Politics

A true masterclass in satire.

He’s said it over and over again on the campaign trail, a consistent drumbeat of a promise: If elected, Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani will freeze your rent.

“I’m running for mayor to freeze the rent for every rent-stabilized tenant,” he said in a campaign ad unveiled in late May. “Wait, you’re going to freeze my rent?” asks an actor playing a tenant. Mamdani comes back on screen: “Yes.”

But does the mayor of New York City actually have the power to stop rent increases in one of the most expensive cities in the world?

Not directly. But they definitely have the power to appoint people who could make it happen — and Mamdani wouldn’t be the first New York City mayor to oversee a rent freeze. Here’s what you need to know about the process:

People gather before marching in memory of Charlie Kirk in Peoria, Ariz., on Sept. 13, 2025.  Photo: Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images

It would be easy to believe America is tipping into an era of rampant political bloodshed.

In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, voices from across the spectrum sounded alarms that the shooting was just the latest flashpoint in a rising tide of violence.

Progressive commentator Hasan Piker, shaken after watching video of Kirk’s murder, warned his audience of “people looking for decentralized forms of violence.” A Reuters analysis was even more blunt, declaring Kirk’s killing “a watershed moment in a surge of U.S. political violence.” Even Utah’s Republican governor mused whether this marked “the beginning of a darker chapter in our history.”

These aren’t the first calls for open strife. When Donald Trump himself was shot last year, some right-wing figures rushed to declare it the opening salvo of a new civil war.

Are we on the brink of another 1960s-style season of political assassinations and unrest?

A funny thing is happening beneath the apocalyptic headlines: Rather than surging, key indicators of political violence and extremism in the U.S. have actually been trending downward in recent months. New findings from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, or ACLED, show that protest and extremist activity has dropped significantly nationwide.

In August, the number of public demonstrations in the U.S. plummeted by nearly 40 percent compared to the month before. A much-hyped progressive day of action called “Rage Against the Regime” fizzled with only modest turnouts, contributing to the sharp decline in protests.

And, perhaps most tellingly, organized extremist incidents — rallies, hate marches, militant group meet-ups — fell off a cliff. ACLED reports that extremist group activity dropped by over one-third in August, hitting its lowest level in more than five years. It’s part of a steady decline in far-right mobilization that dates back to 2023.

In other words, according to ACLED, by the time commentators were warning that Kirk’s murder heralded a new wave of violence, extremist activism on the ground was at a multiyear low.

Five-Year Low

The contrast between the panic-stricken narrative and ACLED’s hard numbers is striking. Yes, politically motivated attacks still occur and can be horrific. Yet the broader trend in extremist mobilization suggests less organized violence, not more.

ACLED’s data-driven analysis notes multiple factors behind the slump. There are possibly more clandestine tactics by groups. Leadership failures could account for a lack of organization. And a big one: There is a loss of “urgency” among extremist followers because they see their views reflected in mainstream politics.

It turns out that when your side is already winning, you don’t need to storm the barricades.

Even Princeton’s Bridging Divides Initiative, which closely monitors political violence across the country, acknowledges that incidents remained relatively low in 2024. Their analysis, grounded in real-time event tracking, confirms that, while we’ve seen marked upticks in threats recently, the overall trend in political violence has declined since the peak years around 2020.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, or SPLC, observed the same phenomenon in its latest Year in Hate and Extremism report. The SPLC counted 1,371 active hate and extremist groups in 2024, down from 1,430 in 2023. The group concluded the slight drop “does not signify declining influence” at all. Rather, it’s because many on the far right “feel their beliefs have become normalized in government and mainstream society,” according to the report.

In plain English: Why organize a fringe militia when your agenda is being adopted on Capitol Hill and made into policy by the White House?

This dynamic helps explain why the immediate wake of Kirk’s assassination hasn’t unleashed the spate of tit-for-tat violence some feared.

Why organize a fringe militia when your agenda is being adopted on Capitol Hill?

The far-right ecosystem, which in years past might have exploded with vengeful rallies or vigilante reprisals, has been relatively muted in terms of on-the-ground action. To be sure, there was plenty of online fury and calls for crackdowns. Offline, organized extremist events, though, remain in a lull.

The shock and outrage did not translate into a Proud Boys revival or a new wave of militias taking to the streets.

Energy on the left, meanwhile, is already flagging. Its protest movements have been quieter than expected during Trump’s second term.

Progressives pulled off several “days of action” earlier in the year, but by late summer the protests were losing steam. The energy that fueled huge anti-Trump demonstrations in 2024 ebbed, reflected in the 40 percent drop in protest activity.

