Even Bill Kristol Says He Would Vote for Zohran Mamdani for NYC Mayor

Even neocon Bill Kristol would rather have a democratic socialist for mayor of New York City than Andrew Cuomo.

In a Wednesday interview with Claremont College’s The Forum, Kristol, now The Bulwark’s editor at large, stated that the idea of “going back” to Cuomo, who previously served as New York attorney general and governor, would be “ridiculous.”

Kristol said he would probably vote for Mamdani in the general election if he lived in New York City, although he wouldn’t have thought to rank him in the primary. But the bulk of his ire was for Cuomo and the establishment.

“The idea of going back to Cuomo is just, I think, ridiculous. I think if it had been the first round, I would’ve voted for someone else and maybe wouldn’t have even ranked Mamdani, and would’ve had other people who were more centrist, liberal types,” he said.

“All these big shot, you know, finance types in New York, they couldn’t get behind anyone except for Andrew Cuomo. It’s really pathetic, in my opinion. So now they’re rallying to Cuomo with some of them, but I don’t have that much sympathy for that,” Kristol continued.

A “Never Trump” Republican like Kristol is, in theory, the exact kind of support that Cuomo would be looking for. The fact that he can’t get it from even the center right is an indictment of Cuomo’s lack of juice, energy, and integrity more than anything else. Kristol doesn’t even seem to like Mamdani all that much, but his disdain for Cuomo overrules that.

“New York is a huge city. [Mamdani is] not going to destroy it, I don’t think. He’s gonna set up five silly government-run grocery stores, I guess. I don’t think he even will do that [inaudible]. And so they’ll be fine,” Kristol said. “I do think the right’s reaction to Mamdani has been a little hysterical. He’s a very impressive politician. I don’t know that he’s going to be a very good mayor. He’s 33 years old, he’s never run anything. They’re good people who could work for him though, in New York. So, who knows? I don’t know.”

The interview has yet to be released in full.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller is one of a handful of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet members who are hiding out on military bases so they don’t have to be exposed to the public that hates them.

The Atlantic reported Thursday that Miller, his wife, and their two children have relocated out of their home north of Arlington, Virginia, to a U.S. military base after local activists embarked on a campaign to shame Miller for his role leading Trump’s fascistic crime and immigration crackdown.

A group called Arlington Neighbors United for Humanity have organized protests near the ghoulish politico’s home, posted wanted posters with his address alleging he’d committed “crimes against humanity,” and written messages on the sidewalk in front of his house in chalk warning that “Miller is preying on families.” Katie Miller lamented that the day after far-right activist Charlie Kirk was killed, a protester approached her outside her home. She claims the protester said, “I’m watching you.”

Now Miller and his family have reportedly joined a smattering of political appointees who have fled to the safety and seclusion of military facilities, where the public’s anger can’t reach them and their own insidious policy ideas can fester.

Another unnamed senior White House official had also relocated to a military base after Kirk’s assassination, The Atlantic reported. They were not named due to a specific foreign threat. 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem moved into military housing typically reserved for the Coast Guard commandant on Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, after the Daily Mail described the location of her Washington, D.C., apartment building. A top administration official told New York magazine last month that DHS had stalled confirming any high-ranking Coast Guard officials because it could threaten to remove her from her new digs.

Both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth live on “Generals’ Row” at Fort McNair, where Hegseth’s home was expected to undergo more than $137,000 in renovations before he moved in. 

These Trump officials’ removal to military bases risks deepening their cultural and political division from the Americans they serve. It puts a strain on military resources, while also emphasizing the military’s growing role in the Trump administration. 

“In a robust democracy, what you want is the military to be for the defense of the country as a whole and not just one party,” Adria Lawrence, an associate professor of international studies and political science at John Hopkins University, told The Atlantic.  

Meanwhile, Trump has stripped security details from his political opponents. It’s worth noting that the only politicians who have been assassinated in the last year were Democrats. 

