Thursday, June 26, 2025

Part I

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Will a Socialist Muslim Become Mayor of New York? Zohran Mamdani Wins the Democratic Party’s Primary Race in New York

In politics, there are earthquakes and there are earthquakes. What took place yesterday in New York City is a very significant earthquake. It looks like the Democrats are now poised to nominate Zohran Mamdani, an open democratic socialist candidate. A young Muslim born in Uganda, he is going to be the nominee for the Democratic Party in the mayor’s office for the nation’s largest city.

Now, New York politics is always interesting, is almost never boring. It is sometimes unpredictable. It certainly was yesterday. It sometimes is a bellwether for politics, but in most cases, not so much for say, a national election. But it often is an indication of where things are headed in the Democratic Party. And it was the Democratic Party’s nomination race in the primary that was held yesterday that has made this big news.

Okay, so let this sink in again. An openly socialist, a democratic socialist candidate has been designated and has won the primary in order to be the Democrat’s choice for the mayoral race in New York City. Now, all these words are important. Democratic socialist, the most important word there is socialist. And we’re not talking about someone who’s just playing around with socialism. We’re talking about someone who basically ran openly on what can only be described as a socialist platform.

So he ran on housing rights and on the rights of all New Yorkers to a certain level of living, of financial support. And he was very open in terms of his aims, and he got into a lot of controversies during the race. But evidently, that did not prevent him from gaining the nomination. He said in the course of the race, “A life of dignity should not be reserved for a fortunate few.” He said, “It should be one that city government guarantees for each and every New Yorker.” 

Now, there are political promises and there are promises. That’s a promise that he says the city of New York, that is to say the city itself, should guarantee a certain level of economic dignity for every single New Yorker. Now, of course, that raises a host of questions. I think some people would think mechanically, “Well, what would that level be?” Others are going to think pragmatically in terms of finances, “Where’s that money going to come from?”

Others would recognize that this is an astounding pledge for someone to make in a race for the mayor’s office in a major American city. The fact that the city has the responsibility to guarantee for every single one of its residents, and frankly, residents here loosely defined, a certain level of economic support. And a certain set of rights, including what’s defined as a right to housing.

Well, this is a really big story. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a bigger story in recent American politics. That’s saying something. Zohran Mamdani, an interesting figure. No doubt he is a gifted politician. You don’t win this kind of primary race without being a gifted politician. The former democratic governor of the state, Andrew Cuomo saw winning this nomination and winning the mayor’s office as the way to plot his political comeback after he had had to resign as governor in a sex scandal. And so he saw himself as coming back. Remember that he himself is the son of a political dynasty. Mario Cuomo was the democratic governor of New York.

And at one point, it was considered that he was almost assuredly going to be the Democratic presidential nominee. He pulled out of the race. But nonetheless, Andrew Cuomo saw himself in the White House. Obviously, resigning from the New York governorship in a level of disgrace was a setback for those plans. He saw his comeback as coming through the mayor’s office and he had awesome political support.

He had open endorsements from people like former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. You also had the support from former US president Bill Clinton. So there was a lot of inside Democratic support, and it was the inside democratic machine that went big for Andrew Cuomo. As recently as say, three or four weeks ago, it was considered that Cuomo would win the primary in a landslide. It would basically be a breeze. It would be a walk.

There were some other candidates who were considered at one point to be at least serious contenders, but honestly, they barely broke into the race by the time everything began to narrow. And it narrowed with Zohran Mamdani. Not expected in the beginning of this race to be a major figure, he won the primary, and he won it as a democratic socialist.

Now, when you’re thinking about changes in American politics, you’re thinking about big ideas and worldview implications. Let’s just talk about what Zohran Mamdani represents. What are his positions? What are his convictions?

Well, he ran not only on the Left, he ran on the far left. The movement, now known as democratic socialists and the parties known as the Democratic Socialists of America. It dates back to the last decades of the 20th century, and it dates back to a movement to unify parties on the left. Some of them were very small, some of them were larger. Some of them had been based in the labor movement. Some of them had been based in the far left, including the anti-war left in the Vietnam era. You had something of an assemblage of those described as democratic socialists.

Democratic in this sense, was more than anything else to demonstrate that they were committed to the electoral process. Read that as in the operations of democracy. But the big word is socialist. And you say, “Well, what kind of socialists were they?” Well, according to most estimations, the vast majority of those in the democratic socialist movement are committed to government control of the economy and the eventual elimination of capitalism.

Now remember, we’re talking about New York City. Need, I say Wall Street? And now you’re talking about having the Democratic candidate for mayor on a platform calling for what amounts to the abolition of the private economy and capitalism. The democratic Socialist movement, you can think of it in the US Senate with someone like Vermont independent Senator Bernie Sanders. And by the way, he is declared to be an independent, though he has allied with the DSA. And then you look at someone like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and you can look at others who have been associated with a socialist movement. You can think of figures in American history, political activists like Michael Harrington back during the Vietnam War era.