At least for now, both sides of the spectrum are mobilizing less in the streets — albeit for very different reasons.

An Advancing Agenda

All of this leads to an ironic possibility: Political violence may be declining largely because the would-be perpetrators feel they don’t need it anymore.

The American far right, once relegated to the fringe, now sees its formerly “extremist” ideas being enacted through mainstream institutions.

As the SPLC report noted, positions that might have once only been pushed via hate rallies — anti-LGBTQ+ hostility, attacks on “woke” education, dismantling diversity programs — have seeped into legislation and school board policies.

In 2024, militant groups harassed diversity and inclusion efforts, and soon after, Republican lawmakers, egged on by Trump, moved to ban discussion of race and gender in classrooms.

After Kirk’s killing, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller went on Kirk’s podcast to vow revenge on left-wing groups. Vice President JD Vance, for his part, announced his intent to attack two of the top liberal foundations and a historic magazine of the left.

Guns and intimidation aren’t necessary.

The decline in violent extremism is welcome, but the apparent reasons behind it should give us pause. What does it say about the state of the country when extremists stand down not because they’ve been defeated, but because they think they’ve won? It suggests that the battleground has shifted. The fights that once took place at the margins — in backwoods compounds or tense street protests — are now unfolding in courtrooms, statehouses, and school boards.

Liberals know it too: The relative quiet on the left could well be a sign of resignation, as if even the opposition recognizes that the hard right’s agenda has the upper hand.

America may be “a very, very dangerous spot” as one expert told Reuters, but not for the reasons cable news would have us believe. The danger isn’t an impending civil war in the streets; it’s a creeping normalization of hard-line political goals that no longer require mob violence to be realized.

The assassins and agitators are stepping back, confident that the system now carries their torch for them.

The danger isn’t an impending civil war in the streets; it’s a creeping normalization of hard-line political goals.

Still, Kirk’s assassination cannot be brushed aside. For all the evidence that political violence has ebbed, singular events can act as catalysts, jolting extremists out of dormancy. This killing could become a ramp toward a new future of violence.

If history is any guide, however, it won’t be in the form of clashes. The capacity, and appetite, for that kind of confrontation seems to have dwindled.

Today’s great danger likely isn’t open war in the streets, but the quiet march of an extremist agenda already advancing through institutions. That may bring with it an even greater violence.

In the days following the murder of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, his friends and allies have called for revenge against all kinds of groups, including trans people and the so-called radical left, even as the motivations of the alleged shooter, who was reportedly raised in a Republican household, remain far from clear. Now, some of those same rightwing figures are homing in on another target: colleges and universities, which they blame for radicalizing both the alleged shooter and, more broadly, people they accuse of celebrating Kirk’s death.

“These universities should not receive a single American tax dollar.”

Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old Utah man who is accused of shooting Kirk, reportedly attended just one semester of college at Utah State University in 2021. He later enrolled at a technical college, where he was a third-year electrical apprentice. Those facts make it clear that traditional higher education factually could not have played a meaningful role in what led him to allegedly shoot Kirk. But that logic hasn’t mattered to figures like MAGA activist and Trump confidante Laura Loomer, who tweeted on Sunday that it was “time to defund American universities. You don’t need to go to college. Charlie Kirk didn’t go to college.” (At 18, Kirk dropped out of an Illinois community college after one semester to dedicate his time to activism, with funding from Turning Point co-founder Bill Montgomery; after high school, Kirk unsuccessfully applied to West Point.)

In her tweet, Loomer tagged Harmeet Dhillon, an Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice, who responded, “I’m on it. And all the other haters at our American funded schools.”

Dhillon is one of the Trump-appointed officials who has been deeply involved in the push to try to expose, embarrass, or fire anyone speaking ill of Kirk or seeming to celebrate his murder. She praised actions taken against faculty members at Clemson University, where one person has been fired and two instructors suspended after making what the university called “inappropriate” remarks about Kirk following his death.

Dhillon called Clemson’s actions “a good start,” adding, “Federal funding for higher education is a privilege, NOT a right. The government is not obligated to fund vile garbage with our tax dollars.”

This general line of argument—that federal funding should be pulled from universities whose employees say things Trump and his allies don’t like—has animated the administration’s long-standing attacks on higher education. But since Kirk’s death, it’s been widely repeated in a new context. Take Representative Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who issued a press release on Monday calling on the Department of Education to cut off “every dime of federal funding to any elementary, secondary, or post-secondary school who refuses to remove or discipline staff who glorify or justify political violence.”

