THE NEWS

Reps. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) and Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) are warning that socialist ideas are gaining traction among young Americans as the country heads toward the midterm elections, pointing to the education system, the appeal of “free stuff,” and the experiences of countries including Cuba, Venezuela, and the former Yugoslavia as they argue against bringing similar policies to the United States.
The post Exclusive: Reps. Tenney, Malliotakis Warn Socialism Gaining Ground with Young Voters, Point to Mamdani Agenda appeared first on Breitbart.

President Donald Trump touted Friday an executive order he signed directing prosecutors to seek the death penalty for anyone convicted of killing a police officer.
The post Trump Touts Death Penalty for Cop Killers as Officer Deaths Hit 80-Year Low appeared first on Breitbart.

President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States will declare the Strait of Hormuz “U.S. territory” after it finishes defeating Iran, escalating his assertion of American control over the strategic waterway as Tehran vowed that the strait “has been Iranian, is Iranian, and will remain Iranian.”
The post Trump Says U.S. Will Declare Strait of Hormuz ‘U.S. Territory’ — ‘After We Finish Defeating Iran’ appeared first on Breitbart.

Screencap of Twitter/X video.
As the Gateway Pundit reported earlier today, Graham Platner – the Democrat who was running for U.S. Senate in Maine until he was credibly accused of rape and had to drop out of the race, is now set to headline a Labor Day event in Maine.
Democrat activist and former DNC vice chair David Hogg, is not happy about this news, which is ironic considering he was a big Platner supporter until about 15 minutes ago.
The Hill reported in October of 2025:
A coalition of Democratic youth-focused groups endorsed oyster farmer and military veteran Graham Platner on Tuesday in the Maine Senate race to take on Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) next year.
The groups include former DNC vice chair David Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve, Voters of Tomorrow, College Democrats of America, Gen-Z for Change and Youth Save Democracy. Platner, whose campaign has focused on the working class and makes an economic populist pitch, is among a crowded field of Democrats looking to oust the five-term GOP incumbent.
“After our historic loss in the 2024 election, conversations within the Democratic Party have rightly centered on age, the loss of young men, the working class, and the growing disillusionment of young voters,” Hogg said in a statement. “As our party charts a path forward, Graham Platner represents not the entire solution, but a vital step in the right direction.”
Here they are in happier times.

Hogg helped recruit Platner last year. pic.twitter.com/46lUgacjU5
— richard_thunderbay (@thunderbay63) August 14, 2026

Everything is different now.
In the video below, Hogg says:
“Graham should not be going on any form of comeback tour, if that’s what he’s trying to make this. He needs to go on an apology tour. If anything. He needs to apologize to the victims of his behavior and he needs to apologize to those people that he’s clearly lied to.”
Watch:

David Hogg says Platner shouldn’t be speaking at an upcoming labor event in Maine.
They went all in to make this guy a model for the new type of candidate they want to run, and are now upset that he doesn’t want to go away and be quiet. pic.twitter.com/3weT58IpwV
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) August 13, 2026

Hogg is not the only Democrat who feels this way, according to the Bangor Daily News:
Democrats expressed confusion and frustration after activists in Hancock County announced a Labor Day rally featuring former U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner with many in the party looking to leave him behind after a rape allegation ended his campaign.
Sources said the announcement caught the campaign of the new nominee, former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, by surprise. The mix-up lands at a pivotal moment for him as he races to build a national operation against five-term Republican Sen. Susan Collins in one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country.
Republicans have spent weeks trying to tie Jackson to Platner even as Jackson has opened a slim lead over Collins in early polling. Any fresh attention on the former nominee threatens to undercut that effort just as national Democrats rally behind him.
“I don’t know what they were thinking,” former Maine Democratic Party Vice Chair Peggy Schaffer said. “He’s not an elected official, not a union member, and he’s an accused rapist.”
Did Democrats really think Platner was just going to fade off into the night?

