Tag: Socialism

The Brave New Age of Trust-Fund Socialism

Posted on by 2 Comments

Democrats are in the midst of a fun and terrifying transformation. Hating Trump is no longer sufficient to win elections in blue states. Democratic primary voters—specifically the party’s core constituency of college-educated white professionals—are demanding candidates who also hate Israel and capitalism. The 2028 presidential race is going to be an absolute clown show. The least surprising aspect of the Democratic Party’s lurch toward left-wing radicalism is the pampered, privileged backgrounds of the politicians, donors, and operatives leading the charge.

Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City

Mamdani, 34, attended an elite public high school in New York before graduating from Bowdoin College (annual tuition: $74,000) with a degree in Africana studies and launching his short-lived rap career. He has never worked a real job. His father is a Harvard-educated Columbia professor who specializes in “post-colonialism.” His mother is a Harvard-educated filmmaker. The anticapitalist, anti-anti-terrorist mayor married his wife, a Hamas-adjacent activist who also makes art, at his family’s ritzy private compound on Lake Victoria in Uganda.

Graham Platner 

Widely hailed as an avatar of working-class anxiety, Platner is the grandson of a renowned architect best known for designing a $20,000 easy chair. His father, a real estate lawyer who served as an assistant district attorney in Maine, loaned him $200,000 to buy a house. Though technically unemployed and living off disability benefits, Platner runs an oyster farm that primarily supplies his mother’s restaurant. He briefly attended the Hotchkiss School (annual tuition:  $79,350). Before a credible rape allegation derailed Platner’s campaign, a New York Times poll showed him trailing Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) among working-class voters by 30 points.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.)

The shamelessly ambitious congressman has been at the forefront of his party’s left-wing transformation. “Free advice to the Israelis: It’s not a good idea to detain long-shot presidential candidates,” he told the New York Times after an overseas publicity stunt to distract from his enthusiastic support for an accused rapist. Earlier this year, he cosponsored a “wealth tax” bill with Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.). Khanna, whose Silicon Valley district is one of the country’s wealthiest, is married to the daughter of a Cleveland auto parts magnate who utilizes an array of financial strategies the congressman has denounced as “wealth hoarding.” Khanna’s two children, who are still in elementary school, own stakes in three private golf courses, among other investments. His wife, who does not work, once bought a Range Rover that cost more than her husband’s annual salary. The Khannas own a $6 million, 8,000-square-foot mansion in Washington, D.C., which they are selling in order to move closer to their children’s elite private school in Northern Virginia. A Washington Free Beacon financial analysis found that the family’s net worth could exceed $340 million.

Morris Katz

The widely celebrated Mamdani adviser is also credited with launching Platner’s candidacy. Katz, 27, is heir to a garment-industry fortune. His grandfather, Harry Jay Katz, was a notorious womanizer once described as a “playboy prince of darkness” with a “multi-million dollar trust fund.” His father is a playwright, and his mother is the celebrated author of left-wing picture books for toddlers.

Daniel Moraff

Moraff, 34, has degrees from Brown and Yale. His grandfather, Seymour Ginsburg, founded the predecessor to Toys “R” Us and served as the toy chain’s first president. Moraff helped Katz recruit Platner, whom the pair of trust-fund wunderkinds regarded as a “historic figure” destined to lead a socialist “revolution.” Like the former candidate, Moraff has also faced allegations of sexual misconduct. His fiancée’s engagement ring “opens up to a tiny comb” she uses to brush his beard.

Will Neff

Neff, 36, cohosts a podcast with anti-American influencer Hasan Piker. Last year, he accompanied Piker on a trip to China, where the “swagged out white boys” repeatedly praised Mao Zedong. Neff, a former BuzzFeed producer and son of a corporate executive who worked for the Rockefeller family, captained the squash team at the prestigious Blair Academy (annual tuition: $81,950).

Democratic donors

Inherited wealth is a key source of funding for left-wing politicians and affiliated activist groups. MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, have donated billions in support of left-wing causes such as “racial equity,” “climate justice,” and whatever it’s called when prosecutors repeatedly decline to punish criminals.

Alex Soros, the 40-year-old son of billionaire financier George Soros, is constantly taking selfies with prominent Democrats at his penthouse in Manhattan. “So proud to be a New Yorker!” he wrote after Mamdani won the mayoral election. “The American Dream continues!”

