The Cracker Barrel rebrand debacle has been one of the most misunderstood corporate wokeness sagas of 2025. For months, it’s been held up as an example of the failures of ‘culture war conservatism,’ a tempest in a teapot that no one really cared about. Yet, we recently received data-driven proof that the backlash to one of America’s most beloved country brands has been anything but imaginary.
At first glance, it would appear the outrage from consumers and shareholders was simply about the advent of a minimalist logo. The reality, however, is that Cracker Barrel’s performance has been slipping for years. For example, if you invested $1,000 in Cracker Barrel at the start of 2021, it would be worth less than $300 today. That can’t be explained away by a simple logo change. That’s a major problem, years in the making.
But the real test for Cracker Barrel wasn’t whether customers would forgive Uncle Herschel and his wayward brand. It was whether investors would forgive the Barrel’s board of directors, specifically embattled CEO Julie Felss Masino.
On November 20, Cracker Barrel held its annual shareholder meeting, and we found out exactly how much investor trust had been destroyed. Simply put: a lot. A large percentage of investor votes are guided by the recommendation of proxy advisory firms, none of which were inclined to let Cracker Barrel walk away from the debacle scot-free.
In the lead-up to the meeting, much of the ire was focused on Gilbert Dávila, Cracker Barrel’s compensation committee chair and a marketing and diversity specialist, advising a vote against, with some firms also advising against re-electing Jody Bilney, the chair of the Barrel’s nominating/governance committee. CEO Masino wasn’t spared either, with proxy advisory firm Egan-Jones <a href="https://ejproxy.com/post/cash-is-king-the-vicious-cycle-at-cracker-barrel">recommending</a> a ‘no’ vote over the brand’s underperformance. Pay attention to these names — this is how you measure impact.
The outcome? CEO Julie Felss Masino failed to gain support from a quarter of shareholder votes. Bilney, the nominating chair, lost almost a third of shareholder support. And Gilbert Dávila, the diversity specialist, barely broke two-fifths of shareholder support, <a href="https://www.scrippsnews.com/business/company-news/cracker-barrel-ceo-survives-push-for-ouster-after-logo-controversy">resigning</a> after the meeting.
In fact, of the 10 directors up for election, seven of them didn’t break 90% support. That may not sound like much, but in a corporate context, let’s be clear: that’s a vote of “no confidence” from a very sizable number of shareholders.
For comparison, in a 2024 <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/06/exxonmobils-victory-over-climate-activists-is-a-win-for-its-shareholders/">pressure</a> campaign against ExxonMobil, left-wing activist efforts successfully brought down vote counts by a single percentage point — to 95%. Exxon’s CEO, Darren Woods, lost maybe 1% percent of investor support over manufactured outrage. Cracker Barrel’s CEO lost around 20% percent investor support as a result of real outrage.
If you’ll recall, Cracker Barrel made the risky and seemingly unprompted decision to change its logo in August of 2025. In an attempt to reach a younger, less nostalgia-driven audience, they removed ‘Uncle Herschel’ from the classic logo that had been emblazoned on storefronts since 1969.
But that move didn’t proceed as anticipated. The rebrand <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/cracker-barrels-new-text-only-logo-how-you-destroy-brand-critics-claim">got</a> all the wrong attention, from ordinary customers to President Trump to a wide swath of conservative commentators, with Rod Dreher <a href="https://x.com/roddreher/status/1958293733092528218?s=20">deeming</a> the marketing shift “the New Coke of corporate logos.”
And Cracker Barrel, to its very limited credit, listened. After a flurry of negative X impressions and customer protests, the company walked back the rebrand. “We hear you,” Cracker Barrel <a href="https://www.crackerbarrel.com/allthemore">announced</a>, shortly before restoring their old logo, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/03/food/cracker-barrel-drops-design-firm">firing</a> their design firm, and embarking on one of the most embarrassing rollbacks in recent corporate marketing history. “We heard clearly that the modern remodel redesign does not reflect what you love about Cracker Barrel.”
And then, you might think, the story ends. On the business side of things, however, the apology isn’t the final salvo in any marketing fumble. Customers might forgive a brand — but there was a lot more than a logo change to forgive.
Actions have consequences. It’s one of the most foundational principles of business, economics, and politics. In Cracker Barrel’s case, however, an even more foundational principle is being played out in real time: ideas have consequences. Ideas, like allowing political bias to seep into our most prominent corporate institutions, have severe consequences — like a billion dollars&#8217; worth of largely avoidable brand damage. It’s very easy to look at the Cracker Barrel saga and conclude that it’s a non-issue, a side cultural issue invented to invent victimhood where it doesn’t exist. Yet it’s not true.
Cracker Barrel’s failure isn’t a MAGA-generated victim narrative, despite what MSNBC hosts like Jonathan Capehart might <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/msnbc-host-says-hes-sick-snowflakes-slamming-cracker-barrel-logo-redesign">want you to believe</a>. The company’s struggles have hurt people of all political stripes. Using a historic, valuable brand to test pet marketing theories isn’t just a matter of X debate. It’s a threat to the financial futures of millions of Americans, including Cracker Barrel’s roughly 70,000 employees who depend on the company’s success.
Many of those Americans just made their opinions known, sending a clear sign: there’s serious trouble ahead at the Barrel. The rebrand was only the tip of a very large iceberg, and it’s not just going to be hand-waved away, least of all by the CEO and what’s left of the corporate board that allowed it to happen.
* * *
Isaac Willour is an award-winning journalist focusing on race, culture, and American conservatism, as well as a corporate relations analyst at Bowyer Research. His work has been featured at outlets including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Opinion, C-SPAN, and The Daily Wire. He is a member of the Young Voices contributor program and can be found on X <a href="https://twitter.com/IsaacWillour" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@IsaacWillour</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Barrel II

After Rebranding Fiasco, Cracker Barrel Takes It On The Chin In Latest Shareholder Meeting

Corporations

Cracker Barrel

Leftists

Restaurant

shareholders

Woke Culture

US-AVIATION-FAA-TRAVEL

I Did A Deep Dive Into The Air Traffic Control Subreddit And What I Found Is Disturbing

