A woman in the United Kingdom is in trouble with law enforcement yet again for daring to engage in silent prayers.

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce learned in March that she had been under investigation by Midlands Police in the U.K. since January. She has now been criminally charged for praying in her head.

‘You’ve said you’re engaging in prayer, which is the offense.’

More specifically, Vaughan-Spruce was allegedly charged because she “stood outside” an abortion facility in Birmingham, England, to conduct her silent prayers and, therefore, tried to “influence” visitors, which is prohibited.

According to the Alliance Defending Freedom, the charge against Vaughan-Spruce is under Section 9 of the U.K.’s Public Order Act 2023, which outlines “Safe Access Zones” around abortion clinics in England and Wales.

Discretion under the act is left to each individual officer, but all decisions must be made “on a case-by-case basis and must be balanced and proportionate to the circumstances,” the document says.

The law states it is an offense to recklessly or intentionally “do an act” that:

Influences “any person’s decision to access, provide, or facilitate the provision of abortion services at an abortion clinic”;Obstructs or impedes any person “accessing, providing, or facilitating the provision of abortion services at an abortion clinic”; orCauses “harassment, alarm, or distress to any person in connection with a decision to access, provide, or facilitate the provision of abortion services at an abortion clinic.”

Violators are subject to a fine.

RELATED: ‘Your arrest is necessary’: Woman arrested for silent prayer, ‘anti-social behavior’ outside abortion clinic

Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images

In 2022, Vaughan-Spruce made headlines for admitting to possibly engaging in silent prayer near an abortion clinic. She was asked by an officer to voluntarily go to a police station, and, upon declining, was informed that she was under arrest for failing to comply and would be charged with “anti-social behavior.”

According to a city of Birmingham website, anti-social behavior “includes behavior which has caused or is likely to cause you harassment, alarm, or distress.”

Vaughan-Spruce was later charged with “protesting and engaging in an act that is intimidating to service users” but was reportedly acquitted because the facility was actually closed at the time she was there.

She was arrested again in 2023 for praying in an excluded zone, this time on the corner of a road.

“You’ve said you’re engaging in prayer, which is the offense,” an officer told her.

Vaughan-Spruce claimed at the time that she assumed her acquittal meant she could now pray outside of the facility without causing offense.

RELATED: Real-life dystopia: Police arrest woman AGAIN after she silently prayed near abortion facility in UK

Similar charges were recently brought upon a retired pastor in Northern Ireland for preaching inside one of the protected zones.

According to the New York Post, the 76-year-old faces two charges and has pleaded not guilty to seeking to “influence” people accessing abortion services and for not immediately vacating the area when asked by police.

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​Christianity, Abortion, United kingdom, England, Northern ireland, Safe zones, Abortion clinic, Thought crime, Prayer, Faith 

Federal agents charged another Chinese national with allegedly trying to smuggle biological materials into the United States.

On Friday morning, FBI Director Kash Patel announced that the agency had filed charges against Youhuang Xiang, a postdoctoral researcher who is in the country on a J-1 visa.

‘To all universities and their compliance departments: Please be vigilant of this trend.’

These visas are issued to exchange visitors approved to participate in certain programs, such as studying or conducting research, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. J-1 visas are provided to professors, research assistants, and students.

Xiang allegedly smuggled Escherichia coli, commonly referred to as E. coli, into the country. He is also accused of making false statements about the smuggling scheme.

Patel explained that E. coli, when not properly controlled, can “inflict devastating disease to U.S. crops and cause significant financial loss to the U.S. economy.”

Xiang was listed on Indiana University’s website as a postdoctoral fellow. His “research interests” included “recognition specificity in host-pathogen interactions and engineering crop resistance to pathogen,” according to the website. As of Friday afternoon, the university removed Xiang from its Department of Biology webpage.

