This week, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) won the Democratic nominations for three New York congressional seats. These deep blue seats are now poised to be held by three individuals who not only hold terrible policy positions but also actively despise the nation they seek to represent. Take “Democratic” nominee Darializa Avila Chevalier, who looks less like a candidate than a conservative’s parody of one. A Columbia University graduate and PhD candidate, Chevallier narrowly won her race for Congress while accusing her Dominican immigrant opponent of being a racist. She was one of the founders of Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), and led the illegal occupation of the college campus. Chevalier’s open disdain for the United States did not stop her from securing the Democratic nomination. A few years ago in a now-deleted Twitter account she said she “just wiped my hand on the American flag.” Her disdain isn’t reserved for America. She also turns it on the country her parents came from, the Dominican Republic, branding it a racist nation and calling for it to merge with Haiti into a single “black” country. Another winner, Claire Valdez, campaigned and rallied — like Chevallier — alongside socialist streamer Hasan Piker. Piker is now under Treasury investigation for allegedly violating U.S. sanctions on the Cuban regime. He has said America deserved the 9/11 attacks, and has praised and dressed as tyrants like China’s Mao Zedong, whose policies killed an estimated 60 million people, more than any ruler in history. Valdez hasn’t merely kept odd company; she has made a “free Palestine” one of her most important issues, rather than the issues that concern people who live in her district. Like Chevallier, Valdez is a downwardly mobile overeducated liberal arts graduate who worked at Columbia University and was a “union organizer” after graduating with a Fine Arts degree in Chicago. The final DSA congressional winner is the least publicized in part because it seems as if many other DSA members dislike him, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander. Lander ticks every socialist box: abolishing ICE, taxing the rich, redistributing income, cracking down on corporations, and attacking Israel. But unlike Chevallier and Valdez, Lander is Jewish and thus influencers like Hasan Piker and even Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife, who backed the other two, withheld the same endorsement for Lander. Antisemitism was so prevalent during this Democratic primary that Congressman Dan Goldman, who is Jewish and was running against Brad Lander for the nomination in New York’s 10th congressional district, was asked not to come back to a coffee shop by the store owner on social media and refunded his payment. The DSA didn’t just win congressional races this week; they also nominated over a dozen state legislators in New York, and their ranks are poised to grow from six to 15 state legislators. Like many of you, I watch unfolding events with deep concern. My homeland was ruined by socialists who came to power not by coup but by ballot, carrying the same ideas I now see on the rise in America. When Venezuelans voted for Hugo Chavez, he too promised to take from the rich, he too hated America and “imperialism,” and he was also a furious antisemite who condemned Israel. His socialist policies were the same: Free housing, government grocery stores, price controls, and the seizure of private property. The result was shortages, blackouts, extreme poverty, an exodus of millions, and hyperinflation. What separates American socialism from Venezuela’s isn’t ideology but who votes for it. America’s socialists are mostly young, white, and college-educated. When they had support, Venezuela’s socialists were older, poorer, less educated, and mostly not of European descent. While Darializa Avila Chevallier carried New York’s 13th congressional district by winning white college-educated and young voters, Espaillat ran up double-digit margins in the poorest, most Hispanic parts of the district and carried majority-Black precincts. Valdez, who took NY-7, did best in the highest-income, youngest areas and lost Orthodox Jewish precincts badly. There has never been a nation so rich and so free like America, where the most well-off and educated members of society vote for their own destruction. *** Daniel Di Martino is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. All views expressed are those of the author and not the Manhattan Institute. 

