'Self-deporting back to their country'

It was a bloodbath

'Trump’s weakness and chaos'

Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City is a warning shot — and Republicans would be foolish to ignore it. On June 24, Mamdani, an unapologetic Democratic socialist, defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayoral race’s Democratic primary. Mamdani’s platform is openly and proudly anti-law enforcement, anti-capitalist, anti-Israel, anti-white, and pro-extremist. […]

'Shame on every GOP sycophant'

'The United States must unleash American energy'

Books Backlist Bonanza Backlist Bonanza: 5 Underrated Books for Hot Commie Summer Tired of the status quo? Try these books featuring revolutionary governments some communal weirdos… By Alex Brown | Published on July 7, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Tired of the status quo? Ready for change? Eager for some activism and advocacy? Excited to build new coalitions instead of pouring money into systems that are designed to oppress? I’ve got three words for you: hot commie summer. These five books aren’t really about communism anymore than that phrase is; rather, the stories herein are about asking “what if we did something different?” We have some revolutionary governments and some communal weirdos, both seeking to make life better, whether on a small scale or large. The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy (Danielle Cain #1 — Tordotcom, 2017) We don’t get much speculative fiction set in anarchist communes, but I love the way Margaret Killjoy takes “the deer is fucked up” subgenre of horror and applies it to a group of outsiders. In Freedom, Iowa, a bunch of anarchists summon a deer god to deal with internal conflict, and Danielle wanders into the middle of it. She’s searching for clues about her dead best friend Clay, and her journey takes her to a collective struggling to live up to its grand ideals. It is to my utter disappointment that we never got more than two novellas when it was primed to be a series as vast as Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries. Maybe one day someone will have the great sense to option this for a TV show.  Summer in the City of Roses by Michelle Ruiz Keil (Soho Teen, 2021) Michelle Ruiz Keil only has two young adult novels out, but both are dreamy historicals featuring a band of lefty alternative weirdos forging a found family under magical realism vibes. This one is inspired both by the Grimm fairytale “Brother and Sister” and the Greek myth of Iphigenia. Iphigenia was the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, rulers of Mycenae. Pops pissed off Artemis during the Trojan War, and she retaliated by interfering in his march. To beg for forgiveness, he decided to sacrifice his daughter to Artemis. Lucky for her, the goddess intervened at the last minute by offering a stag instead. Or the sacrifice went ahead as planned. Or Artemis turned her into Hecate. Who knows. Not the point. This story is about two Greek-Mexican siblings, Iph and Orr who are separated in 1990s Portland, Oregon. Orr is packed off to wilderness bootcamp to toughen him up and escapes, finding refuge with a pack of punks. Iph runs away to search for him and finds George, a queer teen with ties to the underground. These new friends offer the teens a new way of moving through the world. They don’t have to accept things as they are; they can strive toward something more meaningful.  The Siren, the Song, and the Spy by Maggie Tokuda-Hall (The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea #2 — Candlewick Press, 2023) The sequel to the phenomenal YA queer fantasy The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea doubles down on the anti-colonial themes. In the first book, Florian and Evelyn escape their colonial oppressors, transforming psychologically and physically. The second book features them only tangentially, instead focusing on a pair of siblings whose homeland is invaded by colonizers, Florian’s brother Alfie who is trying to foment a revolution from the heart of the empire, and Genevieve, a spy-turned-traitor trying to atone for all the violence she did on behalf of said empire. This isn’t just a book—or series, really—about taking down the empire. It’s about asking if the revolution is worth it if everyone has to die to achieve it. It’s about asking how much blood is too much, how much we must pay for freedom and who has to pay it. It wants us to think about the world that will be left behind once the rebels are victorious. How we fight matters as much as what we are fighting. Blackheart Man by Nalo Hopkinson (Saga Press, 2024) I always feel like I’m cheating a bit on this list by including more recent titles, but this book was so good and not enough people read it! Years ago, the island of Chynchin successfully threw off the shackles of their colonial oppressors, the Ymisen. They rebuilt their society in a more equitable way…unless you’re Mirmeki, soldiers press-ganged into the Ymisen military who turned traitor on their overlords during the rebellion. When some Ymisen emissaries visit, Veycosi is forced to play tour guide after accidentally flooding Carenage Town. The outsiders have a hard time appreciating how the islanders work together for the benefit of the community and honor their ancestors. Cosi also gets tangled up in a mystery about children going missing, a troop of undead Mirmeki soldiers rising from the tar pits, and a potential imperial invasion. It’s Nalo Hopkinson. That’s really all you need to know. Metal From Heaven by august clarke (Erewhon Books, 2024) This book got a ton of buzz last year, and I expect it will end up on a bunch of Best Of lists this year, so it’s not exactly “underrated.” However, it’s also the first book I thought of when I came up with this theme, so get ready for even more buzz. Marney Honeycutt is a child when she witnesses her family and entire community massacred while protesting dangerous working conditions at the Chancey ichorite factory. Ichorite, a magical metal mined from newly conquered lands, turns some children, like Marney, “lustertouched,” giving them hallucinatory experiences and strange abilities. After she’s taken in by a group of queer guerillas and trained in the art of sabotage and rebellion, she is set on her greatest mission: convince the Chanceyco heir to marry her so she can destroy the corporate empire from the inside out. It’s a ferocious, lyrical novel. august clark wrote a story that is both a labor manifesto and rallying cry. It is a brick thrown at the Stonewall Riots and a protestor standing up to agents of the empire.  [end-mark] The post Backlist Bonanza: 5 Underrated Books for Hot Commie Summer appeared first on Reactor.

