes” during the Enlightenment into two categories — male and female — actually “led to the differentiation and specific designation of reproductive organs; the penis, testicles, ovaries, and uterus.”
If this were the only undergraduate thesis at New College promoting such radical activist views, it might be dismissed. It is not.
In January 2026, the college approved and archived an undergraduate thesis in the Division of Humanities that engaged in political activism and covered Gender Queer and Fun Home — books the sexually explicit content of which has prompted parents to oppose their inclusion in school libraries. Myhill also sponsored this thesis and is thanked effusively in the acknowledgements.
Oddly, this thesis includes two abstracts. The first, more formal one describes an exploration of “book censorship, theft, and destruction,” framed as actions “employed to specifically target queer, trans, Jewish, and other marginalized communities,” and ends by describing the authors’ “queer works” as “an act of cultural legacy, heritage transmission, and resistance.” The second reads like a direct taunt of DeSantis and New College’s policy reforms:
<blockquote>This thesis is about queers, trans people, gender, Nazis, book burning, moral panics, censorship, Magnus Hirshfeld, pornography . . . queer bibliography, the Phantasma, classroom libraries, Ron DeSantis, what it’s like to be erased, and also how people fight back . . . so why not read it already?</blockquote>
This isn’t “academic” in any meaningful sense, but rather activist writing designed to indoctrinate, recruit, and promote activism.
In one section, the thesis classifies Gender Queer as essential reading and mocks DeSantis for displaying redacted pages from the book during his November 2023 debate with California Governor Gavin Newsom. It frames Florida’s higher education reforms as part of an “anti-gender movement” with “chilling reach.”
The thesis also compares Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Christopher F. Rufo’s rhetoric to the “paranoia and persecution of McCarthyism in the 1950s” and claims that he helped incite a “reactive moral panic” like the one behind Nazi-era book purges in 1930s Germany. It compares <a href="https://x.com/christopherrufo/status/1824307070839165333">Rufo’s tweet</a> about abolishing the college’s Gender Studies program to a “long and fiery radio address” delivered by “Joseph Goebbels.” Again, such comparisons are not objective scholarship but political activism.
Other recent theses at New College also veer in an activist direction, including a 2025 thesis on “Queer Resistance and the Fight for Change in Morocco,” a 2026 thesis on “Why Queer People Like Horror Films,” and another in 2025 titled “Who Holds the Mic?: Exploring Image, Control, and Identity in Queer.”
Of course, Florida’s higher-ed reforms don’t ban students from discussing controversial topics in class or engaging in activism in their free time. State leaders intended them to prevent public institutions from using public funds to “promote, support, or maintain” programs or activities that “advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion” or “promote or engage in political or social activism.”
The work required to shepherd student theses entails faculty time and labor, institutional oversight, and curriculum funded by and developed under the authority of the university. It strains credulity to present as legitimate scholarship works that push false, ideologically charged views of biology or that describe themselves as works of “resistance.” A process that produces such works appears to flout Florida law’s intent to prevent state and federal funds from being used to “promote or engage in political or social activism.”
None of this is to say that shutting down New College’s gender-studies department was in vain. The volume of activist “scholarship” produced at the institution has declined markedly, and that’s a true achievement.
Nonetheless, Florida’s academic reforms are not self-enforcing. As always, personnel is policy. True believers on the faculty will look for workarounds. If nobody is paying attention, abolished departments will soon reappear inside more traditional ones — in this case, the departments of English and Theater, Dance &amp; Performance Studies.
Institutional responsibility lies with the faculty and administrators who decide which scholarship to approve, endorse, or reward. New College’s trustees and the state legislature can pass resolutions and rewrite statutes, but they cannot monitor every thesis committee or syllabus. 
That requires constant vigilance, because the pattern is predictable: abolish the department, then watch its ideology migrate to the English department, the history department, or the library.
If New College wants to fulfill its evolution into a post-woke institution, its guardians should not approve scholarship that treats its vital reforms as analogous to a second Holocaust. Leaders should hold faculty accountable when they use university resources to resurrect discarded programs and pursue activism under new names.
* * *
<a href="https://www.city-journal.org/person/colin-wright">Colin Wright</a> is an evolutionary biologist and Manhattan Institute Fellow.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis engages with New College of Florida

