Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck and his team are desperately trying to save a woman in the Canadian prairie province of Saskatchewan who has been failed by her country’s socialist health care system.

Jolene Van Alstine of Regina has for eight years suffered from a rare parathyroid disease called normocalcemic primary hyperparathyroidism, which causes nausea and vomiting and draws calcium from the bones into the blood, resulting in extreme bone pain, weakened bone density, and fractures.

‘I’ve been alone lying on the couch for eight years, sick and curled up in a ball, pushing for the day to end.’

Van Alstine has undergone three surgeries but still requires a specialized procedure to remove her overactive parathyroid gland.

The problem, according to Canadian state media, is that there is presently no surgeon in the province able to perform the operation. While there are apparently capable and available surgeons elsewhere in Canada, Van Alstine has indicated that she must first obtain a referral — and cannot secure one, as none of the endocrinologists in her region are accepting new patients.

Until this week, Van Alstine was running short on hope.

“My friends have stopped visiting me. I’m isolated. I’ve been alone lying on the couch for eight years, sick and curled up in a ball, pushing for the day to end,” she told state media.

Glenn Beck noted Wednesday on his show, “She’s riddled with pain. Yesterday, we found out that she was in the ER because she’s having all kinds of complications because of this. And she can’t take it any more.”

“This one is so grotesque,” continued Beck, “because the state would rather have her die.”

‘We expect to see more than 16,500 “medical assistance in dying” or euthanasia deaths.’

The prospect that her treatable disease might go untreated prompted Van Alstine to contemplate state-facilitated suicide, which is euphemistically referred to in Canada as Medial Assistance in Dying.

RELATED: ‘Pro-death legislators’ want euthanasia in Illinois — Canada reveals why that’s a terrible idea

Photo by ROMAIN PERROCHEAU/AFP via Getty Images

“I understand how long and how much she’s suffered, and it’s horrific, the physical suffering, but it’s also the mental anguish,” Miles Sundeen, Van Alstine’s partner, said late last month. “No hope — no hope for the future, no hope for any relief. I don’t want her to do it, but I understand where she’s at.”

George Carson, a MAID approval doctor, indicated this week that he assessed Van Alstine and provided her with his approval. Since she has apparently also received approval from a nurse practitioner, she now requires only one more approval in order to secure a spot among the tens of thousands of Canadians who will be snuffed out in the new year by their socialist health care system, which was originally founded by the eugenicist Tommy Douglas.

MAID is among the top five leading causes of death in Canada and accounted for 4.7% of all deaths in the country in 2023.

Rebecca Vachon, health program director at the Canadian think tank Cardus, recently told Blaze News that “based on current reporting from the most populous provinces, we expect to see more than 16,500 ‘medical assistance in dying’ or euthanasia deaths in 2024, which is an increase from the 15,343 deaths reported in 2023. This will likely result in MAID deaths constituting 5% of total deaths in Canada that year.”

MAID — which Canada’s Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer boasted in October 2020 would, with expanded access, “result in a net reduction in health care costs for the provincial governments” — appears to be fast becoming a relief valve for a health care system that has come under great strain in part because of an aging population but largely because of the immigration-driven population gains overseen by the Trudeau Liberals.

‘Imagine saving a woman’s life for Christmas.’

Average annual immigration from 2000 to 2015 was 617,800. Under the Trudeau Liberals, average annual immigration was 1.4 million from 2016 to 2024.

As of April 1, 2025, Canada had an estimated population of just over 41.5 million people. According to the 2021 census, over 8.3 million people — 23% of the total population — “were, or had ever been, a landed immigrant or permanent resident in Canada.” This, however, appears to be a gross undercount.

A new government report revealed that 38% of non-permanent residents — roughly another 576,000 — were potentially “missed” by the 2021 census.

According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, there were 2.41 physicians per 1,000 people. The United States, by comparison, reportedly has at least 3.6 doctors per 1,000. An estimated 5.9 million Canadians — around 14% — don’t have regular access to a primary care provider.

“This is your socialized health care, gang,” Beck said on Wednesday of Van Alstine’s case.

“This is the reality of compassionate, progressive health care. Canada has to end this insanity. And Americans must never let it spread here.”

