There are less than 40 days until the election, and Americans are growing increasingly concerned about the atmosphere of political violence and the recent assassination attempts targeting GOP candidate and former President Donald Trump.  On this episode of The Spectacle Podcast, host Scott McKay and special guest Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) discuss the Secret Service’s inept response to the threats against Donald Trump’s life and the continued incitement of violence from public figures on the left. Sen. Paul also explains his proposals to lower the deficit and his stance on tariffs. Tune in to hear their conversation! Listen to The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Spotify. Watch The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Rumble.  The post <i>The Spectacle</i> Ep. 150: Rand Paul on Violence Against Trump, Balancing Budgets, and Tackling Tariffs appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Pundits highlight the first indictment of a sitting New York City mayor as though primarily an imputation of Eric Adams and not prosecutors who historically allow corruption to flourish when committed by their friends. Progressive prosecutors, particularly ones located in New York, move aggressively when perceived malefactors offend not the law but their politics. Adams offered a “help is not on the way” characterization of the December meeting held with President Joe Biden regarding the illegal-alien crisis. Earlier this year, Hizzoner admitted: “The national government has turned its back on New York City.” When you announce seeing the turned backs of the powerful, they tend to pirouette for the purpose of not ballet but bulldozing. The bulldozers showed up at 6 a.m. Thursday at Gracie Mansion, where federal agents seized Hizzoner’s cell phone and inflicted other humiliations. These included the indictment, released later that day, which indicated a quid pro quo scheme in which Turkish interests plied money into Adams’s campaign in exchange for opening a consulate in the city without the hassles of red tape and that bureaucrat from Ghostbusters shutting down their project. It further alleges that Adams received these foreign donations through straw donors. Since New York City matches Big Apple campaign contributions, Adams, the feds say, in effect cheated the system by collecting these public subsidies for his campaign. Beyond this, they claim he received travel and accommodations gratis from these foreign well-wishers. Adams regards the indictment as the quid pro quo in that feds punish him for criticism of them. “I always knew that if I stood my ground for New Yorkers that I would be a target — and a target I became,” Adams told the New York Post in a statement in which he vowed to fight on to serve as mayor and fight the effort for him to serve time. More than 90 years ago, Adams’ predecessor Jimmy Walker dramatically absconded on the S.S. Conte Grande rather than face any potential charges. The differences between the mayors extend beyond the Irish exit. The flamboyant mayor brought 43 suits on an earlier trip to Europe, flouted the law by conspicuously drinking in Prohibition-era speakeasies, and frequently cavorted with dancers, to include Ziegfeld Follies showgirl Betty Compton, for whom he left his wife. Adams, like Walker before him, upset the wrong man — the titular leader of his party. In the case of Walker, who became the national posterchild for urban corruption, Democratic presidential nominee Franklin Roosevelt orchestrated his “resignation” ahead of the 1932 presidential election and that prolonged European stay. Adams, for his part, repeatedly criticized the Biden administration for passivity in dealing with the flood of illegal immigrants draining city services in New York and other metropolises. Now Biden’s Justice Department sics its prosecutors on him. Hmmm. This, really, comes as the first sitting mayor in the city that gave us Tammany Hall to find himself facing felony charges? Big government results in big corruption. When a politician fast-tracks a construction project, he necessarily commits the unforgivable sin of preventing graft opportunities long enjoyed by inspectors and other lower bureaucrats. Campaign finance laws, ostensibly designed to even the playing field, instead, as demonstrated here, act as a scheme to reward cheaters and encourage, a la tax law, creative means of avoidance. And do-gooder schemes to provide matching funds to politicians, as though the people allocating public money require public money to bankroll their ambitions, represent one more opportunity for the powerful to rip off the public. Possibly Adams committed all the offenses the Justice Department assigns to him. One cannot help but find it curious that not a mayor with a bag man grabbing millions but one accused of campaign finance violations and taking in-kind gifts finally attracted the feds to a mayor of New York City. Of course, if you believe law-breaking motivated the feds here, then Eric Adams has a bridge in Brooklyn that he, along with some Turkish gentlemen, wish to sell you. READ MORE: Ryan Wesley Routh, Do-Gooder Will the Real Threats to Democracy Please Stand Up? The post Eric Adams Has a Bridge in Brooklyn to Sell You appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