At New College of Florida, Gender Studies Quietly Continues

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Actor Vince Vaughn just publicly called out what conservatives have been saying for years: late-night shows gave up being funny long ago in favor of pushing a hyper-partisan agenda.
The 55-year-old “Dodgeball” star made his thoughts known during a recent appearance on Theo Von’s “This Past Weekend” podcast.
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“Podcasts have gotten so much more popular with less production, less writers, less staff,” Vaughn said. He went on to explain how people seem to prefer podcasts because they’re looking for “authenticity.”
“I think that the talk shows, to a large part, became really agenda-based,” the celeb went on. “They were going to evangelical [sic] people to what they thought. And so, people just rejected it because it didn’t feel authentic. It felt like they had an agenda. It stopped being funny and it started feeling like I was in… f***ing a class I didn’t want to take… I’m getting scolded.”
Vaughn said it was a mistake to blame technology or other external factors for late night’s downfall, saying he believed it was a catastrophe of their own making.
“If you look at what happened to the talk shows and why their ratings are low, it’s got only to do with the fact of what you just said… they all became the same show,” Vaughn added. “And they all became so about their politics and who’s good and who’s bad. And it’s like, imagine sitting next to someone like that on a f***ing plane.”
As for his own politics, Vaughn has said in the past that he most closely identifies with the Libertarian Party and doesn’t land cleanly on the right or the left.
“I got along with people for the most and always was, you know, always try to be honest about who I am,” the actor told Von. “But yeah, there’s times you felt like it would have been easier. It’s almost like a career move. You know what I mean? But I was always the other way, too. Like, I’m not jumping on 100% this or this because I have opinions on both sides. There’s sh** I don’t agree with at all, and then there’s sh** I don’t agree with at all.”
Vaughn’s comments come on the heels of Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” being canceled due to poor performance, with insiders saying the show lost millions every year. The liberals cried censorship, but average viewers appear to be fed up with the heavily biased, unfunny program and others like it.
A <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/late-night-hosts-targeted-conservatives-92-of-the-time-made-more-than-7000-trump-jokes-in-2025">report</a> published by the New York Post last December found that 92% of jokes on mainstream late-night shows over the previous year have been targeted at conservatives.
The analysis of 818 episodes focused on major mainstream late-night hosts, including Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, and Seth Meyers.
Those shows included 197 liberal guests and only two who were conservative.

Vince Vaughn

Vince Vaughn Drops Truth Bomb About Why Late-Night Television Is Dead

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Here we go again. Minnesota’s elected officials have proven that the extreme progressives are in charge in the North Star State, beholden to the radical progressive activists who crawl out of every nook and cranny of the Twin Cities’s prestigious, white, liberal suburbs and exurbs. 
 
If you thought this was still the land of the milquetoast, “Minnesota Nice,” I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you. 
 
In the aftermath of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation that began last summer and ramped up as the White House began cracking down on widespread fraud, Minnesota has been ground zero for purity tests of the far-Left regime. Now, there’s a horse race for the Democrat Farmer Labor candidate for Minnesota’s Senate seat, after current Senator Tina Smith announced her retirement at the end of this term. 
 
The race to the Left — or the bottom, depending on which way the political winds are blowing — is between current Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and Rep. Angie Craig. Both women flash their “girl power” bone fides at every chance, except when they’re appealing to the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/walz-signed-exec-order-protecting-trans-procedures-on-minors-while-holding-hand-of-gender-confused-12-year-old">trans-affirmative activists</a> who claim sex is a social construct, or to the abortion rights radicals who endanger women’s health and applaud the death of baby girls up to the <a href="https://alphanews.org/angie-craig-voted-against-bill-to-establish-protections-for-babies-who-survive-attempted-abortions/">moment of birth</a>. 
 
The latest show of extreme views comes from Craig, who, in a <a href="https://www.startribune.com/ice-agent-surge-minnesota-protests-federal-enforcement/601591429">commentary</a> in The Minnesota Star Tribune, writes of her “regret” in voting for the Laken Riley Act, the first bill that President Donald Trump signed into law in his second term. 
 
It’s “become clear that supporting any bill that gives ICE new authority in this administration was the wrong decision,” Craig writes. She cites the act’s expansion of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 to include the detention without bail of noncitizen aliens while their immigration proceedings were pending to nonviolent offenders and provides for detaining aliens who are charged with or convicted of assaulting a law enforcement officer. 
 
Craig comes to her lament after standing “side by side with protesters on the streets of Minneapolis and opposite dozens of armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the Whipple Federal Building.” She makes no mention of the victims of these aliens’ <a href="https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/ice-arrests-dozens-criminal-illegal-aliens-convicted-murder-child-rape-and-more">crimes</a> — crimes that put them on the ICE radar and, thanks to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, were free to live as “neighbors” instead of being detained by law enforcement in the local jails. 
 