Air Force One

air traffic controllers

Airlines

Airplane

airport

Government Shutdown

Opinion

Reddit

Trump Derangement Syndrome

We all remember the moment from &#8220;Anchorman&#8221; when Ron Burgundy, played by Will Ferrell, read the words, &#8220;Go F*** Yourself, San Diego,&#8221; to end a live news broadcast. Even though he was just blindly reading the words from the Teleprompter, which had been sabotaged, it didn&#8217;t matter. Rioters threatened to kill Ron Burgundy. He was fired. Everything changed after that moment, and everyone in the theater understood why. You see, the anchorman had just said something highly profane about the residents of his own city, on camera. It&#8217;s the kind of thing that you simply cannot come back from — unless, like Ron Burgundy, you manage to redeem yourself by saving a woman from being mauled by a bear. Which is the kind of thing that would get anyone out of the doghouse.
Back in 2004, no one would need to have this joke explained to them. The humor was pretty self-evident. But just twenty years later, it&#8217;s not remotely clear that this scene would land. For one thing, we don&#8217;t really have comedy movies anymore. That’s not just a thing people say. It’s true. Hollywood stopped making comedies right around 2012 to 2013. Now the genre essentially doesn’t exist.
But more importantly, in 2025, recent events have demonstrated that it&#8217;s actually very possible for a prominent person to tell an entire city to go f*** itself, in no uncertain terms, and then remain popular in that same city — popular enough to potentially win a congressional race. In fact, it&#8217;s now a viable campaign strategy to look the voters in the eye and pull a Ron Burgundy because, as it turns out, insulting the voters can somehow make you more popular than you were before.
If that sounds hyperbolic to you in any way, then you probably haven&#8217;t been following the rise of a Democrat congressional candidate named Aftyn Behn, who&#8217;s running in today&#8217;s special election to fill a seat in Tennessee&#8217;s 7th Congressional District. This is a district that includes downtown Nashville and most of Nashville&#8217;s black population — along with several Republican-dominated suburbs like Franklin, plus several rural counties. Back in 2020, as we&#8217;ve discussed, Behn openly attacked the city she intends to represent in Congress. She stated that she hates Nashville, and then she went on to name several specific features of the city that she despises.
But the really remarkable part of this story is that, having trashed her own potential voters in this resurfaced clip, Aftyn Behn has made the conscious decision to stand by her remarks. And, in doing so, she appears to have strengthened her political position. She&#8217;s running in a district that went for Donald Trump by more than 20 points in the last election. And yet, according to a recent Emerson College poll, Behn is within 2% points — within the margin of error — of winning this race. The Republican, Matt Van Epps, is barely holding onto the lead.
Before we get into the implications of this race for the Republican Party — and there are many implications — there are some recent videos you need to see. Without context, you might assume these clips are coming from some kind of satirical film about U.S. politics, like a modern-day take on &#8220;Anchorman.&#8221; 
They&#8217;re darkly hilarious, in many ways. But they&#8217;re very real. 
<h3>Watch:</h3>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
CNN: &#8220;Do you think it was a mistake to say you hated Nashville?&#8221;
AFTYN BEHN: &#8220;I was a private citizen.&#8221;
So yes, she still hates Nashville and people will still vote for her <a href="https://t.co/Lrg8jwsNXt">pic.twitter.com/Lrg8jwsNXt</a>
— Sara Rose 🇺🇸🌹 (@saras76) <a href="https://twitter.com/saras76/status/1995155204464083308?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 30, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @saras76/X.com
She can&#8217;t even muster up a single word of praise for Nashville — not a single positive thing — even when it&#8217;s teed up for her. The best she can do is utter a non sequitur about how she made the previous remarks bashing Nashville as a &#8220;private citizen,&#8221; as if that&#8217;s relevant in any way. But if anything, that makes it worse, because it means it&#8217;s what she actually believes. It&#8217;s something she said before she had an obvious incentive to lie, as a politician.
Of course, this woman knows what just happened in Virginia, where a Democrat sociopath — someone who says he wants conservatives and their children to die — just won the race for attorney general. She understands that Democrat voters are motivated, above all else, by hatred. And she&#8217;s made the calculation, at this point, that the only viable path forward is to appeal to Democrats&#8217; profound disdain for the world they live in (or, in this case, the city they live in).
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1700-the-matt-walsh-show?elementPosition=2&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-976065" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-768x128.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1-1536x256.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/Matt-watch-now-1.jpg 1800w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
To be clear, if she had just said that she hates the bachelorette parties in Nashville or whatever, that wouldn&#8217;t really be an issue. If she had said she just hates the pedal taverns and wants to abolish them and imprison everyone involved, I would wholeheartedly agree. But she explicitly stated that she also hates the entire city as a whole. And now she&#8217;s banking on the possibility that most people living in Nashville also hate the entire city — hate themselves, essentially. And frankly, she might be right.
In recent days, across various interviews with friendly outlets, Behn has used the same script when she&#8217;s been asked about her many, many other deranged comments. 
Here&#8217;s another example:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
NEW: CNN&#8217;s Kasie Hunt gives up and moves on after far-left congressional candidate Aftyn Behn of Tennessee refused to admit that funding the police is a good thing.
Hunt: Would you like more money for more cops on the streets in your district?
Behn: So those um, past comments… <a href="https://t.co/DScvVKZQYt">pic.twitter.com/DScvVKZQYt</a>
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) <a href="https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1995657250581742007?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 2, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @CollinRugg/X.com
Notice that, in this case, CNN attempts to do her a favor. They don&#8217;t show any of the &#8220;old posts&#8221; that they&#8217;re asking about. They think they&#8217;re teeing up a softball question — where she can safely say, without any pushback, that yes, she wants police departments to exist. This is one of those issues that, especially now that the George Floyd hysteria has subsided, is something you&#8217;d hope 100% of Americans would agree on.
But still, even with this very generous setup, she doesn&#8217;t give the answer that a well-adjusted, sane human being would give. Instead, she once again states that she was a &#8220;private citizen&#8221; when she made those &#8220;old posts,&#8221; which remain unmentioned. And then, when she&#8217;s pressed on her non-answer, she strongly suggests that, indeed, she still wants to defund the police, in the year 2025. She states that she&#8217;s going to defer to her &#8220;community,&#8221; rather than take any position of her own. And then she proceeds to say that her &#8220;community&#8221; wants &#8220;mental health services.&#8221; She never says her &#8220;community&#8221; wants to have a police department.
Again, it&#8217;s the kind of answer that will only appeal to you, as a voter, if you&#8217;re a deeply disturbed individual. And the more this woman rises in the polls, the more we have to ask ourselves if that&#8217;s a fair way to describe the entire Democrat Party — as in, every single voter they have.
Over at MSNBC — a.k.a. &#8220;MS NOW&#8221;  — the damage control went even worse for Aftyn Behn. That&#8217;s because, in this interview, the anchor actually put some of her tweets up on the screen, to great comedic effect.
<h3>Watch:</h3>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Democrat Aftyn Behn refuses THREE TIMES to walk back her previous calls to defund the police:
MSNBC: &#8220;Do you still stand by those comments?&#8221;
BEHN: &#8220;I&#8217;m not going to give cable news talking points&#8230;.
MSNBC: &#8220;What is your position today?&#8221;
BEHN: &#8220;I&#8217;m gonna talk about my race.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/92YRm2KMOk">pic.twitter.com/92YRm2KMOk</a>
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) <a href="https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1992748967491510366?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 24, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @RNCResearch/X.com
Yeah, she&#8217;s not going to get into &#8220;cable news talking points&#8221; — like addressing the question of whether she supports burning down police stations. That&#8217;s just a &#8220;talking point&#8221; — as in, it&#8217;s something that she explicitly stated that she supports, just a few years ago. And to this day, she won&#8217;t renounce it.
To be clear, Aftyn Behn is indeed a real person. This is a real candidate that the Democrat Party is running for a House seat. And they&#8217;re not disavowing her, or even criticizing her, in any way. Why would they? Behn represents the mainstream Democrat Party. That&#8217;s the important point here. If someone says he&#8217;s a Democrat, this is what he&#8217;s supporting.
And just to emphasize that point, the Democrat Party has come out and announced that they strongly support everything this woman is saying.
This is a post from <a href="https://x.com/kenmartin73/status/1995235893116821694?s=20">Ken Martin</a>, the chair of the Democrat Party, just a couple of days ago.
<blockquote>Democrats are building momentum. We’re all gas, no brakes. Let’s do everything we can to chip away at the GOP’s House majority. This Tuesday, get out and vote for Aftyn Behn if you live in TN-7!</blockquote>
So there it is. The highest levels of the Democrat Party have endorsed one of the most demented candidates to run for office in the modern history of this country. They&#8217;ve also endorsed all of this.
<h3>Watch: </h3>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
The Democrat Party is backing a candidate who wants to abolish police and thinks burning down police stations is justified.<a href="https://t.co/rzLjel5I5F">pic.twitter.com/rzLjel5I5F</a> <a href="https://t.co/KVbtPprrJR">https://t.co/KVbtPprrJR</a>
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) <a href="https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1995324387587727378?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 1, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @RNCResearch/X.com
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨 Democrat nominee for the upcoming TN07 special election Aftyn Behn condemns women who get married and start families&#8211; saying it&#8217;s the product of &#8220;deeply patriarchal structures&#8221;:
&#8220;My therapist always asks me to transcribe my dreams and the recurring dream I&#8217;ve had is standing… <a href="https://t.co/LTsYj0im7Q">pic.twitter.com/LTsYj0im7Q</a>
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) <a href="https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1993043067486527894?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 24, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @greg_price11/X.com
She says, &#8220;My therapist always asks me to transcribe my dreams, and the recurring dream I&#8217;ve had is standing up in a Cafeteria full of women and saying &#8216;I don&#8217;t want children. I want power!'&#8221;
Just by itself, 15 years ago, that statement would&#8217;ve been disqualifying, regardless of your politics. For one thing, she&#8217;s going around admitting that she&#8217;s in therapy — which obviously isn&#8217;t something you should brag about. There&#8217;s no reason to be proud of the fact that you&#8217;re paying someone with a master&#8217;s degree who has a vested interest in making sure you&#8217;re never &#8220;cured&#8221; of whatever disorder he&#8217;s diagnosed you with. That&#8217;s a point of shame, not pride. In fact, in a sane country, going to therapy would be disqualifying for any political candidate. If you need therapy, you are not mentally strong enough to hold political office, or any other position of importance.
But that clip gets even worse when she goes on to explain that marriage punishes women, and forces them into &#8220;patriarchal structures,&#8221; whatever that means. Maybe she&#8217;s talking about no-fault divorce laws, where women can cheat on their husbands, and then take half their assets. Who knows — she didn&#8217;t really elaborate, as far as I can tell.
What I do know is that there are many, many more clips that illustrate how unhinged this woman is. She also admitted that she follows around ICE vehicles, and harasses ICE officers and state troops, for example. She says she&#8217;s uncomfortable with Christian influence in government. And so on. But we&#8217;ll end with this clip — which we&#8217;ve played before — because it really underscores the extent of the threat that this woman, and the Democrat Party in general, pose to our country. This was how Aftyn Behn responded to the massacre of Christian men, women and children at the Covenant School in Nashville. In the aftermath of the shooting, she didn&#8217;t say she was worried about the safety of Christians, who had just been massacred because of their faith by a trans-identifying terrorist. Instead, she said the so-called &#8220;trans community&#8221; was under attack — and that, as a politician, one of her primary goals would be to go after me, and The Daily Wire. 
<h3>Watch:</h3>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
WATCH: This is how Democrat Aftyn Behn responded to the Covenant shooting, when a trans-identifying woman killed six at the Christian school.
It inspired Behn’s first run for office…so she could fight to protect “trans communities” and against Daily Wire and <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MattWalshBlog</a>. <a href="https://t.co/th13e1v6dW">pic.twitter.com/th13e1v6dW</a>
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDailyWire/status/1992975426193326512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 24, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @realDailyWire/X.com
The fact that a woman this deranged and evil even has the slightest possible chance to win the special election today — in a district that Trump carried by more than 20 points, in a deep-red state, in a race against a candidate who has been endorsed and heavily promoted by Donald Trump — is a very, very bad sign for the future of the Republican Party.
Over the past few months, we&#8217;ve talked about some major built-in advantages that Republicans are probably going to have, in future elections. If the Voting Rights Act is gutted by the Supreme Court, which is the expected outcome, Democrats will lose several seats in the House. And as more illegal aliens are deported, and as more people leave failing states like California and New York for states like Florida and Texas, Democrats will lose even more representation in Congress.
But these benefits only exist at the margins. They don&#8217;t protect the Republican Party against a complete and total collapse of popular support. And that appears to be where the party is headed, given that Democrats are running complete sociopaths — and winning, or coming very close to winning. If today&#8217;s election in Tennessee is indeed even somewhat close — if this woman isn&#8217;t completely blown out — then we are headed for the worst-case scenario, one year from now in the midterms. Democrats will sweep both houses of Congress, if this trend continues.
And we shouldn&#8217;t be surprised by that outcome, if it should come to pass. Republicans in Congress have been so ineffective that they&#8217;ve failed to give voters a single reason to support them. This is the point where, as we talked about yesterday, the Trump administration has to step in, and take decisive action — any kind of decisive action — that actually improves the lives of American citizens in some tangible way. Denaturalize as many Somali fraudsters as you can. Bomb as many drug dealers as possible. Suspend all foreign migration. Do something, or else you&#8217;ll be replaced very quickly by lunatics and craven degenerates like Aftyn Behn. Today&#8217;s election is a massive warning sign. The polling alone makes that very clear. We can either heed that warning now, while we still have time, or we will lose so badly in 2026 that, as a country and as a movement, we may never recover.

