Win some blue-state and blue-city races, and the cocky new socialist Jacobins believe that they have either already taken over the Democratic Party or will soon absorb it. And in reaction to these new swarms, an increasingly terrified and ossified old Democrat guard either limps away from the hive or invites them in to take over more. It is fascinating but ultimately depressing to watch old-style Democrats say or do anything to avoid the new mob of Robespierres. Democrat candidates who recently begged for a Schumer/Pelosi/Jeffries endorsement now are telling them to get in line at the guillotine. Jewish American Democrats are terrified that what happened to the primaried and defeated Rep. Dan Goldman of New York, an arch-Trump hater, could befall them. Goldman’s obnoxious showboating hatred of Trump and championing of neo-socialist agendas offered no defense against the Jacobins’ antisemitism and hatred of Israel. A number of Jewish Democrat candidates, like wannabe California congressman Scott Wiener, are backing off from Israel and now join the “genocide!” mob. Wiener hopes that the throng will reward his new anti-Israel position by overlooking the now inconvenient fact that to the antisemitic Democrat base he is still Jewish. Some of the rich, likewise, think they can escape the guillotine—the various proposed taxes on “billionaires” and “millionaires” on their net worth or unrealized capital gains or plans to confiscate private properties deemed “not in the people’s interests.” They will either flee to Florida or join the mob and hope their donations spare them from the blade. The hard socialist agenda, which lacks even 50 percent popular support, is often recognizable despite efforts to conceal it until after elections. Given the clickbait lunacy of these socialists’ mindset, their true views often trickle out from prior social media posts, hot mics, leaks, and occasional temper-tantrum outbursts (cf. [Zohran] Mamdani’s “monsters” or [James] Talarico’s “I hate Christianity” or [Graham] Platner’s litany of unapologetic racist, antisemitic, and misogynistic outbursts). In general, the socialist challenge is to “fundamentally transform America” into a statist, inert redistribution machine—nuttier than socialist Europe, a prescription for North Korean-style poverty, and completely unrecognizable to the Founders and most contemporary Americans. As far as we can distill, here are their agendas: 1. The new demography Open borders, massive, unaudited new immigration ending the distinction between mere residence and citizenship. 2. Dismantling the “system” Packing the court, destroying the Electoral College, ending the filibuster, bringing in new left-wing states, defunding the police, ensuring same-day registration/voting, no voter ID, foreign nationals residing here being eligible to vote. 3. The Islamization of America Ending America’s traditional friendship with Israel and realigning the U.S. with the West Bank, Hamas, Hezbollah, and their autocratic and illiberal, terrorism-sponsoring Muslim regimes. Restoring massive USAID subsidies to fund left-wing takeovers abroad and mainstreaming now overt harassment of Jews at home. 4. Old Communism The government takeover of housing and utilities, targeted expropriation of private property, new punitive taxes on net worth and unrealized capital gains. Wild talk of nationalizing airlines and all health care. 5. Statism Massive new entitlements, free college, canceling $1.7 trillion in student loans, more federal acquisition of private lands, rent freezes. 6. Reparations Compensation for victims of alleged “white privilege,” institutionalization of radical identity politics, and racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation chauvinism. Third world hatred of supposed white oppressors, justifying reparatory preferences for the non-white “oppressed.” 7. Globalism Pledging solidarity with socialist/communist movements abroad while despising Western civilization in general and the U.S. in particular. Once “Mayor” Zohran Mamdani took control of New York, he began promising to confiscate rental properties from landlords and to focus on “white” neighborhoods, and he no longer disguised his innate hatred of Jews. Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia dropped her moderate false face and began radically ramming through hard-left executive orders to ensure more DEI, higher taxes, and anti-ICE hysterics. After being elected, Seattle Mayor Katie Willson gushed “bye-bye” to the billionaire entrepreneurs who are fleeing from Washington state’s new “millionaire’s tax.” She mocked their departure and cared not a whit that her now-socialist city would further descend into a West Coast Detroit or Baltimore. Socialists hide their revolutionary anger with banal pleasantries. We have become well accustomed now to the “socialist smile,” emblemized by the grinning Mamdani or the faux-happy face of James Talarico. Usually, the new touchy-feely socialists chuckle loudest when a rare reporter presses them on their past lunatic harangues, which are then laughed off as hysterias from paranoid right-wing minds. Sometimes socialists embrace the hard commissar style, like the perpetually venomous Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who ridicules journalists, lies flagrantly, and takes back none of his hate-filled rants. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-MI, perpetually screams rather than talks, usually venting her monotonous hatred for the Jewish state. Her latest socialist champions are the Antifa criminals just sentenced to long prison sentences for their conspiracy to murder ICE officers. The more Ilhan Omar is caught trafficking in antisemitic tropes, denying alleged immigration fraud schemes, or filing preposterous federal financial disclosure forms, the more defiant her shouts of “racist” become. The newly emerging socialists, like recent congressional nominees Darializa Avila Chevalier or Analilia Mejia, can never explain why their parents left socialist paradises in Latin America to come to cutthroat capitalist America. Nor do they explain to us why and how such a supposedly toxic, racist nation would extend such generous scholarships and DEI preferences to both. They suffer from the Joy Reid/Ilhan Omar/Rashida Tlaib/AOC socialist syndrome: parents flee socialist paradises of indigenous peoples to ensure their children might thrive in a settler/colonialist and capitalist U.S. whose magnanimity they interpret as proof of guilt that is therefore to be reciprocated not with gratitude but with ever more venom. And once the second-generation socialists joined the privileged elite classes of America, these boutique radicals decided to tear down the very system that nurtured them, without ever expressing a wish to return to the socialist paradises of their parents’ homelands. What drives the sheer hatred of the new upscale socialists, and why are they in vogue now? There are three constants in all these new socialists, as we have seen recently from the recent nationwide primary elections, as well as the daily street theater. One, they hate the United States—loathe its foundation, hate its maturation, and despise the current American nation. They detest especially the middle classes, who lack both the romance of the dependent poor and the supposed “refinement” and “culture” of their own elite socialist aristocracy. And the more they demagogue “white privilege” and “white supremacy,” the more they feel that the river of exemptions, set-asides, preferences, and special considerations will flow to them from a supposedly guilty nation. The socialists’ hatred of America is becoming clearer as middle America embraces the 250th anniversary of the nation, highlighted by throngs of World Cup tourists who cannot praise highly enough the decency, amicability, and prosperity of America between the coasts. So, what is a perennial socialist PhD candidate, or a failed “community organizer,” or NGO flack to do when millions happily suffer from “false consciousness” and have failed to listen to their Marxist handlers? The socialist architects of the current Jacobin takeover see no contradiction in that, like moths harkening to flames, they cannot get enough of the American good life, conspicuous consumer consumption, and merit badges of success like their Ivy League-branded kids, letters and titles after their names, and the right zip code for their first and second homes. Every socialist buffoon reminds us almost daily of Alexis de Tocqueville’s droll warning that most people would prefer everyone to be absolutely equal and worse off than all better off, but with some better off than themselves. The socialists’ hatred of America is also revealed in their envy. Unlike the poet Hesiod’s notion of a “good” envy—embodied in the American tradition of emulation and admiration of those richer than themselves—they buy into the “bad” envy of wanting to destroy those who are brighter, more successful, richer, and more essential to America than themselves, whether an Elon Musk, a Larry Ellison, or a Jeff Bezos. Second, socialists still have little current power other than their control of institutions such as K-12 education, academia, the media, foundations, the bureaucracies, the corporate boardrooms, professional sports, entertainment, and popular culture. Perhaps they wish to end up like the lifelong government employee, Bernie Sanders, who for a half-century shook his two upraised fists at America, screamed at the greed, and ended up with three homes and membership in the millionaire class. Socialists and communists have no confidence in winning over the majority of the American people, at least outside blue-city and blue-state districts. Hence, their efforts to change balloting laws, destroy the border, import angry, poor, new constituents, stage violent street confrontations, and either celebrate or contextualize assassinations from the attempts on [Donald] Trump to the killing of Charlie Kirk. Sane Democrats would reexamine 2024 and conclude the party was far too left-wing and the antidote was a return to the winning formulas of Bill Clinton. But unhinged socialists and communists would claim that 2024 was lost because they were not far-left enough. So we are to believe that Americans scared of Harris’s poorly disguised radicalism can be won over by scaring them even further? A communist in 2028 can win over America when a socialist in 2024 could not? Third, Donald Trump has driven the Left so crazy that they have gyrated from Obama’s four-mansion socialism to unapologetic hardcore Trotskyism. Why? Their pathological hatred transcends Trump’s background, his appearance, his accent, his tweets, and even his appeal to the despised “clingers, irredeemables, deplorables, chumps, dregs, and garbage.” Of course, Trump is a conservative, so he