How did her fellow DFL-er and political rival Peggy Flanagan respond? She pounced on it as an inexcusable failing in the moral purity test that the Minnesota extremist cabal uses as the standard operating procedure in politics. Flanagan posted on X a video clip of Craig voicing her support for the bill before her walk-back, adding, “Nothing can undo the damage that has been done.” Shots fired.
“Minnesotans want common sense,” Michele Tafoya, a Republican seeking that seat, told The Daily Wire. “We want law and order. But we are run by far Left career politicians who put their own careers ahead of the safety of innocent, law-abiding Minnesotans. Some of them are crazy, some of them are cowards and some of them are both. It has to change.”
“Angie Craig turning her back on the Laken Riley Act because her far Left base demands it is a craven act. Moderate Democrats have gone extinct in Minnesota,” she added.
In Minnesota, we were offered a bait-and-switch with Walz, who, in statewide elections and in his miserable bid for vice president alongside Kamala Harris, was touted as an American Everyman action figure, complete with a vintage truck, Mountain Dew, and hunting accessories. But his <a href="https://www.americanexperiment.org/what-america-needs-to-know-about-tim-walz-of-minnesota/">record </a>reveals extremist policies and disdain for the average fellas he was recruited to represent. Walz is one example of a new trend on the Left: Campaign as a moderate and, once elected, push hard-Left, radical policies.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has appeared on various conservative platforms with a moderate <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/01/15/us-news/gavin-newsom-backtracks-on-outrageous-ice-claims-made-by-his-own-team-in-shapiro-interview/">tone</a>. Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger&#8217;s State of the Union <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dem-rising-stars-sotu-rebuttal-ripped-conservatives-anyone-who-claims-she-moderate-liar">rebuttal</a> last month displayed rank hypocrisy and a laughable attempt at &#8220;Moderate Dem&#8221; rebranding.
Spanberger, who ran as a moderate, is now proposing sweeping, state-wide tax hikes, and criticizing immigration enforcement to the point of <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/dhs-blasts-spanberger-potential-release-182714286.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall">denying</a> an ICE detainer for an illegal immigrant with over 30 arrests accused of stabbing a 41-year-old woman to death at a bus stop in Fairfax County. Even socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani leveraged the &#8220;affordability&#8221; buzzword and an inclusive demeanor to obfuscate sky-high tax policies and his anti-Jewish, anti-Israel history.
We’ll continue to see this leftward march, purity tests, and hyperbolic rhetoric in support of these extreme measures — unhindered hormone and surgical procedures on minors for sex transitions, unlimited abortion, allowing males to compete against females in sports and opening bathrooms and locker rooms to all genders — and now siding with criminal aliens against law abiding citizens who truly want their neighborhoods safe rather than be battlegrounds for the latest Karen to proclaim her woke creds with an “ICE OUT” sign and safety whistle. What do you expect from a governor who publicly called ICE officers Nazis and compared them to the <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5307956-minnesota-gov-tim-walz-gestapo-trump/">Gestapo</a>? 
 
Rest in peace to the moderate Democrat who understood the errors of the Biden administration&#8217;s open border policy, who saw the damage of crime, rising welfare burdens, failed assimilation, and the deaths of innocent Americans at the hands of illegal aliens, and worked toward a common-sense solution — even (gasp!) voting with Republicans. In fact, high-profile wins like Mamdani&#8217;s and Spanberger&#8217;s have emboldened the progressive wing, raising the possibility of an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez <a href="https://x.com/SteveGuest/status/2028301350006595984?s=20">presidential bid</a> in 2028 over a moderate candidate. 
 
Bucking the far-Left puts politicians and civilians alike squarely in the fascist camp — just ask former Minnesota <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4982938-dean-phillips-my-voice-was-ignored/">Congressman Dean Phillips</a> or Pennsylvania <a href="https://whyy.org/articles/philadelphia-old-city-fridays-at-fettermans-protest-gaza-israel-war/">Senator John Fetterman</a>. If you’re a moderate, you’re owed any targeted violence, protest, or condemnation coming your way, even if it’s in a <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/anti-ice-mob-storms-minnesota-church-over-pastors-alleged-ties-immigration-enforcement">house of worship</a>. 
 
