Zohran Mamdani, a radical socialist and Democratic Socialists of America member, ran as the most left-wing mayoral candidate in the city’s modern history.  Less than a year into the job, the socialists who put him in office are worried he isn’t radical enough, as reported by the NY POST.

The fight is over how the city handles its public housing. New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) complexes are traditional public housing under Section 9 of federal law. NYC owns the buildings and runs them directly. Most are decades old and in bad shape. Hardline Democratic Socialists of America members and some tenants want the buildings repaired in place and kept under pure public ownership and control.

But Mamdani and some DSA members in his administration support partnering with private developers through federal programs that tear down the old buildings, put up new ones, and convert the units to project-based Section 8. Under that model the federal government still subsidizes the rent so tenants pay about 30% of their income, but private partners manage the property and bring in outside capital.

The first real test is over a pair of NYCHA complexes in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood known as the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses. Mamdani is backing a $1.2 billion plan that would let private developers demolish the crumbling buildings and replace them with mixed-income housing in exchange for rebuilding roughly 2,000 public housing units.

New York City officials see the project as a possible model for other aging NYCHA complexes across the five boroughs. That is exactly what scares the hard left. If Chelsea goes this route, they fear the rest of the city’s public housing could follow.

Tenant activists at the complexes have joined the New York City chapter of the DSA and are calling the plan the privatization of public housing. Some residents argue the buildings should be repaired under Section 9 rather than demolished. On Saturday, three of those tenants will go before the DSA convention, where members will vote on whether to formally oppose the city’s plan. A yes vote would mean a socialist mayor getting rebuked by his own socialist organization in his first year in office.

Mamdani and the DSA members in his administration argue the buildings are in such bad shape that tearing them down and building new is cheaper than renovating them.

They say federal housing money is shrinking, and there is no other realistic way to fix them. The money for the rebuild is meant to come through the federal RAD/PACT program, which converts the units to Section 8 so private partners can bring in the capital. The socialist mayor is accepting private capital to rebuild the housing, and his own organization is calling it a sellout.

The housing fight is not the only sign the DSA is losing trust in its man at City Hall. The chapter is also set to vote Saturday on a resolution to put a socialist in as City Council speaker in 2029, when current Speaker Julie Menin is term-limited out. The goal is making sure Mamdani stays radical.

The draft resolution calls for turning the 51-member Council into a separate power center that keeps the mayor tied to the DSA’s agenda and stops Republicans and conservatives from becoming the main outlet for anyone unhappy with his administration. It says the Council should try out more aggressive policies, such as police reform and expanding a Department of Community Safety, that the mayor’s office will not or cannot push right now, starting in the districts where Mamdani won by the largest margins.

The same organization that elected a DSA socialist mayor now believes it needs the City Council to stop him from moderating. It also acknowledges that New Yorkers dissatisfied with Mamdani could turn to conservatives if the left does not offer its own outlet for discontent.

The far left is beyond radical, and this is their all or nothing rhetoric. Mamdani promised the world, and the moment he made one decision that sounded like a capitalist idea, knocking down falling-apart buildings and building new ones with private partners and federal Section 8 funding, the people who cheered him on started treating him like a sellout.

Less than a year in, Mamdani has personally signed just two bills. One made outdoor dining permanent, and a another (COPA) gave certain nonprofits the first opportunity to buy specific distressed multifamily buildings before they hit the open market. Everything else the Council passed became law without his signature. Outside of a rent freeze on about one million stabilized apartments and a state-funded free 2-K childcare program launched with Gov. Hochul, he has delivered little of the sweeping change he promised. This is what electing a socialist mayor actually looks like.

Every Democrat in this country who rode the DSA wave will face the same choice next year, either go full radical or get eaten by your own side.

Watch Saturday’s votes. If this is what the DSA calls too moderate, ask what they really want for this city.

Three Iran-backed operatives have been indicted in New York on terrorism charges, including a plot to use vans loaded with fuel, chemical accelerants, and metal shrapnel in an explosive attack at a British Royal Air Force base where American troops were stationed.

