Author, columnist, speaker
Resistance Is Rising Against the Woke Culture
By Robert Knight
There’s been a lot of pushback lately on a number of levels, which is encouraging in a society that often seems to have gone off the rails.
Seven landlords are suing New York City over Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rent freeze on a million units. They are worried that, as costs rise, they won’t be able to keep up their properties.
That’s a major concern since the Islamist/communist mayor has pledged to seize ownership of buildings that fall into disrepair.
It’s a malicious scheme. Starve the property owners of revenue they need to keep their units livable, and when they can’t, the government comes in to assume ownership so it can create more slums full of people grateful for “free” housing.
This is diabolical socialism (a redundancy, I know), and it’s familiar to those forced to live under it in places like Cuba or North Korea.
I hope the landlords, who want a 3 percent annual increase in rent, win this one.
The mayor ate some crow this past week when he withdrew his threat to have Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if the Israeli prime minister dared to set foot in New York.
In 2024, the International Criminal Court put out a warrant for Mr. Netanyahu, charging him with genocide over Israel’s war in Gaza in response to the murderous Hamas invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Mr. Mamdani said he was cooperating with the ICC, even though the United States does not recognize its authority.
On July 20, President Donald Trump made it clear in a social media post that Mr. Mamdani had better not overstep:
“Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America. He is fighting against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which recently killed 52,000 innocent protestors, and has spent the last 47 years killing American Soldiers, and others. The only ones that should be arrested are the people that led Iran into this unprecedented SPIRAL OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION, something that should have been dealt with years ago, by previous Presidents!" [capitals in original]
Mr. Mamdani had told the New York Times earlier this month that his staff was still exploring the legalities of apprehending Mr. Netanyahu if he visited the United Nations in September.
Then, in a July 21 post on X, the mayor backed off, while still calling the Israeli leader a “war criminal” who is “not welcome in New York City.”
So, the Marxist leader of America’s largest city won’t get to engage in foreign policy after all.
Would New York’s finest really have gone along with this insane scheme to pit them against federal agents sent to protect the Israeli leader?
Thanks be to God that we won’t have to find out.
It’s just the sort of nuttiness we have come to expect from the unhinged leftists that are seizing control of the Democratic Party.
In addition to backing collectivism, open borders, and the terrorist group Hamas, they have passed laws in more than a dozen states to allow quack doctors to give sexually confused minors life-changing drugs and sexual surgeries.
On July 21, 203 House Democrats voted against an amendment to the defense bill to bar males from female sports teams at Department of Defense schools.
The party is clearly lurching into full-tilt Graham Platner territory.
A Nazi-tattooed communist and accused rapist, Mr. Platner, had been picked by Democrat primary voters to run against Susan Collins, Maine’s longtime Republican U.S. senator.
After Mr. Platner withdrew, Democrats quickly anointed another leftist, state Senate President Troy Jackson.
Given that the Marxist group Our Revolution, founded by Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, has already endorsed him, Mr. Jackson may have a hard time pretending to be a moderate. The smart money is on Ms. Collins to retain her seat.
Elsewhere, there was pushback against the woke agenda of the Smithsonian Institution, whose radical agenda was recently laid bare in a 162-page White House report.
On July 21, the museum’s director, Anthea Hartig, faced a barrage of embarrassing questions before the House Subcommittee on Delivering Government Efficiency.
Republican members revealed numerous examples of how the museum had become a leftist indoctrination machine.
Ms. Hartig waffled when asked about drag queen exhibits open to children, and about whether men could become women, calling it “irrelevant.”
She dodged inquiries about a “mass action toolkit” that the museum adopted under her leadership and which labeled traits such as “objectivity” and “politeness” as examples of “white supremacy culture.”
Rep. Brandon Gill, Texas Republican, also asked her about an exhibit that said Mickey Mouse had racist origins related to black minstrels. Although Ms. Hartig said, “Mickey Mouse is not racist,” she asserted that Walt Disney’s beloved character was “rooted in minstrelsy.”
In sports news, WNBA star Sophie Cunningham of the Indiana Fever told ESPN that she opposed letting biological men compete in women’s sports.
Ms. Cunningham has gained prominence via posted videos of her defending her superstar teammate, Caitlin Clark, a white, straight, Catholic who is getting pummeled by jealous players from other teams.
