Mamdani sells socialism — and Republicans peddle the Temu version



New York City has elected a self-professed socialist as mayor. Critics worry about Zohran Mamdani’s inexperience, his approach to law and order, and his views on Israel and Islamic radicalism. But the most urgent issue inside the walls of City Hall is his economic agenda.

Mamdani promises “free” bus transit, a freeze on rent increases, a $30 minimum wage, government-run grocery stores, free child care, and higher taxes in a city already crushed by some of the nation’s highest tax burdens. His brand of socialism isn’t subtle. It’s explicit — and guaranteed to fail.

A movement confident in free enterprise can beat socialism — first in the arena of ideas, then at the ballot box. But only if we choose clarity over imitation.

Many on the right treat Mamdani’s victory as cosmic justice for a deep-blue city that keeps moving left. Others welcome his rise, convinced that showcasing a hard-left mayor will repel voters nationwide. That might be true. It might also be fantasy.

New Yorkers didn’t elect Mamdani so conservatives could score a talking point. His win advances ideas — and conservatives must decide whether they still believe ours are better.

When the right copies the left

Mocking government-run grocery stores is easy. Yet national Republicans just embraced government ownership in Intel — a massive corporation that dwarfs any Manhattan supermarket. Some even support a federal sovereign wealth fund to buy equity across private industry, handing Washington the power to pick winners.

Mamdani demonizes Wall Street and high earners who keep the city solvent. Republicans respond by demonizing “big pharma” and pushing policies that treat major U.S. innovators as villains.

Mamdani wants to redistribute income with New York’s already-extreme tax code. Some on the right now call for $2,000 government checks to lower-income households — financed with borrowed money and paid back by business owners already hit with $350 billion in new tariff taxes this year.

Mamdani would freeze rents because, in his telling, landlords “make a killing.” His economics ignore taxes, insurance, utilities, and maintenance costs that devour margins across New York’s rental market. Yet GOP proposals on health care routinely blame insurers for “making a killing while the little guy suffers.” The overlap with left-wing rhetoric isn’t coincidence. It’s drift.

High grocery prices fuel Mamdani’s push for government-run grocery stores. He blames “capitalistic greed.” Republicans answered high beef prices by accusing meat companies of “price fixing.” Again, the same logic — just delivered with a different logo.

Resurrecting failed policies

Mamdani’s worldview mirrors the same interventionist thinking that powered the Affordable Care Act. Subsidies, mandates, and price controls promised relief. They delivered higher premiums, higher costs, and lower-quality care.

Conservatives should highlight that failure. Instead, too many mimic the left’s solutions — regulation dressed up as populism, government expansion sold as “tough on corporations,” and class warfare renamed as “standing up for workers.”

If Mamdani’s win teaches anything, it’s that conservatives must draw a bright line: free enterprise or the road to socialism. Blurring that line weakens the argument and cedes the moral ground socialism feeds on.

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Bettmann/Getty Images

The real fight

The conservative movement faces serious internal debates — debates worth having. But Mamdani’s election exposes one fight we cannot dodge: the fight for limited government and competitive markets.

We cannot counter socialism with lighter versions of the same policies. We cannot attack Mamdani’s economic program while pushing our own price controls, government takeovers, and redistribution schemes. A movement that refuses to defend free enterprise won’t defeat socialism. It won’t even understand the threat.

Mamdani comes into office with plenty of flaws. New Yorkers will feel the consequences soon enough. But conservatives face a choice: defend our own principles or mimic the left and call it “the new right.”

A movement confident in free enterprise can beat socialism — first in the arena of ideas, then at the ballot box. But only if we choose clarity over imitation.

If Intel gets government cash, taxpayers deserve equity



The Trump administration has negotiated a 10% federal stake in Intel in exchange for the disbursement of $8.9 billion of grants originally allocated by Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act.

First, let me offer a disclaimer: I disapprove.

If companies don’t want their equity diluted, then they should not have the option of taking taxpayer money.

Not of the Trump administration’s negotiation — but of the fact that this money was ever appropriated in the first place. The CHIPS Act was a redistribution of wealth from taxpayers to corporations. What Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent are doing is simply making the best of a bad deal.

If Intel had raised this capital on Wall Street, it would’ve had to sell debt or dilute its shareholders. This is not popular among free-market conservatives because this is not how capitalism is supposed to work.

In free-market capitalism, Congress would never have appropriated $8.9 billion to Intel. Therefore, we are no longer talking about free-market capitalism. If Intel is accepting capital injections, its existing shareholders deserve to have their equity diluted.

Moreover, the government’s 10% share of Intel will be nonvoting stock. The federal government will not have management control. It will just hold a passive ownership share — something it can sell down the line to recoup what taxpayers were forced to spend.