Leah Hunt-Hendrix, the “anti-elite” granddaughter of billionaire oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, helped Mamdani raise $4 million to fund his mayoral transition. An early supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Hunt-Hendrix summered in the West Bank while completing her Ph.D. from Princeton under Professor Cornel West. She owns a Maltipoo named after Malcom X. Pierce Delahunt (they/them) uses his share of the family outlet mall fortune to fight “intersectional oppression” by funding “anticapitalist” organizations. The self-described “Social Emotional Leftist Educator” earned his master’s degree from the Institute for Humane Education.

Fergie Chambers is the great-grandson of James M. Cox, the former Ohio governor and Democratic presidential nominee who founded what is now Cox Enterprises. After selling his share of the company for hundreds of millions of dollars, Chambers started a Marxist commune in Massachusetts that lasted a few years before going defunct. He fled the United States in 2024 amid a criminal investigation into his funding of violent anti-Israel protests.

Source: The Brave New Age of Trust-Fund Socialism

That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.
Philippians 3:10

God’s Here

After losing his wife and son in a tragic accident, a firefighter wrestles with grief and forgiveness. Starring Kevin Sorbo (God’s Not Dead), Sarah Elizabeth Reeves Director: Bill McAdams Jr. Writer: Bill McAdams…

Keep reading

OVER THE HILL GANG CAR SHOW, TAKE OVER!

Stew Leonard’s car show coverage over 400 classic cars, hot rods and custom builds completely packed out the lot as Stew Leonards in Newington, Connecticut, on Sunday, July 19, 2026. This venue was…

Keep reading

Feeling Alone? God Sees You

Even when you feel invisible in your struggle, God sees every tear, every burden, and every silent prayer. Your exhaustion has not escaped His attention. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and…

Keep reading

Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.

Abdul El-Sayed Wears Luxury Watches Worth Thousands While Campaigning Against the Wealthy

Posted on by Leave a comment
Gold Rolex wristwatch with Roman numerals on wooden desk next to notebook and pen

Left-wing Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed is running as a populist who rails against the wealthy. At the same time, he’s been photographed on the campaign trail wearing an array of luxury watches worth thousands of dollars, a Washington Free Beacon review found. El-Sayed has even bemoaned the “perverse psychological consequences” of Rolex advertisements along the Michigan freeway. “How many people who drive this road can actually afford one of those?” he asked in his 2020 book. As it turns out, El-Sayed, who described himself in an interview with LGBTDetroit in May as a “sucker for automatic watches” and “classic watches,” can afford some pricey wristwear. He even earned a shout-out from a watch podcast the same month for “rocking what looks like the Sinn U-1 SE,” a German diver’s watch that costs roughly $4,000.

“Badass stealthy pick, well done Doc!,” an Instagram post from the Lan Jam podcast declared. The podcast bills itself as “a friendly discussion between two blokes on watches, cars, aviation, movies, and everything in between.” The following month, in June, El-Sayed posted a video wearing what appears to be an Omega Seamaster DeVille, a vintage watch worth about $3,000. El-Sayed appeared to wear a pricier Omega—the Speedmaster Moon Phase Chronograph, worth roughly $10,000—in a June campaign video. And he donned a Mühle Glashütte S.A.R. Rescue-Timer, a German nautical watch worth nearly $2,000, while “getting ice cream in Grand Haven, MI.” He also sported a vintage 1950s Elgin “Doctors Watch” worth nearly $2,000. El-Sayed has billed himself as a crusader for the working-class against the wealthy and has suggested that he struggles to afford groceries and health care. “Why do we have a trillionaire when the rest of us can barely afford groceries or healthcare?” he wrote in an X post earlier this week. In March, he wrote: “How come we work a full time job and still can’t afford a home?

The answer: corporations can buy politicians.” He has also said he has maximalist political views but a minimalist style and has lacerated American “oligarchs,” saying, “We finally need to start taxing billionaire wealth.” El-Sayed participated in an Instagram video with a self-described “stylist for regular people,” Sophie Strauss, in which she attempted to dress him in a manner that matches his radical politics. When Strauss suggested he wear “something green since you support climate justice,” El-Sayed responded, “Of course, but this feels like money green, and I’m trying to get that out of politics.” In the video, El-Sayed is wearing a watch that resembles a Rolex Submariner, a luxury piece that costs roughly $15,000. Watchmakers like Tag Heuer and Tudor sell lookalikes that cost roughly $2,500 and $5,000, respectively. The Free Beacon could not identify the exact watch El-Sayed is wearing, and a campaign spokeswoman said El-Sayed does not own a Rolex—though the campaign confirmed that he owns several other pricey watches. “He regularly wears a SAR Rescue Timer on the campaign trail because he is trying to rescue our politics from corporate corruption,” said El Sayed spokeswoman Roxie Richner.

