RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/06/30/trump-clings-to-solid-ratings-for-leadership-despite-dems-ongoing-negative-views-ii-tipp-poll/

President Donald Trump’s eventful presidency continues to leave most Democrats and independents unimpressed, but he gets top grades from Republicans, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows. Can he build on recent policy successes to improve his standing with non-GOP voters, or will Trump’s strong personality, offhand remarks, and bold leadership style alienate them?

Each month, I&I/TIPP asks voters to gauge presidential favorability, leadership, and performance. In the just-finished national online poll of 1,421 adults taken from June 25-27, Trump’s grades from voters remain little changed.

Asked to gauge his leadership, 44% of voters gave the second-term president “favorable” ratings, while 45% gave him “unfavorable” ratings. The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.7 percentage points.

But major voting blocs, based on party affiliation, region, and gender, remain sharply split over how they view Trump’s leadership.

Democrats, for instance, give Trump a 77% unfavorable rating, with just 16% calling his tenure so far favorable. Independents are only marginally less harsh: 55% unfavorable, 30% favorable.

Republicans remain happy, if not ecstatic, with Trump’s leadership, giving him 80% favorable to only 12% unfavorable.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/26/zohran-mamdanis-progressive-intifada-will-be-a-disaster-for-new-york/

Whoever is elected New York City mayor in November, Zohran Mamdani’s impressive win this week in the Democratic mayoral primary marks a breaking point in the party, the city and US society as a whole.

New York, where my family settled 120 years ago, is special. It is America’s capital of intellect, art and, most importantly, capitalism. New York’s financial elite have largely tolerated the ‘progressive’ excesses of the Democrats in recent years, but the prospect of a self-described ‘socialist’ running the city may be a bridge too far. We can expect them to renounce the Democrats altogether or join the mass migration south.

Yet while the financial elites might be reeling from the result, Mamdani’s win was no working-class uprising or revolt of the lower orders. His main rival, former New York state governor Andrew Cuomo, did best in heavily black and ethnic white enclaves, many of them quasi-suburban, as well as some elite precincts in Manhattan. Mamdani won most convincingly in the far-from-impoverished hipster belts of Brooklyn, Queens, the Upper East Side and Lower Manhattan. These precincts now dominate a Democratic Party once driven by white ethnics and working-class African Americans.

The key element here is the younger, mostly white, economically marginalised new proletariat – sometimes called the ‘precariat’. They are most lured by Mamdani’s propositions like frozen rents, free buses and childcare – all funded by higher taxes on the wealthy. Their angst reflects the realities of today’s New York, which works for the wealthy elites but suffers very high levels of inequality. Job growth has been weak and concentrated in low-wage sectors like hospitality and tourism. While incomes for most have stagnated, housing costs have not – rising to record levels this year.

The New York these young people have inherited is no longer the epicentre of economic opportunity. It flourishes largely as a hub for trustafarians, top-tier professionals, globe-trotting elites and cultural creators. While New York’s overall population has declined, the number of ultra-wealthy residents has continued to grow. There’s nothing like the job prospects that earlier generations of New Yorkers had – neither in manufacturing nor in business or financial services.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/06/27/blue-state-socialism-you-wanted-it-now-you-get-it-good-and-hard/

Faced with the failure of their policies, far-left and outright socialist Democrats in blue-state America are doubling down. Whether it’s New York, California or midwestern leftist havens Minnesota and Illinois, the socialist model will bring only more failure and misery to its citizens. And, because they voted for it, they’ll get what they deserve.

We’re not gloating here. The Democratic Party was once a serious political group that based its popularity on appealing to centrist blue-collar working class Americans and moderate urban liberals. The extreme left was largely, though not entirely, marginalized.

Today, that’s sadly no longer true. Take California.

Los Angeles is run by Mayor Karen Bass, an unabashed follower of deceased Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, while California governor and presidential-wannabe Gavin Newsom and the California state legislature are both far left.

They’ve distinguished themselves by their inept response to last winter’s wildfires and this summer’s riots, which required federal intervention in the form of National Guard troops.

