ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The BDS Movement Zohran Mamdani Supports Violates New York State Policy Will “Palestinian liberation” become New York City’s political future? by Joe Kaufman

Posted By on October 31st, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-bds-movement-zohran-mamdani-supports-violates-new-york-state-policy/

Zohran Kwame Mamdani wants to be the next mayor of New York City. But before voters even consider handing him the keys to City Hall, one question demands an answer: How can someone who proudly backs the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel – a movement that violates New York State policy – be trusted to lead the nation’s largest city?

New York’s BDS Ban

Nearly a decade ago, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo took a clear stand against anti-Israel boycotts. In 2016, he signed Executive Order 157, which prohibits New York State agencies from doing business with any company or organization that supports BDS.

Cuomo put it bluntly at the time: “If you boycott Israel, New York will boycott you.”

That policy has remained in place under Governor Kathy Hochul, reflecting broad bipartisan support. The message is simple – taxpayer dollars should never be used to advance hate, discrimination, or campaigns that target America’s closest ally in the Middle East.

New York’s anti-BDS stance is not just a political opinion – it is a legally binding order. That means any government leader – including the mayor of New York City – must comply with it. Yet Mamdani has built much of his adult life and political identity around promoting the implementation of BDS and, in so doing, calling for people to break NY state official policy, which unequivocally stipulates that:

“‘Boycott, divestment, or sanctions activity targeting Israel’ means to engage in any activity, or promote others to engage in any activity, that is intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or otherwise limit commercial relations with Israel or persons doing business in Israel for purposes of coercing political action by, or imposing policy positions on, the government of Israel.”

Mamdani’s Radical Record

Assemblyman Mamdani, who represents parts of Queens, has become a hero to the far left for his outspoken support of BDS. He has called for cutting economic ties with Israel and has refused to denounce the slogan “Globalize the Intifada” – a phrase that glorifies violent uprisings against Jews and Israelis. He even lobbied Ben & Jerry’s to stop selling ice cream in Israeli communities.

In college, Mamdani was involved with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) – a group whose chapters have been suspended or banned across the country for crossing the line from protest to extremism. Florida’s state university system permanently deactivated SJP chapters, after the group’s national leadership expressed solidarity with Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization responsible for the October 7 massacre of innocent Israelis.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Danyela Souza Egorov New York’s Plan for Math Instruction Doesn’t Add Up The state’s new Numeracy Initiative emphasizes equal outcomes over merit and rigor.

Posted By on October 30th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-york-students-math-scores-numeracy-initiative-briefs

New York students’ math scores lag the national average and have remained stagnant for many years, despite massive increases in per-pupil funding. In May, the New York State Department of Education (NYSED) launched a Numeracy Initiative to address the issue. Unfortunately, its guidance will lead to even poorer math instruction.

The initiative has released a series of Numeracy Briefs, which aim to instruct educators in “best practices for effective mathematics instruction.” The briefs were produced by TeachingWorks, a group led by University of Michigan professor Deborah Loewenberg Ball. The group’s goal, according to its website, is to promote “teaching to create a more just society” and to develop “equitable, skillful teaching.”

The briefs quickly caused confusion and concern among educators who attended NYSED’s professional development sessions. Some noticed that the guidance from NYSED contradicted well-established math pedagogy, as well as advice from other experts in the field. They reached out to Benjamin Solomon, an associate professor in school psychology at the University of Albany, who has conducted several webinars on math instruction. He wrote a letter to NYSED commissioner Betty Rosa detailing the Numeracy Briefs’ inaccuracies and questionable practices. The letter garnered support from more than 160 teachers, parents, and researchers, all of whom signed a petition calling for the briefs to be withdrawn.

Solomon’s letter states that the briefs cite only two meta-analyses to support their recommendations and rely mostly on books and articles—all while ignoring the substantial body of research that constitutes the science of math. As Solomon noted, “the briefs are mostly [TeachingWorks’] opinion.” Asked to comment on Solomon’s letter, NYSED responded by stating, “Attempts to distort or politicize this work will not deter NYSED’s commitment to advancing high-quality, equitable mathematics instruction for every student in New York State.”

Open Book New York has no records showing how much NYSED paid TeachingWorks to produce the briefs. NYSED should disclose the amount so the public can understand how much was spent to develop guidance that leaves educators and students so confused. State legislators should also hold hearings to investigate how the briefs’ recommendations diverge from established math science.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians Still Prefer Hamas and ‘Armed Struggle’ Against Israel by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on October 30th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22027/palestinians-prefer-hamas-armed-struggle

These [Palestinian poll] findings contradict claims by some Western media outlets that a growing number of Palestinians were disillusioned with Hamas because of the death and destruction it has brought on its people as a result of its October 7 attack.

“The conclusion from these [Palestinian] numbers is that the past two years have led to greater support for Hamas rather than the opposite,” according to the poll.