“Sometimes he wears a vintage doctor’s watch because he is a doctor,” Richner said, though El-Sayed has never practiced medicine. El-Sayed attended medical school at Columbia University but did not complete a residency. He has never been licensed to practice medicine, though he has referred to himself as a “physician” on the campaign trail. El-Sayed railed against luxury watches before running for Senate. In his 2020 autobiography Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey Into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic, he lamented the Rolex billboards that lined Michigan’s highways, saying the ads “have real power” because they serve as “a reminder to almost everyone on that highway that although they cannot afford one, someone driving on that same highway can.” “The cheapest of those watches sells for at least $3,000, even when they’re used,” he wrote. “How many people who drive this road can actually afford one of those?” “Consider the perverse psychological consequences of this signaling,” he continued. “This signaling exacerbates material insecurity. It renders poorer people in more unequal societies more likely to pursue luxury items that they are less able to afford.” El-Sayed’s “impressive” collection earned praise from Josh Rogin, a Washington, D.C., watch collector who runs the Instagram account @WatchTheRamen.

He singled out El-Sayed’s Sinn U-1, calling it an “if you know, you know” piece for those who “still want to wear a $5k watch (and not get mugged).” “He clearly spent years curating it and went way out of his way to collect the pieces he really likes and cares about,” Rogin told the Free Beacon. “Most of them cannot be bought in a retail store.” El-Sayed’s net worth appears to have risen substantially since he ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018. During that campaign, he released tax returns that showed he and his wife, psychiatrist Sarah Jukaku, earned around $237,000 in 2016. Jukaku has since launched a private practice, Mind Work Psychiatry, that does not accept Medicare or any other insurance and requires patients to pay out-of-pocket, the Free Beacon reported. El-Sayed has called for universal health care through a single-payer “Medicare for All” system that would cover every American “from cradle to grave.” El-Sayed also earned nearly $50,000 from paid speeches between January 2024 and April 2025, according to his 2025 financial disclosure, which also lists him as the owner of an “audio and video media” company, Incision Media LLC, worth between $100,000 and $250,000.

In 2024 and 2025, El-Sayed earned $278,939 working as health director for Wayne County. He and Jukaku own at least two rental properties, one in Michigan and one in India, worth up to $500,000 and $250,000, respectively, according to the disclosure. El-Sayed’s in-laws are also well-off. His father-in-law is a kidney doctor who has donated at least $200,000 to a super PAC supporting El-Sayed’s candidacy. Jukaku also serves on the founders’ committee for the Islamic Society of North America and is a former president of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Federal prosecutors named both groups as unindicted co-conspirators in the landmark terrorist financing case USA v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the Free Beacon reported.

Source: Abdul El-Sayed Wears Luxury Watches Worth Thousands While Campaigning Against the Wealthy

But the end of all things is at hand; therefore be serious and watchful in your prayers.
1 Peter 4:7

Jesus Revolution

In the 1970s, young Greg Laurie (Joel Courtney) is searching for all the right things in all the wrong places: until he meets Lonnie Frisbee (Jonathan Roumie), a charismatic hippie-street-preacher.…

Keep reading

Letters to God

Tyler Doherty is an extraordinary eight-year-old boy armed with strong faith and courage as he faces his daily battle against cancer. Surrounded by a loving family and community, Tyler’s prayers…

Keep reading

War Room

Pharmaceutical salesman Tony Jordan and his wife, realtor Elizabeth Jordan, appear outwardly successful; they have a large house, plenty of money, and a beautiful daughter named Danielle. Behind the façade,…

Keep reading

Climbing Your Mountain

Pip: A mountain village, a wandering stranger, a mother weaving a basket by the river — Drink of Jesus has been building a world where ancient scripture lands like it’s…

Keep reading

Boundary Waters wilderness burning at U.S

Wildfires flared earlier this week and destroyed thousands of acres in Manitoba, Ontario, and Minnesota, with many of the fires straddling the U.S.-Canadian border. The Western Fire Chiefs’ map on…

Keep reading

Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.

The Socialist Rise; Takeaways from Colorado primaries: Melat Kiros, a democratic socialist, ousts another House incumbent

Posted on by Leave a comment
Person placing ballot paper into wooden official ballot box at polling station

Democratic socialists struck another blow against the Democratic establishment on Tuesday in Colorado, where CNN’s Decision Desk projects that 29-year-old Melat Kiros will defeat incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette, who was first elected before Kiros was born, in a primary. Kiros was the third progressive challenger to defeat a sitting House member in eight days, after two more won last week in New York. And, after successes in mayor’s races, congressional primaries and more on both coasts, Kiros’ win showed the expanding geographical reach of the left-wing insurgency seeking to remake the Democratic Party ahead of this year’s midterm elections — and as the 2028 presidential primary looms increasingly large. “We are winning from coast to coast, from every level of office. We are taking back our party and our country,” Kiros told supporters at her election night party.

