– Progressive stars Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., are teaming up with New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani Sunday night for a ‘New York is not for sale’ rally at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, New York City.

The high-profile campaign event comes nearly one week before Election Day, as New Yorkers head to the polls for the first weekend of early voting, closing out a contentious mayoral battle where Mamdani’s unanticipated success has landed him on the national stage.

‘Zohran Mamdani is modeling a different kind of politics,’ Sanders, the former Democratic presidential candidate and longtime progressive leader, said in a statement ahead of the rally. 

The trio of self-identified Democratic socialists have invigorated the Democratic Party’s progressive base at a time when Democrats are still grappling with devastating losses in 2024 amid growing discontent with President Donald Trump’s sweeping, second-term agenda.

When Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez teamed up for the ‘Fighting Oligarchy’ tour earlier this year, they sparked sizable buzz, firing up thousands of Democrats at rallies across the United States who had been left without a clear party leader.

‘As mayor, he will not run a top-down, billionaire-funded, consultant-driven administration. Instead, Zohran will be a champion for the working people of New York,’ Sanders said.

Both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have campaigned alongside Mamdani in his bid to lead the nation’s most populous city. 

On Friday night, Sanders appeared for a virtual ‘Get Out the Vote’ event with Mamdani. Last month, Sanders and Mamdani teamed up for a ‘Fighting Oligarchy’ town hall in Brooklyn. 

Ahead of the Brooklyn town hall event, the two progressive leaders marched alongside union members in Manhattan’s Labor Day parade. That afternoon, Mamdani posed for a photo with Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez in Astoria, Queens, amassing millions of views.

Sanders, a two-time Democratic presidential nominee runner-up, was an early endorser of Mamdani’s primary campaign, along with Ocasio-Cortez. Their endorsements helped Mamdani consolidate progressive support in the 11-candidate field during the final weeks of the primary race.

Mamdani’s primary upset triggered a political earthquake as the democratic socialist handily defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who was widely expected to secure the Democratic nomination.

Mamdani’s cross-endorsement with fellow progressive New York City Comptroller Brad Lander cleared the path for Mamdani to consolidate support against Cuomo through ranked-choice voting. 

Cuomo has since launched an independent campaign, teeing up a competitive and contentious general election battle. 

Since Mamdani secured the Democratic nomination, Trump has labeled him a ‘100% Communist Lunatic,’ and ‘my little communist,’ ushering Mamdani onto the national political stage. Mamdani has rejected the moniker, maintaining that he identifies as a democratic socialist, like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez. 

As Trump began criticizing Mamdani, New York Democrats chose to withhold their endorsements of the socialist candidate, who has made a slew of ambitious campaign promises, like fast and free buses, city-run grocery stores and free childcare, all of which he plans to pay for by raising taxes on corporations and the top 1% of New Yorkers. 

After months of withholding their endorsements, Gov. Kathy Hochul finally endorsed Mamdani last month and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries finally affirmed his support in a statement Friday. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has still yet to endorse. 

Pressure had been mounting since Mamdani won the Democratic primary in June for Mayor Eric Adams, who was also running as an independent, or Cuomo to drop out of the race to consolidate support against Mamdani. Adams dropped out of the race and endorsed Cuomo on Thursday. 

That pressure reached a boiling point last week as billionaires, including Red Apple Media CEO John Catsimatidis and hedge fund CEO Bill Ackman, called on Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa to drop out of the race in order to clear a pathway to victory for Cuomo.

The latest Fox News survey, conducted Oct. 10-14, ahead of the first general election debate last week, revealed that Mamdani has a substantial lead in the race. According to the poll, Mamdani has a 21-point lead among New York City registered voters with 49% of voters backing Mamdani, while 28% go for Cuomo and 13% favor Sliwa.

Mamdani also rose above the 50% threshold among likely voters, garnering 52% support, while Cuomo picked up 28%, and Sliwa received just 14%.

In his Oct. 13 address to Israel’s Knesset in Jerusalem, President Donald Trump upset Israeli leftists when he called for Israel’s largely ceremonial President Isaac Herzog to use his one actual power – the power of pardon – and pardon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu has been on trial for more than five years on absurd charges regarding cigars and champagne he received over 20 years ago from old friends.

Those charges fell apart in the opening months of the trial as one prosecution witness after another exposed the emptiness of Israel’s Netanyahu-hating prosecutors’ indictments against the country’s longest-serving and most successful leader. All the same, the Netanyahu-hating judge presiding over the trial is now requiring Netanyahu to appear in court three days a week for a total of 24 hours a week to testify.

Leftists in Israel dominate the country’s media and legal fraternity, much as they do in America. And they were incensed that President Trump dared to interfere in Israel’s ‘internal affairs.’ One anchorman referred to Trump’s call for a pardon as ‘disgusting, and revolting.’

