Islamist socialist (communist) Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign hosted a closed-door roundtable to craft his prospective administration’s education policy, and stocked it with anti-meritocracy leftists. One once bashed standardized tests as “eugenics.” It included people rabidly opposed to gifted and talented programs and people pushing radical antisemitism. “The floodgates are opening to radical indoctrinating propaganda coming into the […] The post The Future of NYC Education Under Zohran Mamdani appeared first on www.independentsentinel.com.

Cythia Erivo and Ariana Grande brought Elphaba and Glinda to life in Wicked, and Oz has never been the same. Fans adore the women’s portrayals of the iconic characters and jump at the chance to meet the stars. It’s sometimes difficult to separate the actor from the character they play and realize they’re just like us. TikToker Tricia Mpisi had the opportunity to attend a 2024 Wicked premiere, which included a red-carpet experience and meeting Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. As she posed for a group photo with the stars and others, someone dropped champagne on Tricia’s head. What came next shocked Tricia the most. @triciampisi Pinch me!!!!! @Cynthia Erivo @arianagrande @Wicked Movie #triciampisi #wickedmovie #universalpartner #wicked #cynthiaerivo #arianagrande #elphaba #glinda ♬ Elphaba and Glinda from Wicked – FallonTonight Cynthia Erivo And Ariana Grande Jumped Right In To Help As Tricia sat, shocked, unable to see with alcohol and makeup running in her eyes, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande comforted her and helped clean her up. The woman showed compassion in what could have been an incredibly embarrassing moment for Tricia. There were plenty of other people who couldn’t help clean up the mess. Cynthia and Ariana helped because they wanted to, not because they had to. That meant the world to Tricia, who proudly shared the story on TikTok. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande fans loved seeing their kindness during Tricia’s encounter. “Sooo amazing,” a fan wrote. “I am so happy you got to meet them and have this experience.” Others wanted to know how this came to pass. “Omg they’re so casual. Was this like a fan brunch?” Someone asked. Meeting Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande is a dream for so many. Tricia really lucked out with this amazing opportunity. “I’m so glad you got to meet them,” a fan wrote “get to live our dream.” “I’m so jealous, but also I would cry like a lot you know,” another agreed. We always knew they were both good witches. After all, no one mourns the wicked. This story’s featured image can be found here. The post Cynthia Erivo And Ariana Grande Prove There’s Nothing Wicked About Them As They Help Fan After Mishap appeared first on InspireMore.

The Democratic Socialists of America just wrapped up a Hajj to their Mecca: Havana, a city so buried in detritus after decades of communism that it’s a wonder why any politician would want to be associated with it. Comparing photos of the Cuban capital today with those from the 1950s is an anti-socialist campaign ad that writes itself. And yet, to Cuba, some 40 Democratic Socialists of America “elected leaders and rank and file members” trotted off for five days, Oct. 14 to 18. But the Democratic Socialists of America is hardly alone. Despite this bleak record of economic disaster and political tyranny every single time it has been tried anywhere in the world, Marxism is experiencing a resurgence that at first blush beggars belief. In the Democratic Socialists of America’s case, Havana’s decrepitude has become so hard to ignore that the group had no alternative but to mention the pervasive degradation in social media posts, though of course it blames U.S. sanctions, not socialism’s utter failure. “The resilience of the Cuban people inspires us, but we also saw firsthand the hardships they face. From blackouts to shortages of basic goods, the U.S. blockade grips daily life, and things are worsening as sanctions tighten and Trump beats the drums of war in the region,” wrote Democratic Socialists of America on X. “We return more determined than ever to end the cruel U.S. blockade and stand with the Cuban people,” read another post. To which some wag on X who goes by the name Henry Hub retorted, “You went to Cuba, saw how poor the peoples living standards are and how limited their economic opportunities and resources are and returned still communist? What was it you took notes on—how to decimate a country with fascist totalitarianism?” Apparently so. We have high-profile candidates and journalists again donning the mantle of Marxism, and even waxing poetic about the Soviet Union. It’s as if the 1930s have returned, and Walter Duranty is dishing out pro-Soviet propaganda in the New York Times. The lessons learned from fighting the existential struggle against Soviet communism seem to have been forgotten. The Democratic Socialists of America has four full-fledged members sitting in Congress, including high-profile players such as Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, who may be preparing to primary Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York. It also includes a candidate who may soon become the Democratic Socialists of America’s best-known member in power. In New York City, the world’s flagship financial hub, Zohran Mamdani is rapidly closing in on a victory in the mayoral election to be