RELATED: University of Michigan’s bio-smuggling scandal explodes: More Chinese scholars busted in alleged plot

Kash Patel. Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

“This is yet another example of a researcher from China — given the privilege to work at a U.S. university — who then allegedly chose to take part in a scheme to circumvent U.S. laws and receive biological materials hidden in a package originating from China,” Patel wrote in a post on social media.

The FBI director noted that the agency and Customs and Border Protection partners “are committed to enforcing U.S. laws put in place to protect against this global threat to our economy and food supply.”

RELATED: University of Michigan now under fire after Chinese scholars allegedly smuggle bio-weapon

Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images

“The FBI will not tolerate any attempt to exploit our nation’s institutions for illegal activity — as we have seen in this case and the three Chinese nationals charged in Michigan in November for allegedly smuggling biological materials into the U.S. on several occasions,” Patel continued. “The FBI and our partners are committed to defending the homeland and stopping any illegal smuggling into our country.”

Patel was referring to several Chinese scholars from the University of Michigan who were accused earlier this year of being tied to a smuggling conspiracy. Some of the biological materials the individuals allegedly brought into the U.S. were described as potential agricultural terrorism weapons.

“To all universities and their compliance departments: Please be vigilant of this trend. Ensure your researchers know that there is a correct and legal way to obtain a license to import/export approved biological materials, and it must be followed without exception. Our continued partnerships will help to better secure our nation and ensure all parties are held accountable,” Patel wrote.

Indiana University did not respond to a request for comment.

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​News, Kash patel, Fbi, Federal bureau of investigation, Chinese nationals, Chinese scholars, Michigan, University of michigan, Indiana university, Iu, J-1 visa, J-1 visas, J-1, Visas, China, Smuggling, Bio-material smuggling, Politics 

As the Trump administration continues to clean up the administrative state, the Department of Justice just landed a potentially significant victory. In a major reversal, the Department of Justice has discarded a decades-old interpretation of a law that essentially allowed illegal aliens to collect welfare benefits.

In a 20-page slip opinion bearing Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser’s signature, the Department of Justice reversed its reading of “federal means-tested public benefit” in light of last year’s overturn of Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council Inc.

‘The existence of such reliance on federal welfare contradicts the textually expressed congressional policy that aliens must not rely on taxpayer support or burden the public benefits system.’

The previous interpretation, stemming from the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 under Democratic President Bill Clinton, extended welfare to illegal aliens by splitting hairs between mandatory and discretionary spending. The DOJ previously directed the Departments of Health and Human Services and Housing and Urban Development to interpret this phrase to allow the extension of benefits to illegal aliens under discretionary benefit programs.

RELATED: US Virgin Islands’ gun restrictions violate the Second Amendment, DOJ claims

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The new opinion rules that the PRWORA includes benefits under both mandatory and discretionary spending programs and withdraws the preceding 1997 opinion, effectively closing this loophole that allowed illegal aliens to collect welfare benefits.

The opinion notes that the PRWORA had many other parts that would seem to resist the old interpretation, particularly since the relevant section of the law was enacted “to address abuse of the welfare system by aliens in the United States.”

The opinion says that despite this clearly stated purpose, the old interpretation led to unrestricted discretionary funds flowing to illegal aliens over the ensuing decades from “many federal agencies.”

“Today, by some estimates, 59% of illegal alien-headed households receive government welfare,” the opinion reads, citing the director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies.

“While some aliens may have come to rely on means-tested public benefits funded through discretionary spending programs, the existence of such reliance on federal welfare contradicts the textually expressed congressional policy that aliens must not rely on taxpayer support or burden the public benefits system,” the opinion continued.

“American taxpayers have interests, too, in ensuring that their tax contributions do not encourage illegal entry into the United States. Americans are entitled to rely on duly enacted legislation crafted by their elected representatives and designed to protect the public fisc from abuse.”

The Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.

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​Politics, Chevron, Center for immigration studies, Illegal aliens, Mandatory spending, Discretionary spending, Hud, Hhs, Doj, Department of justice, T. elliot gaiser, Prwora 

The Republican-held Senate approved a third batch of nominees Thursday night, surpassing the confirmation pace from previous presidencies.

