Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued the first veto of his administration on Friday, striking down Int. 175-B, a bill that would’ve required the NYPD to create plans to enact security perimeters around educational institutions during protests. The analogous religious institution-related bill passed with a veto-proof majority.

Many Jewish organizations back the protest bills, describing them as necessary in an environment of heightened religious discrimination, including antisemitism. But free speech advocates, including the New York Civil Liberties Union and labor unions, urged a mayoral veto of Int. 175-B. The mayor sided with the unions.

In an explanation of his veto of the educational institution-related bill, the mayor said in part:

“The problem is how widely this bill defines an educational institution and the constitutional concerns it raises regarding New Yorkers’ fundamental right to protest. As the bill is written, everywhere from universities to museums to teaching hospitals could face restrictions.

This could impact workers protesting ICE, or college students demanding their school divest from fossil fuels or demonstrating in support of Palestinian rights. Int. 175-B is not a narrow public safety measure; it is a piece of legislation that has alarmed much of the labor movement, reproductive rights groups, and immigration advocates, among others, across this City. Nearly a dozen unions have raised the alarm about its impact on their ability to organize.

That is why I am vetoing this legislation.”

The mayor allowed the religious institution-related bill to go into effect, saying:

“It initially raised constitutional concerns. However, the final version of the bill that passed is narrower in scope and effect. It requires the NYPD to document its existing practices related to protests near houses of worship. Following a thorough legal review, I do not believe it poses the same risks it once did, and that is why I will allow it to become law. That said, I disagree with its framing of all protest as a security concern.”

In a style that’s become expected from the administration, Mamdani also addressed the public in a highly polished video about the veto. He highlighted his broad commitment to free speech rights, including the right to protest his own administration.

While unions, free speech advocates and the mayor’s allies celebrated the veto of the educational institution-related bill, this action pits him against New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, the first Jewish speaker in the city’s history, who warned him against issuing a veto. While the Speaker was elected to the position with unanimous support from Council colleagues, whether whipping the votes for a veto override is possible remains unclear. Such a vote would require members who opposed the bill to now stand in direct opposition to unions that back their elections.

The special election for City Council District 3 next Tuesday has gained significant relevance amid this veto fight. Lindsey Boylan, endorsed by Mamdani, has vowed to let the veto stand. Carl Wilson, endorsed by Menin, says he’d vote to override. Candidate Layla Law-Gisiko, endorsed by Council Member Christopher Marte, has sided with the mayor and committed to upholding the veto.

In her initial public reaction to the veto, Menin struck a notably conciliatory tone given the circumstances, expressing disagreement but openness to tweaking the bill to get it over the finish line. But the bill’s prime sponsor, Council Member Eric Dinowitz, offered a furious reaction, saying the mayor is “breaking yet another campaign promise” and “turns his back on public safety” as he makes “untrue claims.”

The mayor’s core base vehemently opposed both buffer zone bills. While the early days of Mamdani’s administration have included some disappointments for the mayor’s base, this veto could serve to reaffirm their bond. But will the mayor’s veto impact perception of his administration beyond the base?

Jewish Currents senior reporter Alex Kane told me:

“This isn’t an issue that the public has widespread opinions on; I doubt most New Yorkers are tuned in to this debate. But it is an issue of supreme importance to Mamdani’s base, who saw it as a way to empower the police to crack down not only on pro-Palestinian protest, but any kind of protest. Unsurprisingly, Mamdani listened to his closest allies, and spurned legislative critics of his pro-Palestine outlook. The backlash is already coming from Council Speaker Menin and the Jewish establishment groups who pushed the bill. Now the question is whether Menin can wield her power as speaker and get four more votes to deliver a defeat to Mamdani and his labor and progressive allies.”

Political analyst Michael Lange, author of The Narrative Wars, offered a similar opinion, believing that the mayor’s actions primarily bolster his relationship with his own base.