Under its leftist leadership, California is losing hundreds of thousands of its most productive citizens, not to mention hundreds of its most innovative firms. All are fed up with the state’s insane DEI culture, heavy regulations, and super-high taxes.

But the real topic du jour is in New York City, The Democratic mayoral primary just delivered a radical democratic socialist, the global-intifada supporting Zohran Mamdani as the desired candidate. It wasn’t as if New Yorkers didn’t have a choice: Mamdani handily defeated the seasoned, centrist alternative, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in what Politico called a “stunning primary.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/06/25/at-least-5-reasons-why-trump-should-reject-a-nobel-peace-prize/

For a brief window this week, President Donald Trump was out of the running for a Nobel Peace Prize, after a Ukrainian lawmaker withdrew his nomination on Monday for not ending the war there, and before Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., nominated him on Tuesday for the ceasefire between Israel and Iran.

You can imagine the guffaws and hair-pulling from the Trump-is-Hitler crowd at the thought that anyone would see him as a suitable candidate for this prize. But as much as we’d love to watch their heads explode as he walked up to accept the award, we think Trump should take himself out of the running.

Sure, he probably did more for world peace when he bombed Iran’s nuclear sites than any president since Ronald Reagan did when he left Michael Gorbachev high and dry at Reykjavík and sparked the end of the Soviet Union.

But why in the world would Trump want to join the ranks of other Nobel Peace Prize winners?

This is an award that was given to Yasser Arafat, a man once described as the “Father of Modern Terrorism” and who, two years after taking home the prize money, declared that: “We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion … We Palestinians will take over everything.”

It was given to Jimmy Carter, now the second-worst president in U.S. history after Joe Biden, whose weakness led to the Iranian revolution, a year-long hostage crisis, and Soviet Union advances around the world.

And does Trump really want to share an honor bestowed on Al Gore, whose only real claim to fame is getting fabulously rich by spreading lies and misinformation about “global warming”?

He’d also be joining the likes of Rigoberta Menchú, whose autobiography was later attacked as fraudulent and who the Center for the Study of Popular Culture described as a “Marxist terrorist now exposed as an intellectual hoax.”

https://www.commentary.org/articles/matthew-continetti/lawless-left-riots-liberal-followers/

You’ve seen the image: A shirtless young man, wearing a mask and gloves, waves a Mexican flag while standing on the roof of a defaced car. He’s ringed by flames from a nearby burning vehicle. The smoke obscures a traffic light hanging in the distance. It’s a desolate, anarchic landscape—more fitting for science fiction than a spring evening in America’s second-largest city.

This was Los Angeles in early June, when street protests over federal immigration raids turned violent. For four days, masked men battled local police. They hurled stones and shot fireworks. They obstructed highways, torched taxis, and looted shops. LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said his officers were “overwhelmed.”

Liberals shrugged.

Mayor Karen Bass, Governor Gavin Newsom, Representative Maxine Waters, and the unemployed Kamala Harris were all preoccupied with someone 3,000 miles away: President Trump. They downplayed the chaos while blaming him for it. They demanded Trump relinquish control of the California National Guard and remove the 700 Marines he deployed to Los Angeles. They called for ICE to leave town.

Above all, they preened. They issued statements oozing with moral superiority. “Demonstrations in defense of our immigrant neighbors have been overwhelmingly peaceful,” wrote Kamala Harris with characteristic vagueness. “The Founding Fathers didn’t live and die to see this kind of moment,” Newsom said in a televised speech.

He’s right, but not in the way he thinks. The Founders didn’t live and die to see anarchists flout the law in defense of illegal immigrants. They wrote a Constitution establishing federal supremacy over the states. They quashed rebellion and were, shall we say, tough on crime. The Founders would have had no problem recognizing anarchy and declaring it impermissible. Why does Newsom?

https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/tyrannical-regimes-and-the-westerners-who-love-them/

Iranian actress and activist Nazanin Boniadi has issued a heartfelt plea to the Western protest class that I fear will fall on deaf ears. Just as the Palestinians who have made it out of Gaza and can speak freely tried, in vain, to convince the anti-Zionist demonstrators to not lionize Hamas, so are Iranian democracy activists learning about the Western fascination and identification with tyrannical regimes.