After Van Alstine’s last-ditch plea for help to Canadian lawmakers and officials failed to immediately produce the desired results, an American got involved.

“If there is any surgeon in America who can do this, I’ll pay for this patient to come down here for treatment,” Beck wrote Tuesday on X.

RELATED: JD Vance to Canada: Stop blaming Trump for your decline

Photo by Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Beck revealed in a series of announcements first, that multiple surgeons reached out with an interest in helping; second, that his team made contact with Van Alstine and Sundeen; and third, that his team had connected with the U.S. State Department after discovering that Van Alstine lacked a passport to gain legal entry into the United States.

“I’ll fly her down. I’ll put her up. I’ll get her the doctors,” Beck said on his show. “We need to get her the surgery.”

“Imagine saving a woman’s life for Christmas,” added Beck.

“Is there anything better that we could do?”

Sundeen told Canadian state media after Beck’s team spoke with him, “For us to have it done in the States would be financially impossible otherwise.”

An Ipsos poll conducted last year for Global News found that 42% of Canadians would travel to the U.S. and personally pay for more routine health care if needed — up 10 percentage points over the previous year — and 38% would travel to the U.S. and pay out of pocket for emergency care — up 9 points over the previous year.

Sean Simpson, vice president of Ipsos Public Affairs, noted, “I think the increase is happening because of the increasing level of frustration that Canadians have in the health care system.”

“It’s not the quality of care that people are upset about; it is the timely access to care, meaning wait times in emergency rooms, wait times to see specialists, to get appointments, for screening,” continued Simpson. “As a result, we have a significant chunk of the population say if they can get that service elsewhere, such as the United States, they may consider doing so.”

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​Canada, Canadian, Glenn beck, Euthanasia, Suicide, Health care, Maid, Medical assistance in dying, Ottawa, Saskatchewan, Disease, Health, Hospital, Surgery, Politics 

Netflix just announced its next animated children’s film, “Steps,” a Cinderella inversion in which the evil stepsisters are the real heroes. Shocking, I know. The platform is also releasing “Queen of Coal,” a film about a “transgender woman” overcoming the patriarchy in his small Argentinian town.

Reports of the demise of wokeness were premature. Its adherents remain committed to pushing it across every domain of society. What’s notable is how boring it has all become. Deconstruction has been the default mode of modern culture, but it is running out of things to deconstruct. The transgression has lost its power as the taboo fades, and in that exhaustion, something new — perhaps something true — stirs.

The revolution brought destruction, but its exhaustion brings new possibilities.

Some call Friedrich Nietzsche the first postmodernist for announcing that “God is dead.” Whether he was a precursor or ground zero, the genealogy of the movement clearly flows from his work. You can argue about whether he unleashed several horrors into the world or merely acknowledged their arrival, but Nietzsche at least understood the seriousness of his claim. He understood that having the blood of God on your hands was not a clever academic parlor trick — it was monstrous.

With the creator of the universe declared dead, modern man felt free to dismantle the order that once bound him. The sacred bonds of hierarchy were shattered. Postmodernism launched its assault on the good, the beautiful, and the true. And breaking sacred bonds releases immense energy. The leftist revolution that consumed the West drank deeply from it.

The church, the community, the family, marriage, gender roles, gender itself — each time the left destroyed one of these natural structures, it seized the power trapped inside and wielded it against its enemies.

Deconstruction reaches its natural end

But deconstruction has a natural end point. Transgression requires something sacred to violate. As I have written before, you eventually reach the point where there is nothing left to transgress.

When every movie, show, novel, game, and song “subverts” the traditional Christian norm, the subversion becomes the norm. That’s why these Netflix offerings feel so lifeless: They all follow the same trajectory toward the same inversion.

Fifty years ago, critics complained that stories were predictable because the squeaky-clean hero always triumphed. Today they are predictable because the villain is always a misunderstood victim of bigotry who deserves to win. The inversion isn’t clever or subversive. It’s the boring status quo.

The death of who?

So what happens when postmodernism has inverted every hierarchy, mocked every sacred symbol, and squeezed the last drop of power out of attacking Christianity?

The philosopher Alexander Dugin offers a compelling answer. If modernity was the death of God, the end of postmodernism is the exhaustion of subversive secular culture. At that point, new possibilities appear. Instead of proclaiming that “God is dead,” people start asking, “The death of who?” The old order fades so completely that secular man forgets what he was rebelling against.