As far as the trans issue, Ms. Cunningham said that she loved everyone but that, "I want to protect young girls in a locker room and young girls who shouldn't have to go against biological men."
If common sense like this breaks out all over the country, and people connect the dots, Democrats won’t be celebrating after the midterm election in November.
Illustration by Alexander Hunter in The Washington Times.
Beware of the Wolves in Sheep's Clothing
By Robert Knight
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear appears to be readying for a presidential run in 2028.
The telegenic Democrat was on a speaking tour last year in early primary state South Carolina. In September, he has a book coming out entitled, “Go and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country,” a reference to Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan.
His publisher summarizes it this way: “By regrounding faith in compassion and kindness, he believes we can start to heal as a country.”
Compassion and kindness are God-given, but I thought we were in the midst of healing from the nightmare of the Biden years, with its promotion of atheism, illegal immigration, sexual anarchy, and attacks on Catholics and pro-lifers.
Mr. Beshear, like Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, identifies as a Christian and a moderate and gets priceless media cover while supporting the Democratic Party’s radical social and economic agenda.
In 2023, for instance, he tried to block a state bill protecting minors from “gender affirming care.”
The law prohibits doctors from subjecting gender-confused teens to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible, disfiguring surgeries.
The law also bans males from competing on girls’ sports teams. Most people think this makes sense.
Beshear insisted that such a law “would hurt kids and their families” and violate “parental rights.”
He claimed there was no evidence of widespread harm. To which I would say one butchered child is too many and that evidence of harm is voluminous, including the growing number of suicides and trans-related violence.
On the same day of Mr. Beshear’s veto, both houses of Kentucky’s Republican-controlled legislature overrode it. Naturally, a federal judge, Rebecca Grady Jennings, issued an immediate injunction halting enforcement. The case is still in litigation.
A year earlier, Ms. Jennings, one of President Donald Trump’s few clunker appointees, struck down a Kentucky law prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks and requiring medical oversight for abortion pills.
Gov. Beshear also vetoed that bill, and the legislature overrode him.
In South Carolina, which went for Mr. Trump by 30 points, Mr. Beshear emphasized his Christian faith while boasting that he was “a proud, pro-LGBTQ+ governor.”
This is a stance that ignores Jesus Christ’s clear restating of God’s creation of male and female and God’s marriage-based sexual morality from Genesis.
According to the Washington Post, Mr. Beshear said, “My faith teaches me that all children are children of God, and I didn’t want people picking on those kids.” How about protecting them from quacks who sterilize them and turn them into lifetime medical cases?
By the way, politicians love to haul out the term “children of God” like a magic amulet. The Bible says we’re all created in the image of God, but that we’re not children of God unless we believe in Him and submit to God’s authority. Until then, we’re on the other team, and I don’t mean the New Jersey Devils.
“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name,” John 1:12 says. If we’re automatically children of God, we wouldn’t need to be, as Jesus said, born again.
Anyway, Mr. Beshear is not the only wolf in sheep’s clothing. Democrats have become quite adept at using Christianese and buzzwords to fool people. President Barack Obama often gave biblical scholars heartburn over his misappropriating Jesus’s words to justify sexual sin and confiscatory redistribution of wealth.
In Texas, state Rep. James Talarico is battling hard-left U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett for the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator. Like Mr. Beshear, Mr. Talarico touts his Christian faith while cleaving to a radical agenda.
“He delivers left-wing orthodoxy in centrist packaging and fights Christian nationalism with Scripture,” the Wall Street Journal explains.
If you’re a patriotic Christian, he’s talking about you and your family as a threat to America.
Much of his rhetoric revolves around Marxist class envy, such as, “Make billionaires pay their fair share in taxes.”
During remarks opposing a bill protecting kids from transgender treatments, he said, “Jesus never once condemned transgender people.”
Well, Jesus didn’t need to, and He welcomed all repentant sinners. The Hebrew Scriptures are crystal clear on sexual morality. Sexual confusion is the province of paganism, which historically often involved child sacrifice as well.
Any comparison to the pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ Democratic Party inferred by readers at this juncture may not be coincidental.
In a 2024 interview with MSNBC, Mr. Talarico said, “Christian nationalism is dangerous. … When politicians use the Bible to push division and hate, they’re not following Jesus; they’re using His name for their own agenda.”
This is classic projection, accusing your opponents of exactly what you’re doing.
Illustration by Linas Garsys / The Washington Times.