Congressional Republicans have lost a strong contender to help them retain their majority in the House of Representatives with the announcement of the retirement of Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. According to the House Press Gallery, Republicans current hold a 220 to 212 majority in the House. There are currently three vacancies in the chamber due to three Democrats having died in office.  Bacon, who has represented Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District since 2017, announced June 30 that he would not be running for reelection in 2026. The congressman’s district includes Omaha, the Democrats’ blue bastion in an otherwise red state, and is seen by some Democrats as a pickup prospect to help them reclaim the House majority in the 2026 midterms. Omaha ousted its Republican three-term incumbent Mayor Jean Stothert in favor of Democrat John Ewing Jr., the Douglas County treasurer, in May.  The Cook Political Report has moved the district into the “Lean Democrat” category from its prior “Toss Up” designation after Bacon’s retirement announcement. His district was won at the presidential level by Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024. Several Democrats have already announced bids to replace the five-term lawmaker. They include Denise Powell, a self-described small business owner and public school champion, and Nebraska state Sen. John Cavanaugh. Bacon, who is a retired Air Force brigadier general, cited spending more time with his family as the reason for leaving Congress. “After three decades in the Air Force and now going on one decade in Congress, I look forward to coming home in the evenings and being with my wife and seeing more of our adult children and eight grandchildren, who all live near my home,” Bacon said in a statement.  While the Nebraska congressman put his family front and center of his rationale for leaving federal legislative office, it was no secret that Bacon, who is seen as a moderate Republican, had a sometimes contentious relationship with President Donald Trump. In April, Bacon sponsored legislation to end President Donald Trump’s tariffs after 60 days unless the president received approval from Congress. That prompted the president to allude to him as a “rebel Republican.” Bacon also crossed party lines to vote to codify same-sex marriage into federal law and in 2018 sponsored legislation to increase the punishments for straw gun purchases; that is, buying firearms on behalf of others.  “I have a love for national security, and I’ll always be a proponent for old-fashioned Ronald Reagan conservative values. It has been an honor to serve the 2nd District of Nebraska and the nation, and I thank our constituents for trusting me to represent them,” Bacon said in his retirement announcement. The post Centrist Republican’s Retirement Poses Risk to GOP’s Slim House Majority appeared first on The Daily Signal.

