Dear Weekend Jolter,
To get ahead of the inevitable press release headlines from the Bukharins of Brooklyn: A Mamdani victory on Tuesday is not a mandate for socialism. Or for a return to the style of grievance- and identity-based politics that voters have grown so tired of (just ask KJP how well that tactic is working these days).
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tried mightily at last weekend's Mamdani rally to portray their collective and collectivist cause as conventional, even mainstream. By eliding the means of their proposals (costly government programs with checkered track records) and focusing on the hoped-for ends (affordability!), she brushed off the reputation such ideas have for being "outlandish and radical."
"We must remember in a time such as this, we are not the crazy ones, New York City. We are not the outlandish ones, New York City. They want us to think we are crazy — we are sane," she declared.
If you're thinking, That is exactly what a crazy person might say, you're not alone. Here's Dan McLaughlin:
Just as it is never a good sign when you have to tell people that you're not a witch or a secret Nazi, it's typically not a good sign for the breadth of the appeal of your political movement when you have to deny being crazy. It is fitting that AOC paid tribute to Eugene V. Debs, who topped out at 5.99 percent of the national popular vote in 1912 (dropping to 3.41 percent in 1920 after they gave women the vote).
AOC went on to claim that NYC is the "rule," not the "exception," and that the post-Trump future "belongs to us." This, of course, was something of a prewrite of those aforementioned press releases and posts that will flood social media if Mamdani wins as expected in the New York City mayoral race. They will tout his Bernie-style politics as the future of the "fighting" Democratic Party, hoping to outshout and overpower any attention paid to the more moderate Abigail Spanberger's also-expected victory in the Virginia gubernatorial race.
But, Dan writes, "New York City politics has been highly unrepresentative of the state and country for so long that no mayor of the city has been elected to higher office since John Hoffman was elected governor in 1868."
Not only is New York City unrepresentative of even its own state; as Dan writes, Mamdani has also been aided immensely by the "perfect storm of corrupt, weird, and unlikable establishment Democrats or an eccentric populist Republican" running against him.
Maybe Mamdani would still be ahead in a race that didn't feature a previously indicted incumbent who later dropped out and a widely loathed former governor with so many skeletons he needs to keep half of them in off-site storage. But he probably wouldn't be a shoo-in. Jeff Blehar puts the choice thus:
Cuomo is the grim, joylessly corrupt embodiment of everything that people feel isn't working about the New York Democratic establishment — and he's allegedly a tush-groping creep on top of it all. Electing an inexperienced progressive outsider who promises free gifts and redistributive revenge against the wealthy — and moonlights as an intifada enjoyer — might not normally seem like a smart move, but when faced with Andrew Cuomo as your other serious choice? Well, in that case, second look at the communist.
(Phil Klein also explains why Cuomo, not Republican Curtis Sliwa, should get the blame if Mamdani wins.)
Naturally, it helps any Democrat running for office next week that President Trump, with his daily outrages, can be their foil. But even in Definitely-Not-Crazy New York City, Mamdani's polling has more or less plateaued, while Cuomo has surged nine points since Mayor Eric Adams dropped out and endorsed him, according to the latest Suffolk University survey. The race remains Mamdani's to lose, as Noah Rothman writes, but his enthusiastic supporters continue to constitute a minority in New York City.
This is not a model for national Democratic success, no matter how much the Zohran boosters might wish it to be so.
