Mamdani’s privileged path, liberals’ Supreme Court hypocrisy and other commentary

Culture critic: They’ll Come for Non-Jews, Too

At Britain’s Glastonbury music festival, punk duo Bob Vylan’s lead singer led “tens of thousands” in “shouting, ‘Death, death to the IDF,’ ” frets Ayaan Hirsi Ali at The Free Press. This wasn’t just chants against Israeli’s military but part of an “ideological insurgency against the Jewish people.” Calling it the “Free Palestine” movement is a “smokescreen”; it’s actually a “weaponized” form of “Islamism soaked in Maoism.” What makes it “uniquely dangerous is the merging” of the two: “Islam brings the fire,” Maoism “the strategy.” The goal of this “cultural movement”: “Erase not just Israel” but “the Jewish people from the moral map”; “force” Jews to “choose between their dignity and their safety.” And it doesn’t end with Israel — they’ll “come” for non-Jews, too.

Conservative: Libs’ Supreme Hypocrisy

“Democrats griped when conservative judges blocked their plans. Their views have changed now that Trump is President,” mocks The Wall Street Journal’s Allysia Finley. “Liberals are fuming over the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Trump v. CASA, which curtails universal injunctions.” Yet it “merely means a single judge can’t block a government policy nationwide,” and not long ago “liberals were raging against overreaching orders by Republican-appointed judges.” When one jurist blocked the FDA’s “approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, President Biden bristled that the injunction was ‘completely out of bounds.’” Dems also fumed when a court blocked Team Obama’s work authorizations for dreamers. Liberals want such the injunction tool “available to serve their political ends even as they complain when conservatives deploy it to advance their own.”

Academic view: Mamdani’s Privileged Path

Zohran Mamdani, the child of cosmopolitan parents, “grew up in an environment that was affluent, privileged, and high status; but also strongly disdainful of Western values,” Peter Wood explains at The Spectator. NYC Democrats’ mayoral nominee graduated from Bowdoin College in 2014 with a degree in Africana Studies, a department that “existed to promote social change and fulfill ‘a psychological need on the part of Black students.’ ” He also “co-founded Bowdoin’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.” Aside from winning a state Assembly seat in 2020, he “has no record of significant achievement in other walks of life.” Now, having ridden the life frustrations of his thirty-something peers to one step from running City Hall, Mamdani “is poised to turn New York into Bowdoin on the Hudson.”

From the right: Socialists’ Dem Takeover

A decade after “the Republican Party underwent a wrenching transformation as Donald Trump seized control and turned it into a vehicle for MAGA populism,” Democrats “have resisted popular pressure to change,” notes Seth Barron at City Journal. Yet now Bill Clinton, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer have all kissed Zohran Mamdani’s ring, “giving him some claim to be a new leader of the Democratic Party.” The party now faces its “own catastrophic molting, shedding centrists and donors,” as it morphs into something resembling “the British Labour Party, with socialism and anti-Zionism at the center of its agenda.” The rest of “America may or may not like Democrats’ aggressively left-wing remodeling.”

Military chaplain: Protect Troops’ Faith Choices

“As the Department of Defense executes its review of fitness and grooming standards,” ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, “military leadership can and should confidently retain” policies “that provide a path for service members who sincerely need religious accommodations involving uniform wear and grooming for items such as beards, turbans, and yarmulkes,” argues Doug Carver at the Washington Examiner. Happily, “there is a proven track record of religious accommodations improving military effectiveness.” Respecting religious identity “by accommodating religious dress and grooming standards means that we continue to recruit the best and strongest possible candidates to serve in our military.” “Many brave members of the Armed Forces are counting on Hegseth” to protect religious freedom “in his review.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board