I walked into that house meeting with a knot of anxiety, a strange sense of paranoia. An hour later, I was running into the freezing Ohio night, barefoot and coatless, tears blurring my vision. My paranoia, it turns out, was simply an instinct for survival.  During my last year at Kenyon College, my roommates, all members of Students for Justice in Palestine, called a meeting. There, I sat for an hour, stunned, as they hurled baseless accusations at me.   When I couldn’t stop the tears, I said, “I’m sorry, I have to go now, I’m starting to cry.” No apologies came. Only cold stares from my housemates, one even smiling as I desperately blinked back tears.  I rushed out, too ashamed and afraid to grab a coat or shoes, preferring the biting winter air to another minute inside. I stayed out for hours, then moved into emergency housing two days later. My roommates never apologized or contacted me.  Though my name is Yael and I wear a small Star of David necklace, I never mentioned my beliefs to them. Yet simply existing in their orbit seemed enough to ignite their ire. While I can’t definitively say they attacked me because of antisemitism, their SJP membership—a group notorious for its antisemitic and anti-Zionist views—and one girl’s disturbing Instagram “reflections” suggest otherwise.   Her posts openly declared sentiments like, “If the West wants an Israel so bad, split Germany in half,” and, ominously, “If you think this is justified, live every day knowing your spirit is sick.”  My dorm nightmare mirrored a larger, pervasive campus environment. On campus, Zionist views and basic human decency were suppressed, at least when it came to Israel. Last year, I plastered hostage posters around campus daily. They were torn down almost immediately.  But apparently calling for the release of babies stolen from their beds or those kidnapped while dancing at a music festival on Simchat Torah—the happiest day in the Jewish year—was controversial. So controversial, in fact, that I once saw a professor ripping down a poster of four-year-old Ariel Bibas. But that wasn’t enough for him. He literally scrubbed the wall afterward, ensuring no trace of Ariel remained at Kenyon.  SJP hosted many outspokenly antisemitic speakers, especially after Oct. 7. Among them: Miko Peled, notorious for his refusal to condemn the Hamas terror massacre on James Whale Unleashed. There, Whale directly confronted him: “They’re terrorists. They went into a town and they massacred every man, woman, and child. Are you saying that was false?” Peled was unable to answer.   Despite Peled’s shameful behavior, the college’s Asian and Middle East Studies and English departments directly sponsored his event. SJP may have orchestrated it, but Kenyon was more than willing to fund the antisemite.  SJP, however, didn’t just amplify the voices of antisemitic adults. They also featured Kenyon students, notably during their “Vigil for Palestine” on the one-year anniversary of October 7th. This vigil was described as a “vigil to honor the tens of thousands killed before, on, and after Oct. 7, 2023, and the countless Palestinians who have been displaced and dispossessed since 1948.”   But what about the hostages taken on Oct. 7? As one student speaker eloquently put it, “Who is applying pressure to Israel to release their hostages too?” A disturbing moral equivalency.  And where was the Kenyon Hillel, the only designated Jewish space on campus, during all of this? It failed to live up to the promise of Hillel International: to “always be a safe space for all kinds of Jewish students—a place where they feel welcomed and included.” I certainly didn’t feel that way. Attempting to “be open to everyone,” it refused to associate itself with Israel, which felt like a rejection of a core part of my identity.   While that was difficult, it paled in comparison to the Hillel’s reaction, or lack thereof, to the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust. The Hillel failed to condemn, or even acknowledge the massacre, at least online, until one year after the tragedy. Then, it hosted a poetry reading “to commemorate the anniversary of the hostages being taken and the current conflict that is taking place between Israel and Gaza.” This was hardly the condemnation of Hamas’ pogrom I had hoped for. Sadly, my experience at Kenyon College isn’t unique. In fact, it pales in comparison to what many students across the country have endured since Oct. 7. No one screamed “Death to Israel!” in my dorm, nor did a rock shatter my window and strike my head on Holocaust Remembrance Day.   I consider myself lucky—but what a tragic measure of luck for a Jewish college student. To emerge relatively unscathed after Oct. 7 is a relief that itself underscores a profound campus crisis. According to a February poll by the Anti-Defamation League and Hillel International, an alarming 83 percent of Jewish college students have experienced or seen antisemitism on their campuses since Oct. 7. How much more must Jewish students endure before enough is enough?  The post 83 Percent of Jewish Students Face Campus Hate—How Much More Will Colleges Allow? appeared first on The Daily Signal.