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One last thing before you go (or scroll through the highlights below) — our webathon is now in full swing, so if you've thought about donating and haven't yet gotten around to it, well, here's that link. We appreciate anything you can chip in or, if it's a very large amount, heave in with considerable physical effort. Thank you once more.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
Tucker Carlson's friendly interview with the noxious Nick Fuentes is a warning bell: A Time for Choosing on Antisemitism
A House report confirms what we suspected: The Outrageous Biden Autopen Scandal
On Argentina's elections: Milei's Triumph
All is (still) not well among academic professionals: So Much for Diversity
ARTICLES
Rich Lowry: Donald Trump Has Broken the Progressive Ratchet
Rich Lowry: Mamdani's Islamophobia Canard
Audrey Fahlberg: Exclusive: Felon Released by Biden Faces New Gun Charges After Drive-By Shooting
Dan McLaughlin: Pennsylvania Supreme Court Retention Election Is a Key Swing-State Test
Jim Geraghty: Democrats, Beware: The Shutdown Pain Is About to Get Real
Jim Geraghty: It Doesn't Matter If Trump Would 'Love to' Run for a Third Term in 2028
Abigail Anthony: PEN America's Inflated Book-Ban List
Andrew McCarthy: The Faux Outrage over 'Arctic Frost'
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Celebrating Bill Buckley — and the Majesty of Our Nation's Founding
Noah Rothman: If Trump Doesn't Want to Be Impeached, He Should Stop Doing Impeachable Things
Noah Rothman: Kevin Roberts's Bad Faith Arguments
Brittany Bernstein: 'No Election Deniers' in the Democratic Party? Yeah, Right
Brittany Bernstein: Bill Gates Backtracks on Climate Change Doomsaying: 'Will Not Lead to Humanity's Demise'
Jeffrey Blehar: Harvard Students Weep at Being Told They're Expected to Learn
John Fund: Air Traffic Delays Pile Up as Shutdown Drags On
James Lynch: Top Biden Officials Used Autopen to Abuse Executive Power as President Declined, House Report Finds
Nina Teicholz: As New Dietary Guidelines Loom, It's Time to Flip the Food Pyramid
Jianli Yang: China's 'Fortress Without Isolation'
CAPITAL MATTERS
Joel Kotkin writes about the shift away from big-box: The Rise of the Artisan Economy
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Armond White nukes a film of "crisis clichés" and "phony political urgency": Kathryn Bigelow Plays War in A House of Dynamite
Brian Allen catches us up on October's art news, notably the Louvre heist: The Louvre Robbed, the 2026 Color of the Year, and Yet More Yattering About Race
EXCERPTS YOU CAN DANCE TO
NR's editorial on the Tucker-Fuentes interview yells "STOP":
The issue isn't merely that Carlson "platformed" a white-nationalist influencer.
This framing allows Carlson and his defenders to portray the interview and others like it as an effort at open debate, as a good-faith attempt at engagement with alternative views.
The deeper problem is that Carlson didn't actually challenge any of Fuentes's noxious views that he has spelled out quite clearly over the years. Fuentes has engaged in Holocaust denial, called Adolf Hitler "really f***ing cool," and said that if his movement gained power, it would execute "perfidious Jews."
Carlson didn't even need to go back through old clips to find objectionable statements. In his appearance, Fuentes stated that the "big challenge" to unifying the country against tribal interests was "organized Jewry in America," and he expressed admiration for Soviet butcher Joseph Stalin. He did not receive any pushback from Carlson. . . .
George Washington, in a famous letter to a Jewish congregation in Newport, R.I., in 1790, wrote, "May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants." American Jews have enjoyed more security and freedom here than at any place in world history and rewarded that welcome by making positive contributions to the nation in just about every field imaginable. A version of America that is no longer safe for Jews to live in securely, and that is overtaken by anti-Israel zealots, is not an America that any conservative should want to live in.
Rich Lowry explains the likely impact of Trump's second term on the left's long-term aims:
It's axiomatic in Washington, D.C., that changes that are undertaken by administrative action alone are easy to reverse.
There's no doubt that if a Democratic president wins next time, he or she will undo much of what Trump has done through executive action, but will he or she be able to take it all the way back to where it was before?
I don't think so. It will certainly be goodbye to the Gulf of America and the Department of War, and ICE raids will stop immediately. But Trump has struck blows against long-standing progressive priorities that were pursued in a piecemeal fashion, meant to build up and become irreversible over time. On these, it will be hard for the left to recover — in other words, Trump has broken the progressive ratchet.
How does the ratchet work? It begins with small, unobjectionable, or perhaps even salutary steps, coupled with assurances that potential downsides or extreme outcomes will never come about. Then, over time, incremental moves are made in the same direction until the unreasonable policy that we'd been assured would never happen is entrenched reality.
It is the work of decades, and it depends on no one ever pushing things back in the other direction (that would be reactionary) and everyone's accepting the endpoint as a fait accompli. . . .
Trump has yanked the other way so far on these ratchet issues that it's not clear when or how the left can get them back to the status quo ante.
It took so long to get there in the first place that snapping back to politicized training standards, pervasive DEI, or the most outlandish forms of the trans agenda will be very difficult.
Trump, meanwhile, is threatening his own legacy by courting another impeachment battle. Here's Noah Rothman:
For several months, senior White House officials have explained that many of the president's actions stem from his trepidation over a potential third impeachment investigation. Trump is, thus, intently focused on the midterm election, going so far as to encourage GOP-led states to commit to mid-decade redistricting if only to hold onto the Republican Party's narrow House majority.