Meanwhile, the promise of becoming like gods and remaking the world in our own image begins to sour. We see the consequences of rejecting the good, the beautiful, and the true — and find them unbearable.

A postmodern moral wasteland

Postmodern man has lived his entire life in a world re-engineered from the top down by “experts.” When he cast God from His throne, man imagined he would shape the world through his own individual will. But the modern secular man discovers instead a moral wasteland. He finds that he is captive not to his own liberated self, but to darker forces once held at bay by the divine order he dismantled.

He no longer remembers what that order looked like — or why he rebelled against it. And in that moment, the opportunity to rediscover the spiritual returns.

RELATED: We’re not a republic in crisis. We’re an empire in denial.

Blaze Media Illustration

The revolution brought destruction, but its exhaustion brings new possibilities. People have forgotten the object of their rebellion, and now they look at the miserable world secular man has made. They crave something more.

Order, duty, faith, meaning. These begin to look far more promising than the ugly, pointless chaos modern man created for himself. People once again thirst for a world where the good guy wins and God reigns.

God never died — modernity did

The truth is that God never died. Christ died and rose again. Modern man tried to replace the divine with science and reason, but the Lord is the source of reason itself. He cannot be dethroned by His own creations.

As deconstruction loses its revolutionary energy and becomes stale, the desire to re-embrace sacred order returns. J.R.R. Tolkien captured this when he wrote: “Evil cannot create anything new. It can only spoil and destroy what good forces invented or created.” Eventually evil runs out of things to spoil. A barren, thirsty culture begins searching for the living water only divine truth can provide.

Ready for revival

Modern culture is bankrupt, and everyone feels it. The attempts at transgression now read as hollow conformity to a corrupted system. We are not the masters of our own world or our own truth — and thank God for that.

We do not have to live in the nihilistic abyss we created. The natural order waits just beneath the surface, ready to re-emerge in a cultural revival.

The creative future will not come from a relativistic Hollywood clinging to the corpse of deconstruction. It will come from those willing to embrace the transcendent — from those who understand that the world is held together not by our will to power, but by the truth and beauty of our Creator.

​Opinion & analysis, God, Postmodernism, Entertainment, Woke hollywood, Pop culture, Steps, Netflix, Cinderella, Queen of coal, Revolution, Nietzsche, Alexander dugin, Deconstruction, Sacred, Profane, Subversion, Television, Movies, Christianity, Religion, Nihilism 

The White House, federal regulators, and Congress are scrambling to develop a national approach to artificial intelligence. Yet almost no one is examining AI from an ethical or civil-society perspective. Policymakers frame it as an economic or national security issue. Those angles matter. But the deeper question — what it means to live in an AI-dominated world inside a constitutional republic — remains almost entirely unaddressed.

AI is already reshaping our political life, our civic discourse, and our education system. One of the clearest windows into this shift is the outsized influence of Wikipedia and Reddit. Large language models like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini consume a training diet heavy on both sites. AI systems don’t “know” anything in a human sense. They mirror patterns. And the patterns they ingest come from platforms run by anonymous editors, ideological moderators, and unaccountable gatekeepers.

No special-interest group today is fighting for Americans who will soon live in a world saturated with AI slop.

The Oversight Project examined the underbelly of this problem, beginning with Wikipedia. After noticing what looked like coordinated ideological editing campaigns, we sought to understand who was shaping the platform. What we found was a small, powerful cadre of editors with the authority to dictate what information is permitted. These editors operate anonymously — or so they believed.

We identified several of them and, more tellingly, where they were editing from. Some connections were foreign. Others showed activity that aligned with a 9-to-5 workday. It was clearly inorganic. That raised obvious questions: who pays these people, who coordinates them, and whether intelligence services are involved.

The most aggressive coordination appeared on politically sensitive topics, especially anything involving Israel or the Arab world. Automated tools tracked and reverted edits across thousands of pages to enforce a narrative. When Wikipedia realized we were mapping these networks, it panicked. To protect anonymity, the platform changed its internal rules to obstruct outside scrutiny. Then it retaliated by downgrading us to “deprecated” status — a ban in all but name. Anything sourced to us became unacceptable on the site.