But the truth is that by asking Israel’s left-leaning president to put an end to Israel’s Deep State’s assault on Netanyahu, Trump was defending America’s national interests.

This is true for two reasons.

First, the corrupt legal authorities involved in the trial are abusing their power over Netanyahu in a way that undermines American interests.

On Wednesday, just two days after President Trump gave his address, Netanyahu was back in the courtroom in Tel Aviv. He had asked the judges to let him delay his testimony so that he could hold certain meetings. The judges and prosecutors demanded to know what meetings could possibly justify delaying his testimony. He explained one was highly classified, and they demanded to know what it was about.

Within hours of the exchange, the story leaked that Netanyahu was scheduled to meet secretly with the president of Indonesia. The leader of the largest Muslim state in the world, President Prabowo Subianto, was scheduled to pay a top-secret trip to Jerusalem as a step toward opening diplomatic relations with Israel. This was to be one of the most important fruits of Israel’s U.S.-supported victory in its seven-front war against Iran and its axis of terror. But thanks to Israel’s corrupt legal fraternity, the meeting leaked to their press allies and President Subianto stayed away.

President Trump made clear in his speech that expanding the circle of peace between Israel and the Islamic world is a chief U.S. goal. Israel is America’s most powerful ally in the troubled Middle East. Trump sees it as an essential U.S. interest that the Arab and Islamic world accept Israel as a permanent entity and an allied state. But for Israel’s politicized Deep State, undermining and humiliating Netanyahu by chaining him to a courtroom and subverting his diplomatic actions is apparently more important.

These radical jurists must be stopped not only for Netanyahu to be able to devote himself entirely to serving his country, they need to be stopped to enable President Trump to secure America’s goals in the Middle East.

The second reason that ending this farce of justice against Netanyahu is in the United States’ interests is that there is a link between the forces of political warfare and lawfare in Israel and the U.S. If you scratch just beneath the surface, you’ll doubtlessly find that for the same billionaire agents of anarchy, who funded and brought the unprecedented lawfare against both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, working to undo Israel as a key way to unravel American society. For example, the Tides Foundation funds radical groups, including pro-Hamas protesters in America, and it funds groups involved in the protests and riots and political violence in Israel.

Tides is one of several foundations whose actions in the U.S. and Israel are the subject of multiple congressional investigations. One of the investigations focuses on well-documented claims that the billion-dollar, multi-year effort to criminalize Netanyahu that engulfed Israel in political instability for years, was funded in part by the Biden administration. That investigation must continue and the U.S. government officials who funded and facilitated political chaos in Israel should be forced to account for their actions.

Even more importantly, the IRS should investigate how U.S. non-profits groups that enjoy U.S. tax exemption valued in millions of dollars have abused their status to fund political violence, insurrection, and mayhem in Israel. In some cases, according to Hamas’s own internal documents, these U.S.-based non-profit-funded groups’ campaigns convinced the genocidal terror group that Israel was ripe for annihilation on October 7, 2023.

In his historic speech in Jerusalem, President Trump laid out great plans for building a new Middle East that will join Israel’s genius and power to the oil-wealth of its neighbors and transform the Middle East into a driver of global prosperity under American leadership. Trump would have been hard-pressed to lead this momentous undertaking if the Deep State were still persecuting him, his top aides and his children.

Netanyahu has miraculously been able to lead Israel to one of the most important military victories in its history. With Trump’s assistance, Israel destroyed Iran’s axis of terror across seven fronts. Netanyahu achieved this while forced to spend days on end in a courtroom answering asinine questions from shameless prosecutors before brazen judges.

Imagine what Netanyahu and President Trump would be able to do together if Netanyahu doesn’t have to spend 24 hours per week in a courtroom.

President Trump was right to ask President Herzog to put an end to the madness that is Prime Minister Netanyahu’s trial. And he would be right to order the IRS to start investigating the role American non-profits have played and continue to play in destabilizing Israel and corrupting its legal system. Israel’s leftists, like their American funders, may not like President Trump for doing it, but generations of Americans, Israelis, and peoples of the wider Middle East will thank him.

A federal judge struck down a Biden-era rule that expanded federal anti-discrimination measures to transgender healthcare, writing that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ‘exceeded its authority by implementing regulations redefining sex discrimination and prohibiting gender identity discrimination.’

The ruling from Judge Louis Guirola Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi came after a coalition of 15 Republican-led states sued over the matter, according to The Hill.

‘When Biden-era bureaucrats tried to illegally rewrite our laws to force radical gender ideology into every corner of American healthcare, Tennessee stood strong and stopped them,’ Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said in a statement following the ruling. ‘Our fifteen-state coalition worked together to protect the right of healthcare providers across America to make decisions based on evidence, reason, and conscience.’