For the past week, my team at America 2100 and I have been in Charleroi, Pennsylvania — a downwardly mobile, 4,000-person town in the southwestern part of the state. We went to Charleroi to document and report on the flood of thousands (now well over 2,000, according to one Charleroi borough councilman) of primarily Haitian immigrants into the town over the past few years. Charleroi — already a vulnerable working-class town — has seen its immigrant population grow “by over 2,000% in just the last two years,” according to a March report from a local outlet. Springfield, Ohio, was never a one-off; there are now dozens of stories just like it, in towns across the country. The new weight bearing down upon the town is palpable. Car crashes are soaring. The schools are overwhelmed. Public services are strained. Houses — some packed with 15 to 20 Haitians at a time — are falling into disrepair or worse. The budget can’t keep up — and nobody at the state or federal level seems particularly interested in lending a helping hand. Charleroi, as one resident told us, is “a place that time forgot” — “nobody cares about Charleroi, Pennsylvania.” An unfashionable little town, filled with unfashionable little people, is of little to no concern to political elites in either party. If the businesses around Charleroi want to transform the town forever in pursuit of their unquenchable thirst for cheap foreign labor, who are we to stop them? “Where’s [Pennsylvania Governor Josh] Shapiro?”, Larry Celaschi, a Charleroi borough councilman, wondered out loud to us last week. It was a question we heard repeatedly from locals. Shapiro — like most of the political class ostensibly elected to represent Charleroi — hadn’t seen fit to even acknowledge the crisis. That changed today, when Shapiro finally saw fit to at least weigh in … during an interview with a left-wing New Republic journalist, Greg Sargent. In an interview today, Sargent noted that Donald Trump — following on our reporting last week — had “attacked the population of Haitians that have moved to Charleroi in the southwestern part of the state” and suggested “towns and villages across PA are ‘inundated’” in a rally earlier this week. Shapiro responded by trashing the claims as “bulls**t,” adding: Charleroi is a wonderful community in Washington County, Pennsylvania, a community that has seen migrants contribute to their economy, contribute to their community. You’ve heard that from residents in the area. Charleroi is also a community that’s facing serious economic challenges. Instead of actually offering something that’s going to help them address their economic challenges, Donald Trump goes and s**ts on the community. It’s not only disrespectful, it’s really dangerous. When Donald Trump creates a kind of “others” in our community, he puts people at risk and he makes us all less safe. That is really, really dangerous and destructive. I’ll tell you the other thing. They do have, as I said a moment ago, serious economic challenges with plant closures and other things. As governor, I’m working with the community to help lift them up, to help address that. I’d love to have elected officials and wannabe elected officials like Donald Trump actually do something constructive that helps the community instead of tearing them down. I can’t speak for the residents of Charleroi, but I’m glad Shapiro appears to have finally noticed they exist. (After all, that — reminding America that they exist, and matter — was the central goal of our reporting). But I can’t say I’m surprised he took the opportunity to essentially imply that the town’s native population — at least, the ones who object to the top-to-bottom transformation of their community — was racist. Sure, he’ll claim he was only talking about Trump. But the vast majority of locals we spoke to agreed with Trump’s assessment. It’s notable that all the mainstream media reports on Charleroi since it entered the national spotlight have relied heavily on a handful of sources in local office — most notably, the borough manager and the two liberal members of the borough council — who share the media’s opinion on immigration. The average local, by and large, does not. Shapiro might have known that, had he ever taken the time to go to Charleroi and talk to them himself. READ MORE: The Rightward Rebellion: Why Young Men Are Flocking to Conservatism Was It Worth the Empanadas? The post Oh, Now Josh Shapiro Cares About Charleroi? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

At a recent campaign rally in Detroit, Vice President Kamala Harris was interrupted by people chanting, “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide! We won’t vote for genocide.”  She swiftly shut the protests down: “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” Some Michigan voters evidently took her seriously. This week, Amer Ghalib, the Yemen-born mayor of Hamtramck, endorsed President Donald Trump less than 50 days before the election, signaling a potential opportunity for the former president to pick up votes in Michigan.  Hamtramck Mayor Endorses Trump Elected in 2021, Ghalib became the town’s first Muslim mayor. Once a majority Polish enclave of Detroit, Hamtramck became the first Muslim-majority city in the country in 2013. Ghalib’s victory against incumbent mayor Karen Majewski ended Hamtramck’s century-long streak of Polish American mayors. That same year, Muslim candidates won all six city council seats for the first time. Today, Polish Americans make up just 5 percent of the town’s population.  