“I don’t foresee the Mayor’s veto of the educational buffer zone bill materially changing his electoral coalition. If anything, it further reinforces its current contours: Mamdani allied with the free speech and protest left, while pitted against the reactionary center,” Lange said.

The tension within Mamdani as a politician has always been an obvious desire to be well-liked alongside a commitment to democratic socialist politics that alienate moderate and conservative segments of the electorate. That tension expressed itself even in the lead-up to his decisive victory last November, which found an inescapable refrain of “I don’t agree with Mamdani on everything” as an addendum for support among various validators who feared repercussions from their own voters.

Mamdani’s veto demonstrates follow-through on a principle he outlined during the campaign: to protect democracy from the rise of authoritarianism. American democracy has traditionally made room for unpopular speech, even speech that would be illegal in other parts of the world, in the interest of protecting liberty. To borrow perhaps the most famous quote by founder Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” The open question in Jeffersonian terms is whether we still hold that particular truth to be quite so self-evident in the second quarter of the 21st century.

Earlier this month, Americans across the political spectrum, including this author, called for the resignation or expulsion of now-former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-California). Swalwell resigned on April 14.

The Swalwell collapse may’ve felt sudden to much of the American public, but what quickly emerged from insiders and colleagues was a total lack of surprise. Swalwell stands accused of drugging and assaulting women, including rape. A political culture of secrecy protected him for many years. Colleagues may not have known the worst of his offenses, but they knew enough to get him out well before 2026.

Fast-forward to today, and we’re now down three members of Congress.

Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Florida, resigned Tuesday. She was indicted on charges of stealing millions of dollars in federal relief funds and using some of it in support of her own congressional campaign. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, resigned the same day as Swalwell. He had already admitted to having an affair with a staffer who later committed suicide and stood accused by at least one additional staffer of sending her sexually explicit texts, as reported by NBC News.

A fourth member, Rep. Cory Mills (R-Florida), should follow them out the door or be expelled. Last year, the House Ethics Committee. Per Fox News, “Mills faces allegations of domestic abuse from an incident in February 2025 and a separate case of blackmail from July that same year, where he allegedly threatened to release explicit images of a romantic partner.” A Washington Post report on police footage following a 911 call found that “the woman had shown [officer Richard] Mazloom bruises on her arms and marks on her face.”

Like the calls for Swalwell’s resignation, the demand for Mills to see himself out is bipartisan. The resolution for Mills’ expulsion was introduced by a member of his own party, right-wing firebrand Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina).

In an era of hyperpartisanship, the locked arms across party lines to see corrupt and predatory members out is a welcome reprieve. Faith in American institutions is at an all-time low, and every member shown the door by their own colleagues serves as a building block toward restoring public trust.

It’s true that every American is and should always be innocent until proven guilty as a matter of law. But serving as a member of U.S. Congress is a job, not a right. Members can be fired.

Americans deserve a Congress that holds itself to the highest standards, because the body will never be effective so long as the chamber remains riddled with corruption, secrecy and abuse.

Mills represents an easy case. Get him out.

Social progress is uneven. Giant leaps can occur as the result of cultural forces that escape containment in conjunction with the organized efforts of people who work thanklessly for years before seeing any change.

These windows of progress open widest during moments of tumult and system stress. The resurgence of Black Lives Matter and Me Too during the first administration of President Donald Trump, which led to mass mobilization, was not a coincidence. America had elected its most openly racist and misogynistic president in contemporary history through an Electoral College that subverted popular will. An appalled public reacted.

We’re in April of 2026, Trump is once again our president, and another window is wide open.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA-14) was accused of rape and sexual assault, creating a domino effect of reckoning that finds at least four members of U.S. Congress in peril as of this writing. What were once whispered rumors are flying into public view, alongside incriminating testimony, images, and video content.

Concurrent with this reckoning is a metastasizing public disgust at the years-long inaction over the crimes committed by sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. His powerful alleged co-conspirators continue to walk among us, leaving an enraged public to search for culprits itself as the government fails to do much of anything other than continue to protect his associates.