‘This decision restores not just common sense but also constitutional limits on federal overreach, and I am proud of the team of excellent attorneys who fought this through to the finish,’ he added.

Skrmetti’s office said the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi held that HHS ‘exceeded its authority when it issued a rule in May 2024 redefining Title IX’s prohibition against discrimination ‘on the basis of sex’ — which Congress incorporated into the ACA through Section 1557 — to include gender identity.’

‘HHS’s 2024 rule represented a disturbing federal intrusion into the States’ traditional authority to regulate healthcare and make decisions about their own Medicaid programs. Specifically, the rule would have prohibited healthcare facilities from maintaining sex-segregated spaces, required certain healthcare providers to administer unproven and risky procedures for gender dysphoria, and forced states to subsidize those experimental treatments through their Medicaid programs,’ it continued. ‘In vacating the rule, Judge Louis Guirola determined that when Congress passed Title IX in 1972, ‘sex’ meant biological sex and that federal agencies cannot unilaterally rewrite laws decades later to advance political agendas.’

The states involved in the lawsuit were Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia, and West Virginia.

The rule was first created under the administration of former President Barack Obama in 2016, before President Donald Trump reversed it in his first term and then former President Joe Biden reversed it again, The Hill reported. 

Guirola’s ruling said HHS ‘exceeded its authority by implementing regulations redefining sex discrimination and prohibiting gender identity discrimination.’ 

The judge vacated the rule universally, but the rule had already been prevented from going into effect. It has been stayed since July 2024, according to Bloomberg Law. 

The Democrats, or Socialists, or whatever they are these days, are hopping mad over President Donald Trump’s construction of a ballroom in the East Wing of the White House, and while it may be their silliest freakout of the entire Trump era, it is also quite telling.

The ladies on ABC’s ‘The View’ were apoplectic when they saw images of demolition, a fairly ordinary way to begin renovations, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. They echoed one-time resident Hillary Clinton’s complaint that Trump doesn’t own the White House, even taking to song about it.

What makes this argument so absurd, is that Trump is not building this ballroom for his personal use or glory. It’s not a vanity project. It is a long-considered addition to an executive home that lacked the capacity to hold large indoor events.

Trump, as has always been his wont, is looking to create grandeur, and that seems to be something to which leftists reflexively object.

Trump is obviously not the first president to renovate the White House. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt put in a swimming pool. His successor, President Harry Truman, practically gutted the place to add a balcony. President Nixon covered the swimming pool but added a bowling alley. Finally, President Obama transformed the tennis court into a basketball court.

Note that these are all changes that were made to serve the respective president’s personal taste or enjoyment, like a Roman emperor adding a water feature to his personal dining area.

What Trump is doing is completely different. The ballroom he is constructing will likely survive as a symbol of American power long after we are all gone. It will be, in a sense, our generation’s contribution to the people’s home.

Trump wants this venue, this symbol of America, to be grand and classically inspired, a timeless marble monument to a United States that emerged from the 20th century as the world’s only super power.

And in a way, this is part of what the left objects to, not just in regard to the White House project, but to Trump’s proposed new arch in Washington, D.C., and great statuaries of American heroes, not to mention the recent massive military parade.

In the post-Cold War era, part of America’s international style and sensibility was to be understated. Like the star quarterback who is also a model and a chess prodigy, we learned not to rub it in.

In that time, very little public art or architecture was done on a grand and classic scale, and in more recent times, our society has been so hellbent on taking statues and monuments down, that we gave little thought to putting them up.

Trump instinctively understands that in 2025, America may still be the world’s only superpower, but not by so hegemonic a distance as in the recent past. China, among others have been catching up, and the ‘aw, shucks’ attitude of the past needs some adjusting.

World leaders as well those on public White House tours should have their breath taken away when they walk into the presidential ballroom. Such displays are as old as nations themselves, from the pyramids to the Coliseum, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Though this expansion of the White House would be well worth taxpayer money, Trump has found a way to build it with private donations, as well as his own funds. Still the left is throwing a fit. Why?

Recent polling showed that only 36% of Democrats are very, or even just somewhat, proud of America. This being the case, it’s easy to understand why they object to building testaments to its power and glory.

What Democrats and socialists are really objecting to here is not that Trump’s ballroom celebrates himself, it’s that his ballroom unabashedly celebrates America.

Fifty years from now, when King George VII of Great Britain dines at the White House, people will little remember that it was built by Trump, even if all the gold leaf remains. By then, it will simply be a great piece of American architecture we can all be proud of.

Americans want and deserve a big, beautiful ballroom for their nation’s executive mansion, and there has never been a president more capable of delivering it than our real estate mogul-in-chief.

Liberals can stamp their feet in anger all they want. But the ballroom is going to be built, and eventually, most of them will come to appreciate it.