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** Daily Newsletter: NOVEMBER 10, 2025
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** In today’s newsletter:
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JOHN KETCHAM: How Zohran Mamdani Won New York ([link removed])

SONNIE EKWOWUSI: Christian Persecution in Nigeria ([link removed])

R. R. RENO: The Mediocrity of AI ([link removed])

THE EDITORS: Heritage and the Right ([link removed])

Welcome to the First Things daily newsletter, your guide to the ideas and events shaping our shared moral, cultural, and religious life. Each article we publish continues the conversations First Things has been leading for thirty-five years.

Stay with me as we look at Zohran Mamdani, the plight of Nigerian Christians, and the limited abilities of artificial intelligence. Then, listen to the editors discuss Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and how the drama at the Heritage Foundation speaks of a younger generation in search of authenticity.
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** How Zohran Mamdani Won New York ([link removed])
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** JOHN KETCHAM
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The new mayor of New York has a complicated identity. How Muslim is he? How American is he? While those questions have fascinated much of the online right, John Ketcham focuses instead on Mamdani’s appeal to the base. The professional class, six-figure earners, academic radicals: The women and men who elected Mamdani actively reject the idea of “New York [as] an engine of actualization . . . the possibility to become the best version of oneself and be rewarded for it.” They’re blinded by their own entitlement.

For further reading: Christopher Caldwell wrote a whole book arguing that we’ve long lived in an age of entitlement. Read Rusty’s review, “The Antidiscrimination Regime ([link removed]) ,” in the March 2020 issue. Also, there’s something in Mamdani’s oeuvre that reminds me of Roger Scruton’s neologism: oikophobia. For more on the often-prophetic philosopher (and First Things contributor), read Carl Trueman’s April 2023 review of a posthumous collection of Scruton’s writings, “Scruton’s Castles ([link removed]) .”
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** Christian Persecution in Nigeria ([link removed])
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** SONNIE EKWOWUSI
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Violence against Christians in Nigeria has long simmered in the public consciousness. People know it’s happening and know it’s bad, but are uncertain of the scale and what can be done to end the killing. Sonnie Ekwowusi provides a much needed explainer to recent events and the moral stakes involved. He writes that the “Nigerian government has largely remained silent. . . . Authorities frequently describe these massacres as ‘armer-herder conflicts,’ but human rights observers disagree. The pattern of targeting—churches, Christian villages, and pastors—points to organized religious persecution.”

For further reading: First Things has provided coverage on the circumstances of vulnerable Christian populations for decades. From the March 2016 issue, Thomas Howard’s “The Dangers of Hindu Nationalism ([link removed]) ” is an important contribution to the topic.
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** The Mediocrity of AI ([link removed])
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** R. R. RENO
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From the November issue: “Change is not always progress.” Rusty greets AI not with a fire alarm or a ticker-tape parade, but with a yawn. The technology is limited. It can be easily manipulated. It will introduce to the internet vast oceans of slop. AI may transform the world but, it won’t necessarily be explosive; it will be mediocre.

For further reading: Is ChatGPT infested with demons? I think so. Thomas P. Harmon has a more nuanced warning in “Demons and ChatGPT ([link removed]) .” He cautions that demons exploit our already-present desires. AI chatbots, in the ways they mirror user input, do the same.
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** Heritage and the Right ([link removed])
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** THE EDITORS
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Listen: Julia Yost, Dan Hitchens, and Rusty Reno discuss anti-Semitism, generational conflict, and Heritage, the conservative think tank whose president recently touched off a controversy by releasing a video statement in support of Tucker Carlson.

It’s a fascinating, wide-ranging conversation. What stood out to me was Rusty’s point. In his youth, there was a firm line between television advertisements and programming. Today, young people are being sold to 24/7. Nothing is authentic. The only way for a commentator to establish trust and authenticity with a jaded viewership is to say something that puts him outside of the omnipresent commercial order. Nick Fuentes’s strategy is to prove himself authentic through transgression.

Upcoming Events
* Tomorrow: The Future of Higher Education, a discussion with Mark Bauerlein and Mark Regnerus | Irving, TX. Register here ([link removed]) .
* January 9, 2026: Second Annual Neuhaus Lecture at the New College of Florida | Sarasota, FL. Details coming soon.

Until next time.


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JACOB AKEY
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Associate Editor
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