Even First Lady of the United States Melania Trump reacted to the pressure this month, making an out-of-the-blue speech demanding a public Congressional hearing with Epstein survivors and asserting her own innocence, pointedly using the singular first-person instead of the plural amid her husband’s career low approval ratings.

Speaking of approval ratings, Congress finds its own approval somewhere not only beneath the floor but down in the bowels of Hell. Democrats and Republicans have a clear moment to regain a modicum of public trust by cleaning up their own House.

Instead of a partisan food fight, party leadership on both sides should sit down and hammer out a list of creeps who need to go. Make no mistake, they already know exactly who in their own conferences should be shown the door.

Leaders cannot wait for a lengthy procedural drama to play out. It’s well past time they march into the offices of every last known predator in the U.S. Congress and deliver an ultimatum: we can do this the easy way or the hard way. Predators can resign immediately or face a robust public reckoning with a guaranteed expulsion vote.

What about innocent until proven guilty? Some may ask. That is the legal standard and must remain so in every free society. But we don’t require a criminal finding to fire someone from a government job. Public officials must be held to the highest standards and maintain public trust. Absolutely no one is entitled to a seat in Congress. Plenty of public servants are waiting just outside the doors, ready and able to serve the American people better than this sorry bunch.

As someone who spends the vast majority of my professional time with elected officials and those who wish to be, I can promise you these are some of the most image-conscious people in the world. The bad ones know what they’ve done. Give them the option to exit of their own accord or promise to air their dirty laundry in public, and they’ll be on the first flight back to the very districts they’ve been ignoring.

The American people want to see congressional predators sent packing. All of them. Get these creeps out of our House. Then let’s talk about the U.S. Senate.

The rise of AI has sparked a cultural conversation so contentious and misinformed that those with even the slightest understanding of large language models (LLMs) find themselves wondering if we have real hope for genuine societal understanding.

Many states have passed various forms of AI and AI-related legislation, but federal legislation becomes likelier by the day, even as we have a Congress filled with leaders who are arguably compromised or not literate in AI technologies. The threat of increasing legislation has spurred the political involvement of companies that intend to strike while the iron is hot when it comes to government oversight.

OpenAI (Leading the Future, related network) is fighting to keep the regulation light, believing that inept legislation will hamper innovation and lead to international AI development outpacing the U.S. They believe this would put the U.S. at a strategic disadvantage, perhaps even a dangerous one, all while hurting their bottom line.

Anthropic (AnthroPAC, Public First Action) advocates a regulatory framework to restrain what it sees as possible catastrophic outcomes of unrestrained development. The practical benefit is that such legislation could prevent competition from outpacing them while stymying smaller firms that couldn’t easily comply. Anthropic is often associated with the effective altruism (EA) movement and, according to critics, catastrophism.

The incentives for both perspectives are a combination of genuine ideology and self-interest. The OpenAI camp finds the Anthropic camp to be alarmist safety-maximalists standing in the way of progress. The Anthropic camp considers the OpenAI camp reckless to the point of danger in pursuit of profit.

If all of this sounds like the quibbling of self-important tech bros, you’re not alone. The problem is that all of them have a lot of money, and mailboxes are already being stuffed with propaganda for and against their various candidates. None of it will properly educate the public about the actual state of AI safety.

The issue of AI safety is urgent and real, even if concerns about artificial general intelligence (AGI) remain speculative and the conversation around environmental impact is often misinformed. The technology as it exists today does pose genuine challenges in job loss, local environmental health, national security, and even human rights as AI-weaponry becomes a live issue.

The problem is that the industry wishes to decide the terms of its own regulation. For all of the chest-thumping about safety, there’s not as much daylight between Anthropic and OpenAI as they’d wish you to believe. Both have been integrated into military systems. OpenAI and Anthropic both score poorly on independent AI safety scorecards. Both are driven by profit.