The Trump administration is keeping Congress in the dark on its Caribbean boat bombings—and it’s angering people on both sides of the aisle.

The United States has committed 14 known strikes on small boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean over the last two months, killing at least 61 people.

But not all lawmakers are being treated equally when it comes to accessing information regarding the attacks. On Wednesday, it became abundantly clear that Democrats had been shut out of a Senate briefing on the extrajudicial killings, sending lawmakers on both sides of the aisle into a frenzy.

In an interview with CNN’s Eric Burnett Wednesday, Republican Representative Mike Turner emphasized that Congress had not “received the information that it needs to.”

“I do think that there are serious concerns as to both the legal construct as to what the administration is doing, and there needs to be more information that’s provided to Congress,” Turner said. “And I think both the logistics and the intelligence information needs to be shared more, more broadly.”

Turner, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, revealed that no one in Congress had received a “full presentation” of the scope of and plan for future boat strikes.

Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, issued a venomous statement Wednesday arguing that the partisan information gap was “indefensible” and a “slap in the face” to Congress’s war powers responsibilities.

“Shutting Democrats out of a briefing on U.S. military strikes and withholding the legal justification for those strikes from half the Senate is indefensible and dangerous,” Warner posted on X. “Decisions about the use of American military force are not campaign strategy sessions, and they are not the private property of one political party. For any administration to treat them that way erodes our national security and flies in the face of Congress’ constitutional obligation to oversee matters of war and peace.”

Warner then underscored previous commitments by State Secretary Marco Rubio, who Warner said had “personally promised” a face-to-face meeting on Capitol Hill regarding the details and alleged justification for the attack.

The White House has insisted the violence is justified, broadly accusing the boats of trafficking narcotics to the U.S. from Venezuela and Colombia. U.S. lawmakers have been more than skeptical, though—particularly since several of the boats were thousands of miles away in international waters, and since the attacks were conducted without prior investigations or interdiction.

Trump has blamed the attacks on Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who has remained atop the country’s government despite Trump’s forceful attempts in 2019 to install then-opposition leader Juan Guaido.

On Friday, the Pentagon announced it would deploy the world’s largest warship—the USS Gerald R. Ford—to Latin America in an effort to ramp up the military firepower available for fighting the small watercraft.

But the escalation has only further strained America’s relationship with its Latin American neighbors. In an address to his country late last week, Maduro accused the U.S. of seeking “a new eternal war.”

“They promised they would never again get involved in a war, and they are fabricating a war,” he said.

That infamous Signal chat keeps coming back to haunt the Trump administration.

On Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz was interrupted in the middle of a speech before a U.N. General Assembly vote on whether to condemn U.S. economic restrictions on Cuba.

“Mr. Waltz, this is the United Nations General Assembly,” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said, cutting off Waltz. “It is not a Signal chat. Nor is it the House of Representatives,” he added, also calling Waltz’s remarks “uncivilized, crude and gross.”

Waltz was not happy.

“I am well aware of the location in which we are speaking,” the ambassador responded. “And this is also not a Communist illegitimate legislature in Havana.”

Waltz attacked the Cuban government as “illegitimate and brutal,” claiming that he was correcting “the fake news, the misinformation, and this false reality the regime seeks to create year after year with this vote.”

Ultimately, Waltz’s tough talk swayed few, if any, countries, as the U.N. General Assembly voted 165–7, with 12 abstentions, Wednesday to condemn the American economic embargo against Cuba, the thirty-third year in a row it has done so. The resolution is symbolic and carries no legal weight, but reflects global opinion.

The whole reason Waltz is the U.N. ambassador is because, while previously serving as national security adviser, he set up a Signal chat where secret military plans were discussed with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and other top government officials and then mistakenly added The Atlantic’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg. Waltz was removed from his position and instead nominated to the U.N. post, a job that requires diplomatic savvy, which he seems to be lacking.