But the president's efforts to goad and taunt Democratic voters are making his repudiation at the polls more likely. And if his opponents are set on impeaching Trump again, the president's personalization of the presidency has given them a wealth of options to pursue.
Trump's assumption of quasi-legislative powers in the conduct of his trade war is one slight against congressional authority. His non-compliance with the law is another. Trump did not have the legal authority to fail to enforce a congressional edict compelling the sale of TikTok. The terms of TikTok's sale that he has since ironed out with Beijing remain opaque, but reporting last month indicated that "China gets to keep the TikTok algorithm, simply licensing the algorithm to the US instead of handing over the heart of TikTok's success." China's cybersecurity regulator, Wang Jingtao, confirmed as much. If those are the terms, it would not just be suicidally negligent. It would also represent a challenge to Congress that a less pliant legislature might be inclined to meet.
So, too, are the president's airstrikes on Venezuelan "drug boats." The administration appeals to no legal authority to conduct those strikes. It has not adequately informed Congress of the campaign's objectives or its strategic justification. It has executed strikes that our partners claim have targeted their civilians, and survivors of those strikes have been summarily repatriated to their countries of origin, presumably, because there is no evidence to keep them in detention as dangerous enemy combatants.
Again, a Congress invested in its primacy as the first branch of government might do something about this. These good governance concerns may, however, not fuel the Democratic Party's desire for requital as much as would the president's more facially corrupt initiatives.
Trump refused even to observe cosmetic decorum at the outset of his second term when he sought seven-figure sums from donors explicitly for the privilege of attending special events at his Florida golf club to be in proximity to the president or even to secure a one-on-one meeting with Trump himself. Lest there be any confusion, of course, the White House insisted that the president was "not asking for funds or donations" to attend these events. Congressional investigators might make a show of an inquiry into that claim anyway.
Abigail Anthony, once again, convincingly rejects the bafflingly expanding definition of "banned book":
PEN America's new report for the 2024–25 school year, titled "The Normalization of Book Banning," records 6,870 instances of book bans affecting nearly 4,000 unique titles across the country — but yet again, such numbers are inflated. The main issue with the organization's finding, in both the 2023 and 2025 editions of the report, is that the following definitions are employed:
PEN America defines a school book ban as any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by governmental officials, that leads to a book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished. . . .
School book bans take varied forms, and can include prohibitions on books in libraries or classrooms, as well as a range of other restrictions, some of which may be temporary. For example, if a book that was previously available to all now requires parental permission, or is restricted to a higher grade level than educators initially determined, that is a ban. [Emphasis added.]
I must repeat what I said in 2023: Restricting access does not amount to a "ban." In the United States, you must be a certain age to drive a car, drink alcohol, or gamble — yet none of us would argue that those activities are "banned" because of the minimum age thresholds. Although PEN America attempts to blame "national and local groups touting extreme conservative views" for the imposition of barriers to a particular book in school, there are entirely reasonable and wholly apolitical reasons why a school might establish an age or grade restriction. Consider a hypothetical scenario where a school originally allowed all students to check out the Harry Potter series but later made it available only to students in third grade and above because, particularly in the later books in the series, the descriptions of death and physical confrontation proved distressing for younger children. Under PEN America's methodology, the Harry Potter series is now "banned," but according to any normal person, the school has taken sensible measures to ensure that students are engaging with material that's appropriate in terms of thematic content and difficulty.
But here are some of my new criticisms of PEN America's methodology. It seems that PEN America believes that every single book should be available to every single student in every single public school library — and that is stupid. School libraries have limited funds and shelf space, so not every book can be stocked. Therefore, a school and its affiliated community have to make value judgments about which books are worthy of being purchased and offered to kids. Ideally, the selection process will prioritize books with literary value and historical importance, as well as the works in the curriculum. Other books that are just plain fun for kids will probably be picked to encourage reading for pleasure. Ultimately, some books just won't make the cut — perhaps because the reading level is too advanced, the themes are too mature, the content lacks any intellectual value, or they don't appeal to kids. Still, contra PEN America's arguments, the books that fail the curation process have not been "banned."
CODA
I haven't yet seen the Bruce movie, though I'm sure I will. Springsteen marketing is in overdrive, with the release of the "electric" Nebraska sessions and other odds and ends as part of a new box set. Looking back to the haunting original, let's close today with "Mansion on the Hill."
Thanks for tuning in. Have a great weekend.
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