How far Left are Democrats willing to go? If it’s a way to rile up the extremist base, keep the spotlight off the bottomless fraud scandals, and make the Trump administration Public Enemy Number One, the sky’s the limit. The extremists are at the wheel, and after flattening any moderates in their party, they’ve backed up the truck, ready for another round of hit-and-run.
* * *
Jenna Stocker is editor and publisher of American Experiment’s quarterly magazine. A former Marine Corps officer, Stocker also contributes to The Federalist and National Review.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Minnesota Democrats Hold News Conference Ahead Of State Of The Union

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Self-described antifascist anarchists advertised their plans to protest at the <a href="https://yaf.org/events/nashville/">Nashville Freedom Conference</a> later this week, which will feature Daily Wire hosts Michael Knowles, Reagan Conrad, and Cabot Phillips, along with Daily Wire White House Correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan.
A leftist Nashville group, which goes by the name 615 Antifascist, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/antifascist_615/">posted</a> a flyer on social media calling for people to &#8220;rally against transphobia&#8221; at the Nashville Freedom Conference on Saturday, February 7. The Freedom Conference, hosted by the Young America&#8217;s Foundation, is a two-day event that begins Friday and is expected to draw hundreds of young conservatives from across the country.
The anarchist group specifically called out Knowles, whom they accused of making &#8220;inflammatory&#8221; comments, &#8220;especially around transgender people.&#8221;
&#8220;I&#8217;ve been informed that Antifa intends to protest my speech on Friday. The last time they sent a goon to one of my speaking events, he ended up in federal prison,&#8221; Knowles said on Monday. &#8220;Looking forward to another opportunity to help correct America&#8217;s under-incarceration problem!&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I&#8217;ve been informed that Antifa intends to protest my speech on Friday. The last time they sent a goon to one of my speaking events, he ended up in federal prison.
Looking forward to another opportunity to help correct America&#8217;s under-incarceration problem! <a href="https://t.co/nllaYT0aLX">pic.twitter.com/nllaYT0aLX</a>
— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) <a href="https://twitter.com/michaeljknowles/status/2018402892525207641?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 2, 2026</a></blockquote>
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It&#8217;s unclear if the group has any plans to also protest on Friday, when Knowles is scheduled to take the stage.
Knowles commented further on the leftist group&#8217;s protest plans during his show on Tuesday.
&#8220;There&#8217;s a Nashville antifa — even in Nashville. Nowhere is sacred, I guess. This is the &#8216;rally against transphobia.&#8217; They&#8217;re still on this; they&#8217;re still on the trans thing,&#8221; Knowles said. &#8220;They never give it up because it&#8217;s the apotheosis of liberalism, because the transgender ideology is the culmination of centuries of the liberal impulse for radical liberation from everything, including morality, social order, religion, God, and even the self.&#8221;
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Zohran Mamdani Freezes 16 New Yorkers To DEATH" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Utd803pNIpY?start=167&#038;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>
Knowles is used to leftists and anarchists showing up to make a scene when he speaks, and in one instance, three years ago, a protest became violent.
In 2023, a leftist protester attempted to disrupt an event featuring Knowles at the University of Pittsburgh by setting off homemade smoke bombs and shooting a firework into a crowd of protesters and police officers, injuring one person. The protester, 37-year-old Brian DiPippa, was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/protester-who-shot-firework-explosive-at-police-during-michael-knowles-event-sentenced">sentenced</a> to five years in prison.
Knowles has enraged radical leftists for years over his strong stance against gender procedures. During a 2023 speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Knowles <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/knowles-at-cpac-there-is-no-meeting-halfway-between-truth-and-falsehood">argued</a> that &#8220;transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.&#8221;
The comment sparked a firestorm from leftists who falsely claimed that Knowles was arguing for the eradication of trans-identifying people.
The Nashville antifascist group said in its flyer that the Freedom Conference &#8220;will include leadership sessions, and a lineup of right-wing voices from media designed to &#8216;confront the Left&#8217;s narratives&#8217; and mobilize young conservatives across campuses and communities.&#8221; Other featured speakers at the event include CNN conservative contributor Scott Jennings, conservative activist Robby Starbuck, and pro-life activist Abby Johnson.
The anarchists told people to meet at a Lutheran church just a block away from the hotel in downtown Nashville where the conference is being held.
The antifascist group <a href="https://615antifascist.com/">says</a> it&#8217;s &#8220;a collective of anonymous individuals based in Nashville, Tennessee, united in the mission to combat Fascism in all its manifestations.&#8221; The group focuses on protesting the Trump administration&#8217;s policies and &#8220;rejecting oppressive social norms &#8230; such as racism, sexism, xenophobia, capitalism, and transphobia.&#8221;

Michael Knowles/antifascist protest

‘Antifascist’ Anarchists Plan To Protest Nashville Freedom Conference Headlined By Daily Wire

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