“This is why these universities should not receive a single American tax dollar,” tweeted Lara Logan, a former CBS journalist turned conspiracy theorist, while reposting a report about a University of Michigan professor accused of celebrating Kirk’s death. “They preach hatred of this country, which is Marxist doctrine. It is helping to destroy this country from within—wake up.”

Other figures, like Federalist editor-in-chief Molly Hemingway, called for what could credibly be described as affirmative action to make schools more conservative. “All public universities should be required to have minimum 50% of their staff be conservative professors by spring 2026,” she tweeted. “In each department.” When a journalist on the site asked if she supported affirmative action, Hemingway responded, “No, I want to remove the left-wing oppression that has destroyed American universities.”

Beyond calls to defund colleges and universities, other figures have said that such institutions need more surveillance and campus activism from conservative students. The group includes longtime sting video maker James O’Keefe, who said his company O’Keefe Media Group “will be distributing hidden cameras nationwide to those who are witness to abuse in their school and who are willing to expose it.” O’Keefe added that he would host a livestream this week “where we will put campus corruption on blast and issuing a clear call to action: it’s time to rip the rot out of America’s education system.”

American higher education has long been depicted on the right as a hotbed of Marxism. Yet Kirk’s organization Turning Point USA itself could not have been created without institutes of higher learning; it was explicitly created to promote conservative views in high school, college, and university campuses—and it has thrived on many. Kirk himself said earlier this year that he thought his messaging was working, tweeting that he felt college students were becoming more conservative, even if the institutions themselves remained more liberal.

The right’s renewed pledge to attack universities is just one piece of what the White House has said will be a government-wide push to dismantle “radical” organizations following Kirk’s murder, which Trump has repeatedly blamed on the “radical left.” In practice, this appears to mean threatening left-leaning organizations with defunding and investigation. Speaking on Monday as a guest host of Kirk’s podcast, Vice President JD Vance also threatened to “go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence.”

It’s now critical to understand the larger goal sits behind the destruction of the federal government’s support of science and the scientific method across the United States.

What’s going on? Part of it is sheer grift. In U.S. research, vast amounts of money have traditionally been awarded by those who know the field and given to those best positioned to conduct investigations in areas that are current priorities and who have teams capable of doing the work. But any quasi-neutral process appears to be anathema to the Trump administration, which seems to prefer it when all money and access flow directly from the White House.

It’s true that even before Trump’s arrival on the scene, the U.S. has had a long history of anti-expert know-nothing movements. There’s always been a niche for them because many people without a good education—and frankly, many who have one—remain vulnerable to swindlers. In addition, the powerful have long tended to take advantage of the powerless. But as much as that, the government has often served moneyed interests more than it has its constituents.

One of the reasons for so much rage against conventional Democratic leaders from Bill Clinton forward is the sense that they, too, have played a part in this kind of self-dealing politics. Have the Republicans done it more openly, with more contempt for their base? Yes. But the sense of betrayal from traditional Democratic voters is palpable.

Now Trump is making that tendency among elected officials much, much worse. And he’s tapping into ongoing resentments for his own benefit as he goes along. The anti-vaccine movement, the fluoride paranoia, the Jade Helm panic that Obama was planning to put everyday people in concentration camps—all of these predate Trump’s time in office.

But he aims to capitalize on those kinds of fears and resentments by redirecting them. He tries to convince voters that they’re being hoodwinked, that everything is a hoax. And rather than have them realize the degree to which he’s robbing them blind, he’s turning their rage against anyone who is part of the existing government system.

I literally had no idea about his activism. He's quite the fascinating character when off-screen.

Cromwell certainly looks and sounds the part of an old lefty who might have a Che Guevara poster in the attic and consider Bernie Sanders to be too soft on capitalism. When the Guardian visits his home – a log cabin in the farming town of Warwick, upstate New York, where he lives with his third wife, the actor Anna Stuart – he rises from a chair at the hearth with a warm greeting and outstretched hand (it is a big hand that would have required a generous dollop of glue).

Cromwell stands at 6ft 7in tall like a great weathered oak. “Probably 10 years ago, I heard somebody smart say we’re already a fascist state,” he says. “We have turnkey fascism. The key is in the lock. All they have to do is the one thing to turn it and open Pandora’s box. Out will come every exception, every loophole that the Congress has written so assiduously into their legislation.”

Cromwell has seen this movie before. His father John Cromwell, a renowned Hollywood director and actor, was blacklisted during the McCarthy era of anti-communist witch-hunts merely for making comments at a party praising aspects of the Russian theatre system for nurturing young talent and contrasting it with the “used up” culture of Hollywood.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul became the top official in the state to endorse Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani for New York City for mayor on Sunday, marking a shift for a strident defender of Israel as mainstream Democrats grapple with surging public support for Mamdani’s criticism of the Israeli regime over its ongoing genocide in Gaza.