The 1st District primary was the most surprising outcome on a day in which Colorado Democratic voters settled a series of battles over who will lead the party as term-limited Gov. Jared Polis departs. Those voters opted to keep their two Democratic senators in the Senate. That was good news for Sen. John Hickenlooper, who fended off a challenge from the left. But it was bad news for Sen. Michael Bennet, who lost the party’s primary for governor to state attorney general Phil Weiser. Weiser campaigned on confronting President Donald Trump more aggressively than Polis, who was recently rebuked by his own party for deciding to grant clemency to election denier Tina Peters. Democratic voters also chose their nominee in the battleground 8th District race, projected to pick a 31-year-old state lawmaker to take on a freshman Republican in what’s expected to be one of the nation’s most competitive races in the battle for House control. Here are the key takeaways from Colorado’s primaries.

Progressives oust another House veteran Kiros, who was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, rode the wave of anti-establishment momentum that drove a series of upset victories for the party’s left-wing in New York earlier this month. The contest exposed familiar fault lines, the candidates clashing over resistance to the Trump administration, economic policies, and Kiros’ vocal criticism of US relations with Israel. DeGette leaned on her long record, arguing at a debate this month that “now is not the time to gamble and send somebody with no experience to Washington.” The 15-term congresswoman was also backed by more than $1 million in outside spending, with ads criticizing Kiros as “extreme” and accusing her of making comments “laced with antisemitism.” Kiros, in turn, cast DeGette as part of a failed establishment. “The reality is Democrats have the worst approval rating we’ve had in decades, because we’ve failed to actually do anything for working people,” she argued at this month’s debate.

Kiros was fired from her law firm in 2023 after she published an open letter arguing that student protesters’ calls for the elimination of Israel should not be conflated with antisemitism. She faced scrutiny on the campaign trail after she refused to describe the firebombing of a group of protesters in Boulder calling for the release of Israeli hostages last year as antisemitic. Investigators previously said the perpetrator told police he was driven by a desire “to kill all Zionist people.” “I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator,” she told 9News. “All I know is that he went and attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed.” Over the weekend, Darializa Avila Chevalier, the democratic socialist who defeated the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in New York last week despite scrutiny over controversial posts, encouraged Denver residents to vote for Kiros.

Both women are backed by the anti-corporate PAC group Justice Democrats and Kiros told CNN in an interview that she has spoken with Avila Chevalier. The young democratic socialist is likely to join a slate of other upstart progressives in Congress next year, advancing as a favorite in the general election for the Denver-area district. A rising democratic socialist movement It’s too early to know how the progressive victories in 2026 primaries will play out long-term — including how the general electorate will react to the Democratic shift left in November and how progressives will shape the 2028 presidential race. On Tuesday night, though, democratic socialists were celebrating. Ahead of Kiros’ remarks, the crowd chanted “DSA, DSA” — the acronym for Democratic Socialists of America. Attendees included Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who interviewed Kiros during the campaign, and Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb, a DSA-aligned candidate who won a House primary in Philadelphia this spring.

“They’re afraid of us, and you should be, because we’re not coming here to play,” Rabb told the audience before introducing Kiros. Kiros thanked Sanders, and at one point was handed a cardboard cutout of the progressive icon in a meme-worthy moment, sitting in a chair wearing mittens and a mask. During her remarks, which were often interrupted by celebratory airhorn blasts, she said her victory “sent a clear message: We will not wait.” Then, she laid out a series of democratic socialists’ top political priorities. “We will not wait to take the fight to Donald Trump and the oligarchy. We will not wait to abolish ICE and pass Medicare for All. We will not wait to put an end to the politics of the past, to get big money out of our politics and to address corporate PACs and AIPAC. And no, we will not wait to end the genocide in Palestine,” she said. Her victory, she concluded, is much bigger than this moment. “This is a movement, and we are just getting started.” A nominee for governor who promises to take on Trump The Democratic primary for Colorado governor was the latest evidence that Democratic voters are deeply dissatisfied with their party’s representation in Washington and eager for more confrontation with Trump.