suffers the same left-wing slurs of “fascist” and “Nazi” that met Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. But in his second term, Trump, quite unlike most Republican presidents, is not addressing just symptoms but also the causes and fuel of the socialist project. Trump did not just jawbone the “fake news” but cut off subsidies to NPR and PBS, suing the media when they deliberately engaged in baseless character assassination. He did not just close the border but began deporting the criminal cohort of Biden’s 10 million illegal entrants, sought to end birthright citizenship, made would-be refugees apply for entry in their home country, ended catch-and-release, and will wall off or electronically secure the entire southern border from the Pacific to the Gulf of America. He did not just rhetorically critique DEI; he banned it from the federal bureaucracy. Unlike past Republicans, Trump did not merely critique elitist campuses; he leveraged them to behave like normal people–taxing endowments, banning racist DEI protocols, prohibiting grant surcharge scamming, and demanding they abide by the Bill of Rights. He slashed the left-wing USAID money machine rather than just whining that it subsidized America’s worst critics abroad. In other words, the socialists are enraged not just because they despise the U.S. and lack the power to turn America into Cuba or because they have not yet stabbed, poisoned, shot, decapitated, or blown up the hated Trump, as their followers, celebrities, and a few of their leaders have so often boasted. The real rub is that Trump is their flip side—not a revolutionary but a counterrevolutionary. He seeks to overturn root and branch the entire 100-year progressive project and ensure America’s insidious slouching toward socialism ends with his term—for good. The more they brag about our collective socialist tomorrow, the more Trump incessantly dismantles socialism today. So far, they haven’t stopped him yet–but their lidless eyes never close. (C)2026 Tribune Content Agency, LLC. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

Car accidents kill 100 Americans every day. But now an amazing solution is available: self-driving cars. Robotaxis like Google-owned Waymo, for example. Passengers who try them, like them. Wherever robotaxis are allowed, ridership increases fast. Two years ago, there were 50,000 trips per week—today 500,000. “The car did a better job than if somebody was driving!” says a passenger in my new video. Waymo claims its cars are “10 times safer” than human-driven ones. I wouldn’t believe that if insurance companies, with their own money at stake, didn’t agree.   Reinsurance News reports Waymo’s had an “88% reduction in property damage claims and a 92% reduction in bodily injury claims.” “We have the data,” says Adam Thierer, author of “Permissionless Innovation.” “Ninety-four percent of all accidents are attributable to human error … We can address one of the leading killers of Americans!” Unfortunately, some politicians say you shouldn’t be allowed to try robotaxis. New York state Sen. Luis Sepulveda wants a law that says motor vehicles for hire “shall not be … operated by an automated driving system without a human driver … seated behind the steering wheel and engaged in the task of driving.” He says the state must protect immigrant taxi and Uber drivers who live in his district.    “I cannot support something that is going to almost overnight lead to loss of jobs of over 100,000 people.” “Even if he isn’t needed?” I ask. “Even if he’s worse than the machine?” “I don’t think that having an individual in a vehicle would be worse than a machine,” says Sepulveda. “That’s just wrong,” says Thierer. “Humans get drunk, drowsy, distracted. Say what you want about robots, they don’t get drunk.” Sepulveda responds: “Waymo is going to make billions of dollars—let them pay for the disruption to the labor force.” “Sounds like a mafia pitch,” I push back. “‘Want to come here, Waymo? You have to pay.'” “If the pitch sounds like a mafia pitch, so be it,” Sepulveda replies. I thought I might change his thinking by making a creepy comparison, telling him his ban would kill more people than infamous serial killers have. Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy combined killed about 80 people. Human-driven cars kill more people every day. “The data on Waymo is not 100% safety,” he replies. “A Waymo vehicle struck a child in California.” Like most critics, he cites isolated incidents. Even that child wasn’t injured. Millions of miles of data show that robocars are much safer. And they keep getting safer. We humans learn from our own experiences, but self-driving cars learn from millions of miles of experience. They get better while we sleep. Yes, some drivers will lose jobs. But technology constantly does that. Despite all the jobs destroyed by computers, U.S. unemployment has stayed relatively low. Typists, switchboard operators and elevator operators lost jobs. But most found other jobs, often better jobs. “Some people want cars with no drivers,” I tell Sepulveda. “Women feel unsafe. Some drivers don’t smell good. Some are reckless.” “Many women feel safer with a driver,” he replies. “Shouldn’t people have the choice?” I ask. “Absolutely.” “But you want to take away the choice!” “No,” says Sepulveda. “I’m saying, [protect] the drivers that exist now.” I say, with 100 Americans dying in cars every day, politicians who slow the arrival of self-driving cars have blood on their hands. COPYRIGHT 2026 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