In a massive rollback for LGBTQ rights, the Texas Supreme Court has ruled that judges have the right to refuse to officiate gay weddings if they have a “sincerely held religious belief.”

This rule change came last week in a comment added to the state’s judicial code. “It is not a violation of these canons for a judge to publicly refrain from performing a wedding ceremony based upon a sincerely held religious belief,” the new rule reads.

This move essentially nullifies Canon 4 of the Texas judicial code, which blocked judges from doing things that would “cast doubt on their ability to act impartially or interfere with the proper performance of judicial duties”—like officiating weddings of straight couples but not gay ones. (In Texas, judges are not required to officiate weddings at all.)

In 2019, Justice of the Peace Dianne Hensley was accused of violating the judicial code when she was given a public warning for refusing to officiate gay weddings. Hensley stopped doing all wedding officiating when the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, but promptly started discriminating again when she returned to straight-only weddings the following year, refusing any same-sex couples who came to her. Hensley sued over the public warning she later received, but now, she’s been temporarily vindicated.

“Now going forward, every judge in Texas will enjoy the freedom Judge Hensley has fought so hard for in her case,” Hiram Sasser of the conservative First Liberty Institute said. “As for her case specifically, this amendment melts away the reasons the Commission relied on to punish Judge Hensley.”

“Judge Hensley treated them respectfully,” Texas Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock wrote, of the same-sex couples she refused. “They got married nearby. They went about their lives. Judge Hensley went back to work, her Christian conscience clean, her knees bent only to her God. Sounds like a win-win.”

Not everyone agrees.

“One of the claims that I think will be made in response to litigation that is likely is that, ‘Well, there are other people who can perform the wedding ceremony, so you can’t insist that a particular judge do it,’” law professor Jason Mazzone said. “But that, of course, is not how equal protection works, and it’s not how we expect government officials to operate.”

That one sentence at the bottom of the Texas judicial code is effective immediately, and may even have an impact on the right’s efforts to overturn gay marriage protections in the United States, adding the right to love to the list of quickly eroding liberties currently under attack.

Amid the crumbling relations with Russia and China, President Donald Trump is pushing for the United States to resume nuclear weapons testing.

As the president returned to the United States from his trip to Asia, he took to Truth Social to make an explosive announcement. “Because of other countries testing programs [sic], I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump wrote Wednesday night. “That process will begin immediately.”

The president also claimed that the United States “has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country,” thanks to his efforts during his first term, followed by Russia and then China as a “distant third.” However, in 2025, the Federation of American Scientists found that Russia possessed more nuclear warheads than any other country.

Trump’s tremendous step backwards away from nuclear disarmament comes amid strained relations with both Russia and China, as well as a North Korean missile test on Tuesday.

After a falling out with Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin has resumed saber-rattling amid stalled peace negotiations with Ukraine. Russia tested the world’s first nuclear-powered missile on Saturday, and on Tuesday, it tested an underwater superweapon designed to trigger tsunamis. Trump warned Russia Monday that the U.S. was “not playing games” and had a nuclear submarine stationed offshore.

China has honored the moratorium on nuclear testing established in the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which Russia and the U.S. both signed. (The U.S. never ratified the treaty, and Russia later rescinded its ratification.) Still, China is reportedly rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal. Tense trade negotiations sparked by Trump’s sweeping tariffs have strained relations with Chinese President Xi Jinping, but Trump claimed Thursday the two leaders had had a productive meeting.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom Trump tried and failed to connect with during his tour in Asia, also tested strategic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons this week. North Korea is the only country in the world to conduct live nuclear weapons tests since the 1990s.

Nuclear weapons testing made an appearance in Project 2025, the authoritarian playbook for the second Trump administration. The plan called for the U.S. to “reject ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and indicate a willingness to conduct nuclear tests in response to adversary nuclear developments if necessary.”

Donald Trump’s absolutely incredible, stupendous meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping appears to have almost undone the damage of his own trade policies.