The eight-count superseding indictment, unsealed Tuesday, charges the men with supporting the foreign terrorist organizations Kata’ib Hizballah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The defendants are Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, a dual Iranian-Iraqi national; Mohsen Mohajeri, an Iranian national; and Mohammad Ali al-Hassani, an Iraqi national.

The Justice Department announced that the three men were involved in nearly 20 attacks and attempted attacks across Europe and the United States, including a September plot at RAF Fairford in England, which housed U.S. military aircraft and personnel.

“Anyone who plans a terrorist plot on a military base housing American servicemembers will be prosecuted by the United States government,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said. “Al-Saadi allegedly coordinated with his co-defendants in the days leading up to the attempted terrorist plot. This Department of Justice will continue dismantling terrorist networks and protecting the American people from terrorist organizations.”

FBI Director Kash Patel did not hold back. “According to the indictment, one of the subjects is behind bars awaiting trial yet he allegedly sent coded messages to assist in future acts of violence,” Patel said. “This FBI will use all our resources to detect and stop such terrorist attacks as we’ve done the last 21 months – with over 1,300 terrorists disrupted and nearly 7,000 Foreign Terrorist Organization related arrests, up 1,057%. All those who threaten our homeland will get the message – justice will find you.”

Prosecutors say al-Hassani orchestrated the plot from Iran, and al-Saadi coordinated it from a New York prison cell. Al-Saadi had been arrested overseas around May 1 and later transferred to U.S. custody after prior charges for planning and promoting approximately 18 terrorist attacks in Europe and attempting to bomb a synagogue in Manhattan. From behind bars, prosecutors say, he used phone calls with his family in Iraq to pass coded messages to Mohajeri and al-Hassani, who were both in Iran.

In one call, he told relatives he owed Mohajeri money and had them pass along messages about “work,” which prosecutors call “a term al-Saadi regularly used to describe terrorist activity.” On September 24, he allegedly asked how al-Hassani was doing and told his family to “give him money so we can do it.”

Al-Hassani’s network of paid UK operatives moved on September 26, driving fuel-packed vehicles toward RAF Fairford, the Royal Air Force base in England then used by U.S. forces. Using vehicles disguised as commercial ones, the alleged terrorists had already conducted surveillance of the base, sourced chemical accelerants including large quantities of potassium chloride, and acquired metal for use as shrapnel. The plot was cut short when security blocked at least two of the vehicles before they could close in.

The method of fuel-laden vehicles turned into bombs with improvised accelerants and shrapnel eerily echoes the 1993 World Trade Center truck bomb.

“As alleged, these defendants helped orchestrate a campaign of terror on behalf of terrorist organizations affiliated with Iran that targeted Jewish communities in Europe and the United States, and the British military base, RAF Fairford, housing American service members,” said U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald of the Southern District of New York, whose office is prosecuting the case. “Even after one of their co-conspirators was arrested and placed in federal custody, the defendants allegedly continued coordinating terrorist activity through coded communications and a network of associates overseas. The threat presented by Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups to America and our allies is not hypothetical, it is very real. Our Office will not stop working to address and disrupt this threat, and to prosecute those responsible.”

It wasn’t their first attack. Prosecutors say all three helped orchestrate 18 attacks in Europe under the name Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, or HAYI, which the Justice Department calls a front for Kata’ib Hizballah. This past spring HAYI claimed attacks across Europe, including seven in the U.K., using arson and explosives. One was a near-fatal stabbing of two Jewish men in London, one of them a dual U.S.-British citizen, as reported by Just the News.

The indictment includes photos of al-Saadi appearing to stand in front of a stash of machine guns in a conference room, with a map of the United States on the wall listing “legitimate targets.” Another piece of evidence is an April FaceTime video of an attack happening in real time, with al-Hassani allegedly directing the attackers.

Department of Justice photo of al-Saadi with machine guns and a map of the United States marked with “legitimate targets.” (DOJ)

Mohajeri and al-Hassani are still not in custody. The FBI’s New York Joint Terrorism Task Force led the investigation.

A synagogue in Manhattan, American troops overseas and a map of U.S. targets on the wall. Iran’s proxies aren’t just a threat overseas. They’re coming for us here at home.

