Port Washington, Wisconsin, voters delivered a clear message Tuesday: no more massive tax giveaways without public approval. A local referendum passed decisively, requiring taxpayer sign-off before any future project worth more than $10 million can be added to a tax increment district, a direct response to an $8 billion AI data center project that stands to collect more than $450 million in property tax breaks.
The measure carried 2,710 votes to 1,371, with more than half of the city's 8,257 registered voters casting ballots. In a local special election, that kind of turnout speaks for itself.
The vote marks a rare instance of residents using the ballot box to reclaim authority over how their local government hands out tax incentives. And the backstory, involving police removing citizens from a public meeting, a comedian turned activist, and a data center project shrouded in secrecy, reads like a case study in what happens when officials cut deals without the people who foot the bill.
The data center at the heart of the controversy is no small-footprint warehouse. The Center Square reported the project carries an $8 billion price tag and is expected to receive more than $450 million in property tax breaks through a tax increment district. On top of that, the project would pay no state sales tax on construction, on the servers housed inside, or on the electricity consumed at the site.
That electricity demand is staggering. Once fully operational, the site is estimated to require as much power as the entire city of Los Angeles.
For a small Wisconsin city, those are enormous numbers, and enormous consequences. Tax increment financing, or TIF, is a common tool municipalities use to attract development. The theory is simple: subsidize a project now, reap the broader economic benefits later. But when the subsidies run into the hundreds of millions and the beneficiary is a tech giant building an AI facility, the math starts to look very different for local homeowners and small businesses left picking up the slack on the tax rolls.
That tension is hardly unique to Port Washington. Across the country, communities are grappling with the explosion of data center construction and the generous incentive packages that accompany it. What makes this case stand out is that residents organized, petitioned, and won the right to vote on the question directly.
Christine Le Jeune, a member of Great Lakes Neighbors Incorporated, said in a statement after the results came in:
"Tonight, democracy worked the way it's supposed to. Over 1,000 residents signed the petition that put this measure on the ballot, and tonight Port Washington voters spoke with one clear voice. The people deserve a seat at the table when their tax dollars are on the line."
The petition effort itself is notable. Gathering more than 1,000 signatures in a city of roughly 8,200 registered voters means organizers reached a significant share of the electorate just to get the question on the ballot. And when the vote came, the margin wasn't close, nearly two-to-one in favor of requiring public approval.
The broader political landscape in Wisconsin backs up that sentiment. A recent Marquette poll found that 69% of Wisconsin voters believe the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits. That finding suggests Port Washington isn't an outlier. It may be a bellwether.
The road to Tuesday's referendum was not smooth. In December, Le Jeune and two other members of Great Lakes Neighbors United were removed from a public meeting on the data center project by police. The confrontation began after Le Jeune exceeded her allotted three minutes of public comment and began shouting "shame" and "recall" as she returned to her seat.
When an officer approached Le Jeune and asked her to leave, she would not go. A second officer then began pulling on her arms. Le Jeune and the two others were taken to the floor, handcuffed, and removed from the building.
Whatever one thinks of the conduct on either side of that encounter, the optics are hard to ignore: residents handcuffed at a public meeting about a project that would hand hundreds of millions in tax breaks to a private company. That kind of scene tends to galvanize opposition, and it clearly did. Within months, the petition drive succeeded, and voters delivered their verdict.
The incident also raises a broader question about how local governments handle dissent when large economic interests are on the table. Public comment periods exist for a reason. When citizens feel shut out of decisions that reshape their community, as seen in recent congressional debates over accountability measures, frustration boils over.
The Port Washington fight has drawn attention from state and national figures. Congressman Tom Tiffany, a Republican candidate for governor, has vowed to "end subsidies for data centers in Wisconsin" if elected. That pledge positions data center incentives as a campaign issue in the 2026 gubernatorial race, and puts Tiffany squarely on the side of the 69% of Wisconsin voters who told Marquette pollsters they're skeptical of these deals.
Wisconsin comedian Charlie Berens has also become an outspoken voice on the issue, focusing on the secrecy surrounding the Port Washington project and the broader process by which data center deals are negotiated. Berens testified in support of a bill that would have blocked non-disclosure agreements at data centers. That bill, however, did not pass the Legislature before the session closed.
The failure of that legislation is worth noting. Even as public frustration with data center secrecy grows, the state legislature could not get a transparency measure across the finish line. That gap between public opinion and legislative action is exactly the kind of disconnect that drives citizens to the petition process, and to the ballot box.
It also fits a pattern visible at every level of government. Whether the issue is a closely watched Senate confirmation vote or a small-city referendum on tax incentives, voters increasingly want elected officials to show their work and stand behind their decisions in the open.
The new requirement is straightforward: any future project worth more than $10 million must win taxpayer approval before it can be added to a tax increment district in Port Washington. That gives residents a direct check on the kind of large-scale incentive packages that have historically been negotiated behind closed doors between developers and local officials.
What the referendum does not do is unwind the existing data center deal. The $8 billion project and its $450 million-plus in tax breaks appear to be already in motion. The vote is forward-looking, a guardrail, not a rollback.
Still, the signal it sends is unmistakable. Port Washington voters are telling their elected leaders, and any company eyeing the community for the next megaproject, that the days of closed-door subsidy deals are over. If you want the taxpayers' money, you need the taxpayers' permission.
That principle shouldn't be controversial. In an era when elected officials at every level face pressure to align policy with public sentiment, requiring a vote before handing out hundreds of millions in tax breaks is common sense, not radicalism.
Several details about the data center project itself remain murky. The company behind the $8 billion facility has not been clearly identified in public reporting on the referendum. The specific tax increment district involved and the full terms of the incentive package deserve closer scrutiny, especially given that the project would consume electricity on a scale comparable to Los Angeles.
The failed NDA bill also deserves a second look. If Wisconsin legislators are serious about transparency, they'll bring it back. Voters have made their position clear. The question is whether Madison will listen.