The post Former Graham Platner Supporter David Hogg Upset That Platner is Headlining a Labor Day Event in Maine (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Forget Reminding Young People About ‘Boat People’: South America’s Rejection Of Socialism Is Happening In Real Time

Andy Laperriere, Piper Sandler’s head of US policy research in Washington, wrote in a note on Thursday that explained both parties are moving left on economic policy as populist measures gain support across the political spectrum. His big-picture view is that “hard-left and socialist candidates” are damaging the Democratic brand primarily through deeply unpopular positions on open borders, defunding the police, and transgender politics. In effect, the party’s socialist class is willing to sacrifice broader electoral viability to defend nation-killing policies that most voters reject.

Policies with cross-party support include a $15 federal minimum wage, a temporary 10% cap on credit card interest rates, restrictions on Wall Street’s purchases of single-family homes, and expanded government intervention lowering drug prices.

Even Republican voters back several of those proposals by wide margins, suggesting the post-election policy threat to markets will extend beyond Democratic control of Washington.

Here’s where the numbers are striking: About 80% of Republicans support banning large institutional investors from buying single-family homes, 79% favor capping credit card rates, and 75% back a $15 minimum wage. Across all voters, 63% support higher taxes on corporations and billionaires, while 59% favor government-provided health coverage.

Laperriere pointed out that President Trump and JD Vance have helped move Republicans away from Milton Friedman-style free-market economics by framing trade, corporate power, and economic transactions in increasingly zero-sum terms.

Laperriere said Democrats face a different kind of problem, noting that the party’s socialist and progressive economic proposals are often popular, but its positions on policing, immigration, and gender remain deeply unpopular. Only 29% of voters support abolishing ICE, 24% back transgender athletes competing outside their biological sex, and 11% favor abolishing the police.

Laperriere noted that two-thirds of Democratic voters now hold a favorable view of socialism, partly because younger folks have no lived memory of Soviet bread lines, the Berlin Wall, or the Vietnamese “boat people” who fled communism.

Furthermore, as we’ve outlined, the failed socialist experiment in South America has resulted in a once-in-a-generation shift to common-sense right-wing leaders, with Trump-backed Abelardo de la Espriella taking power in Colombia just a week ago. 

The political shift has extended far beyond Colombia. In recent years, voters across Bolivia, Peru, Honduras, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, and El Salvador have either rejected socialist governments or moved decisively against far-left parties.

Laperriere argues that younger Democratic voters lack any living memory of the “boat people” and therefore have little historical context for understanding how socialist and communist systems fail. But the warning signs are not confined to the Cold War era; rather, years of left-wing governance in South America that have coincided with currency crises, persistent inflation, capital flight, institutional deterioration, and rising crime that resulted in failed states, such as Venezuela and Cuba, are more than enough to show youngsters that socialism has failed – yet again. Latest figures show that there are nearly 800,000 illegal aliens from Venezuela in the US – and we wonder why … 

More from Laperriere:

We want to make two related points in today’s piece. First, voters across the political spectrum are more open to progressive/populist economic ideas than perhaps most investors think – and both parties (if Vance is the GOP nominee) are going to increasingly offer the voters leftof-center economic policies. The hard left and socialist candidates are not swimming upstream when they call for higher taxes on the wealthy, price controls, and more government entitlements. It’s their ideas on the police, the border, and gender identity that will hurt them politically. Second, Democratic voters are fed up with their own establishment for two main reasons: a sense their leaders are feckless when it comes to challenging Trump and the fact that a significant and growing share of the Democratic voting base is hostile to Western civilization. 

We argued in our recent piece, A Policy Bear Market, that both parties increasingly evince an open hostility or at least a wariness to free markets. As we noted in that report, JD Vance is running against Milton Friedman and market fundamentalism. President Trump has tapped into a growing sense that the system is rigged – and over time has convinced more Republicans this is true. He has a zerosum view of economic transactions in which one side is, in his words, getting screwed. It’s true there has always been economic populism on the right, and as we often noted you could call it ‘populism’ because it’s popular. It’s popular to say we won’t touch your benefits, to make the other guy pay higher taxes, and to scapegoat other people for the price you have to pay for drugs, gasoline, or anything else. But as the table below shows, a lot of ideas we generally associate with the left end of the political spectrum enjoy broad or at least considerable support among Republican voters. The move to the left on economic policy isn’t limited to Democratic voters.

