Politics
California D.A. retweets 9/11 attack images as he slams Mamdani
A California district attorney reposted on social media 9/11 images along with comments blasting the election of Zohran Mamdani as New York City’s first Muslim mayor. Despite the gory images and strong denunciation of Mamdani, Dan Dow insists that he has no issues with the Muslim community in San Luis Obispo County, where he is the top prosecutor.
He has “strong ties” with the community, Dow said in an emailed statement Thursday to The Times.
But his posts have drawn backlash, and a Muslim advocacy organization is demanding an apology and an investigation.
On Wednesday, Dow retweeted a post on X from a popular right-wing account that appeared to show a snapshot moments after flames jutted from the South Tower, the second of the twin towers struck by a plane on Sept. 11, 2001.
A second visual tweet, more graphic than the first, displayed footage from two angles of a plane barreling into one of the towers. That was posted by the leader of an activist organization, described as a hate group by some, that claims to “combat the threats from Islamic supremacists, radical leftists and their allies.”
Each was posted in the aftermath of the New York City mayoral election won by 34-year-old democratic socialist Mamdani.
The posts were retweeted and subtweeted days later and 3,000 miles away by Dow, drawing rebuke from some locals, in a story first broken by the San Luis Obispo Tribune.
Dow responded to a Times email for comment saying his issue was not with the county’s Muslim population, which numbers around 500, according to the Assn. of Religion Data Archives.
“I shared the posts because, in my opinion, Mamdani is going to destroy New York being a self-proclaimed socialist,” Dow responded. “I support the Muslim community and have strong ties to our Muslim community in San Luis Obispo.”
The first post Dow retweeted came from the account @EndWokeness, which vows to its nearly 4 million followers that it’s “fighting, exposing, and mocking wokeness.”
The second post came from Amy Mekelburg, founder of Rise, Align, Ignite and Reclaim (RAIR) Foundation, which is listed as a hate organization by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
The council’s Los Angeles office demanded Thursday evening that Dow apologize and “retract his recent anti-Muslim social media posts.” CAIR-LA is also asking for an independent investigation into Dow’s conduct and “his fitness to continue to serve as DA.”
The organization is incensed at his retweeting of Mekelburg, whom they describe as “a known anti-Muslim extremist.”
Mekelburg wrote a sizable message on the video post, saying she’d “given my entire self” to warn the world “about the threat of Islam after 9/11.”
“And now … to see New York — my city — stand in this moment, where someone like Zohran Mamdani could even be elected,” she wrote. “My God, New York, what have you done?”
CAIR-LA said that Mekelburg “falsely equated the election of Mamdani with 9/11, reinforcing the harmful stereotype that Muslims are inherently tied to terrorism simply because of their faith.”
Dow subtweeted that specific post with a message that began by highlighting his 32 years of service in the U.S. Army and his four tours overseas.
“I remember like it was yesterday our nation being attacked by Islamic extremists on 9/11/2001,” he wrote. “I love this country and I do not in any way share the same views as the 33-year-old socialist Zohran Mamdani.”
He added in the tweet: “I am very sad to see the Big Apple torn apart by electing an un-American socialist who wants to trample on the values and freedoms that millions of Americans have fought and died for.”
“Dow’s decision to repost content that weaponizes bigotry and baselessly ties an elected Muslim official to terrorism is appalling and reflects the deeply rooted dehumanization and fearmongering in this country that American Muslims have had to endure for decades,” CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush said in a statement.
Dow’s posts also struck a nerve with one of his Muslim allies in San Luis Obispo, Dr. Rushdi Cader, who referred to the district attorney as “a personal friend” to the San Luis Obispo Tribune.
Cader told the Tribune the posts were “highly incendiary and puts Muslims at risk for harm, especially hijab-wearing Muslim women like my wife Nisha, whom Dan has himself described as ‘a kind and gentle lady’ who he ‘prayed would be blessed with peace.’”
Cader added he thought Dow’s “ugly post” was borne “out of disagreement with Mamdani’s politics” rather than any direct attack on Islam.”
Dow’s tweets drew other rebukes.
San Luis Obispo County Second District Supervisor Bruce Gibson called Dow a “Christian nationalist.”
He “occupies a powerful public office that requires decency and discipline,” Gibson said of Dow. “This post is yet another example that he has neither.”