Much in the way industries like banking and pharmaceuticals have succeeded in ingratiating themselves far enough into our government apparatus that their interests overpower the interests of citizens, the AI industry is looking to follow in their footsteps. While OpenAI pushes to defeat or significantly weaken AI bills it sees as restrictive, Anthropic tends to support regulation while also working to narrow its scope. See the fight over SB 1047 in California, which Gov. Gavin Newsom ultimately vetoed.

We need to have sober, informed conversations about AI that reject the terms of the conversation being forced upon us by monied interests and instead root themselves in the real challenges that exist. We’re grappling with a level of technological change that is reshaping our world faster than we’re adapting.

The rise of AI doesn’t have to be a catastrophe for the planet, and it also won’t solve the human condition. But like the printing press, the World Wide Web, the smartphone, and a host of other innovations that came before, this technology will change the course of history. Whether that change is for the better or worse is up to us.

(Updated 4/10/2026 at 10:26 a.m. to add PAC and legislative details.)

Democratic voters know their party is in shambles as leadership sleeps at the wheel. What many don’t realize, due to the algorithmic manipulations of online life, is that right-wing and right-curious individuals occupy an entirely different media ecosystem with incredibly successful figures. And that ecosystem has already produced an early frontrunner for U.S. president in 2028.

Far-right characters don’t tend to exist on traditional television shows or in establishment newspapers. They live somewhere more powerful: inside the apps people use every day. From streaming services to social media apps to semi-private fan channels on messaging platforms, an entire world exists with highly successful far-right and conspiracist figures like Candace Owens, Alex Jones, Megyn Kelly and Jack Posobiec.

One far-right individual towers above the rest in influence: Tucker Carlson.

As the administration of President Donald Trump threatens Mad King-style rule over the world through at-will war crimes and establishment Democrats hide in various corners from their own shadows, Carlson has emerged as a voice of something akin to reason. In one of his most viral clips yet, Carlson tears into Trump for his profane threat of genocide against Iran on Easter.

“Who do you think you are? You’re tweeting out the f-word on Easter morning,” Carlson said with clear outrage. “So, obviously, you’re mocking the religion of Iran. Okay. If you seek a religious war, that’s a good idea. But by the way, no decent person mocks other people’s religions.”

Carlson wasn’t done letting the president he once supported from the campaign stage have it.

“The message of all faith at the biggest picture level is the message in our Bible, which is: you are not God. And only if you think you are, do you talk this way (...) This is not a theocracy. We don’t go to war with other theocracies to find out which theocracy is more effective. We are not a theocracy. And God willing, we never will be because theocracies corrupt the religion,” Carlson continued.

Through monologues like this, Carlson has made inroads with a huge swath of the public that isn’t part of the MAGA movement, especially disillusioned young people. His consistent and clear-throated condemnation of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians has been the strongest boon to his credibility, because the majority of Democratic and Republican leaders have voted to fund the genocide and refuse to acknowledge it’s even happening.

You might be thinking to yourself: What’s the problem? Isn’t it a good thing to have a GOP against war crimes and genocide? Absolutely. The issue comes down to the fact that Carlson is performing a sleight-of-hand that voters won’t realize occurred until it’s too late. Carlson is the master of the “just asking questions” and evasion game, appealing to common sensibilities while insinuating darker ideas or outright hiding them.

During his time at Fox News, Carlson became the number one figure for online neo-Nazis who congregate on online forums like Stormfront, a particularly notable neo-Nazi space where they’ve gathered for nearly 30 years.

I’ve monitored Stormfront conversations first-hand over time and dug deep into the neo-Nazi ecosystem. Self-described Nazis made it their job to boost Carlson to “normies” as the least offensive possible entry-point into white identity politics, which finds the Great Replacement conspiracy theory as a rallying point. For those who don’t know, the Great Replacement conspiracy theory is a semi-sanitized extension of the white genocide conspiracy theory popularized by neo-Nazi David Lane in the mid-1990s.