The Iranian regime “unleashes its fury, first and foremost, on its own people,” Boniadi told PBS’s Newshour. The regime has shut down Internet access across Iran and has been arresting dissidents to ensure that those who want freedom cannot organize against the government while it is weak. Therefore “we have to separate the Islamic Republic from Iran because most of the Iranian people believe [the regime] is an occupying force.”

She closed with a plea: “I urge Westerners, please, if you want to stand for Iran and the Iranian people and their sovereignty, please don’t conflate that with the Islamic Republic’s sovereignty, they are two different things. Do not raise the Islamic Republic’s flag in your rallies. That is a slap in the face to every dissident, every Iranian who has risked everything for freedom.”

Yet of course this weekend there were those very Islamic Republic of Iran flags on the streets of New York City. The flags of Hamas and Hezbollah—which are also, by the way, Islamic Republic of Iran flags, technically—were replaced by the logo of a tyrannical regime in Tehran. In London, where Boniadi grew up, Islamic Republic flags intermingled with large signs displaying the face of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the words “choose the right side of history.”

https://pjmedia.com/sarah-anderson/2025/06/23/operation-dragon-eye-60-missing-kids-found-in-florida-during-largest-rescue-in-us-history-n4941103

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and the United States Marshal for the Central District of Florida William Berger announced at a press conference on Monday that a two-week operation known as Operation Dragon Eye — one of, if not the largest child rescue mission in United States history — was a success. 

The two-week operation saved the lives of at least 60 children and saw eight adults arrested on charges including human trafficking, child endangerment, drug possession, and drug trafficking. Operation Dragon Eye involved over 20 agencies and 100 people. 

Most of the children, who were ages nine to seventeen years old, were found in the Tampa Bay area. Their stories are heartbreaking. 

Berger said the children have been “debriefed and provided with physical and psychological care,” but some of them required additional assistance: maternal care. According to Natasha Nascimento of Redefining Refuge, many of the young girls were pregnant. She says the operation didn’t just recover children; it recovered generations. 

https://www.city-journal.org/article/los-angeles-riots-california-governor-gavin-newsom-wine

As riots engulfed Los Angeles and mobs vandalized public buildings, incinerated vehicles, and assaulted law enforcement officers, California governor Gavin Newsom was enjoying a swanky wine-tasting party in Napa Valley.

The wine-tasting was held on the afternoon of June 7, 2025, at the Odette Estate Winery, which Newsom co-founded in 2011. Dubbed “Vineyard Vibes,” the event was a fundraiser for the PlumpJack Foundation, founded by Newsom’s sister, and featured “contemporary yet sophisticated” wines, live jazz music, and locally made pizza and smash burgers. “It’s the perfect kick-off to summer fun,” read promotional language. “The fete will take place on the Winery Crushpad, where we’ll gather for music, food, conversation, and delicious wine!”

A source who photographed Newsom at the event expressed shock that the governor was in attendance, given that riots had broken out in Los Angeles the day before. “I couldn’t believe it,” the source said. “He was just walking around like this was an everyday occurrence.” Newsom was at the wine party for at least 90 minutes, according to the source, who said that when the governor finally left, he appeared to retreat to the inner rooms of his winery.

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2025/06/20/breaking-court-lets-trump-keep-natl-guard-in-la-n4940982

An appeals court has once more ruled that the president of the United States does have the authority to keep the National Guard deployed in Los Angeles to put down the dangerous, and even deadly, anti-ICE riots.

A federal appeals court issued the decision in favor of Donald Trump late Thursday, blocking District Judge Charles Breyer’s order to put California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has largely sided with the anti-immigration crazies, back in control of the National Guard in LA. Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney shared screenshots of the decision and noted that it was unanimous, with a Joe Biden appointee joining in with two Trump appointees on the decision.

The decision stated, “We also conclude that the other stay factors — irreparable harm to Defendants, injury to Plaintiffs, and the public interest — weigh in Defendants’ favor. Thus, we grant the motion for a stay pending appeal.”

The judicial panel found Newsom’s claims of the National Guard escalating the situation and interfering with law enforcement were “too speculative.” The lack of proof for the complaints against Trump led the judges to rule in Trump’s favor.