MixCollage-02-Dec-2025-04-42-PM-4216

This Is The Platform That Psycho Feminist Aftyn Behn Is Running On. It’s Crazier Than I Thought.

This Is The Platform That Psycho Feminist Aftyn Behn Is Running On. It's Crazier Than I Thought.

Congress

Democrats

Matt Walsh

Tennessee

U.S. House of Representatives

Seattle’s incoming mayor, Katie Wilson, will inherit a homelessness crisis that will define her ability to lead.
Seattle’s homeless population needs more than another round of aspirational promises. They need and deserve an operational reset grounded in compassion, accountability, and the courage to confront realities the city has failed to address for years.
She must replace press releases and ceremonial groundbreakings for housing that may never materialize with programs that support the homeless in reclaiming their lives from the grip of untreated mental illness, addiction, and dangerous encampments that have taken root throughout the city.
The scale of Seattle’s crisis is staggering. HUD’s 2024 Point-in-Time count identified <a href="https://kcrha.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Point-in-Time-Count-2024_King-County_final.pdf">16,868 people struggling with homelessness in King County</a> — 7,058 sheltered and 9,810 unsheltered — yet even this understates the emergency. It omits the thousands of K-12 students and their families couch-surfing or scraping together money for a few nights in a motel. And at the current 23% growth rate, Mayor Wilson will walk into office confronting a humanitarian emergency approaching 22,500 people.
Meanwhile, encampments proliferate, fentanyl deaths continue at historic highs, and families, businesses, and public workers bear the daily trauma of a system that is not working.
For years, Seattle has clung to the comforting illusion that more subsidized housing units alone will solve homelessness. Despite billions in public spending, housing pipelines remain clogged, construction timelines stretch into decades, and operating costs soar.
But for the majority of those living unsheltered — 78% of whom are struggling with serious mental illness or addiction — homelessness is not merely a housing shortage. It is the downstream consequence of untreated disease.
Often further complicating their illnesses is a condition called anosognosia that prevents them from recognizing their own illness. Consequently, they decline help not because they choose the street, but because their minds cannot see another path.
The mayor must change this trajectory.
If she intends to succeed where past administrations have failed, she must look to the <a href="https://www.discovery.org/m/securepdfs/2025/11/Local-Jurisdictions-Leverage-Homelessness-Reforms.pdf">Discovery Institute’s new report</a>, which details exactly how cities can harness forthcoming federal reforms to drive real results. 
Her reset must include:
<h3>1. Prioritize transitional and treatment-based recovery models</h3>
Seattle must stop investing disproportionately in permanent supportive housing that takes years to build and rarely addresses root causes. It must instead prioritize transitional recovery housing that is staffed with clinicians, case managers, and vocational supports, and must require engagement in these services as a condition of stay.
<h3>2. Partner with high-performing recovery organizations</h3>
Non-profits such as We Heart Seattle and Union Gospel Mission Rescue Missions have a great track record in helping individuals transition to stability. These organizations know how to walk with people through trauma, detoxification, relapse, and rebuilding. Make these organizations central to the city’s strategy — not an afterthought.
<h3>3. Empower and deploy multidisciplinary “CARE+” outreach units</h3>
Combine mental health professionals, emergency responders, and trained law enforcement to intervene proactively, stabilize crises, and compel psychiatric or addiction evaluations when individuals pose clear risks to themselves or others. Washington’s Involuntary Treatment Act already provides necessary tools, but they must be used more consistently and, of course, humanely.
<h3>4. Enforce public health and safety laws to restore order while providing pathways to treatment</h3>
In City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Supreme Court affirmed that Seattle can ban public camping to restore order and safety for all residents. In tandem with this effort, the city must provide the homeless with restorative programs.
<h3>5. Demand performance, not platitudes, at every level of the system</h3>
Seattle must instill accountability at every level of the homeless system: from the individual, to the non-profit, to the government officials responsible for the homeless system.
It must measure outcomes and provide quarterly dashboards on those outcomes and the spending required to achieve those outcomes. Housing without treatment is a revolving door. Harm reduction without recovery is slow-motion abandonment. But it doesn’t have to stay this way.
Katie, you have the chance to lead Seattle into a future where compassion is not a slogan, but a force that restores people and the city they call home.
This is your moment. History will remember the mayor who chose courage over habit, transformation over stagnation. Seattle’s soul is waiting to be mended. Now is the time to lead the city there.
* * *
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.
* * *
Right now, DailyWire+ annual memberships are fifty percent off during our Black Friday sale. Join now at <a href="http://dailywire.com/blackfriday">dailywire.com/blackfriday</a>.

Seattle Street with Homeless Encampment and Space Needle

‘Humanitarian Emergency’: Seattle’s New Mayor Must Bring An End To The City’s Homelessness Crisis

'Humanitarian Emergency': Seattle's New Mayor Must Bring An End To The City's Homelessness Crisis