We are sounding the alarm because foreign actors and domestic ideologues understand the power of controlling Wikipedia’s information flow. Our own intelligence agencies almost certainly understand it as well. In a recent interview, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger told me that intelligence services would be negligent if they were not influencing the platform.

Sanger also expressed regret about founding Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales, noting that like so many other institutions, it has been conquered by the ideological left and turned into a political instrument, a shift made even more consequential in the age of AI.

RELATED: Almost half of Gen Z wants AI to run the government. You should be terrified.

Man_Half-tube via iStock/Getty Images

This is where the danger becomes unmistakable. Most people treat Wikipedia and Reddit cautiously when browsing the internet, aware of the bias. AI does not. When you ask an AI system a question, it generates polished, authoritative-sounding answers built from those same sources — stripped of context, caveats, or transparency. What appears neutral is often laundered opinion.

This information-laundering must become part of the national conversation about AI. Some policymakers seem to understand the stakes. The Senate Commerce Committee has sent oversight letters and plans a hearing. The House Oversight Committee has signaled similar interest. Even Ed Martin, former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, has demanded information from Wikipedia.

But the truth is blunt. No special-interest group today is fighting for Americans who will soon live in a world saturated with AI slop. There is plenty of lobbying in Washington for everything except preserving an honest information ecosystem. Without intervention, public knowledge will be shaped by opaque networks of foreign actors, ideological activists, and machine-driven amplification on a massive scale.

Policymakers must recognize what is at stake and act before the architecture of public knowledge is fully captured. The future of AI — and the future of democratic self-government — depends on it.

​Opinion & analysis, Oversight project, Artificial intelligence, Large language models, Wikipedia, Reddit, Congress, Gemini, Chatgpt, Foreign policy, Foreign influence, Larry sanger, House oversight committee, Ed martin, Lobbyists, Ai slop 

You know the old saying: If it’s too good to be true, then it probably is. You know Haribo, the gummy bear brand? It turns out that the company also sells gummy bear-themed electronics, and its power banks went viral this year for delivering an absurd amount of battery life in a cheap, lightweight package. Backpackers especially loved them because they were so lightweight, and I bought one to try it for myself. But as you can guess, it turned out to be too good to be true.

The Haribo 20,000mAh power bank showed up on Amazon sometime in early 2025, made by a Hong Kong company called DC Global and licensed under the Haribo brand. It had three things going for it: It was light (286 grams), it was cheap ($22-$25), and it had a little fake gummy bear dangling off the USB-C cable.

Ultralight backpackers lost their minds. For years, the gold standard had been Nitecore batteries that weighed significantly more and cost five times as much. The Haribo undercut them both on weight and price while supposedly matching their specs. Reviews poured in praising the thing. I read several before buying mine, and they all said the same thing: This is too good to be true, but it actually works.

Then Amazon suddenly pulled them in November for unspecified safety issues. Two weeks later, CT scans revealed what the problem likely was: dangerous defects.

Structural defects increase the risk of thermal runaway, the technical term for when a battery decides to become a flamethrower.

Meanwhile, I’m still here, and my bag hasn’t burst into flames. The thing works exactly as advertised. Which doesn’t mean the concerns aren’t real, but it does mean we need to talk about what’s actually happening here, not just what the headlines say.

What the CT scans actually show

Jon Bruner at Lumafield published his findings in late November, and they’re not good. The battery cells inside the Haribo power bank show misaligned electrodes. In other words, the layers that should stack neatly are instead wavy, bulging, and shifted. In lithium-ion batteries, this kind of manufacturing sloppiness creates conditions for lithium plating and dendrite growth, which can eventually lead to internal shorts. Internal shorts mean fires.

The scans also revealed irregular geometry and poor edge alignment, suggesting weak quality control throughout the manufacturing process. These aren’t minor cosmetic issues. These are structural defects that increase the risk of thermal runaway, which is the technical term for when a battery decides to become a flamethrower.

Bruner’s post went viral: 4.4 million views on X. Amazon quietly canceled existing orders and pulled the listings, citing “potential safety or quality issues.” No official government recall, just a quiet removal.

The problem with ‘dangerous’

So here’s where it gets complicated. Is the Haribo power bank dangerous? Yes, in the sense that it has manufacturing defects that increase risk. But how dangerous? That’s harder to say.

