Elect strong conservative leaders in your state — or watch it go the way of New York City. That’s the unmistakable warning conservatives should take from New York voters nominating a Hamas sympathizer and self-proclaimed socialist for mayor.
How could this happen just one generation after 9/11? How does the city that suffered most from jihadist terrorism now embrace a foreign-born Islamist who wants to “globalize the intifada”?
When Trump calls for more farm labor from the third world — so long as the workers aren’t 'murderers' — he misses the deeper issue. Violent crime isn’t the only threat.
Several factors explain the city’s decline, but one stands out: immigration. Forty percent of New York City’s population now consists of foreign-born residents — not including the children of immigrants. Mass immigration on that scale, especially from Islamic and third world countries, doesn’t just change the labor market. It imports foreign values and embeds them in the culture.
Trump should think twice about demanding more foreign agricultural workers for red-state America. His arguments about labor shortages miss the larger picture. This isn’t just about harvesting crops — it’s about reshaping schools, neighborhoods, and eventually, the ballot box.
In 2022, the Center for Immigration Studies mapped 2,351 Census Bureau-defined Public Use Microdata Areas to show the percentage of schoolchildren from immigrant households. No surprise: Urban districts in places like New York and Los Angeles show overwhelming majorities of immigrant families.
But that trend now stretches deep into red states. Cities and even rural counties are seeing shockingly high proportions of students from immigrant families.
In southeast Nashville, 65% of public-school students come from immigrant families. Iraq ranks as the second-largest country of origin. In Dallas, all 20 school districts report at least one-third of students from immigrant households. In most of those districts, a majority of families are foreign-born.
This trend extends well beyond major cities. In southwest Oklahoma City, 43% of students come from immigrant families. Greenville, South Carolina, stands at 35%. Birmingham and Chattanooga each hover around 20%.
Red-state cities and midsize towns now reflect immigration levels once limited to coastal urban hubs. That leaves rural America as the last holdout — and even that is changing.
The so-called farm labor trade has transformed heartland communities. These public school districts report the following immigrant family enrollment rates:
Until recently, these areas were overwhelmingly native-born. They maintained a strong continuity of American culture and civic tradition.
What happens when the next generation of these children grows up, votes, and brings in more from similar backgrounds? These red counties may not stay red for long.
Mitt Romney won Washington County, Arkansas, by 16 points in 2012. Just 12 years later, Donald Trump carried it by only six — even as he expanded his statewide margin. What changed? More than a quarter of the local student body now comes from immigrant households.
RELATED: New York City’s likely next mayor wants to ‘globalize the intifada’
Trump won rural Sampson County, North Carolina, by a 2-to-1 margin. Yet, by the 2022–23 school year, Hispanic students made up 44.2% of public school enrollment. The district now runs extensive English as a Second Language programs to meet ongoing demand. Even if Hispanic voters shift modestly right, when has such rapid demographic upheaval ever worked to conservatives’ advantage?
The pace of change is impossible to ignore. Importing foreign labor into rural counties inevitably reshapes culture — and, soon after, voting patterns.
Greene County, Iowa, illustrates the point. In 2023, Hispanic residents accounted for just 3.3% of the total population. But that number underrepresents their influence. Iowa State University researchers found Latino populations in rural Iowa tend to skew young, meaning they disproportionately fill the schools even when their overall numbers look small. That imbalance compounds over time.
When Trump calls for more farm labor from the third world — so long as the workers aren’t “murderers” — he misses the deeper issue. Violent crime isn’t the only threat. The more serious loss lies in surrendering the very communities that naturally align with traditional American culture.
As Vice President JD Vance put it during his Republican National Convention acceptance speech: “America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.”
That is the nation Trump must promise to defend — not just with words but with sound policy.
For anyone who read my commentary last week, it should be no surprise that I am overjoyed that state Rep. Zohran Mamdani trounced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayoral Democratic primary on Tuesday.
Cuomo is a repulsive creep who, as governor, killed thousands of elderly New Yorkers by filling nursing homes with COVID-infected patients. He then lied persistently about his misdeeds. Adding insult to injury, Cuomo groped and mishandled vulnerable women, an offense that led to his resignation in disgrace.
Except for Mamdani’s use of the verboten term 'socialist' and his outspokenly anti-Israeli positions, someone like him fits quite well into the present Democratic Party.
Finally, Cuomo removed bail for violent criminals, something he tried to cover up in his primary race by promising to be “tough on crime.” The fact that Wall Street plutocrats — led by the feckless former mayor, Michael Bloomberg — were backing this shameless reprobate made me even more eager to see him defeated.
Clearly, I am not happy to see Mamdani victorious because I agree with his politics. Looking at the positions he advocates, I can’t find one that doesn’t turn my stomach — but that is also the case when listening to Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar.
I’ve been told that Mamdani is worse than these other leftists because he calls himself a socialist and bleeds for Hamas. Let me register my doubts that once in office (if he manages to win the general election) he would do anything to nationalize anything. His Upper East Side Manhattan backers, who poured out to vote for him, wouldn’t allow him to act like Castro or Lenin.
What Mamdani would likely do if elected mayor would be to make all the horrible conditions produced by New York’s big-city government even worse. Streets, outside the opulent neighborhoods inhabited by Mamdani’s benefactors, will be overrun by criminal thugs. New York City will become even more of a magnet for LGBTQ+ and Black Lives Matter exhibitionists, and normal people will move out of the urban zoo even faster than they’re doing right now.
Those claiming that Zohran Mamdani marks some unprecedented plunge into leftist madness haven't been paying attention. High-ranking Democrats such as the Squad, Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, and Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii have long paved the way. Cultural leftists already infest Congress and crowd the statehouses. Aside from Mamdani’s unapologetic use of the word “socialist” and his anti-Israel posturing, he fits quite well in the modern Democratic Party. Nothing about him signals a deeper descent than what voters already hear nightly on MSNBC.