Slowly but surely, stagnation is stalking some of the world’s biggest economies. Whether it is low growth, astronomical public debt, inflationary pressures, unimpressive productivity, affordability issues, housing shortages, high energy prices, or weak levels of entrepreneurship, Western economies are far from healthy.

Though specific events, like the wars in Iran and Ukraine, have contributed to these developments, many Western leaders persist in blaming their nations’ economic troubles on “neo-liberalism.” British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, for example, has asserted that the economic policies associated with the Thatcher era are responsible for his country’s present challenges.

Others recognize that the opposite of free markets—excessive government intervention—has contributed mightily to the economic problems facing Western countries. Back in 2024, former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi published an official European Union report that identified over-regulation and excessive bureaucracy as key to the economic sclerosis of many European nations.

Alas, many such admissions are accompanied by the insistence that more state intervention is part of the solution. Draghi’s report, for instance, argued for greater Brussels-driven regulation, the wider use of industrial policy, and increased government expenditures if the EU was to avoid becoming an economic backwater. It was as if, having grasped the essence of the problem, the report’s drafters felt compelled to make an act of faith in the curative economic powers of the state.

This is an example of the hold of the social democratic mindset on so many policymakers. But however strong that grip, it cannot disguise the fact that social democratic policies are presently imploding around the world under the weight of their own contradictions. Today, we are witnessing the clash between an increasingly redundant social democratic settlement and the political and economic facts of the early twenty-first century. Until we acknowledge that social democratic commitments are central to our present economic problems, they are likely to worsen.

Who’s a Social Democrat?

Clarity about the meaning of “social democracy” is important here. Contemporary expressions of social democracy do not mean socialism, let alone Soviet-style planned economies. Indeed, the roots of modern social democracy lie in the rejection of outright socialism by sections of the postwar left.

As early as the 1950s, some Western socialist and labor parties started rejecting reliance on Marxist analysis and began to excise commitments to the socialization of the economy from their platforms. This was exemplified by the German Social Democratic Party’s decision in 1959 to formally reject Marxism as one of its primary reference points and embrace what it called “liberal socialism.” Economically speaking, this translated into the position of “as much competition as possible—as much planning as necessary.”

The irony is that many center-right parties had already moved towards similar positions, albeit from the opposite direction. While continuing to denounce socialism, parties ranging from Britain’s Conservatives to Australia’s Liberal Party and large segments of the US Republican Party quietly accepted the postwar economic orthodoxies that stressed Keynesian macroeconomics, the necessity of large welfare programs, the application of industrial policy to many economic sectors, and strong regulatory agencies. The resignations from Britain’s Treasury of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Peter Thorneycroft, and his collaborators Enoch Powell and Nigel Birch in January 1958 in opposition to the MacMillan Tory government’s decision to augment public expenditures underscored the marginalization of robust belief in free markets on the right.

What made this postwar bipartisan blend of markets and extensive government intervention “social democratic” is that it represented an effort to blend commitments to freedom (“democratic”) with a determination to use the state to meet specific collective needs (“social”). Many of the latter were ideologically premised on the idea of social rights to legitimize, as a matter of justice, interventionism and especially policies of unending redistributions of wealth.

Over time, the balance between the “freedom” and the “social” has waxed and waned. In the 1960s, economic liberty and its underlying institutional foundations were significantly diluted by Western governments seeking to realize assorted social rights. By the 1970s, it was recognized that these measures, such as full employment policies, were contributing to a widespread economic malaise. Free marketers were consequently given some scope to liberalize parts of the economy. This is much of the economic story of the 1980s and 1990s.

That said, no Western country—including America—has decisively rejected the social democratic emphasis on using government power to give effect to social rights. Despite generations of market liberals raising searching questions about, for example, the long-term viability of big welfare states, social democracy’s most significant institutional expressions have thus far defied systematic dismantling. In many ways, the period often labelled the “Age of Markets”—roughly 1980 until 2008—is better understood as one which demonstrated the resilience of social democratic priorities rather than the victory of market liberalism.