In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Hochul wrote that she and Mamdani shared priorities like making the city more affordable and ensuring strong leadership of the New York Police Department. She also took an oblique shot at Mamdani’s two main competitors: current New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who President Donald Trump’s team has reportedly pushed to drop out of the race, and Andrew Cuomo, who would have a better shot at winning if Adams did so. The former governor lost the Democratic primary by just under 13 percentage pointsto Mamdani in June.

“In light of the abhorrent and destructive policies coming out of Washington every day, I needed to know the next mayor will not be someone who would surrender one inch to President Trump,” Hochul wrote. Trump, apparently displeased with the endorsement, called it “a rather shocking development.”

Hochul’s support for Mamdani followed nearly three months of hand-wringing from the de facto leader of New York’s Democratic Party, who has expressed skepticism of Mamdani’s policy proposals that would require tax hikes on the wealthy and more public spending. Now, Hochul’s endorsement sets her apart from the top two Democrats in Congress — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — who have both declined to weigh in on the most heated race in New York City.

As a result, New York’s Democratic establishment remains split over whether they should rally behind Mamdani, Cuomo, or — seemingly – no one.

Nearly three months after the primary, only four members of the Democratic congressional delegation representing New York City districts have endorsed Mamdani: Reps. Nydia Velázquez, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jerry Nadler, and Adriano Espaillat. Only Velázquez and Ocasio-Cortez backed Mamdani before his primary win.

“We have a Democratic nominee,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters earlier this month. “Are we a party that rallies behind their nominee, or not?”

Many members of New York City’s financial elite, set on edge by Mamdani’s promises of a freeze on stabilized rents and othermeasures to lower the city’s cost of living, have been plotting to keep him from securing the mayor’s seat in November.

Democratic Reps. George Latimer, Ritchie Torres, Gregory Meeks, and Tom Suozzi have endorsed Cuomo. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Reps. Dan Goldman, Grace Meng, and Yvette Clarke have not made endorsements in the race.

Urging her fellow New York Democrats to back Mamdani, Ocasio-Cortez has pointed to her support of President Joe Biden during the 2024 presidential election even though he was not her preferred candidate.

“We use our primaries to settle our differences and once we have a nominee, we rally behind that nominee. I am very concerned by the example that is being set by anybody in our party,” Ocasio-Cortez said earlier this month. “If an individual doesn’t want to support the party’s nominee now, it complicates their ability to ask voters to support any nominee later.”

Outside the city, Rep. Pat Ryan, a Democrat who represents a swing district in the Hudson Valley, endorsed Mamdani last week. Democratic Rep. Laura Gillen, a moderate from Long Island, was the first Democrat to publicly denounce Mamdani’s campaign after his win but has not endorsed a candidate in the race.

Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Jeffries pointed to a statement he made to reporters last week: “I certainly will have more to say about the New York City mayor’s race in short order.”

Offices for Schumer, Gillibrand, Goldman, Meng, and Clarke did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Nadler, who announced this month he will retire at the end of the current congressional session, addressed his change of heart toward Mamdani during an interview with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer on September 5. During the primary, Nadler said he would not back Mamdani because of his criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and what Nadler called Mamdani’s lack of experience. Nadler told Lehrer his decision to endorse Mamdani after he won the primary was a no-brainer.

“First, he was the Democratic nominee,” Nadler said. “Second, what are the alternatives? You have the mayor, who’s a crook, and you had Andrew Cuomo, whom I had said should resign from the governorship because he was a repeat sexual predator.”

Goldman, whose Manhattan district Mamdani won in June, endorsed state Sen. Zellnor Myrie before the primary and has said he has spoken with Mamdani but won’t endorse him without “concrete steps” to assuage fears from Jewish New Yorkers about hate crimes in the city. It’s not clear what further steps Goldman wants to see — Mamdani has repeatedly said he takes concerns about antisemitism seriously and that he would take steps to protect all of his constituents — Jewish and otherwise.

Clarke endorsed New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams before the primary. Meng, who did not make an endorsement prior to the primary, congratulated Mamdani on his win in June and a campaign that she said “built coalitions & mobilized underrepresented New Yorkers!” But she stopped short of endorsing Mamdani.

Gustavo Gordillo, co-chair of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America, which supports Mamdani’s campaign, condemned the party establishment for neglecting to rally behind Mamdani.