San Luis Obispo Mayor Erica Stewart emailed The Times to say that the city was welcoming to all community members.
“Dan Dow, as the county’s District Attorney, by definition, should be objective and fair,” she wrote. “For someone in his position to express racism is unacceptable.”
Dow had his defenders too.
Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer serves with Dow on the California District Attorneys Assn. Spitzer is the organization’s secretary-treasurer while Dow is the president.
Spitzer found no fault with Dow’s social media posts.
“Elected officials have a platform to share their views and be judged by their constituents,” he wrote in an email. “It is heartbreaking to see someone who has expressed such anti-public safety and anti-Semitic sentiments elected as mayor of New York, and we as the elected protectors of public safety have a right to express that.”
The government shutdown, now the longest on record, is growing increasingly painful as more Americans start to feel its effects.
First, more than 600,000 federal workers were furloughed, and an even larger number were forced to work without pay. Then, funding lapses began to endanger critical antipoverty programs that tens of millions of Americans rely on, like food stamps and nutritional programs for women and children.
And on Wednesday, when the government shutdown became the longest in American history, Trump officials said they would slash air traffic at 40 major airports.
Here is a list of some of the shutdown’s most significant impacts.
- Trump suggests furloughed employees may not receive back pay once the government reopens.
- The Trump administration notifies thousands of federal workers that they will be laid off later this year. (A federal judge temporarily blocked the layoffs).
- Most federal workers receive only a partial paycheck this week.
- All unpaid federal workers miss their first full paycheck this week.
- Thousands of furloughed health workers are called back into work to handle open enrollment for both Medicare and health plans available under the Affordable Care Act.
- Active-duty service members are paid through another reallocation of funding.
- A federal judge orders the Agriculture Department to quickly partially or fully fund SNAP.
- A voucher program providing benefits for 6.7 million women and young children received last-minute additional funding for the month of November.
- An additional 134 Head Start programs, which serve more than 65,000 children and families, run out of federal funding.
- Low-income families begin to miss SNAP deposits.
- A federal judge orders the Trump administration to fully fund food stamps, after admonishing the government for ignoring his original order.
- Reductions of 10 percent of air traffic at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports are set to begin.
If the shutdown continues …
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As President Donald Trump intensifies his administration’s war on drugs through direct military action at sea, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced yet another deadly strike on Thursday.
In a post on X, Hegseth said the U.S. military strike killed three men aboard the vessel, which he described as operated by a designated terrorist organization.
“Today, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization,” Hegseth wrote.
TOP DEMOCRAT BACKS US INTEL ON NARCO-TRAFFICKING STRIKES, FAULTS BIDEN FOR ‘NOT GOING FAR ENOUGH’ ON MADURO
U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth salutes as he inspects a guard of honor during a welcoming ceremony prior to the 57rd Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) on Nov. 4, 2025 in Seoul, South Korea ( Jeon Heon-Kyun/Getty Images)
“The vessel was trafficking narcotics in the Caribbean and was struck in international waters. No U.S. forces were harmed in the strike, and three male narco-terrorists — who were aboard the vessel — were killed,” he noted.
The post included video footage of the strike, showing the moment the vessel was destroyed.
The Trump administration, which has already killed dozens in the deadly strikes, plans to continue pursuing the controversial policy.
US MILITARY KILLS 2 SUSPECTED NARCO-TERRORISTS IN 16TH EASTERN PACIFIC STRIKE, HEGSETH SAYS
“As we’ve said before, vessel strikes on narco-terrorists will continue until their the poisoning of the American people stops,” Hegseth asserted.
“To all narco-terrorists who threaten our homeland: if you want to stay alive, stop trafficking drugs. If you keep trafficking deadly drugs—we will kill you,” he warned.
HEGSETH BLASTS ‘NARCO-TERRORISTS’ TARGETED BY TRUMP ADMIN AS ‘THE AL QAEDA OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE’
President Trump has previously said “the cartels are the ISIS of the Western Hemisphere.”
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The Republican push to flip a Democrat-held House seat in a swing district that President Donald Trump carried in his three White House runs just got a big boost.
Hours after four-term House Democratic Rep. Jared Golden announced that he wouldn’t seek re-election in the 2026 midterms in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, two top nonpartisan political handicappers shifted the now open seat towards the Republicans.