And the December meeting incident, three citizens handcuffed and removed from a public forum on a publicly subsidized project, warrants a full accounting. Public meetings are not supposed to end with residents on the floor in handcuffs. When they do, something has gone wrong, and it isn't just the citizens' behavior that needs examining.
Accountability in government spending is a principle that resonates well beyond any single city or policy fight. Whether the dollars flow to a data center in Wisconsin or a federal agency in Washington, taxpayers have every right to know where their money goes and to have a say in how it's spent.
Port Washington just proved that when government won't give the people a seat at the table, the people can build their own.
Democratic-backed candidate Chris Taylor handily defeated Republican-backed Maria Lazar on Tuesday in a Wisconsin Supreme Court election that locks in a liberal majority on the state's highest court for at least five more years, and sets the stage for an even wider ideological gap next year.
The victory marks the fourth consecutive win for liberal judicial candidates in Wisconsin dating back to 2020. Taylor, a state Appeals Court judge and former Democratic state legislator, will fill an open seat left by a retiring conservative justice. With her on the bench, liberals are guaranteed to hold their majority until at least 2030.
And the bleeding may not stop there. Another conservative justice is set to retire next year, giving the left a shot at 6-1 control of the court, a margin that would make the Wisconsin Supreme Court one of the most lopsided in the country.
Taylor, who worked for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin before entering politics, spent a decade as a Democrat representing Madison in the state Assembly. She became a judge in 2020. Throughout the campaign, she centered her message on abortion rights, a theme that has powered liberal judicial candidates in Wisconsin since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Lazar, a judge since 2015 who previously spent four years in the state Department of Justice under a Republican attorney general, tried to cast Taylor as a partisan operative. She labeled Taylor a "radical, extreme legislator" and a "judicial activist." In 2022, Lazar called the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe "very wise", a position that may have cost her with swing voters in a state where abortion access polls well.
The money gap told its own story. Taylor spent roughly nine times as much as Lazar on television ads, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. That kind of disparity doesn't happen by accident. It reflects a Democratic donor class that has learned to treat state court races like national elections, and a Republican infrastructure that hasn't kept pace.
In her victory speech, Taylor framed the result as a populist rebuke of wealth and influence:
"Once again, Wisconsin showed the entire nation that we believe that the people should be at the center of government and the priority of our judiciary, not the billionaires, not the most powerful and privileged, but the people."
That line might land better if her side hadn't outspent the opposition by a factor of nine.
Liberals first seized control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2023, ending 15 years of conservative dominance. That earlier race, in which Milwaukee Judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated former Justice Dan Kelly to flip the court to a 4-3 liberal majority, was a preview of what was to come.
Since then, the court has moved fast. It struck down a state abortion ban. It ordered new legislative maps, dismantling districts drawn by Republicans. It reversed several election-related rulings, including one that had banned absentee ballot drop boxes.
Each of those decisions landed squarely on issues where conservatives had built legal ground over more than a decade, voter ID protections, redistricting, and abortion restrictions signed into law by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker. One by one, the liberal majority has been tearing that work apart.
The stakes extend to labor law as well. A circuit court judge ruled in December that the law effectively ending collective bargaining for most public workers, one of Walker's signature achievements, is unconstitutional. That case is expected to reach the state Supreme Court, where the outcome now seems preordained.
Wisconsin Republicans have controlled the state Legislature since 2011. But that legislative power means less when a liberal court can redraw the maps, rewrite the election rules, and strike down the laws the Legislature passes. The court has become the left's most effective policy tool in a state where voters keep sending Republicans to the statehouse.
Wisconsin's judicial races have become nationalized contests. Last year's Supreme Court race drew involvement from President Donald Trump, billionaire George Soros, and Elon Musk, who personally handed out $1 million checks to voters in the state. Liberals held their majority in that contest as well.
Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, writing about the court's direction, warned that Republicans must win in April or the state "may never be a battleground state again." Wisconsin Republican Party Chair Brian Schimming echoed that urgency, telling supporters it could "literally mean the success of President Trump's term."
They lost anyway. After the result, Schimming called on Republicans to "stay united and continue fighting for our conservative values." It was the kind of statement parties issue when they have nothing else to say.
The pattern in Wisconsin should alarm anyone on the right who pays attention to Democratic wins in competitive races across the country. When the left identifies a leverage point, a court seat, a special election, a ballot initiative, it floods the zone with money and messaging. Conservatives too often show up underfunded and unprepared.
That said, the picture is not uniformly bleak. In Virginia, for example, a Republican recently won a special election in a rout, puncturing the narrative that Democrats have unstoppable momentum in off-cycle contests. The difference often comes down to candidate quality, spending discipline, and whether the state party apparatus is functional.
The court is poised to be in the spotlight again in 2028, when the next presidential election arrives. With a liberal supermajority likely by then, every election dispute in Wisconsin, from ballot procedures to recount rules, will be adjudicated by justices who owe their seats to the same donor networks and activist coalitions that backed Taylor and Protasiewicz.
Democrats also have their eyes on November, when they'll try to hold the governor's office and flip the state Legislature. If they succeed, the combination of a friendly court and unified government would give them unchecked power in one of the nation's most closely divided states.
Republicans, meanwhile, face a structural problem they've been slow to address. The left has figured out that courts and voting rules are where elections are shaped long before voters show up. Conservatives keep learning that lesson the hard way.
The internal challenges facing both parties are real. Democrats are dealing with their own strategic reckonings at the national level. But in Wisconsin, they have executed a clear, disciplined plan to capture the judiciary, and it has worked.
Four straight losses. A 9-to-1 spending gap. A liberal majority locked in through 2030 at minimum, with 6-1 control on the horizon. At some point, the Wisconsin Republican Party has to ask itself harder questions than Brian Schimming's call to "stay united" can answer.
The conservative bench in Wisconsin is shrinking because conservatives keep retiring into elections they can't win. The donor infrastructure is outmatched. The messaging, Lazar's attempt to brand Taylor as a radical, didn't land with enough voters. And the issues that animate the left's base in judicial races, especially abortion, continue to drive turnout in ways the right has not figured out how to counter.