The Bill Comes Due

The capacity of social democratic agendas and institutions to resist efforts to shrink their importance cannot disguise the multiple ways in which they are faltering throughout the world. The unaffordability of the jewel in the social democratic crown—the welfare state—is the most obvious case.

In 2024, for instance, government expenditures on “social protection” in the EU added up to almost 40% of all state spending (19.6% of GDP), dwarfing spending on core state responsibilities like national defense. That same year, according to the OECD, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, and Japan spent respectively 30.6%, 27.9%, 27.6%, 24.7%, and 23% of their annual GDP on “public social spending.” This included health, old-age pensions, disability benefits, family allowances, labor market programs, unemployment payments, and housing assistance. When government expenditures on activities such as education, public utilities, or subsidies to assorted businesses and industries are added to the overall bill, the demand on the public purse—and therefore the need to extract more wealth from the private sector, and/or deepen public debt—becomes even more pressing.

Among the consequences of these trends is a shifting of resources away from the more efficient private sector. That has implications for productivity. And when social programs like disability benefits become easier to access, the disincentives for people to work grow. This further diminishes an economy’s wealth-creating capacities.

The long-term effects of these and related developments are not difficult to identify. Governments that increasingly resort to borrowing to cover the costs of social programs find that an expanding share of their annual budgets goes toward interest payments. As the size of public debts grows, interest rates go up. Servicing the public debt thus becomes progressively more expensive. Some governments will raise taxes to try to cover their social spending costs. But that also disincentivizes people to be entrepreneurial or work, thereby further weakening productivity.

If you talk to enough policymakers, few will deny the reality of this vicious fiscal circle or its unsustainability. Why then are so many of them unwilling to pursue the type of reforms necessary to address these problems?

Efforts to scale back social democratic policies invariably encounter three obstacles today. One is the existence of large constituencies who will resist any effort to reduce what they regard as “their” entitlements by voting or rioting against anyone proposing substantive reforms. The second is the willingness of many political parties of all stripes to pander to these parts of the electorate by promising not to touch entitlements. The third is the ongoing popularity of appeals to existing or newly imagined social rights to maintain or extend the state’s role in the economy.

Reform Failure

Any one of these factors constitutes a serious barrier to reform. Overcoming all three presently seems beyond the capacity of our present political arrangements. The looming risk is that the lumbering social democratic dinosaur, in its frantic search for more revenue and driven by the desire to appease large voting blocs, will cripple in its wake many of the freedoms, incentives, and institutions that generate the wealth that we need not simply to survive but also to flourish. Equally concerning is how the dysfunctionalities of present-day social programs are fueling a generational conflict between 1) those retirees who paid into social security systems and expect to continue to be paid; and 2) young people who suspect that they are presently subsidizing the incomes of comfortably off pensioners and who wonder if they will get anything at all when they enter old age.

Here and there, Western governments of left and right have implemented incremental changes to try and address these tensions. Yet far too many of these initiatives have come undone.

In 2023, for example, France implemented a pension reform that raised the retirement age from 62 to 64 (effective 2030) and increased the minimum pension contribution. Two years later, these minor adjustments were put on ice by President Emmanuel Macron’s government after a wave of protests. Likewise, the sturdiness of seemingly successful pension reforms, such as those passed by Sweden in the 1990s and 2010s, has been questioned on the grounds that they have put more financial pressure on retirees as well as increased temptations for governments to resort to ad hoc measures that will effectively undermine the reforms’ durability.

Even more seriously, few political leaders have been willing to face up to the fact that the enduring legitimacy of the underlying social democratic consensus creates expectations that sustain powerful stumbling blocks to meaningful change. The postwar social contract—markets overlaid and permeated by expansive and state-enforced social rights—has calcified into an interdependent system of metastasizing regulation, interventionism, bureaucratization, expanding entitlements, and political expectations which erodes the economic growth and fiscal solvency that are preconditions for free and prosperous societies.

