Politics
Washington chooses its wars; Ukraine and Israel have made the cut despite opposition on right and left
Washington, D.C., chooses its wars. And, for now, leaders in Washington have decided the U.S. has a vested interest in the war in Ukraine.
After months of consternation, lawmakers eventually approved $62 billion for Ukraine to fight Russia in recent weeks, with most Democrats endorsing American assistance.
But Congress only dislodged the money after a lengthy push by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. President Biden, McConnell and others finally pushed House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to support the aid, even though most House Republicans opposed it. The Senate OK’d a combination foreign aid package a few days later, 79-18. Only 31 of the Senate’s 49 GOP members voted yes.
Tucked into that package was money for Israel, another conflict in which the U.S. has infused itself, thanks to the votes of bipartisan lawmakers.
THE HOUSE IS PRACTICALLY FUNCTIONING AS A PARLIAMENT, WITH MIKE JOHNSON AS ITS ‘PRIME MINISTER’
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses the U.S. Congress as Vice President Kamala Harris, left, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., hold a Ukrainian national flag Zelenskyy gave them at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Dec. 21, 2022. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
A not-so-subtle reminder of how Washington immerses itself into overseas conflicts came the other day following the death of Alfonso Chardy. Chardy was a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Miami Herald and helped untangle and expose the Iran-Contra Affair in the mid-1980s. That was a decision by the Reagan administration to involve itself in proxy wars in Central America under the guise of fighting the spread of communism during the Cold War. There was worry about increasing Soviet influence in the Western Hemisphere.
Leftist Sandinistas grabbed power in Nicaragua in the late 1970s. Congress sent money to the Contra rebels to support them in the civil war. But lawmakers began restricting money to the Contras in the early 1980s before eliminating all funding.
Reagan administration officials found a creative — albeit illegal way — to go around Congress.
The U.S. would covertly sell weapons to Iran in an effort to curry favor with Tehran to release western hostages held in the Middle East. The proceeds from those arms sales benefited the Contras to wage their battles against the Sandinistas.
Congress may have decided against getting involved in Nicaragua. But Washington as a whole picked that particular fight, making sure the U.S. was fighting through a proxy in Central America.
President Biden is greeted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after arriving at Ben Gurion International Airport Oct. 18, 2023, in Tel Aviv. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Fast-forward several decades, when the U.S. made a decision to go to war in Iraq in 2003. Congress voted in the fall of 2002 to approve the operation, but few lawmakers defend the entirety of that conflict today.
That was the thesis of a floor speech from Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, perhaps the most ardent opponent in Congress against sending assistance to Ukraine.
“In 2003, I was a high school senior and I had a political position,” declared Vance, speaking about his time finishing high school in Middletown, Ohio, and enlisting in the Marine Corps. “Back then, I believed the propaganda of the George W. Bush administration that we needed to invade Iraq.”
Vance later said arguments about helping Ukraine “sound familiar.”
TRUMP DEMANDS EUROPE COUGH UP MORE CASH FOR UKRAINE, SAYS WAR WITH RUSSIA WOULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED ON HIS WATCH
“It’s the same exact talking points 20 years later with different names,” said Vance. “I saw when I went to Iraq that I had been lied to. That the promises of the foreign policy establishment of this country were a complete joke.”
Vance called the push for war in Iraq “perhaps the most shameful period in the Republican Party’s history of the last 40 years.”
Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, has long been critical of the aid the U.S. has provided to Ukraine. ( Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Vance added that his “excuse” for backing the war in Iraq “is that I was a high school senior. What is the excuse of many people who are in this chamber or in the House of Representatives at the time and are now singing the same song when it comes to Ukraine?”
The answer is that America’s leaders are committed to helping Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.
BUTTIGIEG DEFENDS BIDEN CONFUSING UKRAINE AND IRAQ TWICE IN 2 DAYS: ‘VERY FOCUSED ON DETAILS’
History will bear out who is right or wrong on this front. Just the same as history has judged U.S. involvement in Central America against Soviet influences or by seeking war in Iraq. Remember that the foreign aid package includes money for Israel. Congressional Republicans were more comfortable assisting Israel than some liberals.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was one of the most outspoken opponents of sending U.S. dollars to Israel.
“Put simply, we are deeply complicit in what is happening. This is not an Israeli war. This is an Israeli-American war. Most of the bombs and most of the military equipment the Israeli government is using is provided by the United States and subsidized by American taxpayers,” said Sanders. “We are aiding and abetting the destruction of the Palestinian people.”
Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., also opposed the legislation in the House.
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“This bill passed today is a death warrant. A death warrant on Palestinians,” said Bush. “Apparently, it means that Palestinians are not as valued. That their lives are not as valuable as Israeli lives. And I have to say this, for those that feel that way, shame on you.”
Back on Ukraine, it was clear McConnell prevailed. Perhaps it’s one of his last major policy achievements as Republican leader. McConnell didn’t call out Vance by name. But it was clear who he was targeting in an impassioned floor speech.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have both backed funding for Ukraine and Israel. (Getty Images)
“So much of the hesitation and shortsightedness that has delayed this moment is premised on sheer fiction,” said McConnell. “I take no pleasure in rebutting misguided fantasies. I wish sincerely that recognizing the responsible ideas of American leadership was the price of admission for serious conversation about the future of our national security.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., echoed his counterpart.
“Getting this done was one of the greatest achievements the Senate has faced in years. Perhaps decades. A lot of people inside and outside the Congress wanted this package to fail,” said Schumer.
“I think we’ve turned the corner on the isolationist movement,” observed McConnell. “You could argue that this is a more challenging time right now than it was leading up to World War II. I don’t want it to take something like the Pearl Harbor attack to get our attention.”
The U.S. sat on the sidelines as Adolph Hitler ran roughshod through Europe in the 1930s and early 1940s. The U.S. only got involved after the Japanese bombed Pearl Habor and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made a plea to America during a Joint Session of Congress just after Christmas in 1941.
America chooses its wars; America has chosen its wars in Ukraine and Israel.
History will judge whether those were the right decisions.
Politics
Mamdani ripped for claiming victory over capitalism after NYC’s multi-billion dollar taxpayer funded bailout
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New York City’s mayor is again under fire after spewing outlandish claims that his socialist policies are to credit for a balanced budget in the Big Apple, just after the city received a multi-billion dollar bailout from the state.
“In January, our administration inherited a $12 billion budget deficit — a fiscal crisis greater than the Great Recession,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a Tuesday post on X announcing that the debt had been cleared.
“We balanced the budget by taxing the rich and making government more efficient,” Mamdani continued. “We did not balance this budget on the backs of working people, and we never will.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a primary-night watch party for NYC Congressional candidate Claire Valdez at 99 Scott Studio on June 23, 2026 in the East Williamsburg neighborhood of the Brooklyn borough in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
MAMDANI ALLOCATES $500K FOR REPARATIONS TALKS AS NYC FACES $5.4B DEFICIT
But the real reason the budget it balanced is because the city was handed $1.5 billion by the state of New York in January — funded by working class taxpayers across the state — as part of a multi-year plan to bail out the fiscally-challenged city. In late May, the city received another $4 billion.
Of the combined $8 billion provided to the city’s bailout fund under former Mayor Eric Adams’ tenure and now Mamdani’s mayorship, $5 billion was directly earmarked for the city to address fiscal measures. This includes allowing city government to defer pension contributions to close the budgetary gap.
Mamdani’s claims about socialist policies producing results — and his failure to mention the massive bailouts provided by taxpayer dollars — did not fly on social media.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul holds media availability press conference and makes an announcement on abortion rights at the office on 633 3rd Avenue. (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
MAMDANI ALLOCATES $500K FOR REPARATIONS TALKS AS NYC FACES $5.4B DEFICIT
“This is a lie,” independent journalist Nick Shirley said in a reply to the mayor.
“You balanced the budget by borrowing billions from the NY state government which pushed back pension payments, so you literally took money from ‘the backs of hardworking people.’ Don’t get it twisted,” he added.
Commentator and journalist Nick Sortor also flamed the mayor over the loan and his classification of the bailout.
“Are you saying New Yorkers can ‘balance their budgets’ by taking out massive credit card loans?” he asked sarcastically.
Independent journalist Nick Shirley sat down for an interview with Riley Gaines as part of the launch of Outkick’s “The Riley Gaines Show.” (OutKick)
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“Mamdani balanced the budget by taking money from Albany, who in turn taxed Rochester and Buffalo” another social media user said. “That’s who is paying for all of Mamdani’s free crap.”
In a press conference earlier in the day, Mamdani claimed victory over capitalism.
“Throughout this process I have been reminded of the words of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek: ‘if socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists.’”
A man sleeps on the E train, one of the subway lines most utilized by homeless New Yorkers for shelter, in Queens, New York, on Monday, April 7, 2025. (Victor J. Blue for The Washington Post/Getty Images)
After the Republican National Convention (RNC) posted that clip, Mamdani also faced ridicule for that.