Wisconsin is a warning. When one side treats court races like the most important elections on the calendar and the other side treats them like afterthoughts, the results are predictable. And the consequences, redrawn maps, rewritten election rules, dismantled laws, are felt for a generation.
Conservatives who wonder why they keep winning legislatures but losing ground should look at Wisconsin's Supreme Court. That's where the left governs now, whatever their internal squabbles may look like elsewhere.
You can hold every seat in the statehouse and still lose the state if you let the other side own the bench.
President Donald Trump unloaded on the Iranian regime during his third White House press briefing of 2026, declaring that Tehran has spent nearly five decades deceiving American presidents and now finds itself stripped of the military power to back up its bluster.
The remarks came in response to a CNN correspondent who asked whether reopening the Strait of Hormuz is a top priority in any potential deal to end the war. Trump called it "a very big priority," then pivoted to a broader assessment of Iran's diminished position and its long history of diplomatic manipulation.
"That's why, for 47 years, they've been bulls****ing other presidents, and they haven't done the job. And people are living in hell. You live in that country; they're living in hell. No, I think that 47 years of this stuff is long enough."
That single line captured the core of Trump's argument: Iran's negotiating leverage has always rested more on theatrics than on substance, and every prior administration fell for it.
As Breitbart reported, Trump painted a picture of an Iranian military apparatus that has been gutted. His assessment left no ambiguity.
"They're at the weakest point they've ever been. They have no navy, they have no air force, they have no anti-aircraft weaponry. They have no radar. They have no communication."
He went further, noting that Iran's degraded communications infrastructure has actually become a logistical obstacle in negotiations. Trump described the situation with characteristic bluntness.
"In fact, the biggest problem we have in our negotiation is that they can't communicate… We're communicating like they used to communicate 2000 years ago, with children bringing a note back and forth."
For decades, Iran projected regional power through proxy networks, missile programs, and the implicit threat that it could choke global energy supplies by mining or closing the Strait of Hormuz. Trump claims that the foundation beneath all of that projection has crumbled.
The CNN correspondent's question touched a genuine strategic nerve. The Strait of Hormuz is the chokepoint through which a massive share of the world's oil supply flows. Iran has long treated it as a card to play, a threat to dangle whenever pressure mounted.
Trump acknowledged the vulnerability, but not in the way one might expect. He didn't frame it as a reason to tread lightly. He framed it as a reason to see through the regime's game.
"We can bomb the hell out of them. We can knock them out… But to close the Strait, all you need is one terrorist that somehow has a truck loaded with…a water mine, drop them in the water, and now you tell people that own ships that cost a billion dollars… 'Don't worry about the mine.'"
His point was that the asymmetric threat of mining is cheap and easy to execute, which is precisely why Iran has leaned on it. You don't need a navy to drop mines from a fishing boat. But Trump then questioned whether even that threadbare capability still exists.
He noted that Iran no longer has dedicated mine-laying vessels, suggesting they would need to improvise with civilian boats. Then he went further, casting doubt on whether the regime even possesses functional mines.
"I'm not even sure they have any mines… by the way. I'm not sure… They say there might be eight. I don't know. I don't know. I think there might be none because they're very good bullshit artists."
Eight mines. Maybe none. That is the total of what Trump suggested remains of a threat that has shaped American foreign policy in the Persian Gulf for a generation.
The deeper argument woven through Trump's remarks deserves attention beyond the colorful language. For nearly half a century, successive American administrations have approached Iran as though the regime held cards it may never have actually possessed. The pattern is familiar:
Every president who sat across from Tehran, whether through direct or indirect channels, operated under the assumption that Iran had real leverage and that provoking the regime carried unacceptable risk. Trump is arguing that the leverage was always inflated, and that every predecessor who bought it got played.
This is not simply trash talk. It is a negotiating posture built on a specific strategic claim: that Iran's bargaining power has been a bluff sustained by American caution. If that assessment is correct, it reshapes the entire calculus of what a deal should look like and who should be making concessions.
Amid the sharp rhetoric, Trump closed with a line that is easy to overlook but worth noting. When asked about his ultimate objective, his answer was simple.
"But all I want to see is I want to have a safe world."
It is a plain statement, and it sits in deliberate contrast to the combative tone that preceded it. The message to Tehran is not complicated: the bluster is over, the military capability is gone, the American president sees through the act, and the only path forward is a real deal, not another round of the game that bought the regime 47 years of survival at the expense of its own people.
Whether Iran's fractured communications apparatus can even relay that message remains, by Trump's own account, an open question. But the signal has been sent. The world heard it, even if Tehran's leaders are still passing notes by hand.
The Supreme Court confirmed Friday that Justice Samuel Alito sought medical attention after falling ill at an event in Philadelphia on March 20. Alito, 76, saw a physician, received fluids for dehydration, and drove home the same night.
He was back on the bench that Monday for oral arguments. He hasn't missed a beat since.
The court's statement described a cautious, routine response to a minor health episode, according to the Hill:
"Out of an abundance of caution, he agreed with his security detail's recommendation to see a physician before the three-hour drive home."
"After that examination and the administration of fluids for dehydration, he returned home that night, as previously planned."
CNN reported that Alito was taken to a hospital, though the facility was not named. The court's own language was more measured: he saw "a physician," got fluids, and went home on schedule. That distinction matters when the goal is accuracy rather than alarm.
The March 20 incident occurred the same day the Federalist Society hosted a conference in Philadelphia celebrating Alito's 20th anniversary on the Supreme Court. Whatever caused him to feel ill, it did not slow him down.
Alito returned to work that Monday for oral arguments. In the weeks since, he has continued to participate as normal on the bench as an active questioner, including this week's arguments on President Trump's birthright citizenship restrictions. Those are among the most consequential cases on the docket. Alito showed up and did the work.
The real story here isn't a 76-year-old man getting dehydrated. It's how quickly a routine medical episode gets fed into the retirement speculation machine.