Too many political leaders treat this situation as a problem to be patched over with either more intervention or marginal efforts at liberalization. They will not concede that the underlying social contract is now untenable. Nor will they admit that managing the competing demands of social rights and market disciplines is now beyond the powers of technocrats who appear impotent in the face of left- and right-populists selling political snake oil. We are only beginning, I fear, to see the economic and political whirlwind that we will all reap from this denial, absent a revolution in how we think about these questions.

Rewriting the Social Contract

Any such transformation that saves us from our perilous economic circumstances will require a thorough overhaul of our present social contract. Such a change must recognize that the “social” part of social democracy is damaging Western economies and facilitating unwholesome political trends which are contributing to deep fractures in many societies.

Fundamentally rewriting the social contract will require, at a minimum, the subordination of social rights to the demands of liberty and wealth creation. That will be deeply unpopular and provoke a harsh and likely violent backlash. But the alternative is that social democracy’s ongoing implosion could easily collapse the liberal framework of property rights, open markets, rule of law, and limited government that gives rise to commercial civilization and makes elevated levels of prosperity possible.

Our choice is thus no longer between greater or lesser versions of social democracy. It is between completely revising the social contract so that it conforms to the requirements of life in a robust commercial society or, alternatively, acquiescing to remorseless economic decline. The political consequences of the latter will not be pretty.

By Liberty Law – https://lawliberty.org/the-dangerous-twilight-of-social-democracy/

This will not be a return to the pre-Trump stale Republican Party, it will have to expand.

After 12 years in Congress serving at the highest levels of our nation’s federal government, I want to take this opportunity to thank the people of our great state — Republicans, Independents, and Democrats. And thank you to the voters in my district, who cycle after cycle in good years and bad, placed their trust and faith in me to represent them.

I never felt entitled for your vote and I always worked my very hardest to earn it.

There will be a lot written and discussed about the national repudiation of Republicans this cycle and I look forward to that conversation. However, New York deserves its own special attention after the historic loss at the ballot box. It is time to learn and rebuild.

My theory of the case, having a front row seat to the political ups and downs over the past decade, has always been that President Trump is one of one — he is a singular figure larger than partisan politics. He built a unique historic coalition in 2016, mounted the most noteworthy political comeback of all time, survived an assassination attempt, and won the popular vote in 2024.

He also energizes and unifies Democrats and swing voters in a way no other political figure has ever done. In order to win, the next generation of Republicans will need to come to terms that Trump will not be on the ballot. Candidates are on their own to re-energize and inspire the Trump coalition of working class people and offer real solutions to win independents and swing voters to grow the tent.

This will not be a return to the pre-Trump stale Republican Party, it will have to expand.

This cycle, America saw a new generation of Democrat Socialist candidates successfully co-opt Trump’s original outsiders’ populist message of fighting for the little guy and working men and women from all walks of life. That movement started right here in New York, where smiling Socialists masking deep anti-Americanism are successfully on the march and in elected office.

Another important part of my political theory of the case is that we are living through a historic political realignment that is clearly swinging hard towards Socialism today, but will swing back with a vengeance in the next five to 10 years.

Republicans should not blow this opportunity.

America loves a comeback story and Republicans are going to need to write one.

There is no better place to do that than New York.

Unlike so many in elected office, I don’t come from a political family. I first cut my teeth in New York politics in high school when I was a volunteer at the Republican State Committee headquarters in Albany — stuffing envelopes, making posters and phone calls. That was back in the day when Republicans controlled statewide office with Gov. George Pataki at the helm with a savvy, smart operational partner in GOP State Party Chair Bill Powers.

I was further inspired to pursue public service after the deadly terrorist attacks on 9/11.

Back then, I never would have imagined I would make history serving in the United States Congress, let alone in top House leadership.

Whether fighting for small businesses and Upstate farms, being rated as one of the most effective elected officials in America, setting off the long overdue earthquake in higher education, or shaping our national defense strategy as a senior Member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, I have been grateful to earn support cycle after cycle from my constituents with a broad and sweeping coalition of Republicans, Independents, and Democrats.

When I first ran for Congress 14 years ago, the old Republican guard loved to say: “she can’t win,” “she’s too conservative for the district,” “she’s just a young girl from Upstate,” “she will lose.”