Democratic Socialism

Homelessness

Mental Illness

Seattle

Washington State

Two months after the assassination of Charlie Kirk on a college campus in Utah, a Turning Point USA event at the University of California, Berkeley, erupted in violence. <a href="https://calmatters.org/education/2025/11/uc-berkeley-turning-point-fights-arrests/">Over the course of several hours</a>, protesters tried to shut down the event, launched projectiles at attendees, engaged in physical altercations, and sent one attendee to the hospital. While this rightfully prompted an investigation by the Department of Justice’s <a href="https://x.com/AAGDhillon/status/1988272046741111268">Civil Rights Division</a>, the Berkeley riot, and indeed, Kirk’s assassination itself, point to a broader problem: the utter failure of American universities to foster intellectual diversity and a culture of free speech on their campuses.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
We saw all of this at Berkeley back in 2017. <a href="https://twitter.com/UCBerkeley?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@UCBerkeley</a> was sued, and settled the case.
The <a href="https://twitter.com/CivilRights?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@CivilRights</a> will investigate what happened here, and I see several issues of serious concern regarding campus and local security and Antifa’s ability to operate with impunity in CA. <a href="https://t.co/aN7JzouXwl">https://t.co/aN7JzouXwl</a>
— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) <a href="https://twitter.com/AAGDhillon/status/1988272046741111268?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 11, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
One reason Turning Point USA events and other events featuring conservative speakers turn violent is that college students are accustomed to living in ideological echo chambers. A <a href="https://www.thefire.org/sites/default/files/2024/12/Faculty-Report-2024-Final.pdf">2024 report</a> by the nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) demonstrates with raw numbers just how bad the problem is. 55% of conservative faculty (compared to just 17% of liberal faculty) hide their political views to protect their jobs. Just 20% of respondents indicated that a conservative individual would be a somewhat or very positive fit in their department, compared to 71% agreeing that a liberal individual would be a positive addition. 47% of conservative faculty feel they cannot express their opinion on a subject because of how other faculty, students, or administrators would respond. While conservative students may be attending and even teaching classes, often unbeknownst to others, a Turning Point USA event may be the first time many students are exposed to the ideas they have learned to perceive as unacceptable or even evil.
Allowing Turning Point USA to hold events — only after imposing exorbitant security fees and forcing organizers through a Byzantine permitting process — is nowhere near enough. The First Amendment requires as much. Universities have an obligation to their students, and indeed, to the country, to expose students to a broad range of ideas. Rather than let racial diversity drive hiring decisions, universities should strive to ensure that conservative views are represented in social studies and humanities departments. Students should be exposed to the ideas of conservative philosophers, economists, and historians, just as they will invariably be exposed to those of liberal (and even Marxist) thinkers. Universities should cultivate debating societies where participants must advocate positions that differ from their own, and audiences are exposed to competing ideas. And when organizations like Turning Point USA host events, university leaders need not endorse the viewpoints their speakers express, but they should make clear that the speaker is welcome on campus. While a university president attending a Turning Point USA event would likely inflame controversy in the short term, it would send a strong signal that the university’s commitment to intellectual diversity is real.
Fostering open dialogue and the free exchange of ideas is only half the battle. University administrators should adopt zero-tolerance policies for efforts to interfere with others’ speech and learning on college campuses, violent and non-violent alike. Students who engage in violence must be disciplined, up to and including expulsion. Too many universities give students a free pass when their violence relates to a conservative speaker rather than some interpersonal squabble. But engaging in violence to shut down speech makes the conduct worse, not better, as it is inimical to the purpose of a university. Administrators should craft course evaluations that assess whether the instructor fostered a free exchange of ideas and take it seriously when instructors flunk this critical test. Professors who shut down speech or foster self-censorship should adapt to the new norms or find a different profession.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination should have served as a wake-up call to American universities. While the suspect was not a Utah Valley University student, the shooting nonetheless spoke to a broader failure in American higher education. Too many students see conservative viewpoints as tantamount to violence, and those viewpoints are thus seldom expressed. And when they are, such as at Turning Point USA’s recent event in Berkeley, a violent response is all too common. Universities must take action to reverse this erosion of free speech by prioritizing the robust exchange of opposing views and disciplining, rather than coddling, those who exercise a heckler’s veto against conservative speech.
* * *
Jesse Franklin-Murdock is the Miles Visiting Fellow at the Center for American Liberty and a counsel at Dhillon Law Group Inc., where his practice areas include political law and civil rights.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Turning Point USA Tour Event Held At University Of California, Berkeley

The Violence At Berkeley Exposes A Broader Failure In Higher Education

Berkeley, California

California

Charlie Kirk

First Amendment

Free Speech

Political Violence

Rob Schneider

Turning Point USA

University of California Berkeley

There is a serious battle happening inside the Democratic Party, ranging from the radicals — led by people like Zohran Mamdani, AOC, and Bernie Sanders — to the more traditional liberals, who don&#8217;t seem to have any sort of systemic immunity, to the moderate Democrats who are increasingly feeling out of step with their own party. 
Meanwhile, President Trump just keeps trucking along. Yesterday, the president of the United States spent Veterans Day <a href="https://www.c-span.org/program/white-house-event/veterans-day-observance-ceremony/668831">speaking</a> about the value of our veterans, stating:
<blockquote>This morning, on these hallowed grounds where generations of American heroes rest in eternal glory, we gather to fulfill the sacred duty of every free man and woman. On Veterans Day, we honor those who have worn the uniform, who have borne the battle, who have stood to watch, whose ranks have formed the mighty wall of flesh and blood, bravery and devotion, that has defended our freedom for 250 years. Today, to every veteran — we love our veterans — we say the words too often left unsaid: “Thank you for your service.”</blockquote>
President Trump has a baseline level of patriotism that comes through in everything that he does. The man truly loves this country and obviously loves the American flag and the American military.
He continued by speaking about what we owe to the military — something the radical Democrats do not believe — saying:
<blockquote>Yet every captain of industry, every pioneer of science, and every star whose brilliance has lit up the lights of Broadway, all share one thing in common. They only had the chance to show up because the veterans had the courage to serve. They took care of those people. They took care of all the stars. The stars that you read about wouldn&#8217;t be here without our veterans. Everything we have, everything our country has achieved, has been purchased by the muscle, spine and steel of the United States military. We owe it all to the fierce and noble men and women of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, Space Force, Coast Guard, and the United States Marines.</blockquote>
Contrast that with how Hasan Piker has been spending the last few days. He went to China, and while he was in China, he decided that he was <a href="https://x.com/DrewPavlou/status/1988137151666811252?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1988137151666811252%7Ctwgr%5Ef2722b4aaef4e9a3eebbeeca5a382b177a407c5a%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediaite.com%2Fmedia%2Fnews%2Fhasan-piker-declares-i-dont-have-any-patriotism-for-america-while-streaming-from-tiananmen-square%2F">going to blather</a> about how America is terrible —  in a country that legitimately censors everything you do, kills its opposition, and runs them over with tanks. Hasan Piker was in Tiananmen Square, where protesters against the Chinese government were murdered.
“I don&#8217;t have any sort of patriotism in my heart for America, but just in general. &#8230; I care about people,” he declared.
If that is the choice that Americans are given, and if Democrats continue to embrace this sort of radicalism, they are in some real trouble.
Hasan Piker is, of course, fairly close with Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor-elect of New York. He attended his victory party in New York, where he was going around saying on camera that it was a tragedy that the Soviet Union had collapsed.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2316-the-democrats-circular-firing-squad-continues?elementPosition=5&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+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>
So, radicals are taking over the Democratic Party. There&#8217;s no question they are the ones with the momentum at this point, if the Democratic Party refuses to stand up and say no.
On Monday, there was a protest that turned into <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/chaos-breaks-out-at-tpusa-event-as-leftist-agitators-harass-attendees">a small riot</a> outside a TPUSA event at the University of California, Berkeley. This sort of thing has become common; Antifa radicals and their allies show up at events such as the TPUSA event.
Are there enough normie Democrats to stop this radicalism from taking over the party? The problem for them is that they are perfectly willing to go along with this sort of thing.
The liberal mainstream Democratic Party wants to capture what they think is the jet fuel of the radicals. Thus, Gavin Newsom <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/11/11/gavin-newsom-shames-democrats-who-caved-in-shutdown-battle-pathetic-capitulation-and-a-betrayal/">raged</a> against the end of the shutdown. His press office <a href="https://x.com/GavinNewsom/status/1987703732600184837?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1987703732600184837%7Ctwgr%5E807c3bcc7a79a3fba5814b124ef44e98f88738fd%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Ft%2Fassets%2Fhtml%2Ftweet-5.html1987703732600184837">put out</a> a <a href="https://x.com/GovPressOffice/status/1987664398014677442?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1987664398014677442%7Ctwgr%5E07e1858e7a95c5c9a4f8972a44bd6f9566a290ab%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Ft%2Fassets%2Fhtml%2Ftweet-5.html1987664398014677442">statement</a>: “Pathetic. This isn&#8217;t a deal. It&#8217;s a surrender. Don&#8217;t bend the knee!”
That’s Gavin Newsom linking arms with the radicals in his own party. J.B. Pritzker, who, like Newsom, wants to run for president, also said that the government should remain closed. 
California Rep. Ro Khanna <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/11/12/ro-khanna-senate-democrats-shutdown-schumer/">says</a> the Democratic leadership is “out of touch.”
To understand what’s now happening inside the Democratic Party, look no further than the historical analogy found in the Russian Revolution. There were some soft socialists, the so-called Russian whites, led by a guy named Alexander Kerensky. They were trying to hold off the Reds, and started off in an unenviable position militarily, but ended up winning because eventually there wasn&#8217;t enough systemic immunity to stop them.
That&#8217;s where we are right now. The systemic immunity is gone.
We&#8217;ll see how long this current Democratic Party can last without splintering into pieces.