Every time a conservative justice sneezes, a certain segment of the political class begins gaming out replacement scenarios. Court watchers and anonymous sources start circulating theories. The underlying wish is transparent: any opening, any hint of vulnerability, becomes an opportunity to reshape the Court's ideological balance in the public imagination before anything has actually changed.
Alito has not publicly indicated any imminent retirement plans. There is no sourced reporting suggesting otherwise. What exists is speculation dressed up as concern.
The left spent years demanding that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg retire on their preferred timeline, and she refused. They should understand by now that justices make their own decisions about their own careers. That principle doesn't change when the justice in question is a conservative.
The facts here are thin because the story is thin. A justice felt ill. He saw a doctor. He got fluids. He went home. He went back to work. He has been actively hearing cases ever since, including cases of enormous national significance.
If Alito's health were genuinely in question, his absence from the bench would tell that story. His presence tells a different one.
The Court has serious work ahead of it. Alito is doing that work. Everything else is noise.
A seven-month-old girl is dead because a man on the back of a moped opened fire on a Brooklyn street in broad daylight. Kaori Patterson-Moore was fatally struck by a stray bullet on Wednesday at Humboldt Street and Moore Street in Bushwick. A second bullet grazed her two-year-old brother's back.
By Saturday afternoon, about 50 mourners had gathered for a community vigil. And Kaori's father, Jamari Patterson, released a letter to the media that no parent should ever have to write.
"I was literally taking her outside to get her ears pierced, new clothes and shoes for her and her brother. I just taught my baby how to take a step. She took her first step to me, her only step. I can no longer sing to my baby, or nothing."
Police believe Patterson was the intended target. Detectives say the gunman was aiming for him, and cops say he has ties to the Money Over Everything gang in Bushwick Houses. The bullet found his infant daughter instead, as New York Post reports.
Patterson's letter painted the picture of a father trying to hold a life together. He described the moment he first saw his daughter, born premature, placed in an incubator.
"Upon graduating, I ended up having my beautiful baby girl, seeing her for the first time I knew she was special."
He wrote about trying to distance himself from the street. "The life I live, even getting different jobs to stay away from negativity, I begin to change things up. Which is facts," he wrote. The letter ended where grief always does, in the place where words stop working: "I miss her so much. I want my baby back."
Great-grandmother Arlene Poitier spoke at the vigil and described a family that can no longer function in its own home.
"We have anger. My family is broken. I am broken. I don't have her to sleep with me at night."
She described a nightly routine: the parents would bring Kaori to her room to sleep, and once they closed the door, the baby would open her eyes and look at her grandmother. "She's not there," Poitier said. "I still have her diapers, her pajamas, and stuff on my pillow. She was Nana's baby. She's Nana's baby."
Then she said something that should echo far beyond a Brooklyn sidewalk vigil.
"I have to hear my grandson say, 'What did she do that someone would do this?'"
"What am I supposed to say?" she asked. "What am I supposed to say when children ask you stuff like this?"
Alleged triggerman Amuri Greene, 21, was taken to a hospital for a possible broken leg suffered when the moped crashed after the shooting. He has been charged with murder, attempted murder, assault, and other counts. His alleged accomplice, 18-year-old Matthew Rodriguez, who police say drove the moped, was arrested in Pennsylvania on Friday. Charges against Rodriguez were pending.
Two suspects. A moped. A handgun. And a dead baby on a Brooklyn sidewalk. This is the reality of violent crime in New York City, stripped of every euphemism city leaders love to hide behind.
Kaori's grandmother, Christine Poitier, did not mince words at the vigil. She described her granddaughter as "an angel, always smiling, always a beautiful individual." Then she turned her grief outward.
"Somewhere through the generation we failed. A lot of these young kids, they don't know, they don't know. They don't have the morals, they don't have the principles. Some of them don't have their grandmother outside telling them, 'You can't do this.'"
That is not a policy paper. It's a grandmother standing over a casket-sized hole in her family and saying what every honest person in these communities already knows. The collapse is not primarily about funding or programs or "root causes" as politicians define them. It is about the disintegration of family structure, moral formation, and adult accountability in communities where young men grow up without anyone telling them no.
New York Attorney General Letitia James attended the vigil and thanked the NYPD detectives who tracked down the suspects.
"I want to thank them in particular for hunting down these two individuals who are responsible for the murder of a 7-month-old child."
James also sent a message to the Brooklyn District Attorney asking that "these two individuals be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. No excuses." The sentiment is welcome. But the question for New York's political class has never been what they say at vigils. It is what they do in the months between them. The policies that treat enforcement as an afterthought, that empty jails in the name of equity, that view policing as the problem rather than the thin line between order and the chaos that killed Kaori Patterson-Moore.
There will be flowers on the sidewalk for a week. Local news will move on. Politicians will move on. And somewhere in Bushwick Houses, another young man with no moral guardrails and easy access to violence will calculate whether the consequences are real.
Christine Poitier already gave the diagnosis. The generation failed. Not because of insufficient government spending, but because the basic institutions that civilize young men, families, churches, and communities willing to enforce standards, have been hollowed out while New York's leaders chased every ideological fashion that made the problem worse.
A 21-year-old fired a gun from the back of a moped into a crowd that included an infant. An 18-year-old drove the getaway vehicle. A seven-month-old girl who had just learned to take her first step will never take another.
Kaori Patterson-Moore's first step was to her father. It was her only one.
A seven-month-old baby girl named Kaori Patterson-Moore was shot and killed on a Brooklyn street Wednesday afternoon when a gunman on a moped opened fire in what investigators described as a suspected gang-related incident. Within hours, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani responded publicly, and the words he chose set off a firestorm.
Mamdani did not focus on the suspected gang members who pulled the trigger. He did not call for tougher enforcement or longer sentences. Instead, he spoke about "gun violence" and pledged "more work" to combat it, language that critics say deliberately avoids naming the criminals responsible and instead treats the weapon as the problem.