But you’re talking about big support for the welfare state. Big support for government intrusion in the economy. Big, big support for direct government involvement and control in such things as rental properties. And when it comes to Zohran Mamdani, he’s gone so far as to say that the city of New York needs to have city-owned grocery stores. Okay, let that sink in. City-owned grocery stores.

Now, one of the big problems of course for the political prospects of someone like Zohran Mamdani is that he is very likely to win election as New York City’s mayor. Now, there are two other candidates who are going to be on the ballot, at least two others. One’s a Republican nominee, and there’s probably not much chance the Republican being elected. And then you have an independent candidate who happens to be the current mayor, Eric Adams.

And of course he’s been involved in scandals. We’ll just leave it at that. And he wasn’t going to gain the Democratic Party’s nomination, so he is running for re-election as an independent. I think that’s going to be a very unsuccessful effort. So unless there is a major change in the game between now and November, just consider the party registration numbers indicate that whoever wins the Democratic nomination should axiomatically win the mayoral election in November. So I think unless something major changes, you’re looking at Mayor Mamdani.

Well, he’s been in controversy and other issues. For one thing, he is openly sided with the Palestinian cause. He is a Muslim and hold that thought for just a moment. He’s been a severe critic of Israel even saying that he believes that if the current Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, were to come to the United States, were to come to New York City, he should be arrested by New York authorities, in keeping with the indictment from the International Criminal Court.

Now, as we’ve seen, that is an incredibly politicized court and it just tells you a great deal. You would think in a city with a Jewish population as large as what you see in New York City, you would think this would be impossible. But it happened. Andrew Cuomo conceded last night. This, by the way, is a setback for the old Democratic establishment. People like Bill Clinton, the former president had endorsed Andrew Cuomo. It’s also a setback for the city’s long standing political elite. You could put in that category, Michael Bloomberg, of course, the billionaire who became mayor, originally as a Republican switched to independent. So the big old established political structures in the Democratic Party and in the city of New York came out saying two words, Andrew Cuomo. And they came up with Zohran Mamdani.

Now I mentioned that he’s a Muslim and that raises a very interesting issue. Of course, this comes down to controversy when it comes to Israel and Gaza. And it comes down to the fact that he’s going to be discussed all over the world as the Muslim mayor of New York City. If indeed he wins the office. The New York Times offered a headline, “Zohran Mamdani’s Success is Especially Meaningful for Muslim New Yorkers.” And in this article by Maya King, we are told that New York is home to roughly 1 million Muslims who make up 12% of the electorate in the 2021 mayoral election.

Now wait just a minute. I wonder how many Americans realize that in our nation’s largest city, 12% of the electorate in the last mayoral election identified as Muslim. I think that probably an eye-opener. But nonetheless, you are looking at the fact that Mamdani won the nomination. Mamdani was really, really clear in his support for the Palestinian cause. And frankly, as I mentioned with Prime Minister Netanyahu, very much a critic of Israel, he really didn’t back up on that at all. When controversy arose. He said, and I quote, “There are millions of New Yorkers who have strong feelings about what happens overseas. I am one of them.”

Saying that he would, “Not abandon my beliefs or my commitments,” as the Times says, “to fighting for human rights.” It’s a very interesting response. There are millions of New Yorkers who have strong feelings about what happens overseas. In this case, the context is all important. We do know exactly what he means.

Well, all right, there’s more to this story because when you have this man identified as a democratic socialist, as the one who would be–if elected–the first Muslim mayor of New York City, it does raise the question, what kind of Muslim is he? And I say that because his platform also included radical advocacy for the LGBTQ+ movement. And when I say radical advocacy, for instance, he says that he wants to spend $65 million in taxpayer money on transgender treatment, including for minors.

And later his campaign made clear that means not only hormonal treatments but surgical treatments. So we’re talking about a radical pro-LGBTQ position here. And let me just state the obvious: that is a radical contradiction to the teachings of Islam. Or at the very least you could say, that it would be radically contradictory to the teachings of the Koran. And so just think about the fact that there would be some in New York who would want, say bragging rights, this is the first Muslim mayor. But the vast majority of Muslims around the world would not consider him a Muslim. At least in terms of his beliefs and the application of those beliefs as revealed they would claim in the Koran.

So another way to put it is that an awful lot of the liberal Muslims in the West can’t go to the majority Muslim world because they would be endangered if they did. So they’re defined as Muslim here. But it is very interesting to ask the question of exactly what that means. And perhaps over we will find out. Let’s put it this way, if he’s elected, New Yorkers are going to find out. The Wall Street Journal seems to understand exactly what’s going on. They ran a headline article, “Wall Street Panics Over Prospect of a Socialist Running New York City.” Again, panics over the prospect. The editorial board of the same newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, made its position clear with a headline statement, “The People’s Republic of New York City.”