THE DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—The death rate in the U.S. declined to a new record low in 2025, according to new provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) out Thursday. The CDC reported that 3,094,593 total deaths occurred in the U.S. in 2025. The nation’s overall death rate was 689.2 per 100,000 people, a 4.6% decrease from 2024 and also marking the lowest death rate ever recorded in the U.S., according to the CDC. The death rate dropped across all age groups, per the CDC’s data. Moreover, the age-adjusted U.S. death rate per 100,000 people was 811.1 for males and 582.9 for females. Overall, age-adjusted death rates in the U.S. were lowest among the multiracial non-Hispanic population in 2025 at 187.3 per 100,000 people, and highest among the black non-Hispanic population at 869.0 per 100,000 people, according to the CDC’s estimates. The CDC’s report also notes that the top causes of death nationwide in 2025 were heart disease, cancer and “unintentional” injuries. “In 2025, death rates per 100,000 were lowest for children ages 5–14 years (14.0) and highest for people age 85 and older (12,787.5), similar to patterns in 2024,” according to the report. The fall in total deaths last year was largely driven by a steady drop in drug overdoses, NewsNation reported. The nation’s general fertility rate was 53.1 births per 1,000 females ages 15–44 in 2025, marking a 1% decline from 2024, according to CDC data released in April. Several analysts previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that issues such as less quality medical care, lack of access to medical insurance and unhealthy lifestyle habits may have been driving poor health among some southern Americans in recent years. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

In another case of federal bureaucrats challenging elected leaders, seven employees of the Environmental Protection Agency who signed onto a public letter opposing President Donald Trump were eventually ousted. Now they’re suing to get their jobs back. The terminated employees are suing with the backing of the litigation group Democracy Forward. Democrat lawyer Marc Elias is chairman of the board for Democracy Forward, which has filed numerous lawsuits advocating for the federal bureaucracy against elected leaders. Elias is best known for election litigation for Democrats, and for his role in pushing the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy theory. The plaintiffs—three of them suing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and four suing in the Northern District of Illinois—assert the firings were unlawful because they were exercising their First Amendment rights on their own time. Claire Balani, Lane To, and Alexis Wright are suing the EPA in Washington, D.C., while Andreas Harris, Alexander Cole, Stephanie Eytcheson, and Anna Laird are suing in Illinois. The lawsuits were announced Tuesday. The June 2025 public letter from the employees to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, coordinated by the liberal group Stand Up for Science, says it is a “Declaration of Dissent” from the Trump administration’s policies. The letter said the administration “dismantled” what it called “environmental justice,” stating, “Today, we stand together in dissent against the current administration’s focus on harmful deregulation, mischaracterization of previous EPA actions, and disregard for scientific expertise.” Stand Up for Science says it wants to “take back Congress,” but doesn’t openly support one party, only asserting it wants “pro-science” members. The group has sponsored rallies across the United States. The seven were considered probationary employees, based on how long they worked for the EPA, meaning they didn’t yet have full civil service protection afforded to other federal employees and couldn’t appeal their removal to the Merit Systems Protection Board. Democracy Forward notes that more than 100 agency employees signed the public letter criticizing the Trump administration’s policies, and more than 30 agency employees went without discipline because they were union representatives. The letter says that climate issues disproportionately affect “vulnerable communities, including Black communities and other communities of color, poor communities, disabled communities, LGBTQIA+ communities, and historically overburdened and underserved rural and urban communities.” The letter goes on to say, “In addition, your administration has fired or forced onto administrative leave several categories of employees, including those responsible for environmental justice and those managing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility initiatives.” The fact that so many employees signed a politicized letter is part of a bigger problem with the federal bureaucracy, said Robert Moffit, former assistant director of the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the federal workforce. “It is arrogant to assume one has the right to federal employment,” Moffit, now a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Signal. “These employees don’t understand a simple fact of life: The president of the United States determines the policy of the executive branch,” Moffit continued. “If one