GOP governor hopeful Bruce Blakeman blasts ‘dangerous’ Mamdani, Hochul in pitch to moderates
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Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said New Yorkers need to vote for him for governor if they want to stop the red scare -- the march of socialism -- infecting New York's body politic under Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul's watch.
Mayor says progressive peers who swept primaries speak to Americans ‘coast to coast’ as moderates have reservationsZohran Mamdani, the New York City mayor, said on Sunday that he and a slew of democratic socialist allies who prevailed in recent primary elections are carrying a “national message” to struggling working Americans hungry for a new kind of politics “coast to coast”.Mamdani made that triumphant clarion call on ABC News’s This Week just five days after he had seen his endorsed candidates win Democratic nominations in three races for New York congressional seats, as well as for five state legislature positions in Albany. He made no effort to disguise his delight that his clean sweep marks a dramatic shift in Democratic politics – not just in New York City, which he has led since January, but also across the US. Continue reading...
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) on Sunday said he would not want to change the Constitution’s rules against non-native born Americans running for president, even as his political base continues to grow nationally. The 34–year-old democratic socialist was born in Uganda. ABC’s Jonathan Karl in a Sunday interview noted that Mamdani will soon meet…
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) in a Sunday interview sought to explain his controversial vote to confirm Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as he said Kennedy is dug in on his views toward vaccinations despite public opinion. Cassidy, the first physician to serve as the chair of the Senate Health, Education,…
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Sunday said he does not support amending the Constitution’s requirement that presidents be natural-born U.S. citizens, dismissing speculation about his own eligibility as his national profile booms following socialism‘s success in New York’s Democratic primary. Appearing on ABC News’s This Week, Mamdani was asked whether the Constitution should […]
President Donald Trump has spent the last several weeks sparking chaos for Senate Republicans, who only now, according to New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, are “coming to understand” the threat the president poses, though the realization may be “a bit too late.”Trump has aggressively pushed Senate Republicans to advance his controversial voter ID bill known as the SAVE Act, despite Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s insistence that the bill lacks adequate support in the GOP caucus. Trump also derailed the Senate GOP’s entire agenda with a surprise cancellation of a Senate confirmation hearing, and caused further chaos by refusing to sign a bi-partisan bill on affordable housing.With the midterm elections just months away, Senate Republicans, Bouie argued, are starting to wake up to the threat Trump poses for their own political survival.“Trump does not identify himself with the Republican Party. He identifies himself with his own political standing. And so, if he feels he needs to do something to protect his standing that harms Republicans, he’ll do it without even thinking,” Bouie said in an episode of “The Opinions,” transcribed by The New York Times. “And Senate Republicans in particular, who did not expect to be fighting for their majority this fall, are somehow only now coming to understand that, yes, if you are in his way, he is going to make life difficult for you, even if that costs you a Senate majority. And there’s a 50/50 chance, 60/40 chance that, yeah, it costs the Republicans their Senate majority.”Amid Trump’s cratering favorability among Americans, the Senate may very well end up in Democratic Party control, an idea that analysts previously thought unthinkable. But Senate Republicans’ realization may have come too late, Bouie argued.“Politically for them, it’s just like a bit too late, right?” Bouie said. “They already spent all of 2025 tying themselves incredibly tightly to the administration under, as I read it, irrational exuberance – this idea that kind of caught hold, I think, throughout a large part of American politics that Trump’s win represented some sort of MAGA sea change in American life.”
Benjamin Netanyahu lost the Democrats. Now a growing number of Republicans are souring on him and his country, too.Why it matters: More Republicans, especially younger ones, turned on Israel as its military leveled Gaza — and then Netanyahu alienated President Trump and his team as they sought to end the Iran war.For 15 years, Netanyahu offset collapsing Democratic support by cultivating Republicans. If Republican support is no longer guaranteed, he has a serious problem — and so does Israel.The big picture: That problem starts at the highest level of the Republican Party.In September of last year, as President Trump was pressing Netanyahu to accept a Gaza peace deal, he told the Israeli prime minister that "all the Jews are sick of you" and there would be a "divorce" between the two countries if he refused to go along, according to Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's new book, Regime Change.Axios reported that Trump called Netanyahu "fucking crazy" and warned his actions risked further isolating Israel around the world. Trump later told Axios in an interview that his relationship with Netanyahu is good, "but we have to keep him a little bit sane."Trump's possible heir apparent, Vice President JD Vance, rebuked Israeli officials opposing the Iran deal."If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world," he said.The strains over the war came as high-profile "America First" anti-interventionists — led by Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Marjorie Taylor Greene — stoked the backlash against Israel.Carlson, who left the Republican Party last week, said Netanyahu manipulated Trump into joining the war. He called the president a "slave" to the Israeli prime minister.Ben Shapiro, the Daily Wire co-founder and staunch Israel defender, has seen his ratings fall as right-wing listeners opposed to U.S. support for Israel turn elsewhere.Between the lines: Israel has become a new litmus test in the online right's war against the GOP establishment.Nick Fuentes and his "Groyper" followers have spent years attacking mainstream conservatives for being too loyal to Israel — promoting antisemitic messages that once lived on the fringe but now echo through young conservative spaces.Bigger platforms have carried versions of the same argument. Carlson and Candace Owens have sharply escalated anti-Israel rhetoric, often casting U.S. support for Israel as evidence that "America First" has been corrupted by foreign influence.By the numbers: Cracks are forming in the Republican firewall on Israel:An April Pew Research Center poll found that four in 10 Republicans have an unfavorable view of Israel. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans aged 18 to 49 felt that way, while one in four aged 50 or older had a negative view.One in five Republicans say the U.S. is too supportive of Israel, per a Quinnipiac University poll this month — three times the number after the Oct. 7 attacks three years ago.Israel's destruction of Gaza after the Oct. 7 attacks caused younger Republicans to reevaluate their attitudes about Israel. A University of Maryland Critical Issues poll last year showed less than half of Republicans, 46%, thought Israel's military actions were justified under the right to self-defense. Just 22% of Republicans aged 18-34 backed Israel's actions."Something is absolutely brewing among young Republicans," the poll's director, government and politics professor Shibley Telhami, told Axios.He said the war has accelerated young Republicans' drift away from Israel. Only one in four Republicans had a more positive than negative view of the Iran war, a May UMD Critical Issues poll revealed, while one in three had a more negative than positive opinion.Reality check: The GOP writ large overwhelmingly backs Israel. A February Gallup poll showed 70% of Republicans sympathize more with Israelis than Palestinians. (Still, that was down 10 points from 2024.)Faith & Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed said the leadership of the Republican Party and the evangelical community is as pro-Israel as he's seen in more than three decades in GOP politics.But polling numbers on Israel across the U.S. electorate, including among Republicans, "are dangerously low," he said — a worrisome trend looking beyond the 2028 GOP presidential primary.What we're watching: How much of Israel's lost standing is tied directly to Netanyahu — who's facing one of the toughest election fights of his career this fall — as opposed to the country itself.Axios' Zachary Basu contributed reporting.
A handful of GOP lawmakers made their way to Washington, D.C. recently to attend and promote the Great American State Fair, organized by the President Donald Trump-linked group Freedom 250, but in doing so, “accidentally” exposed the event for its numerous shortcomings, The Daily Beast reported.Rep. Michael Baumgartner (R-WA), for instance, took to social media to attack his own state’s government for not participating in the fair, posting a photograph online of himself standing on the National Mall lawn. The “awkward post,” the Beast noted, depicted Baumgartner standing in front of “only a handful of people visible behind him.”Other GOP lawmakers engaged in similar “self-owns,” as the Beast described them. Rep. Blake Moore (R-UT) posted a video online from the fair asking Americans to attend the event, but in a manner in which he “all but [begged] people to let his office help them get there.” The video also “came with the unfortunate visual aid of Moore standing in an almost empty park, with an empty Ferris wheel turning behind him,” the Beast’s report reads.“Contact our office if there’s any help that you need to organize things or tours or get more information,” Moore said in the video he published online. “Please, please reach out. We’d love to help out in that way.”The Great American State Fair faced challenges weeks before it opened to the public last week after artists backed out of the event en masse after learning of its connections to Trump. In the four days since opening, the fair has been plagued with power failures that stalled a Ferris wheel and melted ice cream supplies.Investigative reporter Eric Flack also revealed that the state exhibits at the fair ranged wildly in quality, with some states’ exhibits amounting to two chairs in a small, shared booth.
An MS NOW host argued Sunday that President Donald Trump squandered a rare political gift — a bipartisan housing bill that could have eased financial pressure on millions of Americans — because he "threw a temper tantrum," choosing instead to hold the legislation hostage to his voter ID agenda.In an opening monologue, the host laid out what they framed as a baffling self-inflicted wound. Trump, he said, "had the opportunity to actually do something that could ease the financial burdens for countless Americans" and could have signed "the largest housing affordability bill in a generation" — a rare bipartisan measure that would have handed his own party something to campaign on in November."It could have taken an easy W, which doesn't come often in this political climate," the host said.Instead, the host argued, Trump "threw a temper tantrum" and is "now holding that bill hostage" until Congress passes the SAVE Act, his voter ID legislation that critics say could disenfranchise millions of voters. The host summed up the dynamic bluntly: "holding affordability hostage to leverage voting restrictions."The host was joined by Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), who offered a withering read of the president's priorities."We're talking about a guy who pretends to love America," Lee said. "They love the symbolism, the ideology, but they don't love the people."Lee argued that when given a genuine chance to help "his own voters, for all voters across America, for poor and working class people, he won't do it." The reason, she contended, is that the administration's goal "is to help and enrich themselves, their own people, and we're all just along for the ride," whether Democrat, Republican, or independent.Pressed on whether she had spoken with Republican colleagues furious about Trump torpedoing the bill, Lee acknowledged she hadn't directly, but said the political reality was obvious — that lawmakers in both parties need something to show voters, and the housing bill "would have done so."Lee also drew a sharp contrast between the money available for the military and the funds denied to domestic programs, pointing to a $1.5 trillion defense request and "a request for a war that the vast majority of Americans and the rest of the world do not want," even as the administration says the country "cannot put people in housing.""Americans lose," the lawmaker said, arguing Republicans "have nothing to go back to run on" but cautioning that political self-interest "shouldn't be the reason that they do it."She closed by warning that voters squeezed by grocery and housing costs are "starting to get pissed off" and demanding answers — a reckoning, she said, that "every elected official is going to have to answer for, not just in November, but ongoing."