“It always looks good at first until the chickens come home to roost,” one person replied.
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“He’ll soon ‘deliver’ bread lines instead,” said another.
Mamdani’s office did not return Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Politics
Commentary: The sad inevitability of Justice Alito’s birthright citizenship dissent
In 1913, Antonino Alati left southern Italy to find a better life in a land where many people regarded him as little better than scum.
He joined millions of his fellow countrymen in the United States, where the press vilified Italians as poor, swarthy, violent Catholics who had too many babies, refused to assimilate and could never possibly be considered “white.”
Politicians were already working to shut the door on them. A congressional report released two years before Alati’s arrival cited southern Italians as evidence that “the new immigration as a class is far less intelligent than the old.” They came to the U.S., the report asserted, “with the intention of profiting, in a pecuniary way, by the superior advantages of the new world and then returning to the old country.”
Alati wouldn’t let bigotry win. He soon sent for his wife and children, including his infant son Salvatore. Alati turned to Alito, Salvatore became Samuel. A generation later, the family had a Supreme Court justice in Samuel A. Alito Jr. — the second Italian American, after Antonin Scalia, to sit on the highest court in the land.
During his 2005 confirmation hearings, Alito praised his father as an “extraordinary man who came to the United States as a young child and overcame many difficulties” to ensure a better life for him and his sister. By then, Italian Americans were established as an essential part of this country’s fabric, from music to politics to food.
It’s the most American of tales — which is why it’s so surprising, yet not, to read Alito’s blistering dissent in the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision rejecting President Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship.
If there’s one constant in this country besides death and taxes, it’s how quickly descendants of immigrants, and sometimes immigrants themselves, forget how loathed their ethnic group was and how they proved the haters wrong. Too many become uncharitable to the policies that helped them and the immigrants who followed.
But Alito’s stance against birthright citizenship goes beyond just forgetting his roots. His 39-page opinion describes the supposed impact of undocumented migrants on the U.S., using words — “overran,” “soared,” “exploded,” “massive,” “a stream,” “huge” — that read like the same invective used against Italians in his grandfather and father’s time.
The justice channels anti-Italian conspiracies of the past by casting doubt on the national allegiances of the U.S.-born children of Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants — the same patriotism test that Italian Americans faced generations ago when xenophobes questioned their Catholicism. Alito claims without evidence that millions of agricultural workers were able to apply for American citizenship after President Reagan’s 1986 amnesty “at least in part because of fraud” — a charge also leveled against Italians who sought to naturalize back in the day.
And so it goes, each passage a jumbled argument dressed up in judicial interpretations largely rejected by his fellow Catholic Supreme Court justices John Roberts, Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh. Coney Barrett signed on to the majority opinion that Roberts wrote, and Kavanaugh concurred.
Rev. William Barber II speaks during a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court on April 1 while justices heard oral arguments on birthright citizenship.
(Al Drago / Getty Images)
I know how quickly families forget their own immigrant histories. Yet I look at people like Alito and wonder how they ended up thinking the way they do, because I could never imagine doing the same.
My maternal grandmother was born in Arizona to parents who fled their home country during the Mexican Revolution, becoming an American citizen by birthright. My father, who crossed the border in the trunk of a Chevy, legalized his status in an era when it was far easier to do so.
Like Alito’s paisanes, my Mexican family was also demonized for supposedly being insufficiently American and posing a threat to national unity. They also sacrificed their own dreams so their children and grandchildren could achieve theirs.
And just like Alito, some members of my family have forgotten our history and support Trump or favor some of his immigration policies, dismissing new arrivals as criminals or lazy. That’s why I will always side with undocumented people and welcome anyone who gives birth in this country with the hope that their newborn finds a better life.
It seems from his dissent that Alito somewhat agrees with me. He posits that millions of Americans who were born in this country to parents without papers “have a strong moral claim to be able to remain in the land where they grew up.” Congress “can and should address their situation,” he writes.
The justice blasts birth tourism, where women from China and other countries travel to the U.S. to have a baby, then return home, benefiting from our generosity and offering nothing in return.
I agree that’s a mockery of what being an American should be and ruins it for people who want to contribute to building a better nation. But Alito throws out the baby with the bathwater by failing to recognize that Trump’s attempt to erase birthright citizenship via executive order is presidential overreach based on bigotry, not rule of law. He’d rather cut up the Constitution to spite something he doesn’t like. Thank God his side lost, yet it’s sad that Trump’s pathetic attempt to define who can be an American went as far as it did.