Some still say that today. I spent two years, and then the next 12, traversing the largest geographic district in New York and east of the Mississippi River leaving no stone unturned and earning support directly from the voters. Listening to them and hearing them — on national frustrations, but importantly on state, regional, and local issues as well.

I listened to voters and focused on delivering a record of clear and consistent results with a potent combination of national issues coupled with deep understanding and connection to local, state, and regional issues.

That coupled with exceptional constituent services and a very consistent and disciplined messaging strategy, cycle after cycle, we broke electoral records for any Republican in the Northeast and fundraising records nationwide.

And I paid it forward. I worked to flip nearly every county in my district. I also served in top leadership to deliver the House Majority through smart candidate recruitment and national fundraising.

Importantly, I always ran on an effective, meaningful policy platform attuned to voters’ concerns on real issues nationally and locally with a record of consistent, tangible, and real results — big and small. I always showed up. And voters in turn showed up for me.

I share this as I am leaving Congressional service because I believe Republicans in New York and across America can and should learn from this. The broad and consistently winning “Elise Coalition” was built of highly energized Republicans, nearly a quarter of registered Democrats, and the vast majority of Independents.

There was no pre-existing political machine in Upstate, we had to build it from scratch. That gargantuan effort turned a sleepy, low turnout district into the highest voter turnout district in the state. With a 100% win record. Full stop. For 14 years and seven ballots. We took a 50/50 bellwether district and won by such large margins with such strong coattails down-ballot, that we made it look easy where it was written off ad nauseum by the media as a safe Republican district.

Turn’s out, that was absolutely wrong and was lazy reporting all along. It is now back to a knife’s edge 50/50.

Last year, I made the difficult, but correct, decision not to run for governor of New York. As a working Mom to our young son coupled with professional responsibilities serving in Congress in a slim Majority where every vote is essentially decided by one vote, it was not the right time.

Additionally, I was concerned there was a lack of urgency for the need to rebuild the Republican apparatus. There was far too much party infighting, coupled with regional state fiefdoms, and not enough focus on the people.

I also had a sense that Republicans were failing to deliver an agenda or communicate a message that was worthy of the mandate voters had generously given us in 2024.

The focus of top House leadership became surviving another day in power rather than listening to the American people and delivering solutions on affordability, housing, and lowering energy costs.

Yes, Congress delivered the expansive and important One Big Beautiful Bill where I cast the deciding vote, but other than the message discipline of New York Republicans communicating on the historic tax cut we delivered on SALT, did Republican candidates ever really explain why the bill is so important? The answer is no. It showed up in exactly zero exit polls.

We know it is possible for Republicans to make inroads electorally and strategically in New York. Over the past decade, I successfully delivered real results to my constituents while rebuilding the Republican Party in my district and nationwide by supporting and helping elect a historic number of Republican candidates both in our state and across the country — including a historic number of women.

As the highest ranking New York Republican to serve in Congress in over a century, I worked closely with Speakers of the House when we delivered the House Majority through New York. We developed a savvy winning legal strategy to defeat the New York Democrats’ attempted gerrymander in the courts.

And let’s not forget, Lee Zeldin ran a generationally great statewide race with a strong state party chair in Nick Langworthy coupled with savvy Congressional candidates like Mike Lawler who flipped key districts. These were smart and massive wins on the board that were wiped away in last week’s blue tsunami.

I think back to a lengthy one-on-one conversation I had late last spring with still one of the smartest tacticians in New York politics, former governor George Pataki — one of my friends and neighbors on beautiful Lake Champlain. A few hours learning from him is worth more than decades of any consultant. He wisely suggested that part of the winning strategy must be a complete rebuild of the New York GOP apparatus and state party that was accomplished before he won in 1994 — a historic wave year for Republicans.

He was right. There is no question that needs to happen and it needed to happen yesterday. We have seen a hollowing out of the Republican support in the Hudson Valley while previous strongholds like parts of Upstate New York and Long Island have slipped away and are aging out. This suggestion is meant to be honest and productive, putting the voters — not the party insiders — first.