The core issue of this deal is the redistribution of wealth from taxpayers to corporations. Yet much of the pearl-clutching among “free-market” conservatives is about the stock ownership, not about the massive taxpayer grants to corporations.

“Not long ago,” the Wall Street Journal groaned, “it would have been hard to imagine a Republican president demanding government ownership in a private company, but here we are.”

Oh, please. Before George W. Bush, I couldn’t imagine a Republican president bailing out Wall Street either. But the Journal didn’t seem to mind when its banking buddies got billions in bailouts with no strings attached, which was also footed by “we, the taxpayers.” That is much more offensive to me than the taxpayers taking a nonvoting equity share of a company that is appropriated by my tax dollars.

The Journal forgets how “principled” conservatives defended Bush’s $700 billion handout to the very institutions that caused the 2008 financial crisis. In return, those banks gave the government preferredstock, which didn’t have voting rights either — but did give the government first dibs on dividends and liquidation. That’s ownership.

Even better, Bush’s Treasury also demanded warrants — rights to convert into common stock down the line. If Trump had exercised those warrants in his first term, the federal government could have taken actual equity in Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and the rest.

RELATED: Corporate America is eating its seed corn — and our future

Photo by Kwangmoozaa via Getty Images

National Review is up in arms too. Its editorial board — which tried to get us Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris — scolded Trump’s plan like it was some socialist scheme:

Looking at that sad situation, the Trump administration wants a piece of the action. Rather, it wants to use your money to get a piece of the action.

The White House said it was entertaining the U.S. taking a 10 percent stake in Intel, a roughly $10 billion investment at the company’s current valuation. A government $37 trillion in debt and running a $2 trillion deficit has no business playing investment manager with even more borrowed money. And the idea that what Intel really needs to fix its long-running problems is the managerial genius of the federal government is laughable.

That is deeply dishonest. Trump and Bessent negotiated about money already allocated to Intel by Congress under Joe Biden. They did not propose new spending. What’s more, the 10% equity stake does not give the Trump administration governance rights over Intel.

We’ve seen this play before with EV handouts. In 2024, the Department of Energy approved an $80 million grant to Blue Bird to manufacture electric school buses. Trump froze those appropriated funds. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) threw a fit, demanding the money get released.

If Blue Bird gets that $80 million, then taxpayers should have an equity share in Blue Bird, and the ownership of its current stockholders should be diluted accordingly. This isn’t a free market. It’s crony capitalism — or worse, corporate communism with the redistribution of wealth from taxpayers to publicly traded companies. If they don’t want their equity diluted, then they should not be taking taxpayer money.

I’ll let Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have the final word. “We should get an equity stake for our money,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “So we’ll deliver the money, which was already committed under the Biden administration. We’ll get equity in return for it.”

Trump’s Chip Deal: Capitalism Flip or Flop? | Ep 1111
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Trump’s Chip Deal: Capitalism Flip or Flop? | Ep 1111

Why is Trump’s Justice Department carrying water for Obama’s visa scam?



Donald Trump’s base has reached a clear conclusion: The entire importation of white-collar workers from India was a scam. It replaced American workers, fueled outsourcing to India, and boosted its economy at the expense of our own.

The labor market is so weak that even legal visa programs should be suspended under Trump’s 212(f) authority. Yet the H-1B and L visa pipelines remain open, and worse, the Trump Justice Department is defending one of Obama’s most lawless expansions: the H-4 spousal work program.

Defending Obama’s H-4 visa scheme undermines both the law and the American workforce.

Save Jobs USA, representing American workers, has sued the government for continuing Obama’s program that grants work permits to H-1B spouses on H-4 visas. Congress authorized the H-4 visa, but it never authorized work permits. Obama simply created them in 2015 by executive fiat.

Because the program is untethered from statutory limits, it has no cap. While the U.S. still issues around 120,000 H-1B visas each year — including under Trump — hundreds of thousands of spouses now work illegally in the same industries, displacing Americans. Most are funneled into the tech sector, overwhelmingly from India.

This lawsuit has been winding through the courts for nearly a decade. It began after Southern California Edison fired American workers and replaced them with H-1B visa holders. Both district and appellate courts in D.C. sided with the government. Now, as the case reaches the Supreme Court, Trump’s Justice Department filed a brief — signed off by Pam Bondi — arguing that plaintiffs lack standing to sue.

“Petitioner did not identify a single member who is ‘suffering immediate or threatened injury’ that is fairly traceable to the 2015 rule,” government lawyers wrote last month.

Even if one debates the technicalities of standing, why would Bondi waste resources defending a program that is plainly illegal and harmful to American workers — the opposite of what Trump promised in 2015?

A broader failure on foreign labor

Seven months into the new administration, the broader picture looks grim. The White House has failed to slow worker visa programs outside of narrow national security concerns. Trump has not invoked his 212(f) authority to halt needless foreign labor. Instead, he has floated the idea of importing 600,000 Chinese students — an economic and national security risk rolled into one.