Details of the quid pro quo were remarkably vague but appeared to return trade relations between the two international powers closer to where they had been before Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One shortly after the meeting, Trump detailed that he and Xi had agreed to immediately drop the tariff rate on China by 10 percent (from 57 percent to 47 percent) in exchange for more aggressive policing of the Chinese fentanyl pipeline.

Trump also said that China agreed to pause its controls on precious rare earth minerals for the next year in order to avoid Trump’s threat of an additional 100 percent tariff that would have been enacted on Saturday.

“It was an amazing meeting,” Trump said. “From zero to 10 (with 10 being the best), the meeting was a 12.”

Soybean farmers also got a potential solution to a problem that Trump created. China will buy “tremendous amounts” of soybeans from American farmers starting “immediately,” per the president. Soybean farmers have been pushed to the brink of bankruptcy, practically begging the administration for a bailout since Trump’s previously unsuccessful attempts to trade with China resulted in axing access to the U.S. soybean industry’s number one foreign market.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—who was present at the meeting between Trump and Xi—elucidated those details hours later in an interview with Fox Business.

“The Chinese have agreed to buy 12 million metric tons of soybeans during this season, right now, between now and January, and then for the next three years they’re going to be buying a minimum of 25 million tons per annum for the next three years,” Bessent said.

Other purported gains out of the negotiation, however, seemed rather empty. Trump promised that a bigger U.S.-China trade deal was coming “pretty soon” and that he would travel to China again in April. He added in a lengthy Truth Social Post that China “may” make a “very large scale transaction” of oil and gas from Alaska.

But a couple details that emerged did not sound like they would benefit the U.S. in any way—perhaps most notably Trump’s decision to allow China to “talk to Nvidia and others” about scooping more computer chips. That alone is likely to rile GOP hawks who have clutched Nvidia as a precious stateside asset in the burgeoning AI tech wave.

“I said, that’s really up to you and Nvidia,” Trump recalled he told Xi. “We’re sort of the … referee.”

Trump also faltered on the topic of brokering peace in Ukraine, apparently allowing Chinese consumption of Russian oil to continue unchallenged.

Still, Trump was quick to celebrate his own work on brokering the deal.

“China—you know, I think they feel very strongly,” Trump told reporters early Thursday. “They congratulated me on the tremendous success that we’ve had, because there’s never been a country that has had so much money come into it for purposes of investment, for building, for auto plants, for AI, et cetera. So he was very strong on congratulating me on that.”

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley—92 years old, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and third in line for presidential succession—was not able to answer a basic, clearly stated question from a reporter on Wednesday, offering a response that had little to do with the topic at hand.

“Do you agree with your colleagues that Judge Boasberg should be impeached, and if so, what do you think that process would look like?” a reporter asked Grassley, referring to a federal judge who has drawn the ire of the Trump administration for his resistance to Trump’s deportation campaign, becoming a target of Attorney General Pam Bondi in the process.

Grassley paused for a beat to process the question. “Uh, I’m sorry. I’ve got hearing problems, so speak louder.”

The reporter repeated the question exactly.

“Well, first of all, we wanna make sure that we have all the documents, all the information that we can possibly get, so we know that these people who come before us, they know what to say or not to say,” Grassley replied, completely disregarding the question of Boasberg’s impeachment. “We gotta make sure that we have all the documents, all the information that we can possibly get, so we know when these people that come before us … they know what to say or not to say. And we gotta make sure that we got the documents so that when they lie to us, we can challenge ’em.”

Grassley’s rambling was so off-base that fellow GOP Senator Lindsey Graham had to jump in for cleanup.

“Can I say somethin’ about that? Uh, impeachment starts in the House,” Graham said.