Under the leadership of Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), the Senate confirmed 97 more nominees in a 53-43 vote. In 2025 alone, the Senate confirmed 417 of President Donald Trump’s nominees, leaving just 15 nominees on the docket.

‘It’s a pettiness that leaves desks sitting empty.’

This confirmation rate greatly outpaced former President Joe Biden, who had 365 nominees greenlit through the Senate in 2021.

This unprecedented confirmation pace came after Thune deployed the nuclear option in September to address the ballooning number of nominees awaiting their confirmations over the summer.

RELATED: John Thune to use Democrats’ own ‘nuclear option’ to defeat Senate confirmation blockade

Allison Robbert/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Thune changed the vote threshold in September for sub-Cabinet level positions, allowing nominees to be confirmed in large groups as opposed to individual, tedious votes Democrats consistently tried to obstruct.

“It’s delay for delay’s sake, and it’s a pettiness that leaves desks sitting empty in agencies across the federal government and robs our duly elected president of a team to enact the agenda that the American people voted for in November,” Thune said in an op-ed for Breitbart.

RELATED: ‘This is a must-win’: These 4 Republicans voted against banning trans surgeries on children

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

“Republicans aren’t going to tolerate this obstruction any longer,” Thune added. “We have tried to work with Democrats in good faith to batch bipartisan, noncontroversial nominees and clear them expeditiously, according to past precedent. Democrats have stood in the way at every turn.”

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​Donald trump, John thune, Senate, Senate republicans, Senate democrats, Joe biden, Trump nominees, Senate confirmation, Nuclear option, Politics 

In his damning Dec. 15 article in Compact magazine titled “The Lost Generation,” Los Angeles-based writer Jacob Savage detailed the disenfranchisement of white male Millennials and their systematic exclusion from various industries, especially academia, entertainment, medicine, the news media, and tech.

While America has long been reckoning with the fallout of the DEI war on meritocracy, Savage’s viral article — which journalist Matt Taibbi indicated was initially accepted by the Atlantic on the condition that it avoid making the bigger societal point — crystallized for many, with the help of statistics and personal accounts, the extent and true impact of that racist campaign.

‘This was an injustice, plain and simple.’

After Vice President JD Vance weighed in on the article and the discrimination discussed therein, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chairwoman Andrea Lucas released a video on social media imploring white men to seek damages — a video that Vance subsequently shared.

“Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws,” said Lucas, a Republican critic of DEI and mother of two who was appointed to lead the EEOC by President Donald Trump in January.

The EEOC is the sole federal agency authorized to probe and litigate against private companies for violations of federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination.

RELATED: ‘Enough white guys already’: The war on white men because of DEI in the working world exposed in damning report

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Image

Lucas, who previously noted that Savage’s article told “a story chock full of unlawful discrimination,” said in the video that it was imperative that those keen on taking action contact the EEOC as soon as possible, as “time limits are typically strict for filing a claim.”

The EEOC chairwoman also noted in a follow-up message, “You may have waived your right to money, but you still have the right to blow the whistle and participate in the EEOC process — and EEOC can sue on behalf of a class.”

— (@)

Lucas has made no secret of her contempt for DEI.

In a May 2024 speech — nearly a year after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard/UNC, banning race-based college admission — Lucas stated:

Race or sex cannot be even a plus factor, a tiebreaker, or a tipping point in the employment context. People sometimes think that race or sex can be part of the equation for an employment decision if race or sex is not the sole factor, the exclusive factor, or the deciding factor. That is dead wrong. If race or sex was all or part of an employer’s motivation, that violates federal employment law.

She noted during the Q&A following her remarks that “many employers, by doing lazy, high-level virtue signaling, paint-by-numbers DEI, have mass discrimination.”

Proponents of the DEI regime were evidently prickled by Lucas’ latest remarks.

David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at the NYU School of Law, told the Associated Press that Lucas’ recent posts demonstrate a “fundamental misunderstanding of what DEI is.”