held on Nov. 4. Recent polls show Mamdani, a Marxist Muslim born in Uganda who emigrated to the U.S. in 1998, with a commanding lead of 43.2% support, against 28.9% for former governor Andrew Cuomo and perennial Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa at 19.4%. In Maine, a conservative bastion until not too long ago but which voted for Kamala Harris by seven percentage points, a rough-hewn candidate by the name of Graham Platner has captured the imagination of progressive voters. He has a 58% support against the sitting governor, Janet Mills, who trails at 24% in a mid-October poll for primary elections to be held in mid-2026. On a Reddit thread about people becoming more conservative as they age, Platner wrote that he “became older and became a communist.” He also stated, “I did used to love America, or at least the idea of it. These days I’m pretty disgusted by it all.” The latest thing is that he’s had a Nazi SS tattoo for 18 years, which he said he got in Croatia as a Marine while drunk on leave. But it’s not just drunken soldiers and Democratic Socialists of America members who pine for Marxism. Julia Ioffe, a journalist of some renown, has just penned a book which, judging by an interview she gave on “Morning Joe,” is nothing but a paean to the country of her birth: the Soviet Union. Yes, the good old USSR of gulags, show trials, bread lines, oppression, and dreary lives. In the interview, Ioffe almost waxes poetic about how the Soviets educated women while America did not, comparing her family’s many female PhDs to those of benighted Americans with none. The Soviets did this because they wanted to “emancipate women,” Ioffe said at one point, though later she shows more leg and admits the Soviets were seeking to “abolish the nuclear family.” But Ioffe curiously passes no judgment on a strategy so damaging to the nation, society, and individuals, especially children, so responsible for the drabness of Soviet life, and so clearly aimed at clearing the field for totalitarianism. Ioffe is an opinionated liberal, but she is also a skillful writer who does her homework and knows Russia well. She shares with Mamdani that she came here at the age of seven, also in the 1990s, and therein may lie the nub of the problem. The people voting for Mamdani and pining for communism are predominantly young or foreign-born. Patriot Polling reports that Mamdani has the support of a gigantic 62% of the foreign-born vote in New York City. Cuomo leads Mamdani among the native born, 40% to 32%. Sliwa gets 25%. If you are young or if you are a foreign-born American of any age who immigrated after the 1970s, the chances are that you did not benefit from the focus on civics education and the assimilationist ethos that were the hallmark of America till then. Ditto for a learned mistrust of Marxism of any flavor. “We have a financial literacy problem, and it’s affecting the politics in America,” said the journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin on Bill Maher’s show the other night. He was referring to support for Mamdani’s promises of free stuff, but he could have been referring to all the others. We also have a literacy crisis on civics, the virtues, and the reality of Marxism, and it’s affecting politics in America. Originally published by The Washington Examiner. The post Marxism’s Comeback: Why Young Voters Are Embracing Failed Ideology appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Nov. 2, 2025, is World Fertility Day. The Earth is now home to over 8 billion people. The global population is projected to continue rising for the next few decades, and then a population decline—perhaps a precipitous one—is expected to begin. This decline is coming because, on average, women are having fewer babies. The decades-long drop in fertility is precipitated by many factors, including the continuing aftershocks of China’s forced one-child policy that punished women’s fertility rather than celebrating it. Under the one-child policy, being pregnant became a crime you could be socially punished, openly shamed, and physically assaulted for. By targeting and abusing women, the Chinese government got what it wanted: fewer people. But China also got something else it may not have anticipated: a nation of women who do not want children. China, now slipping toward economic collapse due to too few young workers to support the aging population, is trying frantically to encourage women to have babies. The government is now offering cash rewards for childbearing. But it may be too late to undo what it has done to motherhood. But what has it done, exactly? You Reap What You Sow After years of living as only children, having their fertility forcibly suppressed, and being told that children are a bane to be avoided like the plague, the situation seems to have given birth to a new kind of woman. A self-serving, self-focused woman who does not see herself as a unique and powerful giver and commander of life, but as a cog in the wheel of humanity who has only her own ease to consider. An article by He Huifeng highlights the issue. She says, “Many of China’s Gen Z women are looking to break free from the shackles of marriage and children, to live for themselves.” She says that for these young women, “Winning at life does not necessarily involve getting married or having children, no matter how much their parents and the government want them to.” According to He, “Lying flat, or tang ping, represents the mindset of literally lying down instead