This is the worst possible time to flood the market with foreign workers. The economy has averaged just 35,000 new jobs a month, the weakest pace since the Great Recession. Entry-level job listings are down 15% while applications are up 30%. The class of 2024 is still struggling: 41% underemployed, 58% still searching.

Tech companies, meanwhile, continue layoffs by the tens of thousands this year even as they lobby for more H-1Bs:

  • Intel: 21,000
  • Panasonic: 10,000
  • Meta: 3,600
  • Hewlett-Packard: 2,000
  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise: 2,500
  • IBM: 8,000
  • PayPal: 2,500
  • Dell: 12,500
  • TCS: 12,000

Why would they seek more visas in the middle of layoffs? Because nearly half of H-1Bs go to outsourcing and staffing firms, which feed India’s tech industry while hollowing out our own. Each expansion of the visa pipeline means more outsourcing, not more prosperity for Americans.

RELATED: American universities should be for Americans

Blaze Media illustration

The corporate capture

The deeper problem is the growing partnership between this administration and multinational tech giants. The government even owns a 10% equity stake in Intel. Palantir, which holds sensitive defense and health databases, has been allowed to staff up with foreign workers who now handle American taxpayers’ critical data.

Against this backdrop, Bondi’s defense of Obama’s illegal spousal work program looks less like a legal technicality and more like a political signal: This administration is drifting from Trump’s 2015 America First promises and closer to the “America Last” priorities of multinational corporations.

Back to 2015’s warning

The case against foreign workers is even stronger now than when Trump rode down that golden escalator a decade ago. The economy is weaker, the job market tighter, and the outsourcing racket more blatant. Defending Obama’s H-4 visa scheme undermines both the law and the American workforce.

The administration needs to remember what brought Trump to power in the first place. Stop importing foreign labor. Shut down lawless programs. Put American workers first.

Trump’s Intel Deal Could Set Problematic Precedent Dems Can Exploit

'Solution isn't more heavy-handed government"

Trump Says US Will Snag $10 Billion Ownership Stake In Intel

'The United States paid nothing for these Shares'

Trump just called for this CEO to resign over alleged ties to China



President Trump and Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) are sounding the alarm over a Fortune 500 company and its CEO.

The president made a post on his Truth Social platform, just a day after Senator Cotton sent a letter to the company's chairman citing worries about possible impacts on U.S. national security.

'There is no other solution to this problem.'

Cotton sent a letter to Intel Chairman Frank D. Yeary, telling him that he is concerned with the "security and integrity of Intel's operations" and the "potential impact on U.S. national security" in relation to the company's new CEO.

"The new CEO of [Intel] reportedly has deep ties to the Chinese Communists," Cotton wrote on X.

CEO Lip-Bu Tan was the recent CEO of Cadence Design Systems (2009-2021), a company that makes electronic design automation technology, Cotton pointed out. He added, "Cadence pleaded guilty to illegally selling its products to a Chinese military university and transferring its technology to an associated Chinese semiconductor company without obtaining licenses."

The Republican senator followed that up with a letter to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, asking him to rescind the ability of non-U.S. citizens to have access to Department of Defense systems.

On Thursday morning, the president was much more direct about what he wanted from the Intel CEO.

RELATED: Taiwan’s chip monopoly puts US security and economy at risk

"The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately," Trump said on Truth Social. "There is no other solution to this problem. Thank you for your attention to this problem!"

According to the New York Post, Cotton's letter revealed that Tan had invested at least $200 million across hundreds of Chinese firms between 2012 and 2024. The senator additionally asked if Tan had disclosed any remaining investments he had of a similar nature, due to the fact that Intel receives significant federal funding.

Cotton was referring to Intel being awarded $8.5 billion through President Biden's CHIPS and Science Act in 2024, along with about $11 billion in government loans. Intel brought Tan aboard only a few months ago, in March, replacing former CEO Pat Gelsinger, whom Intel's board reportedly lost faith in.

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An Intel spokesperson told the Post that "Intel and Mr. Tan are deeply committed to the national security of the United States and the integrity of our role in the U.S. defense ecosystem."

The company said it planned to address matters with Cotton, while the senator stated in his letter that he wants a response by August 15.

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Tulsi Gabbard has national security 'experts' worried: 'DNI has access to every single secret'



There is a pattern developing with regard to President-elect Donald Trump's recent nominations: He announces someone apparently well suited to executing the agenda he successfully campaigned on; those with vested interests in the status quo panic; and establishmentarians viciously attack the nominees, pleading with nominal Republicans in the U.S. Senate to prevent their confirmation.