“It’s really much more about creating a culture in which you get the most out of everyone who you’re bringing on board, where everyone experiences fairness and equal opportunity, including white men and members of other groups,” Glasgow said. “If DEI has been this engine of discrimination against white men, I have to say it hasn’t really been doing a very good job at achieving that.”

RELATED: Trump takes a wrecking ball to the woke campus economy

Photo by Tom Brenner-Pool/Getty Image

Jenny Yang, a former EEOC chairwoman who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, similarly complained, suggesting it was “problematic” for Lucas to speak out about the disenfranchisement of white men.

“It suggests some sort of priority treatment,” said Yang, who served as deputy assistant to former President Joe Biden for so-called racial justice and equity. “That’s not something that sounds to me like equal opportunity for all.”

Hours ahead of Lucas sharing her video to social media, Vice President JD Vance noted on X that Savage’s article was “an incredible piece that describes the evil of DEI and its consequences.”

“A lot of people think DEI is lame diversity seminars or racial slogans at NFL games,” Vance wrote. “In reality, it was a deliberate program of discrimination primarily against white men.”

“This is why the Trump administration has so dedicated itself to eradicating racist discrimination. We’ve eliminated funding for DEI, required government grantees to certify that they’re not engaged in DEI, fired a number of DEI employees, and asked the great [Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon] to aggressively prosecute all forms of racial discrimination,” the vice president continued. “For too many Democrat leaders, racial discrimination was bad unless it targeted white men. This was an injustice, plain and simple.”

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​Eeoc, Jd vance, Vance, Discrimination, Anti-white, Equality, Work, Workplace, Erasure, Replacement, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Dei, Working, Quota, Affirmative action, White, White guys, White male, Andrea lucas, Politics 

And now … your Oscars host … Mr. Beast!

The Academy Awards, facing diminished ratings and cultural clout, is moving to YouTube starting in 2029. Yes, ABC didn’t fight hard enough to keep the once-mighty telecast on its airwaves, paving the door for the Google giant to take over.

If Marvel really wants to bring back disenchanted fans, just say Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel got lost in a black hole and can’t make the sequel.

And as one internet wag cheekily put it, calls to “smash that ‘like’ button” may blend with the boilerplate political speeches sooner than later.

It’s a sign of the times, of course, on two fronts. YouTube is a major part of the digital landscape, and ABC understands the Oscars’ cache isn’t what it used to be.

The funniest part? A Variety scribe cheered the news, hoping for an even longer Oscars telecast.

“The Oscars on YouTube could bring an unlimited runtime, unfiltered hosts, and the show we’ve always wanted” reads the hysterical headline.

Imagine enduring a three-and-a-half-hour celebrity lovefest and thinking, “More, please!”

Boulevard of memes

Hollywood could really use some good news at this point. Enter a spanking new study that shares a surprising take on Gen Z. Turns out the youthful demographic’s movie theater attendance climbed by 25% over the past year.

Video game-inspired films like “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” and “A Minecraft Movie” certainly helped, but the image of phone-obsessed teens eschewing theaters for their comfy couches may come with a caveat.

Speak to us directly, and we’ll line up to see what you have to offer. Imagine the lines around the block to see “6-7: The Movie” …

‘Peanuts’ allergy

Coming soon: a reimagined take on the Red Baron where he’s the hero and that dastardly Snoopy is the heel.

Sound crazy? Well we just saw a movie greenlit based on the villainous Gaston character from “Beauty and the Beast.”

“Wicked: For Good,” which makes the Wicked Witch of the West our unfairly maligned heroine, is crushing the box office.

And another reimagined classic spun from “Cinderella” will make those nasty stepsisters the heroes. It’s called “Steps.” Really.

So why wouldn’t Snoopy’s archnemesis ever get a cinematic closeup? It feels inevitable, especially after Sony purchased the rights to the “Peanuts” franchise for a cool $457 million.

Rats.