RELATED: New York City’s likely next mayor wants to ‘globalize the intifada’
In the general election, Mamdani may end up splitting the left-wing vote with fellow Democrats, including Mayor Eric Adams, who plans to run as an independent. That kind of vote-splitting could hand the race to Republican Curtis Sliwa, who has positioned himself as the law-and-order candidate. He’s the only one I’d actually like to see win. Still, I won’t pretend I wouldn’t enjoy the irony if Mamdani pulled it off. A Mamdani victory would deliver maximum schadenfreude.
For decades, New Yorkers and denizens of other major cities have sabotaged themselves at the ballot box — electing pro-criminal politicians, embracing every deranged social experiment, and lately drooling over criminal illegal aliens. Despite the hand-wringing on Fox News, these urban voters aren’t victims of the Democratic Party. They’ve reshaped it. They turned a once-working-class coalition into a hive of government dependents and ideological psychopaths.
Justice demands that these “progressives” live with the consequences of their own political choices. They asked for this. Let them have it — good and hard. The tragedy, of course, is that normal people will suffer too. Those without the money to flee to private buildings with armed security or relocate entirely will pay the price. That’s why I hesitate to cast Mamdani as some kind of avenging angel.
Still, even with the obvious costs of a Mamdani administration, his rise might accelerate a trend that’s both inevitable and necessary. Sane people with means will keep fleeing cities run by criminals and ideologues. Those who stay behind — those who cheer on the chaos — can live with the rot they helped create.
Let me close with a brief speculation about politicians like Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar, Mamdani, and their counterparts in Europe — figures who somehow blend radical leftist politics with expressions of Islamic fervor. On paper, devout Muslims ought to align with the Christian right on most social issues. And many Muslim parents across the country have taken a stand, loudly opposing LGBTQ+ indoctrination in schools.
So why don’t Muslim politicians follow suit? Two possible explanations come to mind. Either they’re mimicking the old communist playbook — aligning with fringe social movements as a means to power — or they’re using Islamic identity as a wrecking ball to level what’s left of Western tradition and cohesion.
Let’s not pretend both options are equally likely. I suspect it’s the latter.
A version of this article was originally published in Chronicles.
On September 11, 2001, nearly 2,500 Americans were killed when two planes hijacked by Muslim terrorists struck New York City’s Twin Towers. It’s been less than 24 years, and now that same city has elected Zohran Mamdani — a “communist,” “Muslim radical,” and “jihadist apologist” — as its Democratic mayoral candidate.
Mamdani is a 33-year-old Democratic socialist backed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). He openly supports the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, refuses to condemn the phrase "globalize the intifada," and proposes rent freezes, city-owned grocery stores, a $30 minimum wage, and a Department of Community Safety to reduce reliance on police.
All it took was 24 years for NYC to go “completely insane,” says Glenn Beck.
Mamdani was endorsed and funded to the tune of $100,000 by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has been accused by multiple U.S. government officials, including federal prosecutors and FBI agents as well as several conservative advocacy groups, as being a Hamas front group and a terrorist organization.
He also received campaign donations from multiple faculty members from Columbia University, where several pro-Palestinian protests, many involving violent incidents, have erupted since 2023. Some of these donors even signed a letter defending Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attacks.
In a 2024 Facebook post, Mamdani’s campaign political director, Julian Gerson, wrote that he was “looking forward to driving down Mangione Avenue a few decades from now.” The post was seen as expressing direct support for Luigi Mangione – the man charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
“Sounds like supporting killing people in the streets,” says Glenn.
On June 17, Mamdani appeared on “The Bulwark Podcast” hosted by Tim Miller and equated the phrase “globalize the intifada” to “a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights,” arguing that the word “intifada” means “struggle” or “uprising” in Arabic. He even suggested that the term was used by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Arabic to describe the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis — a sentiment the museum condemned as “outrageous and especially offensive to survivors.”
Glenn makes an excellent point: If “intifada” describes the Jewish uprising at Warsaw, “then [globalize the intifada] is not just a harmless kind of slogan about human rights; it is a call for violence on the streets,” as the Warsaw uprising was a bloody affair marked by fierce urban combat and executions.
Mamdani’s father, a current professor at Columbia University, has denied that terror and violence are an inherent part of Islam. His book, “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror,” argues that terrorism is a modern political phenomenon, not a product of Islamic culture, and is often rooted in historical encounters with Western power.
“I've read the Quran and much of the Hadith, and I'm pretty sure the violence is a part of that,” says Glenn, noting that the Americans supporting the pro-Palestine movement and people like Zohran Mamdani, condemning any opposition as “Islamophobia,” are ironically the first people who will be in the crosshairs if an Islamic takeover happens.
“The progressive left — the champions of feminism, LGBTQ rights, and secularism — they're going to stand with the people who want to kill them first,” he says.
But right now, that isn’t a concern for the left. They’re amped about Mamdani’s plans to “tax the rich” so he can provide “free buses” and “city-run grocery stores.”
“I'm old enough to remember those city-run grocery stores in Moscow. They were great; the shelves were empty, but that's just Moscow. I mean it worked out completely different in Venezuela where ... oh, no, it didn't. ... They were eating the zoo animals,” mocks Glenn. This is communist dogma at work, he says, and it’s responsible for the “deaths of 100 million people.”
“Get the hell out of New York City. This is about survival,” he warns.
To hear more about New York’s new Democrat mayoral candidate, watch the clip above.
To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
And if Americans don’t wake up, Mamdani’s brand of radical leftism could well be the future of this exceptional republic.
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