New York Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani Holds Election Rally With Bernie Sanders And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Democrats Aim Inward: The Circular Firing Squad Continues

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Ben Shapiro

Bernie Sanders

Donald Trump

Gavin Newsom

Zohran Mamdani

MixCollage-10-Nov-2025-03-23-PM-5263

American Elections Are Now Being Decided Based On Tribal Blood Feuds In Africa

Elections

Minneapolis

Minnesota

Somalia

Veterans

World War II

The Free Press has <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/inside-the-dsas-hostile-takeover">reviewed</a> internal Democratic Socialists of America documents that show the organization&#8217;s leaders view Mamdani as a tool in their agenda to abolish prisons and borders and ultimately end what they call the “barbaric order of capitalism.”
The Free Press continued:
<blockquote>The DSA, founded in 1982, is a political body dedicated to the doctrine of democratic socialism, which is a variety of socialism that simply specifies how it would like revolution to occur: peacefully, through the subversion of democracy. Mamdani, a dues-paying DSA member since 2017, is the tip of that spear. </blockquote>
The Left constantly screws around with the definitions of terms. Socialism, typically speaking, is government control of the market-based order, nationalization of resources, getting rid of the pricing system, etc.
There are touches of socialism in a capitalist economy. This is called a mixed system. The United States obviously has a mixed system. So do Denmark and Norway. Fully socialist countries include Cuba and North Korea. China is an economically fascist system that has maintained aspects of nationalization, but then allowed certain aspects of the private market to operate so they could actually have a workable pricing system.
When people say democratic socialism, sometimes they mean Norway and sometimes they mean the DSA, which is to say, communism achieved through democratic means. 
<blockquote>The DSA held its <a href="https://convention2025.dsausa.org/">annual convention</a> in August, with the theme “Rebirth and Beyond: Reflecting on a decade of DSA’s growth and preparing for a decade of party building.” There, delegates voted to adopt a resolution titled “Principles for Party-Building,” which stated that the purpose of the DSA is “to unite workers to win the battle for democracy and bring about socialism, not to seek a governing coalition with a perceived lesser evil under the current undemocratic political system.” The resolution stated that the goals go beyond the White House. “A socialist party in the United States,” the document said, “must be a part of the global political movement of the working class.” </blockquote>
These are communists. They have nothing to do with the traditional Democratic Party, and yet they have more and more power. They have made it a full-time job to infiltrate school boards and majorities all over the country.
And they&#8217;re not being stopped.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2312-fear-and-loathing-reds-take-new-york?elementPosition=6&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+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>
There&#8217;s going to be a whole new wave of DSA-inspired candidates all across America. State Rep. Ruwa Romman is running for Georgia governor in 2026. She, of course, has talked about how Israel is a fascist government, which is table stakes for the DSA. She canvassed for Mamdani. She&#8217;s mainly driven by radical Third Worldism that is deeply connected to antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment. Her bid is a long shot in that Democratic primary, but she is running.
Graham Platner is very likely to win the Senate nomination in Maine in 2026. He, too, is a radical in the mold of Zohran Mamdani. He&#8217;s taken some hits because he had a giant Nazi tattoo on his chest, which he then denied was a Nazi tattoo, and then covered it up with an even uglier tattoo. But he is a democratic socialist.
Kat Abughazaleh is a candidate for Illinois&#8217;s ninth congressional district in 2026. She has a lot of followers on TikTok. She, like Mamdani, is very social media-savvy. She was indicted by a federal grand jury recently for allegedly blocking vehicles outside an ICE facility. Although she&#8217;s not formally DSA, her platform basically mirrors DSA.
There’s Kshama Sawant, who’s running for Washington&#8217;s ninth congressional district in 2026, and is an open Marxist. There’s Abdul El-Sayed, running for U.S. Senate in Michigan in 2026.
These candidates are very much to the Left, and the Democratic Party seems to have very little systemic immunity to them.
And all it&#8217;s going to cost you if they win is all your money and all your freedom.

Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani Holds News Conference Day After Being Elected Mayor Of New York City