For years, Meta has claimed that it carefully manages access to its platform’s data to benefit users and developers alike. But internal documents from its Federal Trade Commission trial paint a different picture—one of strategic exclusion and economic sabotage cloaked in user protection. Specifically, documents reveal that Meta has been weaponizing its application programming interface, or API, to crush American competitors while maintaining an open door for foreign hostile nations—a double standard that undermines both U.S. innovation and national security. An API is like a digital bridge that allows different software systems to communicate with each other and enables apps and services to share data easily with one another. For tech startups and businesses, API access to major platforms like Facebook is often essential for survival, as it connects them to wider markets. But the lack of that API access can prove deadly. In 2013, Circle, a promising social networking startup, was gaining traction—that is, until Facebook terminated Circle’s API access, saying that Circle was spamming users. Yet internal emails show a different motivation: an attempt to keep Circle from competing with Facebook. Path, another social networking competitor, met a similar fate in April 2013, when Facebook abruptly cut off its API access. According to court documents, Path’s growth “slowed significantly” afterward. Similarly, Vine, Twitter’s short-form video service, was denied API access after a couple of days which could have accelerated its growth. The pattern holds firm. Throughout 2013, Facebook systematically blocked API access to multiple mobile messaging apps, with internal communications stating they would not communicate with developers “in any way about these restrictions.” Facebook acknowledges the detrimental effect that restricting API access has. An internal slide deck in early 2014 states that changing API access would be “killing prospects of many startups.” The message was clear: If you threaten Meta’s dominance, you’ll be digitally excommunicated and your business will die. Yet while American innovators were being systematically cut off, Meta maintained an open and permissive approach to developers from hostile foreign nations. Before the 2014 API change, over 240,000 software developers in hostile countries could access Facebook users’ data. That included nearly 90,000 developers in China, over 42,000 in Russia, 76,000 in Vietnam, and thousands in Iran, Cuba, and North Korea. More specifically, Chinese developers—including those from Huawei—could access users’ profile data, photos, and even private messages. Facebook’s API structure was so permissive that developers only needed consent from one user to access that person’s entire network of friends’ data. A single compromised account could expose hundreds of connections. And Meta knew about these risks. Internal documents show the company was aware that foreign developers could exploit this access for intelligence gathering and espionage. Yet the company continued providing broad access to actors from adversarial nations while simultaneously choking off American competitors under the banner of user protection. Although a court opinion has stated that Meta restricting API access from competitors doesn’t constitute an illegal “refusal to deal” under antitrust law, legal permissibility doesn’t equal ethical behavior. Meta’s selective enforcement puts foreign countries first and America second. The broader implications extend beyond individual company grievances. APIs enable interoperability, increase efficiency, and foster innovation by allowing new services to build upon existing platforms. But when dominant companies like Meta use API access as a competitive moat rather than a bridge to innovation, they effectively tax the entire U.S. ecosystem’s growth potential. Even worse, Meta’s actions aid U.S. enemies. If protecting users were truly the priority, the company would have implemented consistent standards choking off security threats alongside competitive threats. Instead, Meta created a system that protected its market position while leaving users genuinely vulnerable to foreign manipulation and data harvesting. The solution isn’t complex regulation of every API decision, but rather consistency and transparency in how these powerful gatekeepers operate. When platforms achieve the scale and influence of Meta’s ecosystem, their infrastructure decisions effectively become public infrastructure decisions, affecting innovation, competition, and security across entire industries. Congress and federal enforcement agencies should hold these companies with monopolistic reach accountable to their own standards. Meta’s API practices reveal a company that views user and developer protection as a convenient excuse rather than a genuine commitment. Until that changes, we should view Meta’s claims with the skepticism they deserve. After all, a company that protected Chinese developers’ access while blocking American innovators has already shown us where its true loyalties lie. The post FTC Trial Reveals Meta Disregard for National Security, Innovation appeared first on The Daily Signal.