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Friday, November 21, 2025

Trump to Meet With New York Mayor-elect Mamdani Today

This will be an interesting one to watch—if the cameras are on in the room. New York Times: Mr. Trump announced the meeting on social media on Wednesday night, saying that Mr. Mamdani had asked for it and labeling him incorrectly as the “Communist Mayor of New York City.” Mr. Mamdani is a democratic socialist…. “I want to just speak plainly to the president about what it means to actually stand up for New Yorkers and the way in which New Yorkers are struggling to afford this city,” Mr. Mamdani said…. Mr. Trump has repeatedly attacked Mr. Mamdani and said that his victory would be disastrous for New York, the president’s hometown…. But in private, Mr. Trump has described Mr. Mamdani as a talented politician, calling him slick and a good talker, according to two people who discussed the president’s comments on condition of anonymity (New York Times). White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was pretty blunt: “It speaks volumes that tomorrow we have a communist coming to the White House, because that’s who the Democrat Party elected as the mayor of the largest city in the country,” Leavitt told reporters on Thursday (Fox News).

Mamdani-inspired Mob Blocks New York Synagogue With Protestor Shouting Repeately: ‘We need to make them scared’

It’s an ominous portent of what’s to come after Mamdani is sworn in on January 1. New York Post: A hateful mob of anti-Israel protesters descended on a prominent New York City synagogue Wednesday night, chanting “Globalize the intifada” and sinisterly urging the “resistance” to “take another settler out.” “It is our duty to make them think twice before holding these events,” one protest leader told the crowd. “We need to make them scared. We need to make them scared. We need to make them scared,” the agitator repeated emphatically (New York Post). Brooke Goldstein: You do not surround a synagogue if your issue is foreign policy. You do that when your goal is to terrorize Jews. This is bloodthirsty, hate-driven fanaticism, and it has absolutely no place here in the United States. The police must get this under control, and our leaders must call it out for what it is. This is anti-Jewish persecution. Get these people out of the country and designate the Muslim Brotherhood now (Goldstein). How has Mamdani responded? John Sexton: I just checked his feed and he hasn’t said a word. He did tweet about the Trans Day of Remembrance though, so he’s still talking about bigotry, just selectively. But nothing about the mob chanting “globalize the intifada” outside a 135 year old synagogue. That’s not on his radar, I guess. I can’t imagine why (Hot Air).

Florida Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick Indicted in $5 Million Fraud Scheme

Axios reports: Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) was indicted by a federal grand jury in Florida for allegedly stealing $5 million in FEMA overpayments to her company and funneling some of the money into her congressional campaign. Cherfilus-McCormick faces up to 53 years in prison if convicted, Justice Department prosecutors said in a press release announcing the indictment…. The indictment alleges that Cherfilus-McCormick and her brother received a $5 million overpayment in 2021 as part of a FEMA-funded COVID vaccination staffing contract to their family’s health care company, according to prosecutors from the Southern District of Florida (Axios). Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL): I have decided to skip censure and move straight to expulsion. Defrauding the federal government and disaster victims of $5 million is an automatic disqualifier from serving in elected office. Cherfilus-McCormick needs to be swiftly removed from the House before she can inflict any more harm on Congress, her district, and the State of Florida. I’ll be filing the resolution today. If she refuses to resign and save Congress the embarrassment of having to expel her, I will bring this resolution to the floor for a vote (Steube).

Biden DOJ Seized Phone Records of Judiciary Chairman Jordan

Yet another exhibit in the disturbing overreach of the Biden administration. Fox News: The Department of Justice subpoenaed the personal phone records of House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan in 2022, seeking the Ohio Republican’s phone data covering a more than two-year period. The subpoena, obtained by Fox News Digital, shows a federal prosecutor who later worked on special counsel Jack Smith’s Jan. 6 investigation ordered Verizon to hand over the phone data, also known as toll records, reaching back to Jan. 1, 2020. The request appears to be the most expansive yet of the publicly known subpoenas targeting senators and current and former House members during Arctic Frost, the investigation that led to Smith bringing election-related charges against President Donald Trump (Fox News). Jordan: They spied on President Trump. They spied on Senators. Now, we just learned, they spied on me. If they can do it to us, they can do it to you (Jordan).

US Ambassador to Japan Assures New Prime Minister on China Threat: ‘We have her back’

The tensions have escalated after Japan’s new prime minister said an attack on Taiwan from China could theoretically draw a response from Tokyo. Financial Times: The US ambassador to Japan has weighed into the escalating row between Tokyo and Beijing, offering “unshakeable” support to Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and condemning what he said was a “classic case of Chinese economic coercion”. George Glass, who has served as the US envoy in Tokyo since April, told reporters on Thursday that President Donald Trump fully supported America’s closest ally in the region, as both the rhetoric and threats from Beijing intensified. “I just want to say directly from the president and from myself and from the embassy, for the prime minister, we have her back,” said Glass, echoing comments he posted on social media this week as the row worsened in both tone and on-the-ground impact. The dispute — for which diplomats in Tokyo said there was currently “no obvious off-ramp” — erupted from comments concerning Taiwan made by Takaichi earlier this month. During parliamentary questions on November 7, the prime minister said that, in theory, a Chinese attack on Taiwan could draw a military response from Tokyo. The remarks were the most explicit discussion of such a situation by a sitting Japanese prime minister in parliament (Financial Times).