Lithium-ion batteries fail all the time. Samsung had to recall millions of Galaxy Note 7 phones in 2016. Anker recalled over a million PowerCore 10000 units just this year. Belkin, ESR, and half a dozen other companies have pulled products for overheating risks. The CPSC recalls portable batteries practically every month. It’s not unique to Haribo, and it’s not unique to cheap batteries.

The truth is that most defective batteries never catch fire. They degrade faster, lose capacity, or just stop working. The fires are rare but catastrophic, which is why we treat them seriously. But “rare but catastrophic” doesn’t mean every unit is a ticking time bomb.

The other ugly truth is that these high-capacity lithium-ion batteries are small bombs in disguise.

RELATED: Here’s how to get the most annoying new update off of your iPhone

Photo by: Nano Calvo/VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

And eventually, they all go bad. Leave a laptop sitting for long enough, and the battery will swell. iPhones catch on fire all the time. But usually, they don’t, and the small risk is something that we as a society have decided to accept.

I have been using my Haribo battery for months. It has charged my phone maybe 50 times. It has been in my truck, in my backpack, sitting on my desk. No heat. No swelling. No weird behavior. Does that prove it is safe? No. Does it mean I’m an idiot for still using it? Maybe. But it does mean that the risk isn’t as immediate as the headlines suggest.

The real problem: Trust and transparency

The bigger issue here isn’t just the Haribo power bank. It’s that we have no way of knowing which products are actually safe and which ones are cutting corners until something goes wrong.

DC Global, the Hong Kong manufacturer behind the Haribo, won’t tell you what’s inside its batteries. Neither will most companies. You’re buying on faith — faith in brand reputation, faith in Amazon’s vetting, faith that someone, somewhere is checking these things. And that faith is often misplaced.

Amazon pulled the Haribo on November 12, citing vague “safety or quality” concerns but offering no specifics. Two weeks later, Lumafield published its CT scan investigation, revealing exactly what those concerns likely were. We still don’t know what tipped Amazon off in the first place. Customer complaints? Internal testing? We’re left guessing.

What we do know is that it took an independent company with expensive CT scanning equipment to show the public what was actually hiding inside a plastic shell with a gummy bear on it. Without Lumafield’s investigation, we would still be in the dark about why these disappeared.

How many other products have similar issues that we just don’t know about yet?

What you should actually do

If you own a Haribo power bank, should you get rid of it?

That’s up to you. I’m still using mine, but I’m watching it. I’m not leaving it charging overnight. I’m not throwing it loose in a bag with other batteries. I’m treating it like what it is: a cheap Chinese import with questionable quality control.

If you do decide to dispose of it, don’t just toss it in the trash. Lithium-ion batteries are hazardous waste and can cause fires in garbage trucks and landfills. Take it to a proper recycling center — places like Home Depot, Best Buy, and other retailers have Call2Recycle drop-off locations. Discharge it fully first, tape over the terminals with electrical tape, and put it in a plastic bag. You can find a location near you at call2recycle.org/locator.

Should you buy one? No. It has been pulled from Amazon anyway. But even if it comes back or you find one on eBay, don’t. Not because it is guaranteed to explode, but because the uncertainty isn’t worth it.

Are there perfect alternatives? No. Anker just recalled over a million units. Nitecore costs five times as much. Every lithium-ion battery carries some risk. But at least with established brands, there is a recall process. There is accountability. There is someone to contact when things go wrong.

With the Haribo, you get none of that. Just a disappeared Amazon listing and a manufacturer that has gone silent.

The Haribo was appealing because it was cheap, light, kind of funny. But cheap comes with costs you can’t always see until someone with a CT scanner shows you.

A cautionary tale

The Haribo power-bank story is a perfect example of how modern consumer products work. A company in Hong Kong slaps a candy brand on a battery, ships it through Amazon, gets praised by reviewers, goes viral on social media, and then quietly disappears when something raises red flags.

No accountability. No transparency. No consequences. Just a listing that vanishes and thousands of units still sitting in people’s bags.

Amazon knew enough to pull it but won’t say why. Lumafield’s scans showed us the structural problems, but only after the fact. There is no official recall, no manufacturer statement, no clear guidance for the people who bought these things in good faith — just a void where answers should be.