The mayor's framing drew immediate condemnation from elected officials, policy experts, and commentators who accused him of using a dead infant as a prop for gun-control talking points while shielding the city's revolving-door criminal justice system from scrutiny. Fox News Digital reported on the breadth of that backlash, which stretched from City Hall to conservative media to Mamdani's own mayoral rival.
In his public remarks after the shooting, Mamdani offered condolences but pivoted quickly to a familiar progressive script. He said:
"This is not our first family to know this pain. Too many children have never grown up into becoming adults. To parents who've had to bury those they love most. We cannot accept it as normal in our city. We cannot grow numb to this pain, and today is a devastating reminder of just how much more work there is to be done... to combat gun violence across the city."
He also posted on X thanking the NYPD, the same department whose budget he proposed slashing in February and whose officers he had spent years criticizing during his political career. That contradiction did not go unnoticed.
What was absent from Mamdani's statement mattered as much as what was in it. No mention of gangs. No mention of the suspects. No call for accountability within a system that, as one critic put it, "releases" repeat offenders "onto our streets repeatedly, over and over again, with no consequences."
NYC Republican Councilwoman Vickie Paladino captured the anger in blunt terms. She posted on X:
"Literally anything but blaming the criminals who our system releases onto our streets repeatedly, over and over again, with no consequences. Absolute disgrace."
Daniel Turner, executive director of Power the Future and a New York City native, offered pointed sarcasm. "If only New York had strict gun laws," he wrote on X, a jab at the fact that New York already has some of the most restrictive firearms laws in the country, yet a baby was gunned down on a Brooklyn sidewalk in broad daylight.
Mamdani is hardly the only progressive leader whose rhetoric has drawn fire in recent months. The broader Democratic leadership crisis has exposed a party struggling to reconcile its ideological commitments with the real-world consequences those commitments produce.
Manhattan Institute fellow Rafael A. Mangual offered the most detailed critique. He told Fox News Digital that Mamdani's language revealed a deeper discomfort, not just with enforcement, but with naming the kind of people who commit these acts.
"References to the means by which this heinous crime was committed suggests that he is uncomfortable with acknowledging that the murder of Kaori Patterson-Moore was committed by two evil thugs whose callous disregard for the value of human life should disqualify them from ever experiencing freedom."
Mangual went further, diagnosing the political incentive structure behind the mayor's word choice. He argued that Mamdani's progressive base is "simultaneously (if dissonantly) committed to the cause of 'gun control' as well as efforts to reorient the criminal justice system to be more lenient toward the offenders who pull triggers." Framing the killing as a "gun problem" rather than a criminal problem, Mangual said, lets Mamdani satisfy both camps without confronting either.
Several critics drew a sharp contrast between the mayor's swift comments on the Brooklyn shooting and his silence on another recent killing in the city. Richard Williams, an 83-year-old Air Force veteran, was recently allegedly shoved onto subway tracks in New York City and later died from his injuries.
Media Research Center Managing Editor Brittany Hughes connected the two cases directly. "An 83-year old veteran was killed in New York City last month after being randomly pushed onto the subway tracks by an illegal alien," she wrote on X. "Mamdani didn't say a word because trains aren't a good political prop, and he won't condemn criminal aliens."
The contrast is hard to dismiss. When the weapon is a gun, Mamdani finds his voice. When the weapon is a pair of hands and the suspect is an illegal immigrant, silence. That selective outrage tells voters everything about which political narratives the mayor is willing to serve, and which victims he is willing to overlook.
Mamdani's willingness to condemn U.S. policy abroad while going quiet on criminal violence at home is not new. He was among the prominent progressives who rushed to condemn U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran, demonstrating no shortage of moral urgency when the subject suits his political coalition.
Mangual underscored the point by referencing the Williams case directly. "As the recent killing of Richard Williams illustrates clearly, criminals can and do take lives without any weapons at all," he said. The problem is not the tool. The problem is the person wielding it, and the system that failed to keep that person off the street.
Perhaps the sharpest criticism came from Jim Walden, an attorney who ran against Mamdani for mayor. Walden acknowledged the family's grief but refused to let the mayor's post-shooting thank-you to the NYPD pass without challenge.
"We should focus on the family's loss today. But every time you now 'thank NYPD' it burns my blood after you spent your career attacking them and coddling criminals. You really should be ashamed of yourself, @NYCMayor. But we all know you still hate police and policing and would dine with this vile criminal if you could get away with it, politically."
Walden's charge cuts to a real record. Mamdani built his political career in part on calls to defund the police. Fox News Digital reported that he proposed slashing the NYPD's budget as recently as February. Now, standing over the body of a seven-month-old, he thanks the officers whose resources he tried to cut.
That kind of contradiction has become a recurring pattern among progressive leaders. The same internal fractures that have plagued figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, torn between a radical base and political reality, now define Mamdani's tenure in Gracie Mansion.
Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani's office for comment on the criticism. The report did not indicate a response.
The open questions surrounding the Brooklyn shooting remain significant. No arrests or suspect identifications were reported. The basis for calling the incident "suspected gang-related" was not detailed. The specific location in Brooklyn where Kaori Patterson-Moore died has not been publicly specified beyond "a Brooklyn street."
Those gaps matter. If this was indeed a gang shooting, then the relevant policy failure is not the existence of guns in a city that already bans most of them. It is the failure to keep known gang members off the streets, the failure to prosecute them aggressively, and the failure of a criminal justice philosophy that treats leniency as enlightenment.
Critics like Michael Rapaport have previously called out Mamdani and his progressive allies for their selective moral outrage, loud on the issues that energize their base, silent on the ones that embarrass it.
Mamdani chose to make this about guns. His critics, and the facts, suggest it is about something far harder for a progressive mayor to confront: the human cost of a system that treats violent criminals as victims of circumstance rather than predators who forfeit their place in civil society.
Kaori Patterson-Moore was seven months old. She never got to walk, or talk, or start school. She was killed on a Brooklyn sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon. The least her city's mayor could do is name the people responsible, not the object they used.