Fresh off the heels of the San Francisco Giants “Pride Night” controversy, the Baltimore Orioles announced it will hold a “Pride Night” game, which will feature a drag queen performer. The Orioles X account on Wednesday boasted, “Baseball is for everyone. See you at The Yard this Friday for Pride Night!” Baseball is for everyone

Denmark is preparing to outlaw the public broadcast of the Islamic call to prayer. Immigration Minister Morten Bødskov announced this week that the government would relaunch an inquiry into whether a nationwide prohibition on the Adhan — the traditional summons to prayer broadcast five times daily from mosque loudspeakers — could be enacted without violating constitutional protections for religious freedom. Bødskov, a Social Democrat, framed the move in blunt terms, arguing that parts of Denmark risked losing their cultural identity to what he called a slow creep of Islamization. He said the country should sound and feel distinctly Danish, not like a neighborhood in a Pakistani city. Some Danish localities, including Copenhagen, already effectively silence outdoor calls to prayer through strict noise regulations. A new investigation would seek to determine whether a uniform national ban could be written to survive legal challenge under Denmark’s constitution, which protects the right to public worship while already permitting limits on anti-democratic religious speech. The move fits a broader pattern in Danish policy. Under Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, Denmark has cultivated some of the most restrictive immigration rules in Europe, including laws that allow authorities to resettle migrants out of neighborhoods deemed to have too high a concentration of foreign-born residents. Denmark is home to roughly 270,000 Muslims and around 100 mosques in a general population of about six million. The Danish debate is one front in a wider international conversation about the call to prayer’s place in Western cities. In Australia, a Sydney-area local government is weighing planning rules that would bar mosques from installing outdoor loudspeakers for the call to prayer as a preemptive response to a pending application from a mosque in Lakemba. The picture looks markedly different in parts of the United States. New York City moved in 2023 to eliminate permit requirements for mosques to broadcast the Adhan on Fridays and during Ramadan, with Mayor Eric Adams describing the change as an overdue step toward inclusion. Minneapolis that same year became the first major American city to allow unrestricted outdoor broadcasts at any hour. But in Dearborn, Michigan — home to one of the country’s largest Arab-American communities — residents have lodged noise complaints against mosques, and city officials have confirmed that at least one mosque was found in violation of local ordinances following decibel testing.

The hall of the United Nations Human Rights Council fell into an uneasy silence earlier this week as a small woman walked to the microphone and prepared to do something the world’s most powerful human rights body had failed to do: bear witness. Ilana Gritzewsky, a survivor of Hamas’ October 7 massacre, stood before Reem Alsalem — the U.N.’s own special rapporteur on violence against women, who is Jordanian — and refused to be erased. What followed was one of the most searing moments in recent U.N. history, not because of what the diplomat said in response. Because of what she didn’t say. Gritzewsky recounted the morning terrorists stormed her kibbutz — the murders, the burning, the kidnapping. She described being touched, beaten, and sexually abused until she lost consciousness, waking half-naked with seven Hamas fighters standing over her. She described the broken hip, the broken jaw, the scarred soul she carried home from captivity. She spoke of how the wail of an air raid siren or the thunder of an Iranian rocket still hurls her back into that darkness. “In captivity, Jewish women were raped, abused, and humiliated. And you, special rapporteur, you choose silence and denial. You say there was no evidence of sexual violence on October 7th,” she told Alsalem directly. “I’m standing here today, not as a report, not as a statistic. I am a woman who survived. I am the living proof of sexual violence by Hamas.” Then she asked the question that hung over the chamber like smoke: “When I, another Israeli woman, begged not to be raped — why were you silent? Please look at me. Do you believe us now? Will you apologize?” Alsalem sat silent after Gritzewsky’s testimony. She did not apologize. She smirked. This is the UN. Look at the face of the UN special rapporteur who is meant to stand up for women but has refused, again and again, to speak up for Israeli women. Look at her face when a former hostage challenges her. pic.twitter.com/whThRNG92u — Nicole Lampert (@nicolelampert) June 24, 2026 The confrontation laid bare a record that is nothing short of a scandal. As U.N. Watch noted, Alsalem publicly declared last November that “no independent investigation found that rape took place on October 7” — a claim directly contradicted by a U.N. report issued months earlier that found reasonable grounds to believe Hamas committed sexual violence during the attack, with an even higher evidentiary threshold met for assaults on hostages held in captivity. As recently as April 2026, she was still dismissing survivor testimony as “misinformation” deployed to “justify genocide against Palestinians.” Her June 2026 report to the Human Rights Council, titled “Violence against Mothers,” completed the picture. It accused Israel of reproductive violence and genocide, cited a single article from an openly anti-Israel outlet, and lamented that U.S. and Israeli action against Iran might undermine Tehran’s record on women’s rights — a position that drew immediate ridicule from prominent Iranian women’s rights activist Masih Alinejad, who had publicly celebrated those same strikes. The report made no mention of Hamas. It said nothing of Israeli mothers murdered in front of their children, nothing of hostage families psychologically tortured for over two years, nothing of the deliberate phenomenon so systematic it has been given its own name: kinocide. Ilana Gritzewsky offered Reem Alsalem a simple human choice on June 23: look at her, and reckon with what she represents. The special rapporteur looked away.

