Z.E. Silver

Iran doesn't seem intimidated at all and has just released another Lego video mocking the coalition.

A member of an offshoot of the Jewish Defense League — designated by the FBI as a "known violent extremist organization" — was allegedly building explosive devices to target the home of Nerdeen Kiswani in a chilling act of political violence. The defendant reportedly planned to flee to Israel following the attack. This comes amid an alarming rise in threats and violence across the country targeting Palestinian human rights advocates. I am thankful that the NYPD and FBI thwarted this plot, which could have endangered Nerdeen’s life and those of other New Yorkers. Let me be clear: We will not tolerate violent extremism in our city. No one should face violence for their political beliefs or their advocacy. I am relieved that Nerdeen is safe. Our city must meet hate with solidarity, and meet fear with an unshakable commitment to justice and to one another.

Jewish organizations need to remember this tweet and all the tweets that weren’t next time you think about inviting him to your event. His team asked to come to mine and I said no. Just say no. You can work with his office without giving him your platform.

It’s going to be very difficult for Democrats to win the Jewish vote back, even if they went on a tour rejecting the DSA and Hamas wing of the party, because we all watched them flirt heavily with this crowd when they thought it was popular. At this point, it’s not about what is said; it’s about principles and track record - specifically, did you have the spine to stand alone when all your friends said jump?

Here is Nerdeen Kiswani saying that “every single organization on that list is a legitimate target.” Here is Zohran Mamdani protesting with Within Our Lifetime next to Nerdeen Kiswani.

Today, the FBI and NYPD disrupted a plot by a member of a pro-Israel terrorist organization to assassinate Nerdeen Kiswani. This is a reprehensible act of political violence. There is no place for it in our city nor our country. I am thankful Ms. Kiswani is safe and the assailant is under arrest.

In the Late American Republic, Congress became a vestigial organ. While legislative power was still nominally vested in this body, the high degree of consensus required to pass any legislation, combined with the roughly even and increasingly hostile division of the populace into the Reds and the Blues, prevented any major reforms from being enacted. The only true power remaining in the body rested in its ability to veto the President's military expenditures as well as his choice of ministers. To keep the government from failing completely, exceptions to the usual high vote threshold were carved out for the appointment of ministers. But the veto power over military expenditures was increasingly exercised. For historical reasons, military expenditures had to be approved by Congress yearly. This was in marked contrast to the vast majority of the government's actual expenditures (cash, food, and other in-kind payments to the poor and elderly), which were funded in perpetuity and thus elevated above the annual machinations of this fickle body. The controversy around military expenditures typically centered around the border troops and internal security forces. The Blues enjoyed marked support from the Mesoamericans who had recently migrated into the empire, and thus wished to minimize the number and efficacy of these troops in order to allow more such foreigners to slip through the empire's porous borders. Meanwhile, in public, the Reds supported drastically increasing spending on these border guards. But privately, many were beholden to the large landowners who employed these new arrivals on their plantations. Because of this dynamic, by the end of the 2020s, between 1 in 10 and 1 in 5 Americans were descended from ancestors who had managed to evade these border guards (their descendants were granted full citizenship by virtue of having been born on American soil). This dynamic continued until tensions between the Blues and the Reds boiled over. The power base of the Blues consisted of recently arrived Mesoamericans (as stated previously), but also the learned class of Europeans that constituted the administrative layers of the governmental and corporate bureaucracies, in addition to the descendants of freed African slaves. All of these groups were overwhelmingly urban. In contrast, the power base of the Reds consisted of the vast European rural peasantry that still constituted the plurality of Late Republican society, in addition to the commercially-minded merchants, traders, and plantation owners who were wary of the growing tax power of the administrative class. There was also a marked sex divide: women tended to favor the Blues, while men favored the Reds. The Blues were reformists and revolutionaries, the Reds conservatives and traditionalists. The aim of the Blues was the creation of a powerful state with wide-sweeping powers to tax the commerce of rich Reds in order to fund the distribution of food, shelter, medicine, and cash payments to their core base of poor urban Mesoamericans and Africans. This state was (of course) to be administered by the learned class of Blue bureaucrats. The aim of the Reds was divided. Their core rural base wished to return to the social and political arrangements of the Middle Republic. They especially harkening back to what they saw as the era of America's greatest prosperity, the 1950s (when America had emerged as the only major power whose lands were largely unscathed from the Second European War). Meanwhile the rich Reds sought primarily to tighten their monopoly on the Late Republic's land and commerce, and resist the encroachments of the Blue-backed administrative state. Demographic momentum was on the side of the Blues. However, in the mid-2020s, the Reds swept to power across all government bodies, riding a wave of anti-Blue sentiment. Yet, due to the aforementioned Red divide and the previously stated high vote threshold required to enact major reform, the Reds only managed to stall the momentum of the Blues, not reverse it. The porous border was closed, many migrants were rounded up in the interior of the republic, but no major laws were enacted that could've consolidated the Reds' power. And the rich Reds undermined their own power base by continuing to push for more migrants to be allowed into the republic to serve as cheap labor in their enterprises. A dissatisfied and fickle populace swept the Blues back into power. The tactics the Reds had used to round up migrants in the interior of the republic had shocked the power base of the Blues, and even many of those who normally supported the Reds came out against it. This became the Blue's pretense for doing away with the high vote threshold required to enact major reform (the threshold had only ever been a technicality based on governing norms, and was easily dispensed with once those norms were no longer seen as sacred). Suddenly Congress became not only powerful, but nearly all-powerful. The number of judges in the highest court was increased. The new appointees were all Blues, they served for life, and could not be removed. This ensured perpetual Blue control of judicial functions. A Mesoamerican protectorate was elevated into a State and given representation in Congress. The capital city, highly urban and Blue, was also turned into a State and given representation. This ensured perpetual Blue control of the legislative functions. And the Blue legislative majority then enacted voting reforms that heavily favored Blue Presidential candidates. These reforms were rubber-stamped by the Blue judiciary, ensuring perpetual Blue control of the executive function as well.