The Department of Homeland Security has lodged a third ICE detainer in Fairfax County, Virginia, after a 28-year-old illegal immigrant from Guatemala was charged with beating his three-month-old daughter to death. It marks the third murder charge against an illegal immigrant in the sanctuary county in roughly one month.
Fairfax County Police responded on March 27, shortly after 7:30 p.m., to a report of an unresponsive infant at the 3400 block of Lake Street in the Bailey's Crossroads community. Officers began administering CPR before Fire and Rescue personnel took over. The baby was transported to a local hospital, where she was later pronounced dead.
According to Breitbart, preliminary autopsy results from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner determined the cause of death was blunt force trauma. At the time of the call, the infant was in the care of her father, Misael Lopez-Gomez, according to Fairfax police.
Lopez-Gomez is now being held at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center with no bond, facing charges of second-degree murder and felony child abuse. According to DHS, he admitted he illegally entered the United States along the southwest border with Mexico in July 2023 near Albuquerque, New Mexico.
ICE lodged an arrest detainer on Lopez-Gomez and is requesting that he be handed over to federal agents in the event of his release. Acting Assistant DHS Secretary Lauen Bis did not mince words:
"This cold-blooded killer murdered his own three-month-old daughter. We are calling on Governor Spanberger to commit to not releasing this barbaric animal from jail into Virginia communities."
Bis added:
"This monster should have never been allowed in our country by the Biden administration. We need cooperation from sanctuary politicians to stop criminals from being released from jail to perpetrate more crimes and create more innocent victims."
The Lopez-Gomez case did not arrive in isolation. It landed on a county already reeling from two other murder charges against illegal immigrants in the span of weeks.
Just before 9:00 p.m. on a recent Sunday, 38-year-old Anibal Armando Chavarria-Muy, a criminal illegal immigrant from Guatemala, allegedly stabbed an unidentified man to death at a residence on the 6000 block of Bellview Drive in Bailey's Crossroads. Authorities believe Chavarria-Muy may have known the victim. He is charged with second-degree murder and is being held without bond at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center. ICE lodged an arrest detainer on him as well.
In late February, DHS issued a detainer on Abdul Jalloh, a citizen of Sierra Leone, after his arrest in the fatal stabbing of 41-year-old U.S. citizen Stephanie Minter at a Fredericksburg bus stop. Fairfax County Police charged him with allegedly killing Minter.
Jalloh's history makes the other two cases look like bureaucratic hiccups by comparison. He was discovered to have a criminal record showing more than 30 prior arrests, with charges including:
Jalloh entered the United States illegally sometime in 2012. ICE previously lodged a detainer against him in 2020, and a judge granted a final order of removal, finding he could be removed to any country other than Sierra Leone. Despite that order, Jalloh found his way back onto Fairfax County streets until his arrest in the killing of Minter.
More than 30 arrests. A final order of removal. And he was still walking free in a Virginia community. A three-month-old girl, Stephanie Minter, and an unidentified man are now dead.
DHS is now asking Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger and Fairfax County sanctuary officials to honor all three ICE detainers. The fact that federal authorities have to ask is the problem.
Sanctuary policies rest on a theory: that shielding illegal immigrants from federal enforcement builds "community trust" and makes everyone safer. Fairfax County just produced three murder charges against illegal immigrants in roughly 30 days. The theory has collided with a three-month-old's autopsy report.
The Jalloh case is the most damning indictment of the entire framework. Here was a man with more than 30 prior arrests, a judge-ordered removal, and a prior ICE detainer. Every tool the system offers was deployed at some point. None of it mattered because the local jurisdiction treated cooperation with federal immigration enforcement as optional. The revolving door spun, and Stephanie Minter paid with her life.
This is not a story about immigration policy in the abstract. It is not about "root causes" or economic migration or the complexities of the asylum system. It is about three people who are dead in one Virginia county because individuals who should never have been in the country, or who had already been ordered removed, were walking free under the protection of local policy choices.
Governor Spanberger has not publicly responded to DHS's request, at least not in any statement included in available reporting. That silence carries its own weight. Three detainers. Three murder charges. One county. One month. And the governor of Virginia has offered nothing.
Sanctuary jurisdictions love to frame their policies as humane. They rarely hold press conferences when the cost of that humanity lands on a coroner's table. The political incentive structure is clear: take credit for compassion, avoid accountability for consequences.
Bis pointed the finger squarely at the Biden administration for allowing Lopez-Gomez into the country in the first place. That criticism lands. But the Biden administration is gone. The question now is whether state and local officials will continue to obstruct the enforcement mechanisms designed to prevent exactly this.
Fairfax County can honor these detainers today. Governor Spanberger can commit publicly to ensuring that illegal immigrants charged with murder are transferred to federal custody. These are not complex policy dilemmas. They are basic decisions about whether public safety outranks ideological commitment to sanctuary politics.
A three-month-old baby is dead from blunt force trauma. A woman was stabbed to death at a bus stop by a man with 30 prior arrests and a removal order. An unidentified man was killed in his own community. Three families are shattered in Fairfax County, and the officials who designed the policies that kept these men on local streets have said nothing at all.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has committed to opposing "any spending on arms for Israel, including so-called defensive capabilities," according to remarks she reportedly made at a New York City Democratic Socialists of America electoral forum on April 1.
Peter Sterne, editor of City and State NY, reported the commitment in a social media post, stating that AOC made the remarks during a DSA endorsement call. The congresswoman reportedly told the forum that "the Israeli government should be able to finance their own weapons if they seek to arm themselves."
This is a notable shift. Not because AOC was ever a friend to Israel, but because she has now explicitly extended her opposition to include defensive systems designed to protect Israeli civilians from incoming rockets and missiles.
The distinction matters because AOC previously drew a careful line between offensive and defensive military aid. When former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced an amendment to cut funding for the Iron Dome, AOC voted against it, according to the International Business Times. At the time, she justified that vote by arguing there was:
"Nothing to cut off offensive aid to Israel nor end the flow of U.S. munitions being used in Gaza."