Who will stop team Sony from following this corrosive trend? And should it draw a crowd, expect more re-imaginings, like Brad Pitt playing a spiffed-up Pig Pen and Lucy joining the NFL …

RELATED: ‘The Case for Miracles’: A stirring road trip into the heart of faith

Fathom Entertainment

Avengers: Payday

The MCU is in full course-correction mode. But is it too late?

The mega franchise has stumbled in recent years following the two-part “Avengers” saga against Thanos. That coaxed Disney suits to call in reinforcements — AKA Robert Downey Jr.

But wait? The charismatic star’s alter ego, Iron Man, died in “Avengers: Endgame.” Disney craved his sweet, sweet name recognition so badly it brought him back for next year’s “Avengers: Doomsday.”

Except this time, he’ll play the villainous Victor von Doom.

If that decision didn’t reek of flop sweat, the latest MCU news sure does. Chris Evans, who memorably played Captain America in nine MCU films, was given a poetic send-off in “Endgame.” The actor hung up his shield, eager to tackle roles where he doesn’t squeeze into unforgiving leotards.

Except he didn’t really go away. He’s back, according to the just-released “Avengers: Doomsday” teaser trailer. (Imagine the zeroes on the paycheck written to Mr. Evans.)

If Marvel really wants to bring back disenchanted fans, just say Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel got lost in a black hole and can’t make the sequel …

Kamala klarity

Kamala Harris may have been the most qualified person ever to run for the White House. Just ask her.

Yet the former vice president is still struggling to answer softball questions. During the campaign, she famously bungled a layup from Sunny Hostin of “The View.”

“How will you be different than President Biden?” Swiiiiiing and a miss.

This week, far-left “comedian” Jimmy Kimmel teed up another question for the ex-veep to swat out of the studio. Why didn’t the Biden-Harris administration release the Epstein files?

“To give you an answer that will not satisfy your curiosity, I will tell you, we, perhaps to our damage, but we strongly and rightly believed that there should be an absolute separation between what we wanted as an administration and what the Department of Justice did. We absolutely adhered to that, and it was right to do that,” Harris told Kimmel.

“The Justice Department would make its decisions independent of any political or personal vendetta or concern that we may have, and that’s the way it worked.”

Harris is rested and ready for the 2028 presidential campaign, no doubt.

​Hollywood, Entertainment, Culture, The academy awards, Oscars, Mr. beast, Marvel, Toto recall 

I oppose Zohran Mamdani’s Democratic Socialist agenda. But if Republicans are serious about winning elections next year and in 2028, they need to take a hard, unsentimental look at how he just won one of the most consequential mayoral races in the country.

This was not an ideological earthquake. New York did not suddenly “discover” socialism. What happened was a marketing and mobilization breakthrough. Mamdani’s campaign understood attention, simplicity, participation, and distribution better than anyone else in the race.

Republicans often confuse seriousness with stiffness. Mamdani showed that message discipline does not require lifelessness.

Joe Perello, the city of New York’s first chief marketing officer, noted in PRWeek after Mamdani’s victory that the campaign did more than communicate a message. It built an engine that converted online engagement into real-world turnout.

“For marketers and strategists alike, the implications are clear,” Perello wrote. “Growth hacking, iterative testing, and data-driven amplification can convert digital sentiment into real-world behavior. In Mamdani’s case, that meant converting hearts, clicks, and hashtags into ballots.”

Here is the part many on the right do not want to hear: Mamdani did not spend his time lecturing working-class voters about the virtues of socialism or defending failed economic theory. He focused on immediate, kitchen-table concerns and paired them with simple, slogan-ready answers.

Is halal food expensive? Make it cheaper. Struggling to get to work? Free buses. Grocery bills too high? Government-run grocery stores.

He took Bernie Sanders’ 2016-era talking points and filtered them through a polished, Obama-style optimism that voting-age New Yorkers were willing to engage with.

Most voters do not have the time — or patience — to think through how these promises would actually work. They just want to hear that someone intends to make their lives easier.