And of course there has been a seismic shift to the left among Democratic voters. We noted in a recent piece that two-thirds of Democratic voters have a favorable view of socialism. Part of the reason is it has been a long time since ordinary voters have seen socialism in practice. Ask a group of people who grew up in the 1970s or 1980s what ‘boat people’ means and most of them will be able to tell you it’s people who got on leaky boats (or put their children on them) to flee communism and seek a better life. It’s most associated with immigrants from Vietnam but also Cuba and other places. See President Reagan’s brief 1982 Christmas radio address for a moving story of US Navy sailors rescuing some Vietnamese in a desperate situation to get a sense of the phenomena. 

During the Cold War, socialism didn’t have much purchase with voters because images of desperate people fleeing communism, the bread lines in the Soviet Union, and the fact that the guns mounted on the Berlin Wall pointed inward were there for all to see. There were a few exceptions (like Bernie Sanders, who honeymooned in the Soviet Union), but it was obvious to most voters that socialism doesn’t work.

But the Berlin Wall fell more than 35 years ago and socialism is rarely practiced anywhere in the world today. Ask a younger group of people what ‘boat people’ means and you get blank stares. A whole generation of people have grown up having seen nothing of the kind. Instead, a generation of young people has been taught in many schools (especially elite ones) that America (and Western civilization more broadly) is racist and rotten. This view is held disproportionately among young and highly educated white voters. 

This is the coalition that is fueling the insurgent campaigns that have taken out most Democratic House incumbents who have lost their primaries this year. They hold not only progressive or even socialist economic views; they are hostile to Western civilization. They view borders and the police as the vestiges of racism. As the table above shows, these views (in contrast to some of their economic views) are wildly unpopular. Francesca Hong, who narrowly lost the Wisconsin Democratic primary for governor this week, posted a few years ago that we should cancel Thanksgiving because it is “celebrating colonialism.” We couldn’t find a poll result for cancelling Thanksgiving, but imagine defending that in a general election. 

Nonetheless, she received more than 38% of the vote this week. That may be roughly the share of the Democratic primary electorate (which is much smaller than the Democratic general electorate, but nonetheless picks the candidates) that is hostile to Western civilization. Along with frustration with their leaders for being ineffective at challenging Trump, Democratic voters have been in a mood to vote out incumbents. The chart on the following page shows that 10 incumbents have been defeated in primaries this year, the most in a non-reapportionment year (in which incumbents end up running against each other or in territory they haven’t represented before) going back to the 1950s. Most of the incumbents who have lost were Democrats who lost to younger, more left-wing candidates. The turmoil in the Democratic Party has a lot of similarities to the forces that propelled Trump to the Republican nomination in 2016. 

As a quick aside, of course there are other explanations for the shift to the left on economic issues. Corporate profits account for a larger share of GDP. Wealth is increasing faster than incomes, and that disproportionately benefits the wealthier people who hold assets. A decade of zero rates – and the return to more normal rates – has priced many younger people out of the housing market. There was the spike in inflation. There has been a steep decline in manufacturing employment during the past several decades (though not manufacturing output). And so on.

Regardless of the causes, the bottom line for investors is both parties are moving to the left on economic issues. The socialists and the progressive left have taken unpopular positions, but it’s their social agenda that is likely to sink them politically. Many of these more left-wing economic policies are popular (including among many Republicans) and may be become law down the road.

Yet the nonprofit ecosystem of billionaire-backed foundations, far-left NGOs, Democratic Socialists of America activists, and progressive corporate media has little incentive to highlight the political shift across the Americas. The political backlash undermines the core narrative that capitalism is inherently destructive and that socialism will succeed if implemented correctly next time.