She elaborated further:
"What it does do is cut off defensive Iron Dome capacities while allowing the actual bombs killing Palestinians to continue. I have long stated that I do not believe that adding to the death count of innocent victims to this war is constructive to its end. That is a simple and clear difference of opinion that has long been established."
That was the old position. The new one erases the line. Defensive capabilities are now lumped in with offensive weaponry. The Iron Dome, a system whose sole function is to intercept rockets aimed at civilian population centers, no longer gets a carve-out in AOC's calculus.
Worth noting: Greene's amendment to cut Iron Dome funding was supported by fellow Democrats Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Al Green, and Summer Lee. AOC was the one who broke from that group. Now she's circled back and joined them, only with an even broader commitment.
The answer appears to be political gravity. A DSA endorsement call is not a neutral setting. It is a room where the political incentive runs in one direction, and it is not toward nuanced distinctions between offensive and defensive military hardware. The DSA has been unequivocal in its opposition to U.S. military support for Israel, and a candidate seeking their endorsement faces a simple audience to read.
Haaretz has recalled that AOC has not voted to increase funding for military aid to Israel. That track record is consistent. But the explicit pledge to oppose even defensive systems marks a new threshold. It is one thing to decline to increase aid. It is another thing to commit publicly to stripping a civilian defense system from an ally.
The prior justification was at least internally coherent: oppose the bombs, protect the shield. Now the shield goes too. The reasoning that once separated AOC from the furthest-left members of her caucus on this issue has been abandoned, and the venue where it was abandoned tells you why.
AOC has also been vocal in her criticism of the broader regional situation, telling Meidas Touch at the Capitol that the "vast majority of Americans are against a war with Iran." She offered this framing:
"Two things can be true at the same time: We can acknowledge the brutal reality of the Iranian regime and their murdering of protesters. And we can also know for sure that a forever war will not resolve that issue."
It is a familiar rhetorical move: acknowledge a threat just long enough to argue against doing anything about it. The Iranian regime murders its own people, funds proxy armies across the Middle East, and has openly called for the destruction of Israel. The Iron Dome exists in large part because of Iranian-backed groups that launch rockets at Israeli cities.
Opposing the war is a policy position. Opposing the shield that protects civilians from the consequences of that war is something else.
This is ultimately a story about who AOC is talking to and what they demand. The DSA does not reward careful distinctions. It rewards escalation. Every cycle, the ask gets bigger, the line moves further, and the rhetoric catches up to where the base already lives.
AOC once positioned herself as the progressive who could hold a principled but pragmatic stance on Israeli defense funding. That position is gone now. It was traded at a DSA endorsement forum for the cleanest applause line available: no arms, no exceptions, no defensive carve-outs.
The Iron Dome does not drop bombs. It catches them. That used to matter to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Apparently, it no longer does.
Mayor Muriel Bowser wants Washington, D.C.'s youth curfew made permanent, calling the council's repeated cycle of temporary extensions "games" as lawmakers prepare to vote Tuesday on whether to keep the emergency measure alive past its April 15 expiration date.
The D.C. Council will consider emergency legislation to extend the curfew through September 25. The measure requires nine votes to pass. Bowser, speaking at a news conference Monday, made clear she's done with the 90-day renewal routine.
"I think the council should stop playing games with this. This is a tool that we need. We're going to keep coming back every 90 days, and you're going to keep asking me the same question. We need it. We're going to come back 90 days from now, stop playing games and move to permanent."
The curfew bars those under 18 from being out in public or at an establishment in D.C. from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., with some exceptions. It also grants D.C. police authority to designate certain areas as juvenile curfew zones, where a group of nine or more minors can be prohibited from gathering after 8 p.m.
The emergency curfew exists because the nation's capital has a juvenile disorder problem that it cannot wish away with programming and good intentions, according to WTOP News. Temporary curfews have been implemented and reinstated for more than a year. The pattern is now familiar enough to set your watch by.
After D.C.'s 2025 emergency summer curfew expired, gatherings dubbed "teen takeovers" returned. Halloween brought fights, traffic disruptions, and arrests. Officials reinstated the curfew shortly after.
Then came March 14. About 200 people congregated in the Navy Yard. Someone fired a gun into the air. Multiple people were robbed. Two teens were arrested.
Every time the curfew lapses, the chaos returns. Every time the chaos returns, officials scramble to reimpose the curfew. And every time they reimpose it, a faction of the council wrings its hands about whether enforcement is really the answer. The city is running a controlled experiment on its own residents, and the results keep coming back the same.
Ward 2 Council member Brooke Pinto told WTOP the bill will move through the body after a Judiciary Committee markup. But she acknowledged the outcome on Tuesday is not guaranteed.
"The emergency legislation requires nine votes, and my hope is that my colleagues agree that we need to extend this authority, especially as the weather gets nicer and warmer. This is when we tend to see more of these 'youth takeovers' in certain areas of the city."
Pinto said she is confident she would have the votes for a permanent curfew law, which would require only seven votes, but is still working to secure the nine needed for Tuesday's emergency extension. The distinction matters: emergency legislation demands a supermajority, while a permanent law needs a simple one. The higher bar for the temporary fix is, ironically, harder to clear than the lasting solution.
Council members Robert White and Zachary Parker have expressed apprehension toward a permanent curfew. White's argument, offered during a separate vote on youth curfews in December, centers on the idea that enforcement lets the city avoid harder work.
"I think passing this youth curfew lets us off the hook for doing that work, which is critical for reducing juvenile crime."
White wants more youth services and vocational programs. He said he doesn't think there's "enough focus there."
It's a familiar refrain in Democratic governance: the suggestion that enforcing public order and investing in social programs are somehow mutually exclusive. They aren't. A city can hold minors accountable for gathering in mobs at midnight and also fund after-school programs. The curfew doesn't prevent a single dollar from flowing to youth services. What it does prevent is gunfire in the Navy Yard on a Friday night.
The idea that a curfew "lets us off the hook" assumes the council would otherwise be sprinting toward solutions. D.C. has governed itself for decades. The youth services White describes are perpetually underfunded and perpetually invoked as the reason not to do the thing that actually works right now. At some point, the promise of future programming stops being an argument and starts being an excuse.