The white genocide conspiracy theory holds that Jews are conspiring to eliminate the white race through interracial procreation, abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and a host of other elements unworthy of any more time in this piece. Carlson clearly recognized his popularity with this subset of white nationalists and actively courted them on Fox News. He wasn’t even shy about it and has platformed white nationalism online since his firing.

Carlson is also a proud booster of the international far-Right, highlighting authoritarian Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán as a specific inspiration from which the U.S. should take political and cultural cues. Under Orbán’s leadership, democracy in Hungary has collapsed. That is the future Carlson sees for the U.S.

In an especially smart pivot, Carlson 2.0 (or 3.0, or 4.0, depending on how you count) has ceased the social policy commentary common during his run at Fox News because he knows his far-Right authoritarian views are wildly unpopular.

Most Americans support basic rights for minorities, believe the government has no place in making medical choices around issues like abortion and that multiculturalism is a net positive for our nation. They don’t support rounding up immigrants or trying to whiten the overall complexion of the country. Carlson is not aligned with everyday Americans in his views. So he chooses the issue on which he knows every decent American will agree: stop bombing children.

The fact that Carlson is able to fill a vacuum with this message speaks to the moral rot of both political parties. Carlson’s declarations of opposition to genocide and war crimes should be a bar every politician in both major parties can clear. But it isn’t.

If Democrats wish to live in anything resembling a free society, they need a nominee who can expose the lie of Tucker Carlson by embracing universal human rights at home and abroad. Democrats have a bench of figures in the wings ready to champion universal human rights, but party leadership and special interests will do their level best to cut them off before they gain momentum. Voters’ only hope is to wrest power from these feckless leaders and ensure a Democratic party prepared to lead the nation out of our pitch-black moment. Otherwise, Carlson and his ilk will own the American future.

“AI slop refers to low-quality, mass-produced digital content—text, images, video, or audio—created by artificial intelligence with minimal human oversight.”

At least, that’s what Google Gemini says before allowing me to see a single human-written result.

To be online in the 2020s is to be aghast at our collective plummet into an abyss of crude and inane content. The era of AI slop made the situation markedly worse overnight, as accounts launder LLM responses to prompts as their own content and post fake videos to drive engagement. Even OpenAI has had enough of those insufferable videos.

Now, slop threatens to consume what remains of our politics. While President Donald Trump was the first U.S. president to embody slop, the Democrats have found an eager counterpart: California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Much like Trump, the churn of Newsom content posted from his various accounts is mind-numbingly stupid in a way that feels intentional. Crude sexual content, doctored and AI-generated images of his opponents, troll posts written in Trump’s cadence, former President Barack Obama and Trump fighting in the ring. And that’s just in the header image.

The primary difference between Newsom and Trump’s online behavior is that the president’s content feels authentically unhinged, a digital projection of the president’s runaway id. Newsom’s content is so cynical that his entire being feels more akin to an aggregator: recycled SEO and viral-bait content often ripped off from better sources designed for nothing more than engagement boosts.

Newsom’s politics are as unstable and desperate as his online persona. What should we do about homelessness? Provide services, but throw folks the hell out of here. Do Democrats need to support LGBTQ rights? Yes, except no. Is Israel an apartheid state? Of course, but absolutely not. We could do this all day.

There’s something sinister in how remarkably little moral conviction Newsom possesses, as though his algorithm is updating his persona so rapidly that it doesn’t allow for even a semblance of continuity from one day to the next. The notion of Gavin Newsom as an avatar of sociopathy has existed within the public discourse since the first time someone noticed his resemblance to Patrick Bateman, the protagonist of American Psycho played by Christian Bale in the movie. Newsom leans in for engagement.

All of this would be nothing more than a curious story in the dystopian trajectory of American politics if Newsom retired to a cushy private sector job at the end of his term. Instead, he’s expected to be a serious presidential contender for the Democrats, who allegedly hate Trump for bearing so many analogous qualities to Newsom that it’s easy to lose count.