Alito concludes by stating that the court’s decision to uphold the 14th Amendment is “a mistake that will seriously affect the country’s future.”
What new immigrants might inflict on this country is the perpetual worry of immigration restrictionists — and yet history keeps proving them wrong. Alito’s family did; so did mine. Only in these United States can the progeny of people once portrayed as parasites and invaders side with those making the same argument about the latest batch of newcomers.
History will see Alito’s vote for what it is: a forsaking of the promise his family once fulfilled, to support the people who never wanted them here in the first place.
Politics
Socialism goes west as DSA-backed challenger ousts longtime Democrat
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Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., a 30-year incumbent, lost to a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-backed challenger in a high-profile primary on Tuesday evening.
Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old socialist, defeated DeGette in a Democratic primary for a deep-blue House seat anchored in Denver, according to The Associated Press, scoring a major victory for the socialist left on Tuesday evening.
The DSA had been aiming to cast DeGette’s loss as evidence of its growing momentum after a slate of socialist candidates won Democratic primaries in New York City last week.
“Today, the East Coast, next week the Mountain West,” the DSA wrote in a social media post last week.
Rep. Diana DeGette speaks during a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 10, 2024. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
SOCIALISTS CHEER ‘SHOCKWAVE’ PRIMARY NIGHT AS DSA-BACKED CANDIDATES WIN, ADVANCE ACROSS THE MAP
If elected in November, Kiros, who was born in Ethiopia, will likely join the ranks of the far-left group known as the Squad and become one of a handful of the House chamber’s outspoken socialists.
The millennial challenger was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and the anti-incumbent leftist organization Justice Democrats. Controversial socialist streamer Hasan Piker, who has said Hamas is “a thousand times better” than Israel and praised the Chinese Communist Party, also backed Kiros’ insurgent primary run.
DeGette, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who supports abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sought to win a 16th House term by flexing her leftist bona fides. She argued her seniority on an influential House committee would allow her to push for Medicare-for-All legislation — a longtime priority of the party’s far-left flank.
DeGette, who was endorsed by former CPC Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., also spotlighted her experience as an impeachment manager during Trump’s second impeachment trial in 2021.
Though DeGette and Kiros shared few policy disagreements, they diverged sharply over Israel and antisemitism. Kiros also sharply criticized DeGette for accepting corporate PAC contributions.
Kiros, a PhD student and lawyer, was fired from a New York firm in 2023 after publishing an open letter, arguing that pro-Palestinian student protesters calling for the elimination of Israel were not antisemitic and appearing to defend Hamas.
Melat Kiros participated in a League of Women Voters Congressional District 1 candidate forum at Montview Presbyterian Church in Denver on May 28, 2026. (RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post)
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She has also described the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks against the Jewish state as the “inevitable consequence of apartheid” and declined to characterize the deadly firebombing of protesters in Boulder last year who were urging the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza as antisemitic.
“I don’t know what was in the heart of the perpetrator,” Kiros told Colorado’s 9News in a recent television interview. “All I know is that he went and attacked innocent people because of what they might have believed.”
A June 2025 bipartisan resolution condemning the attack as part of a “rise in ideologically motivated attacks on Jewish individuals” won every present lawmaker’s support, except for Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who voted present.
Kiros has also suggested the United States deserved 9/11.
“Inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East that forced people to believe that another act of violence was the only response,” Kiros told 9News when asked if she thought the terror attack was “the inevitable consequence of American foreign policy.”
“And again, just like I said before, our responsibility is to get rid of those conditions that lead to violence in the first place,” Kiros continued.
DeGette argued that Kiros’ embrace of Piker and her comments about antisemitism and 9/11 were disqualifying.
“I’m shocked and disgusted that Kiros is doubling down on excusing terrorism and the murder of innocent people,” the 30-year incumbent wrote on Facebook earlier this month.
Streamer and creator Hasan Piker speaks at a press conference during day two of Web Summit Vancouver at the Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, Canada, on May 13, 2026. (Sam Barnes/Web Summit via Sportsfile via Getty Images)
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Colorado’s 1st Congressional District is the most liberal seat in the state and voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris by 56 points in 2024.
The primary fight was further scrambled by University of Colorado Regent Wanda James, also running for DeGette’s seat. Though James did not pose the same threat as Kiros, her vote share could ultimately have swayed the contest.
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