“Establishment Democrats have no plan to support the workers targeted by Trump’s agenda,” Gordillo said. “If establishment Democrats refuse to get behind Zohran, they’re not just rejecting the vision of an affordable NYC — they’re rejecting the 500,000 voters and counting who are behind Zohran.”

https://archive.is/oNm9B

Top Trump administration officials used Charlie Kirk’s podcast on Monday to threaten a governmental crackdown on left-wing organizations in the name of the slain conservative activist. Administration officials who appeared on the podcast, guest-hosted by Vice President JD Vance, made broad and unsubstantiated claims about their political opponents and alleged that liberal groups were responsible for Mr. Kirk’s death — even though investigators have said they believe that the suspect acted alone.

Kirk perfected this grift. As a recent detailed analysis of one of Kirk’s debates demonstrates, when a student showed up prepared with nuanced, well-researched arguments, Kirk immediately tried pivoting to culture war talking points and deflection tactics. When debaters tried to use Kirk’s own standards against him, he shifted subjects entirely. The goal was never understanding or persuasion—it was generating content for social media distribution.

archive link

In 2021, an audience member asked Kirk at what point conservatives had the green light to use guns on their political opponents, and while Kirk took care to at first “denounce” the question, he went into a longer answer that suggested he didn’t really disagree that much with its premise. Kirk’s sole objection to the idea, he explained, was that it was strategically foolish because it would create a pretext for a Democratic crackdown on the Right. He went on to suggest that the line for when it would be okay to take up arms and hurt people would be “when we exhaust every single one of our state[’s] ability to push back against what’s happening” — in other words, if his movement didn’t succeed through the normal political process. Two years later, he reiterated this, warning listeners that “you have a government that hates you, you have a traitor as the president,” so they should “buy weapons” and carry them around all the time in public in case they have to fight back.

A top Republican lawmaker in the House of Representatives is backtracking on a proposal that would have given Secretary of State Marco Rubio the power to revoke American citizens’ passports if he decides they have provided “material support” to terrorists.

The proposal from Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., sparked a backlash from civil society groups after he introduced it as part of a larger State Department reorganization bill last week.

On Sunday, after The Intercept’s coverage sparked widespread opposition, Mast introduced a manager’s amendment that would strip the provision from the bill he introduced days before. The manager’s amendment itself must still be approved at a Wednesday hearing to apply to the larger House bill, which itself faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

Civil liberties supporters celebrated Monday, after warning last week that the bill endangered the right to travel freely. One advocate had warned that it essentially granted the secretary of state “thought police” power.

“It’s a really great thing that this provision got struck” said Kia Hamadanchy, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. “It was hugely problematic, created a huge risk of abuse, of politicized enforcement.”

A Foreign Affairs Committee spokesperson said in a statement to The Intercept that the language “shouldn’t be controversial.”

“This provision is just one small part of a larger comprehensive, State Department Authorization Act that the House Foreign Affairs Committee introduced last week,” the spokesperson said. Confirming the move to withdraw the provision, the spokesperson said that “the committee will not allow this distraction to overshadow the bipartisan effort to restore command and control of the State Department to the Secretary.”

Under Mast’s original proposal, the secretary of state would have been empowered to refuse or revoke passports of people they deem to have materially supported terrorists.

Activists were especially concerned the provision could be used against critics of Israel, given Rubio’s aggressive move to revoke green cards and student visas from noncitizens who have publicly demonstrated support for Palestinians.

Mast’s amendment would also remove a provision that would allow the secretary of state to revoke passports for people who have been convicted or charged of material support of designated terror groups.

Update: September 15, 2025, 4:27 p.m. ETThis story has been updated to include a statement from a House Foreign Affairs Committee spokesperson that was received after publication.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk presages a new, deadly stage in the disintegration of a fractious and highly polarized United States. While toxic rhetoric and threats are lobbed across cultural divides like hand grenades, sometimes spilling over into actual violence — including the murder of Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband and the two assassination attempts against Donald Trump — Kirk’s killing is a harbinger of full-scale social disintegration.

His murder has given the movement he represented — grounded in Christian nationalism — a martyr. Martyrs are the lifeblood of violent movements. Any flinching over the use of violence, any talk of compassion or understanding, any effort to mediate or discuss, is a betrayal of the martyr and the cause the martyr died defending.

Martyrs sacralize violence. They are used to turn the moral order upside down. Depravity becomes morality. Atrocities become heroism. Crime becomes justice. Hate becomes virtue. Greed and nepotism become civic virtues. Murder becomes good. War is the final aesthetic. This is what is coming.

The author of this piece, Chris Hedges, was recently interviewed on Democracy Now!.