The regulatory system should not ban everything that poses a risk. But we deserve to know what we’re buying. We deserve manufacturing standards that mean something. We deserve companies that don’t hide behind licensing deals and overseas production to dodge responsibility. And we deserve regulatory agencies that can move faster than a thread on X.

​Tech 

A library board member in the reddest part of one of the reddest states in the union recently learned what “progress through cooperation” really means: Sit down, shut up, and stop objecting to porn for kids.

Teri Hubbard, a Sioux Center, Iowa, library board member, was the only vote to remove the book “Icebreaker” — which contains a six-page, graphic sex scene — from the shelves. Her reward? A gentle nudge from City Manager Scott Wynja suggesting she resign.

If these people can’t be trusted to protect children from graphic sex scenes, they can’t be trusted with anything else.

“As our motto with the city states, ‘progress through cooperation,’ I would ask that you work in a spirit of cooperation for the best interest of all,” Wynja wrote, after the board voted 8-1 to keep the book available to everyone, including minors. “If you feel you are unable to serve in that capacity … we can consider going another direction.”

So let’s take a moment to appreciate what “progress,” “cooperation,” and “best interest of all” apparently sound like in Sioux Center. They sound like a passage that opens with: “Don’t be gentle. F**k me like you hate me.”

Wholesome stuff, truly. Norman Rockwell could never.

In fact, I’m shocked Wynja doesn’t put that line on a welcome sign, right under “Population: Proudly Confused.” And why not? I’m sure the eight board members — Tara Berkenpas, Angeles Bahena, Andrew Geleynse, Logan Kaskie, Brian Van Der Vliet, Lynn Van Beek, Lisa Dykstra, and Ruth Clark — would approve. They voted to keep the book, so the public deserves to know their names.

Clark even made the motion to retain it. And here’s the plot twist: She’s a Christian schoolteacher! Apparently, the gospel is no match for the mystical powers of library director Becky Bilby, who seems to think the First Amendment collapses into dust if 13-year-olds don’t get unlimited access to graphic sex scenes.

When Hubbard asked whether the concerned parents could attend the library board meeting — as they had requested — Bilby shut it down immediately.

“Becky made it clear this was a very bad idea,” Hubbard wrote to Wynja, “and that we do not want the public at board meetings because that would lead to media at board meetings, and that would be disastrous.”

Yes, you read that correctly. Public board meetings should avoid the public. The threat of transparency is far more frightening than distributing smut to minors.

Naturally, the usual cast of local intellectuals showed up to defend the cause. Kim Van Es, former chair of the Sioux County Democrats, solemnly warned that “excluding certain authors or certain views leads to authoritarianism, as it did in Nazi Germany.” She then offered a hypothetical about a majority-Muslim town imposing beliefs on Christians — because when you’re out of arguments, you go straight to Hitler and a thought experiment.

But she’s a Democrat. This is exactly the level of analysis we have come to expect.

RELATED: Australia BANS key social media apps for kids under 16 — and platforms must enforce the rule

Photo Illustration by Algi Febri Sugita/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Then Northwestern College theology professor Jason Lief stepped up in “hold my beer” fashion.

“I’m afraid the Bible’s going to be pulled off the shelf,” he said. “I mean, if we go by kind of lewd, sexual stuff. I don’t know if you’ve read the Bible. The Judah-Tamar story …”

This is the profound insight he brought “on behalf of the Bible.”

Has Lief ever read Romans 12:9: “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good”? Doesn’t seem like it.

For those in Sioux Center and at Northwestern College who have read it, here’s a modest proposal: Demand everyone on the board except Hubbard resign immediately. Then fire Wynja, Bilby, and Lief. They all had the easiest job in America — don’t give kids access to pornography — and failed spectacularly.

If they can’t be trusted to protect children from graphic sex scenes, they can’t be trusted with anything else.

​Iowa, Library, Children’s books, Pornography, Opinion & analysis, Censorship, Icebreaker book, Book bans, Sioux center, Progress, School library books, Public library explicit books, Transparency 

New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani calls himself a “Democratic Socialist,” but he clearly doesn’t support the cooperative federalism that keeps American democracy functioning.