The Trump administration could exploit that vulnerability by expanding its messaging around Latin America’s rightward turn. The objective would be to remind younger voters that socialism has miserably failed, and that its consequences always end in disaster: inflation, currency crises, capital flight, institutional decay, soaring violent crime and rising insecurity.

Related read: South America Just Rejected Socialism. So Why Is North America Buying It?

Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/14/2026 – 22:10

An Arizona Shake Shack employee is facing charges after allegedly robbing his own restaurant at gunpoint, locking two co-workers in a walk-in cooler and then returning to work in uniform just two days later.Keondre Simmons, 33, allegedly called out of work at the Shake Shack at Kierland Commons in Phoenix around midnight on Aug. 3 before showing up at the restaurant later that morning to commit the robbery, according to court documents reviewed by FOX 10 Phoenix.Investigators responding to the armed robbery learned that an employee opened a rear delivery door after hearing a bell and believing a scheduled delivery had arrived.CHICK-FIL-A EMPLOYEE BUSTED IN BIZARRE $80K MAC-AND-CHEESE THEFT SCHEME”[The employee] opened the door after hearing the delivery bell, believing a scheduled delivery had arrived,” court documents state.”When the door opened, the suspect pointed a firearm at [the employee], ordered him inside, and escorted him at gunpoint toward the walk-in cooler. The suspect forced [the employee] inside and locked the cooler door.”Police said the suspect then forced the on-duty manager into the office and ordered him to open the store’s safe.”[The on-duty manager] unlocked the safe and, under threat of firearm, removed approximately $2,800 in mixed denominations and placed it into a black gun case-style container the suspect carried,” police wrote. “The suspect subsequently forced [the on-duty manager] into the walk-in cooler with [the employee], and successfully locked the door.”TERRION ARNOLD, LIONS’ 2024 FIRST-ROUND PICK, CHARGED WITH KIDNAPPING AND ARMED ROBBERY IN FLORIDAInvestigators said both victims eventually managed to escape the cooler, but the suspect returned moments later, escorted them to the office and ordered them to kneel at gunpoint.”The suspect took both victims’ cellphones and the office landline, then destroyed them by throwing them into a sink filled with water. The suspect then exited the business through the rear delivery door,” police wrote.Investigators later identified Simmons as the suspect, according to the court documents.Two days after the robbery, Simmons allegedly returned to the Shake Shack wearing his work uniform, where police arrested him.SIX MEN ALLEGEDLY KIDNAPPED TWO PEOPLE AT VACATION RESORT, TORTURED THEM AT BOAT RAMP: FBISimmons later told investigators that he “discarded the clothing worn during the incident, and a firearm is inside his residence,” according to court documents.Simmons faces charges of armed robbery, aggravated assault and kidnapping.He is scheduled to appear in court Aug. 25.

Screencap of Twitter/X video.
Celebrity and alleged comedian Chelsea Handler recently proclaimed that if confirmed, Attorney General Todd Blanche will overturn Roe. v. Wade.
Handler made the comments during an appearance on the Pivot podcast with leftist commentator Kara Swisher.
First of all, Blanche has already been confirmed, but perhaps this was recorded before that happened. More important, is the fact that the Dobbs case, which went before the United States Supreme Court resulted in the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
How could Handler possibly not know this?
Mediaite reports:
Comedienne Chelsea Handler was roasted by the right after she fretted on a recent podcast about Attorney General Todd Blanche overturning Roe v Wade — despite the Supreme Court already doing so in 2022.
Handler joined Kara Swisher on her Pivot podcast in an episode released on Friday, and during a discussion about Joe Rogan and right-leaning podcasters, Handler shared her concerns about Blanche, who was recently confirmed in his role as attorney general.
Handler said about Blanche:
We’re gonna get Todd Blanche. He’s gonna be confirmed and what’s he — he’s gonna overturn Roe v Wade. We’re all sitting around, all these men who have these powerful platforms are sitting around and watching this happen to women, to communities that you could instead be supporting. You don’t have to, like, turn over a whole new leaf, it’s just about being a decent human being.