The race in the district, which is the second-most rural in the U.S. and the largest east of the Mississippi River, is one of the most closely watched House contests in the country next year as the Republicans aim to hold their fragile majority in the chamber. And Golden’s announcement rocked the race.
“I’ve been fielding calls for the last 24 hours about how this is a bellwether for whether or not the Democrats can try to retake Congress, as this was, by many accounts, the most competitive House seat in the nation,” veteran Republican consultant Brent Littlefield told Fox News Digital on Thursday.
VULNERABLE HOUSE DEMOCRAT MAKES MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT
Former Republican Gov. Paul LePage of Maine, interviewed by Fox News Digital on May 7, 2025, in Lewiston, Maine, is running for the U.S. House in 2026 in the state’s 2nd Congressional District (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News )
Littlefield is the top campaign advisor to former two-term GOP Gov. Paul LePage, who earlier this year decided to come out of political retirement and launch a congressional bid in the district.
Golden, a U.S. Marine veteran who deployed to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and who often bucks his own party in Congress, has held the seat since first winning it in 2018. He won re-election last year by a razor-thin margin.
“After 11 years as a legislator, I have grown tired of the increasing incivility and plain nastiness that are now common from some elements of our American community — behavior that, too often, our political leaders exhibit themselves,” Golden said in an op-ed for the Bangor Daily News, where he revealed his unexpected decision.
LONGTIME TRUMP ALLY AIMS FOR POLITICAL COMEBACK
The moderate Democrat took shots at both parties in his 2026 announcement.
“We have seen mainstream Republicans stand by as their party was hijacked first by Tea Party obstructionists and then by the MAGA movement and its willingness to hand much of Congress’ authority to the president,” Golden wrote.
And he added, “I fear Democrats are going down the same path. We’re allowing the most extreme, pugilistic elements of our party to call the shots.”
Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, attends a news conference in the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, July 17, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
In the wake of Golden’s announcement, nonpartisan political handicapper Inside Elections said, “we’re changing our rating from Tilt Democratic to Likely Republican, in a positive development for the GOP and making it more challenging for Democrats to gain the three seats they need for a majority.”
And Sabato’s Crystal Ball, another leading nonpartisan handicapper, shifted the race from toss-up to lean Republican.
“Republicans will flip this seat red in 2026,” National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) spokeswoman Maureen O’Toole pledged.
But Rep. Suzan DelBene, the chair of the rival Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), emphasized that “Democrats will do everything necessary to keep this seat blue so that Mainers continue to have a voice fighting for them in Congress — and we are confident we will be successful.”
JARED GOLDEN FACES PRIMARY CHALLENGE
Golden had been facing a primary challenge from longtime politician and current state auditor Matt Dunlap.
“In the days and months ahead, I intend to vigorously campaign for Congress in Maine’s second congressional district – and I intend to win,” Dunlap vowed on Wednesday.
Maine state auditor Matt Dunlap is primary challenging Democratic Rep. Jared Golden in the state’s 2nd Congressional District. (Matt Dunlap for Congress )
But sources told Fox News Digital that the DCCC is now recruiting for another candidate in the race.
Golden wrote in his op-ed, “I don’t fear losing. What has become apparent to me is that I now dread the prospect of winning. Simply put, what I could accomplish in this increasingly unproductive Congress pales in comparison to what I could do in that time as a husband, a father and a son.”
LePage, in a social media post Wednesday afternoon, didn’t directly mention Golden but wrote, “This race has always been about fighting for rural Maine. As Governor, I spent eight years helping create jobs and making Maine more prosperous. I am running for Congress to make sure that working Maine families have a voice in Washington D.C. This fight is just beginning.”
But on Thursday, the 77-year-old LePage posted to social media a recent poll that indicated he held a 5-point lead over Golden in next year’s showdown, adding that “LePage wins in every poll.”
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LePage then juxtaposed the news that Golden wouldn’t seek re-election.
But Littlefield isn’t taking anything for granted, especially after this week’s convincing election victories by Democrats in high-profile contests in blue-leaning New Jersey and Virginia.
“It’s still going to be a tough race,” Littlefield told Fox News Digital. “It’s not a cakewalk.”
Fox News’ Liz Elkind contributed to this report
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Battle for the House: GOP gets boost in bid to flip swing district after Democrat bows out
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