Asked if Hamas had committed the atrocities seen in the videos shown by international media displaying atrocities committed by Hamas members against Israeli civilians, 86% said the terror group did not commit such atrocities. Only 10% said Hamas did commit them.

A majority of Palestinians, the poll showed, are extremely supportive of Iran, Hezbollah, Qatar and the Houthi militia in Yemen, a terror group that fired dozens of missiles and suicide drones at Israel during the war.

If elections for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority (PA) were held today, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal would win 63% of the votes, as opposed to 27% for incumbent PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

According to the poll, dissatisfaction with Abbas stands at 75%, while 80% want him to resign.

If parliamentary elections were held today, 44% of the Palestinians say they will vote for Hamas, 30% for Fatah, and 10% for third parties.

Also unexpected is the ongoing Palestinian support for the “armed struggle” (terrorism) against Israel.

The results of the poll also show the challenges facing the implementation of the Trump plan, especially disarming Hamas and deradicalizing Palestinian society. Most Palestinians are openly opposed to disarming Hamas – a situation that will make it effectively impossible for any Arab or foreign party to confiscate the terror group’s weapons by force.

Any Palestinian or Arab leader who sees that most Palestinians oppose the disarmament of Hamas will think twice before he undertakes such a mission: he would not want to act against the wishes of the Arab street — such a move would be regarded as treason.

As for deradicalization, it is clear from the poll that Palestinians are moving in the opposite direction.

Many Palestinians are afraid to speak out for fear of being labeled as traitors or collaborators with Israel. We have seen how Palestinians who challenged Hamas were tortured and executed in public squares in the Gaza Strip as soon as the ceasefire went into effect.

Radical change in Palestinian society will come only when Palestinians rise up against destructive leaders who, over the past few decades, have been dragging them from one disaster to another.

Those who thought that Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel and the ensuing war in the Gaza Strip have made Palestinians change their minds about the terror group are in for a rude awakening.

More than half of Palestinians continue to support the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israelis and foreign nationals on October 7. Moreover, the terror group remains popular among a large number of Palestinians. Support for Hamas means support for the destruction of Israel through Jihad (holy war).

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Are Americans Better or Worse Off Since January? While the media fixates on Trump’s tweets, the numbers tell a different story—closed borders, lower inflation, revived energy, and restored U.S. strength at home and abroad. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 30th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/10/30/are-americans-better-or-worse-off-since-january/

The left wing and media rage hysterically from one Trump psychodrama to the next, while Trump trolls both on social media.

But all that is verbiage. What matters is the data and facts of Trump’s first nine months since January 20, 2025, in comparison to either Biden’s prior year or the averages of his four years in office.

Take the border. No one knows how many illegal aliens entered—or stayed in—the U.S. during Biden’s four years of open borders. What is clear is that he set a presidential record of well over seven million illegal entrants.

The border under Trump is now tightly closed. Prior to his administration, it was common for 10,000 people to cross illegally in a single day. In just nine months, approximately two million illegal aliens have been deported or self-deported. The rate of border crossings is now the lowest it’s ever been since 1970.

How about energy? For Trump’s first nine months, gas prices have averaged $3.19 versus Biden’s 2024 average of $3.30 a gallon. Over Biden’s four years, gas averaged $3.46 a gallon.

During the Biden years, oil production averaged 12.3 million barrels per day, compared to 13.5 million barrels during Trump’s first nine months. Biden removed 200 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, leaving office with only 394 million barrels in the SPR.

The reserve has already inched upward under Trump’s initial months to 406 million barrels. Releases have been cancelled. Purchases of replacement oil have been scheduled.

Regarding the economy, Biden’s four years averaged 2.9 percent GDP growth per annum.

Trump’s GDP rose 3.8 percent in the second quarter, with final estimates for 2025 ranging around 3 percent.

Inflation under Trump so far averages about 3 percent. Under Biden’s tenure, inflation increased by 21.4 percent over four years, or on average about 5.3 percent a year.

How about U.S. deterrence and defense?

Under Biden, the military fell short by approximately 15,000 recruits per year, crashing to a shortfall of 41,000 in 2023.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Anti-Israel Agitator Mahmoud Khalil Says His Appeal Process Is Moving Too Fast Tim O’Brian

Posted By on October 30th, 2025

https://pjmedia.com/tim-o-brien/2025/10/29/anti-israel-agitator-mahmoud-khalil-says-his-appeal-process-is-moving-too-fast-n4945415

You haven’t heard much from anti-Israel campus agitator Mahmoud Khalil lately, and there may be a reason for that. He wants to stay in the U.S., and this time around a tad less visibility helps him. Not that he’s become a wallflower. He’s just more selective in where he shows up right now.

Given all that happens and is forgotten from one news cycle to the next, here’s a little refresher on the ungrateful non-American who made his name last year preaching hate on the campus of Columbia University. 