You have regions and races where New York Republicans didn’t even put candidates on the ballot. On Election Day, Elon’s patriotic mom, Maye Musk, earnestly tweeted a telling photo of the fact that there wasn’t a single Republican judicial candidate on her ballot. So prescient and on point, as usual, for the widely admired matriarch of the Musk family.

Which brings me to the most important lesson in politics and it is about what matters most — the voters.

The people are, by far, the best part of the job serving in elected office. I have always strongly believed that voters are smart and astute. As a candidate, you can never be entitled to certain voters, you have to earn it in every election.

You also can’t tell voters what to care about. They tell you and your job is to listen and put forth real solutions and deliver results.

Republicans did not do enough listening, let alone hearing. We didn’t earn or build the apparatus needed to win. There was a sense of entitlement on Republican strongholds whether Upstate or on Long Island, and those slipped away. There was a stark tone-deafness on affordability and a lack of clear agenda of how Republicans would tackle it.

Voters don’t like being taken for granted. And they shouldn’t be. This, coupled with a record-setting low fundraising crisis for the statewide ticket in New York — the lowest in a century — made for a cauldron of epic losses.

And the sad reality is that the voters of New York of all political parties desperately deserve an alternative to this sickening Socialist-Marxist-antisemitic experiment that we are undergoing in our city and state under single-party Democrat rule.

Republicans have an enormous opportunity to rebuild. It will take a new generation capable of thinking outside the box, playing on offense in all parts of the state, rebuilding from scratch at the local level, lots of honest conversations rather than finger pointing and lashing out on X. There needs to be a deep, substantive post-mortem. And we need to have the courage to say what every voter is thinking: there needs to be new Republican leadership in our state.

Most importantly, as I have done for over a decade, Republicans will have to meet voters where they are, have a big tent approach, and put forth solutions to solve real and dire economic and existential challenges that hardworking families are facing in their day to day lives.

Voters are genuinely looking for leadership and how to get involved. The dangerous radical Left in New York is very tactically issue-focused with specific 24/7 organizing tasks, bottled with a slick communications behemoth behind it.

Republicans should take note. It needs to not just be the grand old party but instead an entire rebuild of the apparatus of institutions, media, organizations, and technological tools built to win.

New York City is the most dynamic and resilient city in the world coupled with the beautiful Great Upstate that delivered the first victory of the Revolutionary War at Saratoga 250 years ago. There is no question that New York politics is some of the toughest and bare-knuckled in the nation. Don’t I know it!

My fellow New York Republican Congressional delegation colleagues often joke to one another that electeds in other parts of the country have no idea how tough it is to win elections as a Republican in New York. We need our own brand, we need to build a broad coalition, and we need to rebuild in a way that is compelling to voters whose trust Republicans lost this cycle across the nation.

As a lifelong New Yorker, Mom, Congresswoman, and a New York voter myself, I am looking forward to this next chapter and having an honest conversation in the months and years to come with people from all walks of life about how we must save our state and country after this Election Day walloping.

At heart, New Yorkers and Americans are builders and fighters.

It’s time to build.

And then we need to fight and win.

Elise Stefanik served as representative for New York’s 21st congressional district since 2015.

Bernie Sanders, the 85-year-old Vermont socialist who has been in Congress since the early 1990s and has only had a career in government, just turned on Chuck Schumer. This week he announced he will not back the New York Democrat for Senate majority leader when Democrats take control in January because, he insists, “the time is now for change.”

The man who has spent more than three decades on the public payroll declared that last week’s midterms prove voters want a “new and bold direction.” 

“I personally have known Chuck Schumer for over 30 years and I like Chuck, nobody who works harder than Chuck Schumer. But in my view, the time is now for change and I will not be supporting Chuck to be reelected as the Democratic leader,” Sanders said.

In reality, the far left is already treating its Senate win as a blank check for more radicalism, more spending, and more hostility toward anyone who stands in the way.