The editorial board noted this, “Mr. Mamdani declared himself on election night to be a model for the Democratic Party. And among the party base, he may be. He echoes all of the left-wing social policies that hurt the party in 2024. And on Israel, he sounds like Columbia University demonstrators.” “It’s hard,” they say, “to believe the most Jewish city in America could elect a mayor who favors a boycott of Israel. But that is today’s Democratic Party.”

And that’s another interesting dimension as we leave this story. It is now already claimed by many on the left-wing of the Democratic Party, and consider how left that is. It is now claimed by them that this primary victory by Zohran Mamdani is an indication of the direction the party should seek if it wants to win nationwide elections.

I’ll just say that I’m not an advisor to the Democratic Party, but I would think that that suggestion is, if anything, let’s just say highly questionable. But at the same time, it could be that the Democratic Party is now under such radical control by the radical left that winning national elections is no longer its primary consideration. It’s one of the very interesting things about strictly ideological parties. Those ideological parties throughout history have often been absolutely determined to hold on to their ideology rather than to winning elections.

This should give Republicans no comfort that there will be an easy way forward, but it is an indication that the big action right now is on the Democratic side and asking the question, “Where in the world is the Democratic Party going to go?” If this primary election in New York is an indication, let’s just say, it’s going to be interesting.

Part II

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The 10-Year Anniversary of Obergefell: Obergefell was a Terrible Constitutional Ruling, and Its Ripple Effects Have Been Massive

It is absolutely essential this week that we recognize that the week marks the 10th anniversary of the Obergefell decision headed down by the US Supreme Court in 2015. A five-four decision that required all states to recognize same-sex marriage. It is hard to describe what that landmark decision has meant for the moral revolution in the United States. That moral revolution has written largely on the momentum gained by certain Supreme Court decisions.

And you could just think of the decisions of the late-1960s, early-1070s, Roe v. Wade in particular, and you could go to other decisions as well on sexuality issues, gender issues, marriage issues. But Obergefell is a very clear line in the sand. There’s before Obergefell and after Obergefell.

That five-four decision was devastating. The majority opinion was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy. And like Roe in so many ways, it was an example of horrifying constitutional argument. And as a matter of fact, in some ways it really wasn’t even a constitutional argument. It was something of an existential argument in which writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy basically treated marriage as essentially two things. A social institution and a therapeutic context.

And he basically said, “That as a social institution with certain legal rights and as a therapeutic construct, individuals ought to be able just to marry whom they want to. If it’s a man and a man or a woman and a woman,” he said, “basically, that’s just the extension of the notion of liberty.” Now, as we noted at the time, this continues a line of jurisprudence going back especially to the 1960s, going all the way back to decisions on contraceptive issues. And in which you just had the invention of a new set of rights. And over time, of course, this just expands in which you have the claim that there’s an interior self that now deserves to be fully respected, is fully autonomous, and if that self wants to join with any other self for certain social benefits, no other self and no government should be able to say ‘no.’

But I just want to say that it was an atrocious argument. But it’s the kind of atrocious argument that has won so many times at the US Supreme Court. It is an illegitimate form of constitutional interpretation. It is following in a trajectory of other very bad Supreme Court decisions. And like them, here’s the most important thing, it came with inevitable effects.

And so, one of the things the moral revolutionaries have counted on, and by the way, they acknowledged this early on. So for example, some of the theorists in the LGBTQ movement, some of the activists early on, were very clear that there’s no way they could win, certainly nationwide, at the legislative level. They would have to win in the courts. And so what they couldn’t get through the political process itself, they went around to the courts. And the courts were unusually cooperative in this respect. You could say they were unusually vulnerable. But it is because they had abandoned a legitimate constitutional hermeneutic, a way of interpreting the Constitution. And basically, were turning the court into a sociological engine of what they saw as inevitable progress.

The decision was atrocious. And I don’t have time today, but I would love to just read from the dissent offered by Justice Antonin Scalia at the time. But I want to point out that it has changed public opinion. It did lead to a before and after. That bright line in the pavement, as I say, it is a bright line.

And on one side of it, you have the right of states to define marriage in accordance with the way marriage has been defined throughout virtually all of human history. And on the other side of that line, you have the Supreme Court saying the states do not have the right to define marriage. And instead, marriage has to include a man and a man or a woman and a woman.

And of course, by the way that sets that up, if the issue is marriage is simply a social institution and personal autonomy, and a therapeutic construct is the only real question, then how do you say it’s just one in one? How do you say just two?