On March 8 of this year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Khalil at his New York City apartment, and then took him to a detention center in Louisiana as part of the formal deportation process. 

Kahlil is not an American citizen. He was born in the mid-1990s at a refugee camp in Syria. His parents are described as Palestinian and Algerian, so he has citizenship in Algeria. Before coming to America, he had earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science at Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon, and then applied for admission into Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. In December of 2024, he received his master of public administration degree. 

According to all reports, he is a green-card holder and thus a legal resident of the United States who also happens to be married to a U.S. citizen. So far, he’s been careful to check all of the boxes, right? 

In the spring of 2024, a few months before he graduated from Columbia, those inorganic “pro-Palestine protests” started to erupt almost simultaneously on campuses across the country. 

Columbia became the site of some of the most contentious activity, and Kahlil was at the heart of it all. In April of that year, the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” set itself up on the East Butler Lawn and refused to budge. On April 29, an intimidating group of students, and possibly some non-students, occupied Hamilton Hall on campus. They stayed there for 24 hours until New York City police cleared them out. 

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Tarek Bazrouk and American Domestic Extremism Seth Mandel

Posted By on October 30th, 2025

https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/tarek-bazrouk-and-american-domestic-extremism/

How a society responds to a crisis tells us just as much about that society as the crisis itself, maybe more. Which is why the scene yesterday at a Manhattan federal courthouse is so dismaying.

Tarek Bazrouk was sentenced yesterday to 17 months in prison—the maximum allowed by his plea deal—for three separate anti-Semitic assaults. Yet it wasn’t the judge who was cheered but Bazrouk. Luke Tress reports:

“Around 200 Bazrouk supporters filed into the federal Southern District court in Manhattan on Tuesday morning for the sentencing. Several dozen, including his family, sat in the courtroom, while the rest were diverted to an overflow room to watch the proceedings via livestream. The attack victims and a smaller number of their supporters from the Jewish community sat across the aisle.”

When Bazrouk was arrested, officers reportedly found over $750,000 and an “arsenal” of weapons. Text messages showing Bazrouk’s anti-Semitism made the hate-crimes charges easy. According to prosecutors, Bazrouk was a member of a chat group receiving regular updates from the late Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida. He wore a Hamas headband during one of the attacks. Bazrouk appears to have been a violent criminal who went looking for Jews to assault and finally got locked up for it.

Which is to say, there is nothing sympathetic about the American-born Bazrouk. But that itself is what makes him such a figure of sympathy for the pro-Palestinian activist class.

In 2024, he was arrested for attacking pro-Israel protesters and in fact assaulted another one as he was being arrested. This lovely ball of hate was at it again later in the year, ambushing a Jew near a Columbia protest. Then in January of this year, he got his hat trick.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Outrageous Biden Autopen Scandal

Posted By on October 30th, 2025

https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/10/the-outrageous-biden-autopen-scandal/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=fifth

On Tuesday morning, the Republican-led House Oversight Committee released a report on former President Joe Biden’s use of autopen signatures on the many pardons and commutations he handed out during his term, and particularly near its end. Many of these were scandalous enough taken on their own terms, but what made them particularly outrageous was the suspicion that the bulk of these acts were the work of President Biden’s staff, not the senescent president himself.

After all, this was a president who had imploded onstage at the presidential debate in June 2024, revealing his basic day-to-day incoherence, and then dropped out of the presidential race via tweet a month later. One might reasonably understand how he found the time to preemptively pardon his family members, despite frequently promising never to do so, but it was harder to believe that he was setting aside personal time to commute the sentences of people like Maryland’s thrice-murdering “Black Widow” killer.

The House report confirms what voters long suspected: Biden’s inner circle hid the extent of his mental decline from the American people and, after he dropped out of the race, used his autopen as part of their campaign to set a new record for presidential clemency. Vast swaths of convict-applicants were granted commutations or pardons on the basis of crude search parameters and blunt filtering, not case-by-case examination.

There is little to be done but take note of the dangers of abusing one of the presidency’s core powers (not that President Trump has absorbed this lesson). Acts of presidential clemency are final. As scandalous as mass-printing commutations for the undeserving is, Biden approved of all of this, broadly speaking. One imagines he was not informed of the specifics of who was being granted presidential clemency, but he was aware of the fact that sweeping pardons were being issued under his name.

At the end of the day, this isn’t an autopen scandal so much as a Biden’s poor-judgment scandal. There were, of course, many of those prior to his late-presidency decrepitude, which made things so much worse.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Coming Civil War of Climate Hysterics By Noah Rothman

Posted By on October 30th, 2025

https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/10/the-coming-civil-war-of-climate-hysterics/

The Gates memo may soon touch off a mad scramble for the cash that the donor class is still willing to contribute to climate.