The Democratic Socialist Plan To Take Over America

Communism

New York City

Mamdani Makes History With Decisive Win In NYC Mayor’s Race

The Pundits Are All Wrong About Why Mamdani Won

Gen Z

Illegal Immigration

Manhattan

Mayor

“You did it! You really finally did it, you maniacs! You blew it up, damn you!”
The Statue of Liberty is half-buried in the sand now, and Charlton Heston is yelling at it because of what New York City just decided to do.
By an overwhelming margin, New Yorkers handed over the financial center of planet Earth to a Marxist pro-jihadist named Zohran Mamdani, who has never held a real job.
It&#8217;s a bold strategy, Cotton. We&#8217;ll see how it works out for them.
Mamdani is not hiding the ball. He intends to implement major changes in America&#8217;s financial center, the financial center of planet Earth. He intends to make a new system that is going to destroy capitalism. 
Will he be able to accomplish that? There are some checks on him. 
Many of the promises he has made are like a third-grader running for school president who promises: “Free ice cream for everybody and no homework” was basically his campaign. If he said “affordability” over and over and over and then threw out a bunch of random things that he would never be able to do, he would be elected mayor.
It worked.
We now live in a political era characterized — on both sides — by people accurately diagnosing problems and then not proposing any real solutions while saying, “If you give me ultimate power, I will solve it for you.”
It never works.
Democrats are resistant to the idea that Mamdani is the future of the party. Hakeem Jeffries suggested that he was not the face of the party. But I&#8217;m old enough to remember when Democrats said AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib were not the face of the party.
And now they are.
It will be interesting to see how the Democratic Party treats him. Do they treat him as an outsider? Do they say that he&#8217;s “sort of quirky,” the way they treated Bill de Blasio, or do they embrace him and try to draft off of the energy that he obviously captured in the middle of this campaign?
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2311"><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>
One of the lies that is constantly told about socialist candidates like Mamdani is that they are the people who get blue-collar voters, that they excite blue-collar voters. But America and Europe are different; historically speaking, European blue-collar workers tend toward socialism, but that does not happen in America. In America, blue-collar workers have always been fond of capitalism because it is what provides their jobs. Even in the early union days of the United States, the unions were quite actively anti-communist in the United States in a way that they simply were not in Europe. That remains true today.
What drove Mamdani to victory were immigrants, extreme leftists, and college-educated young women. Some of the latter is because Mamdani, with the smarmy grin and the inability to bench-press 135 pounds, seems particularly non-threatening, as opposed to Andrew Cuomo, who was ousted from office over his inability to keep his hands off the asses of women.
If this is the future of the Democratic Party, go for it, guys. It&#8217;s playing with fire. New York City is playing with fire. Mamdani’s policy proposals are trash. If he implements any of them, the city is in serious trouble.
There are systemic checks and balances that prevent Mamdani from single-handedly destroying the city. If he wants to raise taxes, he has to go to the state level. And the state legislature is very unlikely to want to increase taxes again. He says that he wants to make all the buses free, and he&#8217;s going to pay for it. How&#8217;s he going to do any of this stuff?
He won&#8217;t be able to get any of that stuff done, and then he will rail against the system.
Mamdani will make the business climate disastrous. Crime will go up. His proposals are foolish in the extreme.
Typically when you win, you tend to quote the founding ideals of the country. Mamdani did not. His entire victory speech was about how America historically is trash and how all of the fundamental principles of America are trash, and how he&#8217;s here to change things on a radical, fundamental level.
He quoted Eugene Debs, a socialist candidate from the 1910s and Nehru, the socialist leader of the non-aligned India in the post-partition era. There was no Washington; there was no Jefferson; there was no Lincoln. He said there&#8217;s a mandate for a new kind of politics, a mandate for a city we can “afford.”
All of these plans are trash.
He says that there&#8217;s a “mandate for change.” There&#8217;s always a mandate for change. That&#8217;s what elections are.
I&#8217;m very much looking forward to never having to pay for a hotel again in New York. I&#8217;m just gonna ride the buses around. I&#8217;ll just get on and ride them for free. Why the hell not? As long as I don&#8217;t get stabbed in the face, which may very well happen in a city of New York governed by Zohran Mamdani, who thinks that the police are inhibitors of human freedom.
H.L. Mencken, the famous columnist from the early 20th century, once said that democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
I hope you enjoy what you wrought, New Yorkers.
And I&#8217;m glad that I have some Florida real estate that is available at a fetching price.

TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-VOTE-NEW YORK-MAMDANI

New Yorkers Take The Bait

Marxism

U.S. Politics

When you think about corporate wokeness, what comes to mind? DEI and ESG policies might be the most prominent examples, for good reason. But as someone in the industry of corporate engagement, helping investors use their financial influence to root out bias from America’s biggest brands, we often find ourselves asking this question: who determines parameters? Wokeness is parasitical, and its most subtle and pernicious effects emerge by latching on to legitimate corporate policies and twisting them to serve political ends.
Among the most parasitical of these organizations is the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). An activist group <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/about/our-history/">formed</a> in 1971 to combat the influence of Jim Crow, the SPLC has gradually <a href="https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/heritage-explains/what-went-wrong-the-southern-poverty-law-center">morphed</a> into a group peddling the false equivalence between conservatives and hate groups. Case in point: the SPLC’s infamous “<a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map/?hm_year=2024&amp;hm_ideology=Neo-Nazi">hate map</a>.” The SPLC would like you to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Making-Hate-Pay-Corruption-Southern/dp/1642934399">believe</a> that the map represents American hate in an image, with many of the groups on the map, such as the Klan, white supremacists, and the Westboro Baptist Church, being genuine hate groups. And yet, when you look at the list, you’ll see some groups that decidedly aren’t hateful: Alliance Defending Freedom, American Family Association, Focus on the Family, Moms for Liberty — and an Arizona-based nonprofit called Turning Point USA. The SPLC specifically <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SPLCenter/posts/at-the-forefront-of-the-movement-to-promote-christian-supremacy-is-turning-point/1116433363845757/">lambasted</a> TPUSA as ‘hard-right’ in June of 2025, and <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/turning-point-usa-case-study-hard-right-2024/">even</a> smeared them as part of the political Right’s alleged efforts to “enforce a social order rooted in white supremacy.” Let’s be clear: the SPLC isn’t giving you a hate list. This is a list of groups, ranging from true extremists to normal conservative groups, that the Southern Poverty Law Center would simply like you to believe are all hateful.
<div id="attachment_995255" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map/"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-995255" class="wp-image-995255 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/SPLC-hate-map-1024x534.jpg" alt="Screenshot: SPLC/Hate Map" width="1024" height="534" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/SPLC-hate-map-1024x534.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/SPLC-hate-map-300x156.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/SPLC-hate-map-768x401.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/SPLC-hate-map-1536x801.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/11/SPLC-hate-map.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>Screenshot: SPLC/Hate Map</div>
What matters right now is that some of America’s biggest companies have used the list to guide their corporate policies. Brands as big as Meta (Facebook), Alphabet (Google), and Amazon have used the SPLC’s Hate List for everything from writing their ‘hate speech’ policies to determining which charities they’ll support via employee philanthropy programs. In the SPLC’s eyes (a perspective granted legitimacy by some of the world’s most prominent brands), groups like Turning Point were indeed synonymous with hate.
It’s not about corporations approving of Charlie Kirk’s death (to my knowledge, that hasn’t happened). It’s about corporations enforcing bias, discriminating against conservative and Christian organizations, under the mistaken belief that this means stopping hate. If we are to move away from a society where people are shot for their political and religious views, this premise must be completely repudiated by America’s private sector. We have serious work to do.
And conservatives are <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/10/19/manufacturing-hate-conservatives-pressure-companies-drop-ties-splc/">spearheading</a> that work and using their influence to hold companies accountable for relying on the SPLC’s metrics.
This isn’t about politics, at the end of the day. It’s about getting back to business. It’s almost impossible for a company to claim to have a serious policy on combating “hate” when the organizations that define “hateful” think that the KKK and Turning Point USA belong in the same category. (This is perhaps most evident with companies like Etsy, which apparently has a problem with SPLC-deemed hate groups like TPUSA, <a href="https://www.etsy.com/legal/prohibited/">citing</a> the SPLC in their hate policies, but less of a problem with literal witches that used Etsy to <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/celebrity/articles/paid-etsy-witches-curse-charlie-124930762.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKyrSgpE_OwZ4ZR9-uaiwD15C8F7KUQ405vwpfm8CjcwAeChUfbh3bmjBTuc8iTlS74uYN3GdjWWsjSOo_gGO4Dw16hFSDCc3lCkWsbXSKy1gKoLh2Bpbh7lCm3xFwWgHkWF7b7nDllJwQMVulraHE_qktJz9S6stmmTzmYVYe-h">buy</a> an actual “hate” hex to put on Charlie Kirk shortly before he died. Because that’s not hate speech.)
As The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles recently <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzs6dy74Ew8">told</a> Congress, left-wing political violence is a serious threat to the marketplace of ideas in 2025. The Southern Poverty Law Center is only part of the problem. But, as the FBI cuts <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/10/03/breaking-kash-patels-fbi-cuts-all-ties-southern-poverty-law-center/">ties</a> with the SPLC, it’s time for America’s private sector to do the same. Corporate America didn’t get Charlie Kirk killed — a gunman who believed Kirk was spreading hate did. But it’s time to get serious about how organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center reflect the same poisonous idea: that conservatism and Christianity are hateful. We are seeing now that some people will take that framing and use it to rip the peaceful fabric of society apart.
The post-Charlie Kirk world isn’t one where we can afford to wallow. There’s work to be done. It’s time for us to take all the sadness and grief of this moment and channel it into culture-building energy — for Charlie, and for the country we all love. The SPLC, and a disturbing amount of the Left, would like you (and many of America’s biggest brands) to believe that mainstream conservative views are akin to hate. That idea doesn’t warrant any support in the ideas market. And the organizations that promote that idea don’t deserve to guide our capital markets.
The best time for corporate America to ditch the SPLC was years ago, before a 31-year-old husband and father lost his life after being smeared as part of a hate group. The second-best time is now.
* * *
Isaac Willour is an award-winning journalist focusing on race, culture, and American conservatism, as well as a corporate relations analyst at Bowyer Research. His work has been featured at outlets including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Opinion, C-SPAN, and The Daily Wire. He is a member of the Young Voices contributor program and can be found on X <a href="https://twitter.com/IsaacWillour" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@IsaacWillour</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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How The Southern Poverty Law Center Poisoned Corporate America