This pattern has been repeated for multiple picks, including former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Although virtually all of Trump's nominations have ruffled feathers, his choice of Lt. Col. Tulsi Gabbard to serve as the director of national intelligence appears to have inspired a special kind of unease among Democratic lawmakers, the liberal media, and elements of the intelligence community.

The media

The Atlantic's Tom Nichols rushed to characterize Gabbard's nomination as a "national security risk," complaining that she previously suggested NATO might have had something to do with Russia's invasion of Ukraine and that Syria did not pose a direct threat to the United States.

"Gabbard is a classic case of 'horseshoe' politics," Nichols warned. "Her views can seem both extremely left and extremely right, which is probably why people such as Tucker Carlson — a conservative who has turned into … whatever pro-Russia right-wingers are called now — have taken a liking to the former Democrat (who was previously a Republican and is now again a member of the GOP)."

The Washington Examiner's Tom Rogan suggested that by nominating Gabbard, Trump — who was kneecapped in his first term by a malignant counterintelligence investigation and whose 2020 political adversary was given narrative cover prior to the election by CIA contractors and intelligence community alumni — "is putting his distrust of the intelligence community before the critical interests of national security."

After trotting out the Syria and Russia-themed attacks against Gabbard, then insinuating that she is a sympathizer with the communist Chinese regime, Rogan warned that if confirmed, she would supervise "all U.S. intelligence agencies' collection, analysis, and mission efforts and the production and dissemination of the U.S. government's most sensitive intelligence reporting and analysis. This includes knowledge of spies buried deep inside foreign governments and terrorist organizations."

'This appointment is sending shock waves here in the United States.'

Bill Kristol quoted Jonathan Last, editor of the neocon blog the Bulwark, as writing, "Making Gabbard DNI simply makes no sense. ... Or rather, it makes no sense for America. For Russia, DNI Gabbard makes all the sense in the world."

Last appeared particularly upset over Gabbard's opposition to fruitless foreign entanglements and ineffectual U.S. sanctions.

Dems and spooks spooked

"This appointment is sending shock waves here in the United States but also around the globe," John Brennan, former director of the CIA and chief counterterrorism adviser to former President Barack Obama, said in conversation with MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace.

Brennan, one of the signatories of the infamous Hunter Biden "intel" letter, likened the 18 intelligence agencies that Gabbard would oversee to an orchestra, suggesting that she likely doesn't even know what instruments are being played.

Former Bush adviser John Bolton, a key proponent of America's disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq, suggested to NewsNation's "The Hill" that with Trump's "announcement of Tulsi Gabbard to be the director of national intelligence, he's sending a signal that we have lost our mind when it comes to collecting intelligence."

One former senior intelligence official who spoke under the condition of anonymity told Politico that the choice was a "left turn and off the bridge."

Another intelligence official warned that America's allies, including Israel, might withhold information from Washington if Gabbard were the DNI, adding, "What some allies share may now be shaped by political goals rather than professional intelligence sharing."

An unnamed "Western security source" similarly suggested to Reuters that Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand may be less forthcoming about the intelligence they collect, stressing that foreign nations believe Trump's appointments all lean in the "wrong direction."

Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger (Va.), a former CIA officer who now warms a chair on the House Intelligence Committee, suggested on X that Gabbard, who served in Iraq and Kuwait, would be an oath-breaker.

"The men and women of the U.S. Intelligence community honor their oaths by collecting the vital intelligence that keeps our fellow Americans safe. The global threats we face require a Director of National Intelligence who would do the same. Tulsi Gabbard is not that person," wrote Spanberger.

The former spook, echoing Nichols, appears to have unwittingly highlighted what has the establishment panicking, telling The Hill, "The DNI has access to every single secret that the United States has, every single bit of information that we know. … It's the keys to the intelligence community kingdom."

Larry Pfeiffer, former chief of staff at the CIA under the Bush administration, told The Hill, "Some of the statements she has made through the years that sound like they came right out of the Kremlin's talking points paper are a little bit alarming. Her cozying up to Bashar al-Assad and being an apologist for him as well just raise questions in my mind. Is that really the best person to put in charge of this very complicated, very sensitive operation that is the U.S. intel community?"

Jamil Jaffer, a former House Intelligence Committee staffer and national security prosecutor, told The Hill, "What is unusual here is you've got somebody who's had such a long and vociferous track record of saying things that are factually incorrect, that seem to give aid and comfort to U.S. adversaries and that undermine the very people they should be representing at the principals committee."

As with Hegseth and Gaetz's critics, those denouncing Gabbard appear to be exponents of the very worldview and policy conventions that Trump was effectively elected to obliterate.

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Bob Woodward Is The Deep State’s Favorite Conduit For Disinformation

Woodward's new book is just his most recent attempt to hoodwink the public on behalf of our intelligence agencies.