Americans seem to notice the hypocrisy. Polling last month from NBC News showed that Newsom is less popular than Trump, with Trump underwater by 12 points and Newsom by 18. For comparison, Pope Leo XIV was up by 34, and Stephen Colbert was up 10 in the same poll. The least unpopular Democrat was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was down by 11. (Note that Trump’s approval rating is worse today than last month, but updated polling that includes Newsom isn’t yet available.)

The problem for Democrats with a candidate like Newsom isn’t just the intellectual disaster of running a campaign that feels designed by an unstable LLM, but that Americans cannot stand the state of the AI-consumed environment into which they’ve been dropped.

As a populist left voting bloc emerges in the Democratic Party and the general public experiences cross-party exhaustion from the juvenile chaos engulfing this country, Democratic leaders should think twice before doubling down on a slop candidate.

As the Democrats face down a midterm election cycle and the start of the 2028 presidential race, an unlikely name has emerged as a powerbroker (or litmus test): Hasan Piker.

The streamer, influencer and left-wing commentator serves as a growing political gatekeeper for young voters, specifically young males. As Democrats contend with a far-Right online “manosphere” pulling those young males toward the darkest sectors of the Republican Party, Hasan Piker has emerged as a singular figure.

The problem for establishment Democrats is that Hasan Piker has no interest in putting differences aside to stop Republicans. His political perspective holds both parties accountable for the state of the U.S. and its impact on the world. To Piker, contemporary U.S. politics represent a ping-ponging between awful political parties with more in common than either would care to admit as the country spirals deeper and deeper into oligarchy. It’s the Bernie Sanders critique on steroids.

“The Democrats are smug and condescending, and everything they say sounds fake as shit,” Piker told The New Yorker with his characteristically combative tone. Piker is also a fierce critic of Israel and the Iran war. He never shies away from words like “genocide” to describe U.S.-funded Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

The Democratic establishment’s doomed solution is to cancel Piker as an antisemite before he has a chance to influence the direction of the entire Democratic Party in 2028. But this operation ignores a key problem: Piker is popular because his audience already holds his views. Even if Democrats manage to cancel the streamer, he’ll just be replaced by another figure, perhaps his Oklahoma City mom compatriot Jennifer Welch.

Whether or not one agrees in part or whole with the allegations of antisemitism against Piker, his views on Israel and Iran are mainstream among the U.S. population at large. American sympathies in 2026 have reversed from the historic trendline, with the largest plurality sympathizing with Palestinians. Don’t take my word for it - ask Gallup. Americans reject the war in Iran with an outright majority (61 percent), according to Pew Research.

This presents a conundrum for Democrats who face a revolt from their own voters against what was once a near-universal cross-party commitment to neoconservative politics, and Piker is the last person they wish to have interrogating them.

Politico asked 13 Democrats who have not yet appeared with Piker whether they’d be willing to do so in the context of his livestream interviews. Only three said yes: Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Rahm Emanuel. The outright majority wouldn’t answer the question on the record. This weakness plays directly into the Republican narrative that Democrats are triangulating wimps.

While Piker lives in West Hollywood, he’s become a fixture of left-wing political life in New York City, which serves as the epicenter of democratic socialism in the U.S. following the improbable rise of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. From Mamdani’s election night party to the recent No Kings protest in Midtown Manhattan (about as mainstream a protest as one could find in the U.S.) to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Tax the Rich rally in the Bronx just today, Piker is an inescapable figure across the boroughs.

So I asked New York City’s preeminent journalist of the Democratic socialist movement and the reporter who first broke the news that Mamdani was considering a run for mayor, Peter Sterne of City and State New York, about Piker and the Democratic Party.

Sterne explained, “Polls show that the next generation of Democrats is much more open to socialist and anti-Zionist politics. Pressuring candidates not to appear on Piker’s show won’t reverse that trend, and I think the politicians who recognize the contours of this new Democratic coalition are the ones who will have success in the future.”