Here’s the video:

Chelsea Handler warns that if Todd Blanche is confirmed as U.S. Attorney General, “he’s gonna overturn Roe v. Wade.”
(Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022) pic.twitter.com/5Kt1RfYvsk
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) August 14, 2026

Not to be mean, but Handler might want to ask Todd Blanche to go after whoever did the work on her face.
Did you notice how Kara Swisher said nothing?

As @karaswisher just nods along… https://t.co/5DmfyevLTp
— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) August 14, 2026

These people are such utter morons if they don’t have a script handed to them to follow… https://t.co/VBj3JEABMv
— Tony Shaffer (@tspooky) August 14, 2026

She’s going to be devastated when she finds out https://t.co/bRZEYcLxzc
— ALX (@alx) August 14, 2026

Can you even imagine that there are people out there who get their political views from people like this?

The post WHO WANTS TO TELL HER? Celebrity Dimwit Chelsea Handler Warns AG Todd Blanche Will Overturn Roe v. Wade (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Lawrence Mayor Brian DePena, 61, was charged with wire fraud and money laundering over $1.5 million in COVID loans for small businesses.

Judge Drops Case Against 6 Nevada Republicans Accused Of Falsifying 2020 Election Result

Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times,

Six Nevada Republicans, who were accused of submitting a certificate falsely declaring President Donald Trump had won the state’s 2020 presidential election, will not face a trial after a judge dismissed the case against them on Aug. 13.
Nevada GOP Chair Michael McDonald walks on stage before speaking ahead of then-Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump at a campaign event in Las Vegas, Nev. on Jan. 27, 2024. John Locher/AP

Nevada Judge Mary Kay Holthus ruled in favor of the defendants, who were Nevada GOP Chair Michael McDonald, Nevada GOP Vice Chairs James DeGraffenreid and Durward Hindle, Clark County GOP Chair Jesse Law, and Douglas County GOP officials Shawn Meehan and Eileen Rice.

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford – who, as a Democrat, will challenge Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, in November’s election – brought charges of forgery and “offering a false instrument for filing or record” against the six, who all pleaded not guilty.

In December 2023, Trump suggested that the indictment was politically motivated and tied to the Biden administration.

Trump won in Nevada by a large margin in 2016, but lost the election in 2020.

The 2020 election, conducted under the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, was marred by allegations of electoral fraud.

After the Nov. 3, 2020, election, the six Republican electors gathered outside the Nevada Legislature to sign a certificate giving the state’s six electoral college votes to Trump. The ceremony was broadcast online, and the video footage was used by the prosecution as evidence in the case.

It would later emerge that Biden had won Nevada by more than 30,000 votes.

The case brought against the six Nevada defendants centered on their intent in submitting the certificate.

Prosecutors argued that the defendants intended for the certificate to be recognized as Electoral College votes by then-Vice President Mike Pence, who had to determine who had won the election on Jan. 6, 2021.

Defendants Said It Was ‘Political Theater’

But the defendants said signing the certificate online was an act of “political theater” designed to publicize their concerns about alleged electoral fraud.

They said they had no intent to deceive a government agency but were preserving their rights to challenge the official election results.

“Testimony presented to the grand jury established that the submitted certificates were not treated as Nevada’s official electoral certificates and were not accepted for filing or acted upon by the receiving agencies,” she wrote in her ruling.

“Rather, the evidence demonstrated that the documents were recognized for what they were and returned because they could not be accepted.

“The Court further finds the public and political nature of Defendants’ conduct significant in evaluating whether the evidence supports an inference of fraudulent intent.

“Defendants repeatedly explained the purpose of their actions during the televised ceremony and in contemporaneous communications.”

Holthus said she concluded that the state had “failed to present sufficient evidence establishing the essential elements of the offenses charged.”