He was not alone. Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin stood beside him at the Capitol and declaredshe is “not actively seeking this job. I am seeking change.” She added that she has “been very consistent for a very long time that we need a new generation of leadership.” Slotkin left the door open to voting for Schumer, but only after she sees a concrete plan for the first 100 daysthat puts “money in people’s pockets” and changes how Democrats communicate. In other words, the same progressive priorities, just sold by a different messenger.

The progressive activists can be counted on to join their lifetime government employee in the belief that Schumer is no longer a good fit. Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen is the only Democrat openly weighing a run, and they are already trying to draft him. He is still “actively listening” and warned against a “coronation,” saying “We should not support anybody for leader without a very clear plan.” So far, the only clear plan on offer is more of the failed agenda that produced the very problems Democrats claim they now want to fix.

Schumer, for his part, is pretending nothing is wrong. He insisted the caucus has “great unity” and that he’ll “be proud to lead it as majority leader.” Not everyone is defecting. Returning Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, asked whether he backs Schumer, answered with one word: “Yes.”

Then there is the filibuster. With at least 54 seats, the far left wants Democrats to scrap it so they can ram through their agenda without a single Republican vote. Sanders would not commit. “That’s a very important question, and I haven’t reached an answer on it,” he said, while praising majority rule and fretting about “protecting minority rights.” The same party that spent years warning about threats to democracy is now openly discussing how to silence the minority the moment it holds the gavel.

Senate Democrats vote on their leader next month. Schumer has led the caucus for nearly a decade. Now his own side is openly demanding he be replaced before the new Congress even begins. If this is what he means by “great unity,” the party is already splitting in public.

New York City’s Democratic Socialists of America, the left-wing machine that helped put Mayor Zohran Mamdani in City Hall and place four of its members on the City Council, now admits what many have noted for years. The chapter is too white to match the city it claims to speak for, as reported by the New York Post. 

The numbers are not new. An internal survey reported in August found 60% of NYC-DSA members identify as white in a city that is roughly 34% white. That’s whiter than the Democratic Party overall, about 56% white per Pew. A 2021 national DSA survey put membership at 85% white. The chapter claims more than 15,000 members; 63% responded. Among non-white respondents: Hispanic 14%, Jewish 12%, Asian 10%, Black 9%.

At its City Convention this Saturday, November 14, NYC-DSA will vote on creating an “Anti-Oppression Task Force” (also called a “Task Force to Promote Equitable Organizing Culture”) that would push chapter leaders into diversity training. The resolution states that the group wants to grow among the “multiracial, multigendered working class” but concedes it has “historically faced well-documented challenges recruiting and retaining people of color” and that its membership “does not reflect the racial diversity of our city.” 

The irony is not hard to miss. NYC-DSA has elevated candidates of color, including Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Reps.-elect Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier, while its own ranks still look more like an Ivy League faculty lounge than the five boroughs. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, after watching a Valdez victory celebration, told CNN there was “almost zero diversity in that crowd.” Queens Borough President Donovan Richards welcomed the diversification talk, with a condition. “We hope the equity task force is representative of Black and brown communities,” Richards said. “We hope black and brown members will be in charge of the task force.”

The hypocrisy is egregious on its face. Co-chair Gustavo Gordillo, a Yale graduate who marketed himself as a hardworking labor union member with working-class roots, lives in a$1.5 million Bedford-Stuyvesant townhouse gifted by his wealthy father, with another $1.4 million spent on renovations, according to the Post. Civil rights leader Rev. Kevin McCall had already called for Gordillo’s resignation. On the new task force, McCall said it could be a first step, but only if the chapter opens the doors. “Our campaign to hold the DSA accountable and tell the truth about their privilege is resonating with some rank-and-file members,” McCall said. “As a first test to whether their leadership will confront its own hypocrisy with meaningful action, the DSA should open the doors of their convention, invite black and brown communities into the conversation, and listen to those they claim to help.”

Meanwhile, another resolution aims to install a “socialist speaker of the City Council in 2029” to “hold the mayor accountable from the left,” even as the same organization cannot recruit a membership that matches the city. More task forces, more trainings, more jargon about the “multiracial, multigendered working class,” and the same gap between rhetoric and reality.

Delegates vote Saturday. New Yorkers already know the score.