Zohran Mamdani was inaugurated mayor of New York City on January 1st—and he’s already moving aggressively to put a hard left stamp on his new administration.

Just twenty-five years after Islamic terrorists brought down the World Trade Center, Mamdani appointed a former lawyer for an al Qaeda operative as the city’s top attorney. He overturned an executive order prohibiting boycotts of Israeli businesses and organizations. And he scrapped another executive order adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, as well as one designed to keep houses of worship from being overrun by protestors.

New York City is home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel. During his campaign, Mamdani pledged to protect the city’s Jewish community. But now he’s sending very different and disturbing signals.

Jewish Americans are wary of Mayor Mamdani. They’re right to be.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1981, Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick said the election of Ronald Reagan meant the United States was taking the “kick me” sign off its back.  So, too, is that true with President Donald Trump.  The deposing and arrest of the Fidel Castro of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, is the latest example. Because of Trump, Maduro is not running drugs, nor a gauntlet of death for innocents, nor a criminal cartel… but he may be running a criminal defense team in New York.

The liberation of Venezuela will come with collateral positives:

• Iran’s mullahs know clearly that they are not dealing with a tentative American president who will continue to allow their death march targeting our country;
• we’ll see a dramatic drop in cocaine and criminality exported to the U.S.;
• Russia, China, and Hezbollah will be on their heels in our region, not their toes;
• Cuba will be strangled of vast economic support

And, finally: protestors will know they finally have America on their side.

Americans are safer. Freedom is expanding. Peace through strength is back.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 1981, Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick said the election of Ronald Reagan meant the United States was taking the “kick me” sign off its back.  So, too, is that true with President Donald Trump.  The deposing and arrest of the Fidel Castro of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, is the latest example. Because of Trump, Maduro is not running drugs, nor a gauntlet of death for innocents, nor a criminal cartel… but he may be running a criminal defense team in New York.

The liberation of Venezuela will come with collateral positives:

• Iran’s mullahs know clearly that they are not dealing with a tentative American president who will continue to allow their death march targeting our country;
• we’ll see a dramatic drop in cocaine and criminality exported to the U.S.;
• Russia, China, and Hezbollah will be on their heels in our region, not their toes;
• Cuba will be strangled of vast economic support

And, finally: protestors will know they finally have America on their side.

Americans are safer. Freedom is expanding. Peace through strength is back.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In a stunning act of moral obtuseness, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors recently created a reparations fund for the city’s black community.

Just for starters, racial reparations are illegal — barred by California’s Proposition 209 and the U.S. Constitution. Both forbid governmental discrimination based on race. 

But reparations are also morally wrong. It’s unjust to take from people who never owned slaves in order to give to those who were never enslaved — especially in a state that never had slavery.

Supporters claim reparations will heal historic wounds. They actually deepen them. Once government divides Americans by race and stokes grievance politics, there’s no limiting principle. You can’t legitimize racial sorting for some groups and not expect it to fuel resentment in others. 

The answer isn’t race-baiting policies like reparations. We’re all Americans.

It’s time our leaders acted like it.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Too often, it may seem that our jury system doesn’t hold powerful people to account. This time, it did.

A federal jury has convicted Milawaukee judge Hannah Dugan of a felony: obstructing federal agents who were attempting to arrest an illegal immigrant defendant in her courtroom. 

Dugan’s case drew national attention last spring. ICE agents were waiting outside her courtroom to arrest an illegal immigrant, who was also a defendant in her courtroom on battery charges. Dugan sent the agents to speak with the chief judge, then ushered the defendant out through a discreet back door.

Judge Dugan was free to disagree with federal immigrant law or its enforcement. She wasn’t free to ignore it because it didn’t conform to her policy preferences.

Judges don’t get to decide which laws apply to them. When they break the law, consequences follow.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As we move toward the end of the year—and look at January and 2026 in front us, it’s it is worth remembering that January is named after the Roman figure “Janus,” whose head looked forward and backward.

Looking backward, it was a year with some awful moments. We lost one of the youngest and brightest of our age in Charlie Kirk as well as one of the oldest and brightest of the age that educated all of us, Norman Podhoretz.  The conservative constellation weeps over 2025.  But as we look forward, we have much to celebrate and build on: Namely: Our 250th anniversary as a country which still very much is, as Lincoln said, “the last best hope of earth.”  And, second, a presidency that has sidelined transnational progressivism in favor of Western superiority.  Finally, the hope we all have for the uplift of our fellow citizens and the destruction of the enemies of civilization in a world torn between civilizational abuse and civilizational liberation.

From the Salem Media family to all of you: Happy New Year!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As we move toward the end of the year—and look at January and 2026 in front us, it’s it is worth remembering that January is named after the Roman figure “Janus,” whose head looked forward and backward.

Looking backward, it was a year with some awful moments. We lost one of the youngest and brightest of our age in Charlie Kirk as well as one of the oldest and brightest of the age that educated all of us, Norman Podhoretz.  The conservative constellation weeps over 2025.  But as we look forward, we have much to celebrate and build on: Namely: Our 250th anniversary as a country which still very much is, as Lincoln said, “the last best hope of earth.”  And, second, a presidency that has sidelined transnational progressivism in favor of Western superiority.  Finally, the hope we all have for the uplift of our fellow citizens and the destruction of the enemies of civilization in a world torn between civilizational abuse and civilizational liberation.

From the Salem Media family to all of you: Happy New Year!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

America has many allies in what promises to be a decades-long Cold War 2.0 between the U.S. and its allies and the alliance of tyrants, led by China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Putin, Iran’s Khamenei and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. This quartet of dictators has some fourth-string powers allied with it in our hemisphere, like Venezuela’s Maduro and Cuba’s Miguel Díaz-Canel.

President Donald Trump is in the process of securing the Western Hemisphere against this alliance. He stated what I’d call the “Trump Doctrine.” In all caps: "YOU WILL BE HIT HARDER THAN YOU HAVE EVER BEEN HIT BEFORE IF YOU, IN ANY WAY, ATTACK OR THREATEN THE U.S.A."

In less than 25 words, President Trump put the whole globe on notice. The key word he included in his post: "THREATEN."

As 2025 comes to a close, the GOP is united on national defense. That’s a gift for everyone, whether they know it or not.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Global antisemitism has surged since the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023. Now a civil-rights watchdog is exposing just how pervasive the problem has become on American college campuses.

StopAntisemitism’s 2025 campus report card examined conditions at ninety U.S. universities — and the findings are alarming.

Thirty-nine percent of Jewish students say they’ve felt forced to hide their identity. Sixty-five percent feel unwelcome in parts of their own campuses. And fifty-eight percent report that their universities failed to protect them.

Young people — members of a peaceful religious minority — are being targeted and marginalized at institutions that claim to prize inclusion. Even worse, administrators charged with maintaining safe, civilized learning environments are too often looking the other way.

Less than a century ago, the world vowed: “Never again.” Those words ring hollow when hatred is tolerated — or excused — in plain sight.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most of you know about Handel’s Messiah, perhaps the most popular and enduring work of George Frideric Handel. But few remember Charles Jennens, who wrote and conceived of the idea of the Oratorio, The Messiah.

The Oratorio is still performed thousands of times worldwide at Christmas.

Jennens wrote The Libretto. That's the text of Messiah, tying together the Bible central story, God's salvation of His people through the work of the Messiah. He used the very words of the Bible for his text. His purpose was to remind the audience of the truth and power of the story of salvation, and thus his attention on the Birth of Christ.

Handel put the words to majestic music in just 21 days. For unto us, a child is born. That is the prophet's declaration. That's God's great gift to us at Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.