Obviously, this sets the stage for further subversion of the entire moral system, indeed of creation order in the universe. But it is interesting to see that you have basically a realignment in the United States. The vast majority of Americans 18 to 20 years ago were against same-sex marriage. Within a two-year period after Obergefell, the vast majority of Americans, by almost the same numbers were saying they were now for same-sex marriage.

And what makes that interesting is that just chronologically, this meant many of the same people in the public, their minds had changed. Now, in all likelihood, their minds hadn’t been very firmly set. But the point is that the Supreme Court, in a decision like this, the Left always hopes it has a vast moral impact, and conservatives always fear it will have a vast moral impact. And in this case, the liberal hopes and the conservative fears have been fully realized.

Now, as evidence of this, you have a piece by Kristen Soltis Anderson, identified as a Republican pollster. It appeared in the New York Times, the headline is “Roll Back Legal Same-sex Marriage. Republicans Are Getting it Wrong.” In other words, she’s saying, “It’s a losing strategy to go back and try to defend marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Society’s moved on. The numbers are the big story. This is a losing argument.”

It’s also interesting that the Southern Baptist Convention, meeting just a few weeks ago in Dallas, made headlines for a resolution calling for the reversal of the Obergefell decision. Now that’s treated as something new and as a resolution it was new.

But as a matter of moral resolve that goes all the way back to when Obergefell was handed down. A call by something like the SBC to reverse Obergefell would’ve made no news 10 years ago. I don’t think it would’ve made news eight or nine years ago. But now, 10 years later, we just need to recognize that so much of the culture has now realigned around this Supreme Court decision that even coming out in dissent of same-sex marriage is treated as something akin to cultural treason.

But I just want to underline the fact that Christians have absolutely no option. You might have politicians who can change their position on this. You might have academics who will change their arguments on this. You might have a Supreme Court that claims to have the authority to redefine marriage. But for Christians bound to Scripture and to creation order, we have nowhere to go. And so Obergefell is a lamentable development, predictable as it was, and it came with all of the negative effects that were predicted. Every one of them basically, very much in place right now and in full evidence in the society.

And this also underlies the fact that there were major intellectuals like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, former Democratic US senator, who made the argument that politics is downstream from culture. But I think we also have to recognize as Christians that the culture is downstream from certain developments such as the Supreme Court decision. This just facilitated an awful lot of Americans saying, “You know? That’s just the way things are. I’m going to get on the right side of that bright line.” 

It’s also important to say that the recovery from this kind of moral rebellion is not going to be easy. It’s not going to come fast. Roe V. Wade wasn’t reversed for just about a half century.

Part III

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We are Now 3 Years Post-Dobbs: Returning Abortion to the States was a Necessary Step in the Fight for Life— But Defenders of Life Must Press Onward

And that also leads me in conclusion today to say that there’s another anniversary. It’s the third anniversary of the Dobbs decision reversing Roe v. Wade. Going back to that issue, is the politics downstream from the culture? Does the culture established the politics? That is true. It’s just not all the truth. It is also true that sometimes the culture is downstream from the politics or from a Supreme Court decision.

And looking at the Dobbs decision, here’s one of the things we now learn. 50 years, a half century of the Supreme Court of the United States arguing for abortion rights, and it was an atrocious argument. It was a horrifying argument in Roe back in 1973. But the fact is it did influence the culture. And here’s the sad thing, it continues to influence the culture after the Dobbs decision.

So I’m thankful for the Dobbs decision. I don’t think it went far enough. But at least returning the abortion question to the states was a vital necessary step in what is a recovery towards the full protection of the unborn. We have a lot of argument to make. Same-sex marriage and the unborn. The dignity of human life and the sanctity of marriage. We have a lot of argument yet to make. We have a lot of ground yet to recover. No one said this was going to be easy. No one said that things would always go our way. 

Let’s just say today we’ve looked at the nomination of a democratic socialist in New York City and two very significant anniversaries of Supreme Court decisions. All of this just reminds us of the maelstrom of worldviews that is the world we inhabit today. This is what’s going on in the world today. You can’t look at any of these issues without recognizing that we and our families and our churches, we and our children and our grandchildren are a part of this maelstrom. A part of this struggle over the future of the culture. 

And here’s where we must also understand that no one on our side has exaggerated the result of bad decisions from the US Supreme Court. It turns out that all of those bad results have resulted and more.

It turns out that the malign influence of Roe is even more powerful than we thought when Roe was reversed in 2022. It means that the malign influence of Obergefell is only more pervasive and appears to be more established as you look at the year 2025. But let me just remind you, we have the responsibility to see the truth. We also have the responsibility to serve the truth. On good, clear, biblical grounds, Christians are reminded we are in this for the long haul. And we are reminded we are in this for our children. We are in this because of love of neighbor, and we are in this for the greater glory of God.

I guess the most important thing I can say to Christians today in light of these things is we are in this. So let’s be in this faithfully.