As Citizens Alliance CEO Cliff Maloney observed during Mamdani’s surge in the polls, the public’s lack of understanding about how government operates — and how socialism consistently fails — created the political environment Mamdani exploited. He did not create that environment. He mastered it.

Republicans’ digital blind spot

For years, Republican campaigns have treated digital media as messaging rather than infrastructure. Social platforms are used as megaphones for press releases, fundraising tools, or dumping grounds for cable-news clips. The underlying assumption is that persuasion happens elsewhere — on TV, at rallies, through mailers — and that digital simply amplifies those efforts.

Mamdani reversed that logic. Social media was not an accessory to his campaign. It was the campaign.

His approach drew praise even from outlets like the Guardian, where journalist Adam Gabbatt noted that Mamdani “has won social media with clips that are always fun — and resolutely on-message.”

His team treated TikTok and Instagram like serious growth channels. Short videos were not vanity content; they were experiments. Different neighborhoods, different faces, different tones, different pacing. What held attention? What sparked comments? What traveled across boroughs? Each post generated data, and each data point informed the next iteration.

This was politics run as a full-funnel acquisition strategy. Awareness led to engagement. Engagement led to identification. Identification led to turnout. Republicans can mock the aesthetics, but the mechanics work.

Energy is a signal

One of the most underrated elements of Mamdani’s campaign was how it looked. He was constantly in motion — walking Manhattan, running a marathon, bouncing between boroughs. Rarely behind a lectern. Rarely static. Always visible.

That energy communicated youth, optimism, and confidence in the same way John F. Kennedy outperformed Richard Nixon on television in 1960. A similar contrast appeared in 2024, when Donald Trump’s unscripted, high-visibility media strategy stood in sharp contrast to Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’ tightly controlled appearances.

The predictable response on the right is dismissal. ‘That’s just TikTok nonsense.’ ‘Our voters aren’t like that.’ Those excuses are comforting — and dangerously wrong.

In an age of low trust and low information, energy reads as competence. Movement suggests effort. Visibility substitutes for familiarity. Mamdani’s omnipresence created the impression — fair or not — that he was accessible and engaged with everyday life.

Republicans often confuse seriousness with stiffness. Mamdani showed that message discipline does not require lifelessness.

RELATED: When Bernie Sanders and I agree on AI, America had better pay attention

Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images

From supporters to fans

The most uncomfortable lesson for traditional campaigns is that Mamdani did not just mobilize voters. He activated fandom.

Much of the campaign content that flooded social media did not come from official accounts. It came from supporters remixing clips, creating fan art, cutting moments to music, and sharing them within their own networks. The campaign made Mamdani easy to clip, easy to celebrate, and then got out of the way.

Wired magazine described it as a rare case of participatory political culture usually reserved for celebrities.

This matters because peer-to-peer persuasion scales faster and carries more credibility than anything a campaign can manufacture. Fan-made content travels further, feels more authentic, and costs nothing. Republicans, by contrast, tend to over-police their messaging, choking off organic enthusiasm in the name of control.

Younger voters understand fandom instinctively. They grew up online. Mamdani did not lecture them about politics; he gave them something to belong to.

The wrong reaction

The predictable response on the right is dismissal. “That only works for Democrats.” “That’s just TikTok nonsense.” “Our voters aren’t like that.”

Those excuses are comforting — and dangerously wrong.

Trump understood this dynamic in 2024 when his campaign was largely shut out of legacy media. Figures like Charlie Kirk reached millions of Gen Z voters by blending serious political content with the humor and energy of youth activism.

Algorithms do not have ideologies. Participation is not a left-wing monopoly. Visibility, simplicity, and community are not progressive inventions. In a low-information, high-attention environment, the side that understands distribution wins.

The real danger is not Mamdani’s policies alone. It is a Republican Party that keeps confusing being correct with being effective.

RELATED: How anti-fascism became the West’s civil religion

Blaze Media Illustration

What Republicans should learn — now

First, treat digital as organizing, not advertising. Stop thinking in posts and start thinking in systems. How does attention become action?