The Maldive Islands used up all their fresh drinking water in 1992 and are expected to retreat beneath the rising sea levels within the next 20 years. The Gaza Strip, already burdened by the war its terrorist government inaugurated, became ecologically uninhabitable in 2020. In 1985, air pollution halved the amount of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface. Children stopped remembering what snow even was sometime in the last decade. In 2013, the Arctic became irrevocably ice-free. The “world is going to end” before this decade is out, and every last human being will be dead by the end of next year.

To say that these predicted scenarios of imminent climatological catastrophe have become forgettable background radiation is too charitable. At least background radiation is actually harmful. Climate change, by contrast, is a manageable phenomenon that does not present an existential threat to humanity’s survival. At least, not according to Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates.

“Although climate change will have serious consequences — particularly for people in the poorest countries — it will not lead to humanity’s demise,” Gates wrote in an essay published this week ahead of the COP30 climate summit. Indeed, he observed, the eschatology to which climate change activists are inclined has contributed to negative outcomes, especially in the developing world.

“This is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives,” Gates added. He stressed the need for philanthropic endeavors to prioritize mitigating the effects of hunger, poverty, and disease over their myopic fixation with reducing heat-trapping emissions. “Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering,” Gates continued, “particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world’s poorest countries.”

“People will be able to live and thrive on Earth for the foreseeable future,” Gates conceded, even in a “warming world.” This bit of apostasy from someone who was — or, at least, posed as — a true believer in the cataclysmic future that runaway climate change held in store for us has shaken the industry around environmental activism to its foundation. The memo sets the stage for a pivotal internecine conflict over the future of climate activism.

HISTORY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Matthew M. Hausman:Recognizing “Palestine,” Rewarding Terror, Invalidating Israel

Posted By on October 30th, 2025

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/

Palestinian Arabs have no more historical entitlement to ancestral Jewish land than Germany had to the Sudetenland in 1938. The difference between appeasement then and now is that the west’s faux moral virtue today is an expression of its own antisemitism.

Progressive nations like France, Canada, Ireland, Norway, and Australia fell over themselves recently to recognize a Palestinian Arab state – though one never existed – for the sake of a people whose national identity is a twentieth-century political construct (would that they cared as much about violent antisemitism within their own borders).

There is no mention of “Palestinians” in the historical, archeological, or scriptural records – a fact well-known to the PLO’s founding generation in the 1960s and 1970s, who knew that a country called “Palestine”, with established borders, national culture and language, and institutions of nationhood, never existed. Their revisionist narrative is a myth created to repudiate Jewish history and obfuscate the fact that the only sovereign nations ever to include the territory between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea were the First and Second Jewish Commonwealths* and the modern State of Israel.

And unlike the Palestinian narrative, that’s historical fact – not propaganda.

No sovereign Arab or Islamic state ever stood on the land of Israel following the wars with Rome and dispersion from Judea(after which, in fact, many Jews remained in the land).

Rather, after jihad exploded out of the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century, indigenous Jews were subjugated by Arab conquerors, who were merely the latest in a long line of real occupiers that included Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, and later Ottomans. The land passed from one empire to the next as unincorporated territory for nearly two-thousand years until modern Israel’s rebirth.

Neither Islam nor Arab culture are indigenous to the land of Israel – or anywhere else outside the Arabian Peninsula.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

“Elitism” by Sydney Williams

Posted By on October 30th, 2025

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

The word “elite” has roots in both Latin and Old French, meaning to choose. As an adjective it meant “elected,” or “chosen.” While the word appeared briefly in Middle English (1100-1500AD), it only reappeared in the mid-19th Century, meaning a “choice or select body.” The word is not in Webster’s 1828 dictionary. Wikipedia defines the word: “A small group of powerful or wealthy people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group.” Nevertheless, when used today to describe the politically and financially powerful, the word is often used as a pejorative.

Just as cream floats to the top of an unhomogenized bottle of milk, the brightest and most talented, left untethered, will rise to the top of society. That is nature’s way. It is when position and power are used to enhance and protect one’s privileged status that corruption ensues.

For most of our Country’s history, elites who ran our financial and industrial businesses, who educated our young at prestigious universities and who governed our Country were drawn from east coast, WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) families – those who were wealthy, educated and civic-minded. They embodied the concept of “noblesse oblige,” but they protected their position through discrimination in education, in business opportunities, and in their social lives. However, time caught up to them. Their wealth, singular education, and political influence began to wane following the Depression and World War II. Like today’s elites, they had little in common with the average American. In a recent issue of The Spectator, Madeline Grant wrote of how WASPs are now in their twilight years, as “meritocracy and modernity” have edged them out. Ms. Grant, in my opinion, is late with her analysis, as I believe this transition has been underway for eighty years. While our nation was better off when merit replaced privilege, today it feels like the same game, but with different players.