Twin earthquakes rocked Venezuela on Wednesday, including a 7.5 magnitude quake whose epicenter hit west of Caracas just 40 seconds after a 7.2 magnitude quake struck nearby. At least 164 people have been killed and nearly 1,000 more have been wounded from the back-to-back earthquakes that crumbled buildings and devastated city streets, according to Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez. The total extent of the damage, however, still remains unclear as of Thursday morning, and the death toll could rise even higher as search and rescue teams try to locate missing people.      The twin quakes were “unusual for being so close together in time,” Mark Allen, Earth Sciences professor at Durham University, told Science Media Center. While the second quake’s reading at 7.5 magnitude doesn’t seem much bigger than the first 7.2 quake, “it’s actually twice as large because of the way the scale works,” Adam Pascale, a seismology expert at the Seismology Research Institute in Australia, told CNN. After the huge quakes, Venezuela has felt at least 30 aftershocks, according to Rodríguez. The first earthquake hit around 6:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, and its epicenter was near San Felipe, where around 200,000 people live, The New York Times reported. The second — and larger quake — hit nearby just 40 seconds later. The 7.5 magnitude earthquake was the largest to strike Venezuela since 1900. Photos taken after the quakes show the devastation as hundreds of people were forced to the streets after apartment buildings collapsed. People walk past a collapsed building following an earthquake in Caracas on June 25, 2026.(Photo by Manaure QUINTERO / AFP via Getty Images) CARACAS, VENEZUELA JUNE 25: Rescue teams continue searching the rubble of a collapsed building for survivors in the San Bernardino neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, on June 25, 2026. In the early hours of the day, firefighters and Civil Protection personnel rescued an elderly person showing signs of life from the debris. The individual was taken by ambulance to a medical center. (Photo by Diko Betancourt/Anadolu via Getty Images) President Donald Trump confirmed that reports from Venezuela following the massive quakes “are not good.” Trump added that the United States is prepared to help Venezuela following the devastation. “The two major earthquakes that just hit the great people of Venezuela are both massive in scale and have left a devastating number of deaths. The U.S.A. stands ready, willing, and able to help! I have instructed all agencies of our government to get ready to move quickly. We will be there for our new and great friends.” Rodríguez responded to Trump’s post and thanked his administration for staying in contact with Caracas “in the face of this tragedy that has plunged us into mourning.” “Venezuela will never forget the helping hand extended to our people during these difficult times,” Rodríguez added. In an early morning post on Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote that the “State Department is immediately deploying search and rescue teams, medical resources, and humanitarian assistance to Venezuela.” “The United States extends our deepest condolences to the people of Venezuela following the devastating earthquakes,” Rubio added. “Our hearts are with all those who have lost loved ones, those injured, and the courageous rescue workers working tirelessly in the aftermath.” The massive earthquakes hit Venezuela as the United States continues to oversee the South American country following the U.S. capture of dictator Nicolás Maduro. Venezuela was not the only country to experience quakes on Wednesday, with two other strong earthquakes hitting Japan and Northern California. A 5.6 magnitude earthquake shook parts of Northern California at around 8:10 a.m. PT on Wednesday, and there were some reports of injuries. Then, soon after the twin quakes in Venezuela, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck just off the coast of Japan. No injuries or serious damage was reported after the Japan quake.