Second, simplicity wins. Republicans often pride themselves on being right — and then lose because they are incomprehensible. Clarity scales. Long explanations do not.

Third, loosen control. Let supporters remix, clip, and share. Reach matters more than perfect phrasing.

Finally, build communities, not just campaigns. Email lists decay. Ad budgets run out. Communities endure.

The bottom line

I do not agree with Zohran Mamdani’s politics, and I do not want his policies implemented anywhere. But ignoring how he won would be malpractice.

He demonstrated how power is built today — not through party machinery or television dominance, but through attention, participation, and relentless simplicity. Republicans can learn from that reality, or they can keep losing to it.

Disagree with his ideology. But study his marketing. Ignore the lesson at your own risk.

​Opinion & analysis, Zohran mamdani, Victory, Socialism, New york city, Marketing, Campaign, Elections, 2026 midterms, 2028 presidential election, Social media 

An appointee for New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, abruptly resigned after the Anti-Defamation League of New York and New Jersey exposed her past anti-Semitic social media posts.

On Wednesday, Mamdani announced that Catherine Almonte Da Costa would be his director of appointments.

‘As this has become a distraction from the work at hand, I have offered my resignation.’

The ADL responded to the nomination by highlighting Da Costa’s numerous anti-Jewish online comments.

“Her social media footprint includes posts from more than a decade ago that echo classic antisemitic tropes and otherwise demean Jewish people. … We appreciate Da Costa has relationships with members of the Jewish community, but her posts require immediate explanation — not just from Ms. Da Costa, but also from the Mayor-Elect,” the ADL wrote.

The ADL continued, “Vetting the appointment of city leaders will be Ms. Da Costa’s responsibility and the Jewish community deserves to know: 1) Were these comments previously identified by the Mayor-elect’s team? If so, why were they excused? 2) What will be the policy of the new Administration if comments like these are discovered during the vetting process?”

The ADL’s post included screenshots of three X posts from Da Costa’s account, which has since been removed.

RELATED: Mamdani dares ICE to come get him — and throws the Constitution in the trash

Zohran Mamdani. Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP via Getty Images

“Money hungry Jews smh,” Da Costa apparently wrote in January 2011 on then-Twitter, presumably using an abbreviation for “shaking my head,” an expression of disapproval.

“Woo! Promoted to the upstairs office today! Working alongside these rich Jewish peeps,” she apparently wrote later that year.

“Far Rockaway train is the Jew train,” a third post read from June 2012.

In 2020, Da Costa posted anti-cop sentiments, calling for the defunding of the New York Police Department by $1 billion in the upcoming fiscal year to “get cops out of our schools & subways,” the New York Post reported.

RELATED: NYC councilwoman lays into ‘rich,’ ‘entitled’ Mamdani voters as mayor-elect plans to leave homeless encampments alone

L to R: Zohran Mamdani, Jahmila Edwards, Catherine Almonte Da Costa. Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP via Getty Images

Da Costa announced her resignation on Thursday, following the resurfaced posts.

“I spoke with the mayor-elect this afternoon, apologized, and expressed my deep regret for my past statements,” Da Costa said. “These statements are not indicative of who I am. As the mother of Jewish children, I feel a profound sense of sadness and remorse at the harm these words have caused. As this has become a distraction from the work at hand, I have offered my resignation.”

In a separate statement, she contended that her “tweets from well over a decade ago … do not in any way, shape, or form reflect who I am or my views and beliefs today.”

Mamdani called Da Costa’s past remarks “unacceptable,” adding that the posts “absolutely do not represent him or the values of his administration.”

“Catherine expressed her deep remorse over her past statements and tendered her resignation, and I accepted,” he added.

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​News, Catherine almonte da costa, Democratic socialist, Socialist, Zohran mamdani, New york city, Nyc, New york, Antisemitic, Antisemitism, Anti-defamation league, Adl, Defund the police, Politics