Conservatives

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Hate Speech

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

TPUSA

The first rule of a Marxist revolution is that it must always eat its own. We&#8217;re beginning to see that even before Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor of New York, which has a very high likelihood according to the betting markets.
The supposed heartburn is already setting in because here is the problem: Once people begin to govern, there are actual rules to governance. You have to be a person capable of carrying out the office of the mayor, and there are obstacles to that.
Thus, all of the bizarre, radical signaling that Mamdani has been doing runs up against reality. Make no mistake, Mamdani has embraced Marxism and jihadism. This is a person whose parents are radical; he&#8217;s a second-generation radical. His father compared Abraham Lincoln to Adolf Hitler.
Mamdani came to America as one of the privileged scions of an immigrant family. His father is a Columbia University anti-American professor; his mom is an anti-American producer, both of whom believe in a racial hierarchy of victimhood.
POLITICO reported:
<blockquote>Zohran Mamdani and New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America will have some relationship issues to iron out if he’s elected mayor of the nation’s largest metropolis. The DSA has been integral to his success.</blockquote>
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is a revolutionary movement. They&#8217;re not interested in governance. They&#8217;re interested in revolution. They want to overthrow capitalism. They want to overthrow the Constitution. They hate all of these things.
But the problem is that once they get people elected to office, those people have to operate within some boundaries.
More from POLITICO:
<blockquote>How the arrangement will work should Mamdani win on Nov. 4 is uncharted territory. “One of two things will happen: They will give him a grace period and let him get his sea legs and recognize that compromise is a way to get something done, or they become one of his biggest obstacles,” said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University. “And if that happens, he’ll be fighting people from the right and the left.”</blockquote>
It is clear that that he is going to be moderate in some areas because he doesn&#8217;t want to completely destroy all credibility with the New York population; he wants to retain NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch; he&#8217;s committed to following through with the city&#8217;s plan to build for new jails to replace Rikers, which is something that both he and the DSA had previously opposed.
We&#8217;ll see if the DSA will give him any space. My theory is that they will give him some space, that they will allow him to be as revolutionary as he wants to be within the format that has been provided to him, and then they will gradually hollow out the movement.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2308-the-ben-shapiro-show?elementPosition=3&amp;row=2&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>
What the DSA is realizing is something that people from all sides of the political aisle are realizing: If you maintain your extremely radical ground, but you operate within the party system, you&#8217;re able to more quickly take power than if you operate outside the party system and browbeat people. Hijacking a party is far easier than forming your own, and then ideologically twisting and turning it.
All this heartburn, this angst, is going to be overplayed.
The hard-leftists know exactly who Mamdani is. They know he&#8217;s a revolutionary, and they are perfectly happy to travel with him, knowing that his heart is in the revolutionary place.
Perhaps he ends up stopping short. Maybe they end up turning on him when he&#8217;s no longer useful to the movement. Marxist movements have a real habit of doing this.
They will turn on absolute butchers like Leon Trotsky if it turns out that he is now inhibiting the next step of the revolution.
But I think they will give Zohran Mamdani an awful lot of rope with which to hang the city of New York before they make those sorts of moves. The Democratic Party has now built itself around the radicals, which is why you see Ilhan Omar out there as a chief advocate for Mamdani, on the basis that he is being attacked for his Islamic religion, not for the pro-jihadism or the pro-Marxism, or for the fact that he&#8217;s never held a real day job and that he&#8217;s one of the great leeches on the butt of American society.
The revolution is the only thing that matters here. The truth doesn&#8217;t matter. That&#8217;s true even for many voters in New York. There&#8217;s a <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15235585/mamdani-poll-terrifying-nightmare-new-york.html">brand new poll</a> out, talking about what New Yorkers think is going to happen if Mamdani is elected. The poll shows that many New Yorkers who do not support Mamdani are convinced he&#8217;s going to destroy New York. They think that his mayoralty will mark a return to the urban decay of the 1980s, when the city was blighted by poverty, rampant crime, crumbling infrastructure, and abandoned buildings.
It&#8217;s not as though New Yorkers are unaware of what&#8217;s happening here. New Yorkers are perfectly aware. It&#8217;s just that they are willing to risk it. They&#8217;re willing to risk it because they want to make a revolutionary statement.
The bottom line is that a plurality of New Yorkers understand things are going to be bad, but they don&#8217;t have the strength to stop him. That is the real key to this election.
Many mainstream Democratic figures have swirled and swiveled behind Mamdani and decided that it&#8217;s perfectly fine for him to take a leadership position.
This is what happens when the so-called moderates are more invested in the success of the party than they are in the principles of the party. They give way to people who are more interested in shifting and moving the principles of the party than they are in the success of the party.
* * *
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NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani Campaigns Ahead Of Next Week’s Election

The Democratic Socialists Of America Prepare For Victory

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