Voters chose Weiser over Bennet — even though the senator had long been viewed as the frontrunner to succeed the term-limited Polis. Bennet campaigned on what he said were bolder plans to take on climate change and expand health care access, including creating a state-run public health insurance option. But Weiser tied Bennet to Washington and noted that Bennet will retain his Senate seat. He said in a debate that what’s best for Colorado could fit on a bumper sticker: “Phil Weiser for governor, Michael Bennet for Senate.” He also promised more confrontation with Trump and touted the dozens of lawsuits he has filed against the Trump administration. The Trump administration’s actions targeting Colorado — including moving the Space Command headquarters, attempting to disassemble ​the National Center for Atmospheric Research, denying disaster declaration requests, vetoing funding for a drinking water pipeline and more — left many Democrats hungry for a stronger response.

Weiser’s ads highlighted his efforts to stand up to what he calls a “lawless, bullying administration,” while portraying Bennet as supported by corporate honchos. Weiser will be the clear favorite in November in a state Democrats won by double digits in the last two presidential elections. Republicans are choosing their nominee from a group that includes ministry leader Victor Marx, state Rep. Scott Bottoms and state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer. Hickenlooper fends off challenge from the left Hickenlooper will win the Democratic primary for US Senate in Colorado, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, despite a spirited challenge from his left. He defeated state Sen. Julie Gonzales, a 43-year-old progressive challenger, in a contest that served as proxy for the broader debate over the Democratic Party’s future.

The former Denver mayor and two-term governor leveraged decades of experience in Colorado politics to blunt the momentum of the anti-establishment left wing, touting his coalition-building approach while affirming his opposition to the Trump administration. Gonzales, meanwhile, aligned herself with calls for generational change within the party, arguing that the 74-year-old incumbent’s “go-along-to-get-along, poll-tested incrementalist politics have not made Coloradans’ lives better,” while criticizing Hickenlooper for skipping debates and candidate forums. And while Gonzales was endorsed by the national progressive group Indivisible and the state AFL-CIO, Hickenlooper’s financial advantage – outraising Gonzales several times over – and longstanding reputation was enough to overcome a spirited challenge. Hickenlooper now advances to the general election as the favorite to retain his seat in solidly Democratic Colorado. Democrats choose nominee in battleground House district Colorado’s 8th District, where first-term Republican Rep. Gabe Evans won by less than a percentage point in 2024, is expected to be among the top Democratic targets this fall.

State Rep. Manny Rutinel will win the Democratic nomination to face Evans, CNN’s Decision Desk projects, defeating former state Rep. Shannon Bird. Rutinel is a relative newcomer to Colorado, first arriving in 2020 to work on Hickenlooper’s Senate campaign and permanently moving there two years later after graduating from Yale Law School. In 2023, he was selected to fill a state House vacancy after the former officeholder was appointed to the state Senate. Bird, 57, was viewed as among the more moderate Democrats in the legislature. The former Westminster City Council member and attorney was first elected in 2018 and resigned early this year to run for Congress. The 8th District, which stretches from Denver’s northern suburbs to Greeley, includes a large share of Latino voters. On the campaign trail, Rutinel emphasized his roots as the son of an immigrant single mother from the Dominican Republic, and the contest was marked by clashes over immigration policy and legislative records.

Source: Takeaways from Colorado primaries: Melat Kiros, a democratic socialist, ousts another House incumbent | CNN Politics

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?
Mark 8:36

Peace in the Storm

God does not always remove the storm immediately, but He promises peace in the middle of it. His presence calms fearful hearts.  Bible Verse: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.”…

Keep reading

The Brave New Age of Trust-Fund Socialism

Democrats are in the midst of a fun and terrifying transformation. Hating Trump is no longer sufficient to win elections in blue states. Democratic primary voters—specifically the party’s core constituency of college-educated white…

Keep reading

Finding Hope in Life’s Challenges

When life turns up the heat, your faith isn’t falling apart, it’s being revealed. What feels like pressure is actually God proving that what He placed in you can’t be destroyed.  Bible Verse:In…

Keep reading

Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.

Why Many Cuban Exiles Support Trump and the Extreme Right?

Posted on by Leave a comment
red and white the north face baseball cap

In the heart of Miami’s Little Havana, the echoes of a painful past still shape the political beliefs of a fanatically loyal voting bloc.

Having lived through the trauma of a socialist revolution that stripped some of them of property, freedom, and homeland, many see any hint of leftist ideology as anathema. While Democrats promote social programs and progressive policies… 

Source: Why Many Cuban Exiles Support Trump and the Extreme Right? – Havana Times

My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.
1 John 3:18