It’s abundantly clear at this point that the United States has a gerontocracy issue. It’s not shocking that Grassley can’t hear well, that Senator Mitch McConnell has trouble with standing upright and zoning out, that D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton is showing signs of dementia, or that former President Joe Biden had visible cognitive issues on that debate stage in 2024—all of those people are over 80 years old. The issue is that elderly politicians are wielding immense amounts of power, and would rather die in office than cede their positions to someone even 20 years their junior.

ICE agents are making Portland worse, not better, according to local law enforcement.

Portland Police Commander Franz Schoening testified in court Wednesday that federal officers had escalated a No Kings protest in the city on October 18—not because of crowd violence, but because one of their own had accidentally shot tear gas onto the roof of an ICE facility, reported Politico’s Kyle Cheney.

That day, federal officers tried to use a launcher to fire tear gas at protesters occupying the ICE headquarters’ driveway. But they missed, and instead sent a can flying onto the roof of the building, where more federal officers were stationed. Those officers mistook the friendly fire for an attack by the protesters, and retaliated by firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd, ultimately hurting local law enforcement in the process, according to Schoening.

“The types and amounts of force being used by federal officers is disproportionate to the level of criminal conduct or violence we’re seeing down there,” Schoening said during the first day of a federal trial deliberating the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard to the supposedly besieged city.

The trial, before the U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, is the first instance in which a court weighs in on whether a protest at an immigration facility constitutes a rebellion. Oregon accused the White House in a 41-page legal complaint of having “trampled” the U.S. Constitution by federalizing Portland’s law enforcement, arguing that Donald Trump had legitimately threatened Portland’s peace by “inciting a public outcry.”

Schoening recalled that the city’s anti-ICE protests had been mild in September, but ramped up once Trump got the troops involved.

Rather than rely on data before commanding the National Guard across the country, Trump decided last month to target Rose City after he claimed he witnessed its “destruction” while “watching television.” He then directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to “provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland” in order to defend ICE and his immigration agenda, authorizing the use of “full force.”

Progressive Democratic congressional candidate and former journalist Kat Abughazaleh was indicted by the Justice Department Wednesday for allegedly preventing a federal officer from “discharging the duties of his office” at the Broadview ICE detention center near Chicago.

Abughazaleh and five others are accused of blocking a Department of Homeland Security vehicle from carrying out deportations, banging and scratching on the window.

“It was further part of the conspiracy that Abughazaleh joined the crowd at the front of the Government Vehicle, and with her hands on the hood braced her body and hands against the vehicle while remaining directly in the path of the vehicle, hindering and impeding Agent A and the vehicle from proceeding to the BSSA,” the court documents read. “[Abughazaleh] forcibly impeded, intimidated, and interfered with an officer of the United States.”

Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old Palestinian American House candidate in Illinois’s 9th congressional district, condemned the indictment.

“This is a political prosecution, and a gross attempt to silence dissent, a right protected under the First Amendment,” she said in a video posted to social media Wednesday afternoon. “This is a major push by the Trump administration to criminalize protest and punish anyone who speaks out against them. That’s why I’m gonna fight these unjust charges.”

Federal forces have been particularly violent and confrontational in Chicago, where the Trump administration is carrying out its “Operation Midway Blitz” crackdown on immigration, resulting in shows of dissent from local residents. Abughazaleh herself was body-slammed and beaten by ICE at a previous protest in September. Other protesters in Chicago, such as Reverend David Black and United Methodist Reverend Hannah Kardon, have also been shot at with pepper balls.

“ICE has hit, dragged, thrown, shot with pepper balls, and tear-gassed hundreds of protesters, simply because we had the gall to say that masked men coming into our communities, abducting our neighbors, and terrorizing us cannot be our new normal,” Abughazaleh said.

“This case targets our right to protest, speak freely, and associate with anyone who disagrees with the government,” Abughazaleh added. “We cannot diminish ourselves in the face of these attacks. That’s why we have to unite and stand up for humanity, our rights, and everyone terrorized by Trump’s lawless secret police.”

Abughazaleh and the other five protesters face charges carrying up to eight years in prison if convicted.