Erika Kirk: TPUSA and I Will Ensure A Vance 48 Presidency

This might be the tipping point for the already critically endangered Tapanuli orangutans.

Meet Nepenthes megastoma, the carnivorous plant with a big mouth and a big appetite.

A second 9/11 wasn’t prevented by Marines kicking in doors or drone strikes overseas. It was prevented by accountants.After the attacks, the Bush administration issued an executive order to freeze the assets of organizations tied to terrorism, cutting off their ability to operate. The strategy worked. The United Nations and other international bodies soon joined the financial front in the war on terror, targeting money flows instead of just militants.After 9/11, the United States used financial warfare to cripple terrorists abroad. We now need the same resolve at home.It wasn’t glamorous. There were no dramatic accounting-themed visuals, let alone battlefield footage. But it starved terrorist networks of oxygen — and it saved lives.That same approach now needs to be applied at home.With Antifa finally designated a domestic terrorist organization, the administration should be treating these violent, unhinged groups the same way it treated Al-Qaeda: by dismantling their financial infrastructure, freezing assets, and prosecuting leadership. That makes the president’s nomination of Ken Kies as chief counsel and assistant secretary for the Internal Revenue Service baffling at best — and dangerous at worst.Kies is a Washington hired gun with divided loyalties. He has operated inside the revolving door since 1981, moving between government and lobbying, registering more than 500 times on behalf of various clients. His political contributions suggest close ties to the Pence wing of the party — precisely the faction that has resisted President Trump’s effort to dismantle the IRS deep state and confront politicized nonprofit networks.Instead of cleaning house, Kies appears to be preserving it.He has been reluctant to remove entrenched IRS officials tied to past abuses, including Holly Paz (top deputy of Lois Lerner), Robert Choi, and Anthony Sacco. Paz and Choi were deeply involved in the Tea Party targeting scandal. Sacco publicly pledged to “resist” President Trump. Paz, an Obama donor, was accused of lying to Congress by Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) in 2013 — yet she remained in a senior IRS role until being placed on leave in August.To this day, there is no public confirmation that any of these officials have been officially terminated.Kies has also aggressively defended Kevin Salinger, his protégé and a senior IRS official who oversees day-to-day tax policy operations and supervises an army of government attorneys. Salinger wields enormous influence over whether Trump’s tax agenda is implemented — or quietly buried.At a recent Tax Council meeting, Kies praised Salinger for working “tirelessly to faithfully implement President Trump’s agenda across all of the tax policy initiatives.” Really?Salinger has a long record of involvement with progressive activist organizations, including extensive pro bono work for Immigration Equality, a group that pushes open-border policies, especially for LGBTQ and HIV-positive immigrants. He also served on the board of El Barrio Angels, which provides immigration legal services in Los Angeles. These are not neutral civic activities. They are ideological commitments.If one of the president’s core goals is to depoliticize the IRS after its weaponization under the Biden administration, placing figures so deeply embedded in Democratic activist networks into senior roles is a recipe for sabotage.And the stakes are not abstract.RELATED: Warlord, terror, and taxpayer theft: Somali scheme allegedly bilks millions from Maine Medicaid to fund foreign army Dmytro LastovychAs we speak, Soros-linked nonprofits and so-called charities are laundering foreign money, taxpayer funds, and aid dollars through opaque networks — think of the Somali charity rip-offs in Minnesota and Maine — funding radical activism, facilitating mass immigration, and fueling domestic instability. These same networks help bankroll groups tied to street-level violence, intimidation, and riots. They worsen the affordability crisis Democrats endlessly complain about while escaping scrutiny themselves.Violent left-wing extremists have already crossed from rhetoric into bloodshed. Organized threats have forced senior Trump officials to relocate their families for safety. National Guardsmen have been killed. The idea that this is merely symbolic radicalism is no longer defensible.The IRS should be the tip of the spear in dismantling these financial pipelines — not a sanctuary for the very people who looked the other way while the agency was weaponized against the right.The American people did not vote in 2024 for Washington lifers like Kies and Democratic-aligned operatives to remain entrenched in power. They voted to end the culture that financed, protected, and excused political violence.After 9/11, the United States used financial warfare to cripple terrorists abroad. We now need the same resolve at home. The question is simple: Why are we appointing people who appear unwilling — or unable — to do that job?