Three similar cases in Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia have previously been tossed.

Nevada Attorney General to Appeal

Ford’s office said it plans to appeal Holthus’s ruling.

McDonald’s defense attorney Richard Wright, in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times, said Holthus’s order was “well reasoned.”

“This hasty, premature announcement of an intention to appeal [by Ford] reeks of continuing a politically motivated and legally doomed prosecution,” Wright wrote.

He accused Ford of wanting to continue a “harassment” and “waste of expensive prosecutorial resources.”

The Nevada decision came on the same day Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced charges against five noncitizens accused of voting in the 2024 general election, and one U.S. citizen accused of registering her noncitizen spouse to vote.

The charges follow a state review of 38 suspected cases of noncitizen voting or related conduct from 2009 to 2025.
Donald Trump supporters protest the Nevada vote outside Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nev., on Nov. 5, 2020. Ronda Churchill/AFP via Getty Images
Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/14/2026 – 21:45

Like many other American institutions, the polling industry in recent years has suffered serious blows to its credibility.
Now, in the wake of unexpected Democratic primary results, veteran pollster Frank Luntz has demanded a polling moratorium — sort of.
“I am calling for a total and complete shutdown of primary polling in the Midwestern United States until we can figure out what the hell is going on,” Luntz wrote early Wednesday on the social media platform X.

I am calling for a total and complete shutdown of primary polling in the Midwestern United States until we can figure out what the hell is going on. https://t.co/Wm6TwTuaUG
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) August 12, 2026

In December 2015, then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” according to NPR.
Luntz, therefore, borrowed Trump’s language to make a serious point, albeit in a somewhat exaggerated and tongue-in-cheek manner.
The veteran pollster pointed to the Midwest, of course, because his colleagues have not exactly covered themselves in glory there.
Specifically, on Tuesday, Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong suffered a narrow defeat in Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, despite recent polls showing her with leads ranging from 18 to as high as 29 points.
Likewise, according to The Wall Street Journal, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive endorsed by the likes of socialist independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, squeaked out a primary victory of less than one percentage point last week, notwithstanding polls that showed him leading by as much as 19 points.
Luntz had company among perplexed pollsters.
“Hong might come back, but wtf is up with these primary polls?” pollster Nate Silver wrote on X Tuesday.

Hong might come back, but wtf is up with these primary polls? pic.twitter.com/sPdEhG2Iyl
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) August 12, 2026

Meanwhile, CNN data guru Harry Enten suggested that perhaps this year’s socialist wave in Democratic primaries has skewed polls.
“You’ve got to look at these results and say, ‘Hey, wait a minute, maybe Johnny, maybe these polls are overestimating how much that Democratic socialism is rising within the Democratic Party,’” Enten said, according to Mediaite, “because in two key statewide races in a row, what we’ve seen is the left is being vastly overestimated; and in the case of Wisconsin, the Democratic Socialist being vastly overestimated by 20 points.”
On X, some users insinuated that polling and electoral anomalies always seem to benefit establishment Democrats.

DNC backing is a pathway to election outcomes many consider to be .. Unnatural. pic.twitter.com/vtfbrtuSc3
— Entropic Boss (@ModerateNut) August 12, 2026

Welcome to the Democratic Party fraud machine.
— JBUSES (@JBUSESX) August 12, 2026

It’s not a Midwest problem, it’s a blue state problem. I know you don’t want to recognize that though.
— Joe Mackey (@joe_mack1) August 12, 2026

Significant polling misses, though egregious, are not unprecedented.
For instance, RealClearPolling’s final aggregate of polls in 2020 showed then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden narrowly trailing Trump in Ohio. The final Quinnipiac poll, in fact, gave Biden a 4-point edge. Trump won the Buckeye State by 8.2 points.
In short, the polling industry — much like health care, education, and others — has lost many Americans’ trust.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.

The post Pollster Frank Luntz Calls for ‘Total and Complete Shutdown of Primary Polling’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.