With 93 percent of American Muslims voting for President Joe Biden in 2020, Hamtramck should be an easy win for Democrats. But the Israel–Hamas war has made strange bedfellows for some Muslim voters in Michigan.   Trump met privately with Ghalib ahead of a rally in Flint, Michigan, on Sept. 17. A few days later, Ghalib endorsed the former president in a post on Facebook:  President Trump and I may not agree on everything, but I know he is a man of principles. Though it’s looking good, he may or may not win the election and be the 47th president of the United States, but I believe he is the right choice for this critical time. I’ll not regret my decision no matter what the outcome would be, and I’m ready to face the consequences. Trump told Breitbart that he was “very impressed” with Ghalib, who “was a very big fan of the Trump administration because he saw no wars.” Muslim Voters: Politically Homeless? The Israel–Hamas war has made for strange bedfellows — Ghalib among them. Support for Trump doesn’t always correlate with Republican policy positions. Earlier this year, Ghalib and the Hamtramck city council voted unanimously to divest from Israeli companies. “For now, the city will do its best to refrain from buying, investing or contracting with companies that support the Israeli genocide,” the mayor said.  In March, Ghalib renamed a major street in Hamtramck “Palestine Avenue” in a show of solidarity with Palestinians. Referencing the protesters’ outburst at Harris’ rally in Detroit, Ghalib posted on Facebook in August that Kamala could finish her speech when “Netanyahu finishes his genocide.”  That Trump was a close ally of Israel throughout his presidency and maintains a “good relationship” with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has apparently not affected Ghalib’s support for the former president.  But Muslim Americans in Michigan aren’t a perfect ideological fit with Democrats either, despite voting nearly unanimously for progressive candidates. As a self-described “conservative Democrat,” Ghalib doesn’t agree with progressive liberal ideology. In 2023, he supported a resolution banning the display of LGBTQ flags on city property in Hamtramck. In nearby Dearborn, Muslim parents have made headlines for their opposition to sexually explicit LGBTQ books in school libraries.  “Thank you for changing the perception that all Muslim Americans are default ticket to Democratic Party,” Dearborn resident Khalil Othman said after Ghalib endorsed Trump.   A number of Muslim voters in Michigan like Ghalib are defecting because “the Biden-Harris administration is ‘directly contributing to the death and destruction of our home country and of our relatives overseas,’” says Soujoud Hamade, an Arab American living in the area.  For Hamade, Vice President Dick Cheney’s endorsement of Harris — and her embrace of his endorsement — was the last straw. “These aren’t the values that we as Democrats stood for. We were not the party of war,” she told the Midwesterner.  Similarly, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian American whose district is just south of Hamtramck, has refused to endorse Harris in opposition to the vice president’s stance on Israel. Putting Michigan’s Muslim Vote in Perspective Throughout the election cycle, Muslim voters have made their discontent clear: Democrats need to earn their support. Harris has made some headway in her two months on the campaign trail, earning endorsements from far-left squad members Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But the vice president hasn’t fully earned the trust of Muslim voters. In Michigan, where Biden beat Trump in 2020 by 150,000 votes, Harris can’t afford to lose the support of traditionally Democratic voters. Recent polling from the Council on American Islamic Relations found that 12 percent of Michigan Muslim American voters plan to vote for Harris, with 18 percent supporting Trump and 40 percent planning to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.  Currently, polling shows Trump and Harris neck and neck in the state as Election Day approaches. Though the shift in support among Muslim voters is an exciting development, the population might not be big enough to truly threaten Harris’ chances at victory in the state.  Using data from the 2020 Religion census, political scientist Ryan Burge analyzed Michigan’s Muslim population and cast doubt on the hope that their votes could change the outcome of the election. Despite the high concentration of Muslims in Southeast Michigan, they make up only 2 percent of the state’s overall population. Considering immigration status and age, the population of eligible Muslim voters shrinks further, especially given the relative youth of America’s Muslim population. Burge estimates that Muslim voters will cast about 1.8 percent of all ballots in Michigan this November, or just over 100,000 votes. With those votes split between the candidates, there’s no guarantee that support for Trump among Muslim voters like Ghalib will tip the scales in the GOP’s favor. But in a two-party system, the enemy of an enemy quickly becomes a friend.  Mary Frances Myler is a contributing editor at The American Spectator. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022.  READ MORE by Mary Frances Myler:  Can the GOP Win Back the Senate?  