Just weeks after projecting a diplomatic, moderate tone during an Oval Office visit, Mamdani issued a message that should chill any American who values the rule of law. Responding to a recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in Chinatown, Mamdani in a video urged illegal aliens to “stand up” to federal agents by exploiting every legal loophole to stall enforcement.

Mamdani’s encouragement mirrors the toxic doctrine of states’ rights absolutism that fueled the nation’s march toward civil war.

“We can all stand up to ICE if you know your rights,” he declared, offering a tutorial on how to shut doors in agents’ faces, demand endless clarifications, and film operations to disrupt them.

This is a blueprint for openly defying federal authority, wrapped in the rhetoric of righteous resistance. As a self-avowed Democratic Socialist who promised to “fight back” against ICE and labeled the agency a “reckless entity,” Mamdani reveals a contempt for constitutional order that has moved from fringe to mainstream on the American left.

The peril in this rhetoric is not theoretical. While the circumstances differ, Mamdani’s encouragement mirrors the toxic doctrine of states’ rights absolutism that fueled the nation’s march toward civil war. In the 1850s, leaders of the nascent Confederacy preached nullification — the idea that states could ignore federal laws they deemed unjust, particularly those touching slavery.

South Carolina’s 1832 Ordinance of Nullification, defying federal tariffs, was a dry run for the secessionism that exploded in 1861. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens later declared in his “Cornerstone Speech” that the Confederacy rested on the principle of state sovereignty over federal authority.

Fast-forward to Mamdani’s New York, a sanctuary city where local laws are exalted above national ones and illegal aliens are coached to treat ICE as an invading force. This reckless approach can only ratchet up tensions, increasing the likelihood of violent confrontations and accelerating the erosion of our constitutional order.

This isn’t rights protection. It’s the resurrection of a philosophy that once split the nation in two. The Civil War claimed more than 600,000 lives because defiant states elevated their local priorities over the union’s supremacy. Mamdani’s sanctuary-state playbook risks igniting a similar dynamic — one resisted arrest at a time.

The hypocrisy is glaring. For nine years, Democrats and their media allies branded Donald Trump a “threat to democracy,” insisting that “no one is above the law.” Nancy Pelosi tore up his State of the Union address on camera, declaring his actions an assault on the Constitution. Chuck Schumer warned that Trump’s border enforcement would “Balkanize” America.

Yet when Mamdani — a rising progressive star — directly subverts federal immigration statutes, the same chorus falls silent. No calls for indictments. No panic-stricken editorials about authoritarianism.

Democrats declared Trump’s alleged election interference a constitutional crisis. But Mamdani’s defiance goes straight at the Supremacy Clause, which makes federal law the “supreme law of the land.” By elevating New York’s sanctuary policies and restricting cooperation with ICE to only 170 “serious crimes,” Mamdani is not safeguarding democracy. He is undermining it.

America’s founders envisioned a balance: states as laboratories of democracy but always subordinate to the union’s paramount authority. Sanctuary cities flip that design on its head. Once New York shields violators of immigration law, copycats are inevitable. What happens when California nullifies EPA emissions rules? Or Texas ignores ATF gun tracing? Or Florida decides federal taxes are optional?

RELATED: ‘Shoot ICE on sight’: Twin brothers arrested after allegedly threatening to hang DHS’ Tricia McLaughlin

Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

Localized resistance metastasizes into a patchwork of fiefdoms where the law becomes whatever the local politician decrees.

Mamdani’s vision, if replicated, promises rapid national deterioration: a swelling illegal population operating in the shadows, strained public resources, and cities like New York — home to at least a half-million illegal aliens — functioning as de facto no-go zones for federal agents.

Progressives who cheered Mamdani’s victory must reckon with the monster they helped unleash: a leader who cloaks defiance in compassion while sowing the seeds of anarchy. American federalism depends on shared laws, not selective compliance. If New York wants to lead, it should honor the union that made its success possible — not mimic the Rebels of 1861.

Otherwise we’re not securing the nation. We’re dismantling the house that stands between order and oblivion.

​Constitution, Opinion & analysis, Zohran mamdani, Supremacy clause, Illegal immigration, Mass deportations, Immigration and customs enforcement, Ice raids, Democratic socialist, Nullification, Alexander stephens, New york city, Civil war