can’t work to implement the president’s stated agenda, the right and honorable thing to do is resign and work in the private sector, where they will have a greater sense of personal fulfillment. They might even get a job at Democracy Forward.” However, Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman contends that probationary federal government employees “have the constitutional right to participate in public discussion and debate.” “[T]he government has no right to retaliate against these civil servants because of a protected opinion they expressed while off the clock,” Perryman said in a public statement. “We are honored to work with these brave plaintiffs to protect their First Amendment rights and to protect civil servants from this kind of anti-democratic attempt to punish people for protected speech.” The law firm of James & Hoffman is also representing the federal employees.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, recently became the first trillionaire in history when SpaceX—the rocket company he founded—debuted in a record-breaking IPO. Though market volatility has since pushed his net worth below the trillion-dollar mark in some trading sessions, the milestone endures, as does SpaceX’s groundbreaking innovation in reusable spaceflight and its expanding work in satellite communications and AI technologies. Musk has long been known as an environmentalist. He in fact created the most successful electric vehicle company of all time. He also managed to do it right here in America. Both should receive serious commendation, as well as burnish his credentials in discussions of environmental conservation. Which is partly why MSCI’s latest ESG rating for SpaceX is so blatantly farcical. MSCI is still profiting from increasingly disreputable ESG ratings and related sustainability products, despite pushback from investors, state attorneys general, and federal regulators. Why? Because ESG ratings agencies enjoy support from certain institutional investors, asset managers, and European governments and businesses. ESG strategies have often delivered weaker performance than comparable non-ESG funds, saddling savers with unnecessary costs to subsidize ideological experiments. Investments guided by ESG principles too often funnel capital into activist causes that prioritize political and social agendas over genuine financial returns. These practices raise profound questions about fiduciary responsibility, even if state and local plans are not subject to ERISA. Rather than maximizing returns for retirees and workers, ESG engagement frequently reshapes investment decisions in ways that may conflict with beneficiaries’ best financial interests. Far from a voluntary market phenomenon, ESG investing reflects a government-influenced push that undermines free enterprise and individual liberty. This movement drifts toward centralized control rather than decentralized decision-making. ESG imposes subjective values on pension beneficiaries and distorts capital allocation away from prudent, return-focused stewardship. Yet even as evidence mounts that ESG-guided investments frequently deliver inferior returns, many investors and institutions continue to treat the underlying ratings as credible and authoritative. That confidence is increasingly misplaced. Consider MSCI’s own ratings. A rocket company like SpaceX—which advances American innovation through reusable, self-landing launch vehicles and pursues the ambitious goal of making humanity multi-planetary—should not be ranked in the same tier as a hostile foreign adversary such as Russia. Yet that is precisely what MSCI’s system produced. Following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, MSCI downgraded Russia to its lowest ESG tier, a move that, on its face, appears defensible given the environmental destruction, loss of life, and geopolitical instability caused by the conflict. The absurdity lies in equating SpaceX with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime. SpaceX is an All-American enterprise at the forefront of U.S. space leadership. It prioritizes hiring American talent and has faced Biden-era DOJ lawsuits for allegedly discriminating against noncitizens. According to MSCI’s framework, investors are expected to weigh these “societal” concerns on par with an illegal war that has devastated Eastern Europe. This category error exposes the shallowness of ESG’s value structure. Even on purely environmental grounds, the comparison collapses. Elon Musk has long advocated colonizing other planets to safeguard humanity’s long-term resource future—a goal with profound environmental implications. Whatever carbon emissions SpaceX’s launches generate pale against that broader vision, especially when contrasted with the ecological toll of mechanized warfare. While ESG ideology faces mounting resistance in the United States—including through the work of Heritage’s Free Enterprise Initiative—it retains influence in Europe and among certain global institutions. For the average investor, even those sympathetic to environmental goals, MSCI’s rating of SpaceX reveals ESG for what it is: less a tool for “socially conscious investing” than a mechanism for advancing ideological ends at the expense of financial prudence and American interests. By placing one of America’s most innovative companies on the same plane as a strategic adversary, MSCI inadvertently disrobed the ESG emperor.