Fraud in Minneapolis Somali Community Fueling Islamist Terror Group

There have been numerous examples of fraudulent schemes from the Somali community in Minneapolis. Here: Laundered monies have been making their way back to Somalia and then to the Islamist terror group Al-Shabaab. Christopher Rufo: Federal counterterrorism sources confirm that millions of dollars in stolen funds have been sent back to Somalia, where they ultimately landed in the hands of the terror group Al-Shabaab. As one confidential source put it: “The largest funder of Al-Shabaab is the Minnesota taxpayer.” … In 2023 alone, the Somali diaspora sent back $1.7 billion—more than the Somali government’s budget for that year. Our investigation reveals, for the first time, that some of this money has been directed to an even more troubling destination: the al-Qaida-linked Islamic terror group Al-Shabaab. According to multiple law-enforcement sources, Minnesota’s Somali community has sent untold millions through a network of “hawalas,” informal clan-based money-traders, that have wound up in the coffers of Al-Shabaab (City Journal).

Ilhan Omar, Somali Fraud and Abuse of Refugee Status

David Strom explains: the Somalis are here as “refugees,” with the claim that they are unsafe in their home country. Except that the travel between Somalia and here is robust, with Somalis often going home for visits, giving the lie to the claim that their lives are at risk in their home country. Ilhan Omar herself was a refugee, but travels back to Somalia to pledge allegiance to the country on a regular basis, and often tells her Somali constituents that her primary interest is Somalia, not America. She does so, of course, in Somali. Of course, we are not supposed to talk about any of this, and when we do, we are smeared as racist. Perhaps, we are to believe that corruption and clan politics is just another sign of diversity, and diversity is our strength (Hot Air).

Assessing Sale of F-35s to Saudi Arabia

The agreement by the U.S. with the Saudi Kingdom has provoked a number of responses. Some say it puts Israel’s regional dominance at risk. Others express concern over the degree to which we are strengthening the Saudi Kingdom. Israeli journalist Amit Segal frames well how he sees the broader geo-strategic plan: “You don’t understand the Americans at all,” says a senior Middle Eastern official. “You look at Saudi planes as a potential future threat. The United States, by contrast, counts all the American planes it has sold to countries in the region as a shared air force of a foreign power: the Middle Eastern defense alliance.” It’s a long historical process, but the United States is leaving the Middle East. America now produces more oil than any other country in the world and is no longer beholden to local embargoes. The two great American traumas of this century are tied to the Middle East: 9/11 dragged the US into the region, and the Iraq War dragged it out. The Middle East is a region to avoid, President Obama said when justifying breaking his promise to protect the Syrian people from Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons. In that sense, Donald Trump is a surprising successor. He simply proposes a withdrawal that is more elegant, smarter, and less naïve. Instead of appeasing Iran, he places an iron wall against it. Indeed, that regional alliance protected Israel from two wild Iranian missile onslaughts in 2024 (Israel Hayom).

A Response to Resurgent Antisemitism

Seth Leibsohn for Salem: With all the resurgent antisemitism breathing its odious stench on us—in precincts both left and right—we do well to remember how un-American and anti-American it all is. George Washington—America’s indispensable man, first in the hearts of his countrymen as children used to be taught—put this to rest long ago. In his letter to a Jewish synagogue in Rhode Island, he wrote that this is a country that “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” It was the first time a civil political leader ever addressed the Jews as his equals. What we’re seeing and hearing today—in all of this politically-based Jew hatred and insinuation—is neither right nor left. It’s just un-American. We should view it as George Washington did. That is: A disgrace, a desecration and an ugly stain on the nation we love (Townhall).

10.

80 Years Ago This Week: Nuremberg Trials Commence

The trial of 20 top Nazi leaders began on November 20, 1945: It was to be “the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world,” U.S. Chief Prosecutor Robert H. Jackson said as the proceedings began. “The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored,” he said (Washington Post). The trials themselves provide a window into truth and the human condition. Andrew Walker: Abstract academic debates about relativism sound impressive in seminar rooms. They sound absurd amid the piles of shoes at Auschwitz…. Nuremberg stands as a modern vindication of the moral law of God—the natural law. It demonstrated that evil cannot be excused by legality, that positive law cannot be the final authority, and that justice demands reference to a universal moral order grounded in human dignity. If positivism were true—if the state is the highest lawgiver—then no atrocity could ever be condemned. Murder, enslavement, rape, extermination—if commanded by the state—would be moral by definition. That conclusion is repugnant, and the world knew it, which is why the Nuremberg trials had to take place, even amid the protracted debates over the court’s legal authority. Thus, the crimes of the Nazis were not merely offenses against other nations; they were violations of the very grain of the universe—the moral order stitched into creation (World).

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