Bowser's push to make the curfew permanent would end the rolling spectacle of emergency votes every 90 days. It would also lower the vote threshold from nine to seven, making passage considerably easier. More importantly, it would send a signal that D.C. treats juvenile public safety as a standing priority, not a seasonal emergency to be relitigated whenever the temperature drops.
Bowser framed the stakes bluntly:
"I don't know why you would want to take away a tool that we need going into spring break and the summer. To me, it would be absolutely ludicrous."
She's right on the basic point, even if the broader failure belongs to an entire political class that spent years treating public disorder as an inconvenience rather than a crisis. D.C. residents, business owners in Navy Yard, and families navigating a city where 200 people can congregate, and someone can fire a gun into the air, deserve more than a government that debates whether to keep the lights on every quarter.
The curfew debate is a microcosm of a deeper problem in progressive urban governance. The tools that work, enforcement, consequences, and visible policing are treated as morally suspect. The tools that feel virtuous, programs, services, and "root cause" interventions, are perpetually in development and never quite ready. Meanwhile, the people who live in these neighborhoods absorb the cost of the delay.
No one on the D.C. Council is asking why a major American city needs a curfew for minors in the first place. No one is asking what broke in the social fabric so thoroughly that hundreds of teenagers treat public spaces as arenas for robbery and gunfire. Those are harder questions than whether to extend an emergency measure for another five months.
Tuesday's vote will tell residents whether their council members take the problem seriously enough to act, or whether they'd rather let the curfew lapse and wait for the next Navy Yard to prove them wrong. Again.
The second lady of the United States still takes her three kids to Costco. She buys their lunchbox snacks there. She picks up the same items her family has always grabbed from the warehouse store. And when she moved into the vice president's official residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., she had no intention of giving that up.
Usha Vance told NBC News in a recent interview that keeping the family's Costco membership was non-negotiable, a small, deliberate act of normalcy inside a life that has become anything but normal.
"We have our neighborhood shops. We have our Costco membership. We have all our favorite things that we get. They pick their lunchbox items from there. It's just sort of a family tradition. It's the kind of stuff that you don't want to let go when you have a family life and you move into something like the Naval Observatory."
It is a small detail. But in a political culture where Washington's elite routinely lose touch with how ordinary Americans live, a second lady who still pushes a cart through a warehouse store stands out.
Usha Vance left her career as a trial lawyer after President Trump won the 2024 election. She moved her family, three children, all under the age of ten, into the Naval Observatory, the sprawling official residence of the vice president in Washington. She is also expecting a fourth child.
One of her first moves was practical, not political. She asked whether the residence was childproofed. Anyone who has chased a toddler around a house built for diplomats, not diaper changes, understands the impulse.
Since settling in, Vance has been spotted around Washington running errands, grabbing coffee, and wearing casual clothes, a deliberate contrast with the carefully stage-managed appearances that define most political spouses. The Costco runs are part of that pattern: a mother of young children doing what mothers of young children do, regardless of the address on the mailbox.
On Monday, Usha Vance launched "Story Time with the Second Lady," a podcast aimed at children. Three episodes dropped at once. In the first, she read from Peter Rabbit. The second featured racing legend Danica Patrick. The third brought on Paralympian and author Brent Poppen. New episodes will arrive every few weeks.
Vance said she has used her platform as second lady to encourage Americans to read more, noting the initiative comes "at a time when the literacy rate is declining."
She framed the project in personal terms, not policy ones.
"I've always loved reading a story, from when I was a kid until today, and now as a mom, story time with my kid is a highlight of my day."
She told viewers the podcast would take them on "so many adventures" and help children "learn new things." She also teased a future appearance from Atlas, the family's dog.
The initiative is modest in scope. It does not come with a federal budget line or a new bureaucracy. It is a woman with a microphone, a children's book, and a few friends reading aloud. That simplicity is the point. At a moment when Washington seems incapable of doing anything without a task force, a press strategy, and a seven-figure communications budget, Vance picked up a copy of Peter Rabbit and hit record.
The NBC News interview also revealed something about the Vance marriage that goes beyond Costco runs and bedtime stories. Usha Vance described herself as a trusted adviser to her husband, not merely a supportive spouse standing behind a podium.
JD Vance is widely expected to run for president in 2028. Asked about those conversations, Usha Vance was direct but careful.
"There are conversations all the time. JD is very focused on the midterm elections right now, on all the things that are happening right this moment, which are obviously exceedingly important. And so if you come back in 2027 and ask me, I'll have a better sense of, you know, what he's thinking in that way. But that's not the priority in our conversations."
The answer was disciplined. She acknowledged the 2028 question without feeding it. She redirected to the midterms without sounding evasive. And she set a clear boundary, come back in 2027, that any experienced political spouse would recognize as a polite way of saying "not now."
That kind of message discipline matters. Usha Vance has shown a knack for public appearances that reveal just enough personality to be engaging without handing opponents a sound bite. In a media environment that rewards gaffes and punishes candor, that is a genuine skill.
Washington is full of people who forget where they came from the moment they get a government car and a security detail. The city's political class eats at restaurants where a salad costs $28, sends children to schools that charge more than most state universities, and treats a trip to a normal grocery store as a photo op rather than a weekly chore.
Usha Vance's insistence on keeping the Costco membership is a small thing. But small things reveal character. It signals a family that does not intend to let the trappings of office rewrite their daily habits.
The Vances have drawn attention at high-profile public events and faced hostile crowds. Through it all, Usha Vance has maintained a composure that reflects someone grounded in something more durable than poll numbers.
She left a successful legal career. She moved her young family into a historic residence that was not childproofed. She is pregnant with her fourth child. And she still finds time to read Peter Rabbit into a microphone because she thinks American kids should read more.
None of that requires a press release. It just requires showing up, at the kitchen table, at the warehouse store, and at the microphone.
In a town that runs on pretense, a Costco card is a quiet act of defiance.