of being a productive member of society. Rather than striving to study hard, buy a home, or even start a family, many young people are rejecting it all to ‘lie flat.’” “Lying flat” and rejecting a life course that includes responsibility, work, managing stress, planning, and sacrifice—a life course that many would call “growing up”—is not just a problem for Chinese youth. We see a similar phenomenon in America and elsewhere. Why? Though complex, the reasons are likely similar. While women’s fertility has not been suppressed through forced abortion and forced contraception in America, the free-for-all sexual climate and the push to climb the corporate ladder has urged women to the abortionist’s table, cheered on by a chorus of voices invoking the same noxious idea that was planted in the minds of young Chinese women: “Babies are burdens.” Returning to Ancient Wisdom The pervasive “live for yourself” and “babies are burdens” mantras are in direct conflict with both the ancient Chinese wisdom of Confucius and the teachings of Jesus, which are both summed up nicely by Mahatma Gandhi: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Once a mindset of living only for oneself and rejecting children is deeply ingrained in a culture and in the souls of young women and men in it, how can a change from selfishness to selflessness be precipitated? Or can it? Commenting on the falling birthrate and the growing selfishness epidemic, American psychoanalyst Erica Komisar says, “What we fail to realize is that the desire to have and to care for children comes from feeling that we as children were desired and cared for, and that we were a priority to our parents … The declining birth rate is … a failure of society to value nurturing and family above all else and to model our joy in parenting to the next generation.” Valuing Nurturing and Family Above All Else If a major failure of the maturing generations is failing to value family above all else and failing to model joy in parenting, then perhaps a winning strategy is to start there: to talk freely and frequently about how raising children is—in aggregate—a prime asset, not just a time-consuming liability. Chinese influencer Shen Jiake observes that for policies aimed at increasing the birth rate to be effective, they must make young women feel as if their quality of life will be improved more by having children than by not having them. The fact that children make life more joyful (if also more rigorous) used to be largely self-evident, but no more. American writer and mother Bethany Mandel says this is precisely where we must begin. She says those who know the joy of parenting must confront the false narrative that “motherhood is where dreams and hopes and ambitions go to die. Children are dream crushers. Something to be avoided.” And perhaps it is not as much an uphill battle as it appears. Mandel says, “Here’s the secret: Talking about the joys of parenthood isn’t just some slick spin to get people to produce more human capital. No, it’s the truth. There is no higher joy, no greater euphoria, no more thrilling or exalted accomplishment than bringing a unique soul, all their own, into the world and orienting them toward virtue.” Mandel continues, “Parenthood is sublime. It is the greatest and most transcendent of human achievements. This isn’t sugarcoating, this isn’t hyperbole, it’s just truth-telling. And we need more of it.” I concur. It seems the very future of the world depends upon it. China berated and victimized mothers for 40 years. The West has been debasing, mocking, and marginalizing them for even longer. It’s time for more truth-telling. It’s time to let the secret out in grand fashion that having new little people to care for, to trust you, to teach you, to make you fall down laughing, and adore you beyond your wildest dreams—despite the diapers and the long hours—is the very finest life has to offer. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post It’s World Fertility Day: Should We Celebrate Fertility or Punish It? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

As part of an ongoing series discussing the question of religious revival in America, The Daily Signal reached out to Megan Basham, an author and culture reporter for The Daily Wire, to discuss what she is observing about religion in the United States. The Daily Signal asked Basham about what she was seeing on the ground through her participation in a Turning Point USA event. “I was expecting, kind of what you see in the Charlie [Kirk] videos, like there was going to be this combative questioning, where I needed to be prepared to defend life and defend biblical marriage and two genders. And, you know, that wasn’t the events that I’ve experienced at all,” she said.  “It’s more like these kids are just looking for advice. You know, they seem very hungry for spiritual things. And to me, what they’re asking about is: ‘How do we have a deeper religious life, and how do we incorporate that into how we live?’ And they’re asking, like, sort of these big ideological questions,” she explained. Basham emphasized how elite culture suddenly seemed more willing to discuss Christianity. “We have Elon Musk. We have Joe Rogan. We have all of these sort of manly leaders of tech and culture and media, and they’re suddenly talking about Christ. They’re talking about church. They’re talking about Christianity,” she said. Basham detailed what she sees as the connection of the decline in trust in American institutions to a renewed exploration of faith on the part of some young men. “[M]aybe there’s been a moment where they stared into the abyss, and there is only one thing left to turn to. When we’ve come through a culture where all of our institutions have becalmed themselves in such massive ways, what is a solid rock of truth that you can hang on to?” she asked rhetorically. Basham explained that she had recently interviewed Doug Wilson, a prominent proponent of Christian nationalism who has been profiled in recent months by many mainstream outlets, including The New York Times and CNN. Basham speculated that part of what was drawing people to the Christian nationalist movement was that “it’s offering answers that are sort of, postmodern liberal society [that] is too afraid to answer, but they’re actually scriptural answers.” “But they seem, I mean, it seems so foreign now to say, well, actually, yeah, we do believe that not only are there two sexes, but these two sexes have different roles designed for them by God. And you can see the outgrowth of what those roles are by, for example, the fact that women are childbearing, and what does that mean? What comes along with that?” Basham explained, adding: And so, to me, those guys are really driving the conversation, even though, you know, they’re painted as fringy, they’re moving the Overton [window] of what we’re allowed to talk about.  Basham emphasized the widespread discussion of doctrinal differences as a positive sign of renewal. “One of the reasons I do think, I don’t know if we call it a revival, but maybe some sort of spiritual awakening is happening, is because suddenly everybody’s taking their doctrinal [distinction] seriously again. And when I was growing up, I mean, you know, I’m Gen X, so it was all Catholics and evangelicals together, Catholics and Protestants together,” Basham said, adding, “Nobody really talked about doctrinal [distinction] as much, except maybe John MacArthur and R.C. Sproul, you know, it just wasn’t a discussion that people had. And so, to suddenly see these really robust debates not only happening, but being popular content tells me, well, clearly there’s an interest there.” On the phenomena of some young men converting to more liturgical forms of Christianity, Basham critiqued some of the Protestant outreach methods. “The problem is, you know, as far as Protestants, so much of what we’ve been represented by is that seeker-sensitive megachurch model that’s like about an inch deep. And understandably, I think that hasn’t been super attractive, particularly to these young men, and that’s why you’re seeing this rise in Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism,” she said. The post Megan Basham Weighs in on America’s Potential Religious Revival appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Price of a Life

A family in Toledo, Ohio, got a most unwelcome visitor Saturday afternoon — a male they didn't know who allegedly opened their front door and announced to a young daughter that he was a police officer."This guy came through the back alley, came to the front door, and he was trying to open the entrance," Steven Aranda told WTVG-TV of the frightening encounter. "And my little daughter said, ‘What are you doing?’ She said, ‘You don’t belong here,’ and then he said he was a Toledo cop."'I threw him down on the ground — slammed him on the concrete and beat him up.'Charging documents indicated that Parker Jackson, 33, claimed he was a police officer and needed to check on the children in the home, the station said.Aranda told WTVG Jackson didn't look like a police officer, and a Toledo Police report Blaze News obtained indicated that Jackson provided no identification backing up his claim that he was a cop.The station said Aranda was concerned about protecting his children and took matters into his own hands.'I snatched his a*s up, and I threw him down on the ground — slammed him on the concrete and beat him up," Aranda told WTVG. “I pinned him down until the cops got here.”Indeed, Jackson's arrest photo shows him with a bloody, swollen lip and a cut above his eye. The police report also said Jackson was showing "visible symptoms of intoxication" by the time officers arrived. In fact, the report added that Jackson appeared to have been carrying several opened and unopened cans of Milwaukee's Best Ice beer at the time of his arrest. The report also said Jackson acknowledged opening the home's front door and claiming to be a police officer.RELATED: Dad tells cops he caught a rideshare driver sexually assaulting his daughter. So he did what dads do. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesJackson pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated trespassing, inducing panic, and impersonating a police officer, WTVG reported, adding that a judge ordered Jackson to stay away from the family and set his bond at $1,500.Aranda told the station his four children were shaken by the incident.“The kids were kind of scared a little bit 'cause, you know, they ain't been playing outside now in the past few days because you can’t trust nobody no more,” he noted to WTVG. “Watch out for your kids where they play at and their surroundings.” You can watch the video of Aranda's interview with WTVG here.Jackson on Friday was still behind bars at Lucas County Jail, officials told Blaze News.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

'You INSULTED Black Men': Black Pastor Calls Obama OUT for Being a Racist FRAUD and Endorsing Spanberger