I oppose Zohran Mamdani’s Democratic Socialist agenda. But if Republicans are serious about winning elections next year and in 2028, they need to take a hard, unsentimental look at how he just won one of the most consequential mayoral races in the country.This was not an ideological earthquake. New York did not suddenly “discover” socialism. What happened was a marketing and mobilization breakthrough. Mamdani’s campaign understood attention, simplicity, participation, and distribution better than anyone else in the race.Republicans often confuse seriousness with stiffness. Mamdani showed that message discipline does not require lifelessness.Joe Perello, the city of New York’s first chief marketing officer, noted in PRWeek after Mamdani’s victory that the campaign did more than communicate a message. It built an engine that converted online engagement into real-world turnout.“For marketers and strategists alike, the implications are clear,” Perello wrote. “Growth hacking, iterative testing, and data-driven amplification can convert digital sentiment into real-world behavior. In Mamdani’s case, that meant converting hearts, clicks, and hashtags into ballots.”Here is the part many on the right do not want to hear: Mamdani did not spend his time lecturing working-class voters about the virtues of socialism or defending failed economic theory. He focused on immediate, kitchen-table concerns and paired them with simple, slogan-ready answers.Is halal food expensive? Make it cheaper. Struggling to get to work? Free buses. Grocery bills too high? Government-run grocery stores.He took Bernie Sanders’ 2016-era talking points and filtered them through a polished, Obama-style optimism that voting-age New Yorkers were willing to engage with.Most voters do not have the time — or patience — to think through how these promises would actually work. They just want to hear that someone intends to make their lives easier.As Citizens Alliance CEO Cliff Maloney observed during Mamdani’s surge in the polls, the public’s lack of understanding about how government operates — and how socialism consistently fails — created the political environment Mamdani exploited. He did not create that environment. He mastered it.Republicans’ digital blind spotFor years, Republican campaigns have treated digital media as messaging rather than infrastructure. Social platforms are used as megaphones for press releases, fundraising tools, or dumping grounds for cable-news clips. The underlying assumption is that persuasion happens elsewhere — on TV, at rallies, through mailers — and that digital simply amplifies those efforts.Mamdani reversed that logic. Social media was not an accessory to his campaign. It was the campaign.His approach drew praise even from outlets like the Guardian, where journalist Adam Gabbatt noted that Mamdani “has won social media with clips that are always fun — and resolutely on-message.”His team treated TikTok and Instagram like serious growth channels. Short videos were not vanity content; they were experiments. Different neighborhoods, different faces, different tones, different pacing. What held attention? What sparked comments? What traveled across boroughs? Each post generated data, and each data point informed the next iteration.This was politics run as a full-funnel acquisition strategy. Awareness led to engagement. Engagement led to identification. Identification led to turnout. Republicans can mock the aesthetics, but the mechanics work.Energy is a signalOne of the most underrated elements of Mamdani’s campaign was how it looked. He was constantly in motion — walking Manhattan, running a marathon, bouncing between boroughs. Rarely behind a lectern. Rarely static. Always visible.That energy communicated youth, optimism, and confidence in the same way John F. Kennedy outperformed Richard Nixon on television in 1960. A similar contrast appeared in 2024, when Donald Trump’s unscripted, high-visibility media strategy stood in sharp contrast to Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’ tightly controlled appearances.The predictable response on the right is dismissal. ‘That’s just TikTok nonsense.’ ‘Our voters aren’t like that.’ Those excuses are comforting — and dangerously wrong.In an age of low trust and low information, energy reads as competence. Movement suggests effort. Visibility substitutes for familiarity. Mamdani’s omnipresence created the impression — fair or not — that he was accessible and engaged with everyday life.Republicans often confuse seriousness with stiffness. Mamdani showed that message discipline does not require lifelessness.RELATED: When Bernie Sanders and I agree on AI, America had better pay attention Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty ImagesFrom supporters to fansThe most uncomfortable lesson for traditional campaigns is that Mamdani did not just mobilize voters. He activated fandom.Much of the campaign content that flooded social media did not come from official accounts. It came from supporters remixing clips, creating fan art, cutting moments to music, and sharing them within their own networks. The campaign made Mamdani easy to clip, easy to celebrate, and then got out of the way.Wired magazine described it as a rare case of participatory political culture usually reserved for celebrities.This matters because peer-to-peer persuasion scales faster and carries more credibility than anything a campaign can manufacture. Fan-made content travels further, feels more authentic, and costs nothing. Republicans, by contrast, tend to over-police their messaging, choking off organic enthusiasm in the name of control.Younger voters understand fandom instinctively. They grew up online. Mamdani did not lecture them about politics; he gave them something to belong to.The wrong reactionThe predictable response on the right is dismissal. “That only works for Democrats.” “That’s just TikTok nonsense.” “Our voters aren’t like that.”Those excuses are comforting — and dangerously wrong.Trump understood this dynamic in 2024 when his campaign was largely shut out of legacy media. Figures like Charlie Kirk reached millions of Gen Z voters by blending serious political content with the humor and energy of youth activism.Algorithms do not have ideologies. Participation is not a left-wing monopoly. Visibility, simplicity, and community are not progressive inventions. In a low-information, high-attention environment, the side that understands distribution wins.The real danger is not Mamdani’s policies alone. It is a Republican Party that keeps confusing being correct with being effective.RELATED: How anti-fascism became the West’s civil religion Blaze Media IllustrationWhat Republicans should learn — nowFirst, treat digital as organizing, not advertising. Stop thinking in posts and start thinking in systems. How does attention become action?Second, simplicity wins. Republicans often pride themselves on being right — and then lose because they are incomprehensible. Clarity scales. Long explanations do not.Third, loosen control. Let supporters remix, clip, and share. Reach matters more than perfect phrasing.Finally, build communities, not just campaigns. Email lists decay. Ad budgets run out. Communities endure.The bottom lineI do not agree with Zohran Mamdani’s politics, and I do not want his policies implemented anywhere. But ignoring how he won would be malpractice.He demonstrated how power is built today — not through party machinery or television dominance, but through attention, participation, and relentless simplicity. Republicans can learn from that reality, or they can keep losing to it.Disagree with his ideology. But study his marketing. Ignore the lesson at your own risk.

If they showed you their election autopsy, then you’d know what’s in it.

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