Harris and ABC Lied About Late-Term Abortions As Students Return, So Do Pro-Palestinian Protests The post Mayor of Majority-Muslim City in Michigan Endorses Trump appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Higher education has been a cesspool of anti-Americanism, censorious leftism, and cultural radicalism for longer than I have been alive. The moral rot is, and always has been, particularly acute at Ivy League or otherwise putatively “elite” institutions. The pro-Hamas “protests” that have rocked university campuses since Oct. 7 are indicative: One cannot help but realize that the jihadi anarchy on display at Harvard Yard hasn’t been replicated at red-state public schools such as Alabama or Ole Miss. But every so often, something happens at an “elite” university that manages to shock our already jaded consciences. For instance, there was the triumvirate of “elite” university presidents who testified before Congress last December that the permissibility of campus calls for the genocide of the Jewish people “depends on the context.” There was also Judge Kyle Duncan’s March 2023 struggle session at Stanford Law School, where a baying left-wing mob — egged on by then-“DEI” Dean Tirien Steinbach — prevented the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals jurist from delivering his remarks. But perhaps the single biggest disgrace to rock academia in recent years has been the University of Pennsylvania’s yearslong crusade against its own tenured law professor, Amy Wax. In 2017, Wax coauthored an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer that lamented the decline of traditional bourgeoisie values across American society and suggested this decline is blameworthy for many of America’s present social maladies. Almost immediately, 4,000 people signed a petition calling for Wax’s ouster; 33 of her Penn Law colleagues also condemned her instantaneously. Wax, a vocal critic of mass migration and skeptic of multiculturalism, admirably refused to be silenced. She ruffled more feathers when she observed that, in her two decades of teaching experience, Black students rarely finish in the top half of graduating law school classes. Statistics, it seems, are racist. For two and a half years, a period spanning successive Penn Law deanships, Wax has been subject to a probe into her alleged wrongthink and misdeeds. The investigation has depleted valuable funds that Penn Law could have used to foster free speech or — how’s this for an idea? — actually train students to practice law. The probe has been exorbitantly expensive, forcing Wax to retain counsel; thankfully, a GoFundMe legal defense fund for the embattled professor has raised nearly $200,000 since its July 2022 launch. The witch hunt, as Aaron Sibarium observed for the Washington Free Beacon, has also “made Penn a pariah among academic freedom advocates.” The judgment finally came this week: Penn Law suspended Wax for a year, reduced her pay for that year by 50 percent, permanently stripped her of her endowed chair and summer pay, and publicly reprimanded her. Interestingly, as Sibarium scooped, Penn Law had previously offered Wax a settlement that would have lessened her penalty on the condition that she not “disparage the University,” not sue Penn, and not publicly disclose the exculpatory evidence she had presented during the yearslong probe. Translation: Shut your mouth and this problem will go away quickly. Chairman Mao would have nodded right along. Penn Law, in the most recent version of the oft-cited U.S. News & World Report law school rankings, is tied for fourth place. High-achieving law school applicants (rightly or wrongly) seek to enroll there, and high-end law firms (rightly or wrongly) seek to recruit from there. When such an institution allocates immense time and resources to punish and humiliate one of its own faculty members, the goal is clear: to send a message. In this particular case, the message could not be clearer: You must bend the knee. Wokeism, unlike the liberalism of old, brooks no dissent. Free inquiry must yield to the stifling intellectual conformity that leftists delude themselves into thinking is “progress.” On the substance of Wax’s comments, to merely speak of race-based outcomes and speculate as to the underlying social phenomena that might have affected those outcomes is verboten. Anyone who does not toe the line, condemn America as a bastion of “systemic racism,” and endorse everything from reparations to race-conscious admissions practices is, in turn, deemed a racist him/herself. To call this spectacle “Orwellian” would risk understatement. The Amy Wax struggle session ought to be an inflection point in our higher education wars. College students should stop applying to Penn Law. Employers — from law firms to individual judges — should stop hiring from there as well. And Congress should pass a new law placing a hard condition on the disbursement of higher education funding: No private university that punishes a tenured professor for engaging in First Amendment–protected speech will receive a single penny in public funding. Wax is vowing to fight on. Perhaps she will sue Penn Law. Perhaps she will prevail in that suit. But as is so often the case, the process is the real punishment. And the indignity is the whole point. To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM READ MORE: Why Are the Nutjobs Trying to Kill Political Opponents All Left-Wingers? Do Republicans Still Buy Sneakers Too? The post The Amy Wax Inflection Point for ‘Elite’ Higher Education appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

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