Sen. Sanders would agree, telling YouTuber Keith Edwards, “I’ve talked to Hasan. In many respects, he’s doing a very good job. The bottom line is we’ve got to communicate with people.”

That said, even Piker’s defenders would often agree that he’s engaged in inflammatory and controversial speech throughout his career, especially before becoming a mainstream figure. Among the most frequently cited examples are his infamous declaration that “America deserved 9/11,” seeming dismissiveness of human rights abuses in China and shock-jock style comments that straddle a line between crude polemic political speech and antisemitism. In the context of online discourse, especially the virulently antisemitic, violent and misogynistic “manosphere,” young people are so desensitized to extreme language that Piker’s remarks feel mild by comparison.

“People have criticized Piker for antisemitism. Now, Piker has repeatedly spoken out against antisemitism, but he is an outspoken and even crass anti-Zionist – so I understand why people might feel that some of his language crosses the line,” Sterne told me. “But the fact that Piker actually opposes antisemitism means that he is one of the best streamers for disillusioned, anti-Israel voters to listen to. Because the alternative isn’t that young voters will go back to loving Israel; it’s that they’ll start listening to outright antisemites who also criticize Israel – like Tucker Carlson or Nick Fuentes.”

This is the political reality in the Trump era. Dark, shocking and violent language is not a deal-breaker for the youngest voters who have no memory of pre-Trump American political discourse. Many see a degree of menace behind the forced niceties of earlier eras, a compliant populace that sleepwalked its way into our current political hellscape. Far-right figures, including neo-Nazis like Fuentes, prey on the disaffection and moral outrage of American youth, echoing their anger to pull them into the extremist pipeline.

Whether or not establishment Democrats succeed in their efforts to end the rise of Hasan Piker, they will not change the fundamental realignment occurring across the consciousness of an American people who cannot stomach watching children be bombed with their tax dollars, to say nothing of American material life getting worse under economic inequity and a failing social safety net.

Democrats can start listening to the voices of the American people or concede the future to forces that will make the Trump era look like the good old days.

What is this?

Sosa v. State provides original editorial content, curates top political journalism, interviews leading voices and more! You’ll get access to content you won’t see anywhere else as we make sense of a chaotic world and hold power to account.

It’s going to be a bit messy at the start, and I appreciate your patience.

What is this not?

Neutral news reporting. I’m a political strategist with a background in commentary. You’re getting my perspective here, which is informed by my professional and personal experiences. I’ll do my best to demonstrate trustworthiness at all times, and I expect my audience to hold me to it. But I bring a strong and unapologetic editorial perspective.

What is the Sosa v. State editorial perspective?

You’re not going to get traditional Democratic (or Republican) party-line opinion. I sit in the left sector with libertarian instincts, and I’ll be talking to voices from across the political spectrum. Some may surprise you.

Why is it called Sosa v. State?

Because New York’s favorite editor-in-chief Jeff Coltin says that “fits” my “vibe.” (Hat tip to Billy Freeland for iterating with me at the start.)

Thanks for being here, and I look forward to the coming conversations! Don’t hesitate to be in touch.

In the News:

I talked to Hell Gate about the choice before Mayor Zohran Mamdani: sign the New York City Council’s protest bills or veto. Mamdani faces a major test as he decides who he’s willing to make angry and where his base fits into his governance strategy.

My take: “Signing this bill would represent capitulation on the issue that defined the entire mayoral race, especially for the young voters who dedicated the most work to his campaign and propelled him to a decisive victory.”

I interviewed Nina Schwalbe and Jack Schlossberg at Inspir Carnegie Hill. You can watch a slightly janky upload here. Stay tuned for the next episode, which will feature AM Alex Bores, AM Micah Lasher and (if he confirms!) George Conway.

I appeared on Ghost Runner Pod to discuss the NY-12 race. Catch Eli Miller’s interview with me here. We’ll be circling back later in the cycle with the latest updates in the race.