Wednesday, July 8, 2026

Mamdani’s silver-spoon socialist fixer races to Platner, plot how to blackmail Dem party

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s silver-spoon socialist adviser, Morris Katz, rushed over to beleaguered Graham Platner’s house Wednesday as they plotted how to remain a powerbroker in the Senate race — enraging Democrats.

The gathering included Platner’s top campaign brass in addition to Katz, who is trying to hatch a plan for Platner to “remain a voice” in the Senate contest “no matter what” the accused rapist decides, a source familiar with deliberations told The Post.

Platner has so far refused to step down as Maine’s Democratic Senate nominee after he was accused of rape by an ex-girlfriend — with the clock ticking on a Monday deadline.

His intransigence has left Maine Democrats “livid” and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) “in shock,” according to the source.

“The fact that the NYC mayor’s fixer is headed there to triage Maine has everyone fuming,” the source added.

Allies of Platner argue that he formed a movement in Maine, touting the over 150,000 votes he notched in the primary, and deserves to remain influential.

Platner denies an allegations of rape or sexual assault.

Two sources say Katz has told allies he believes Platner should to leave the race before the 5 p.m. Monday deadline to withdraw from the ballot — but wants the exit to be on the candidate’s terms.

“It’s quite clear that he’s [Platner’s] gonna have to get out of the race,” a second source told The Post. “Their reluctance here … is a result of their larger political project, trying to get these types of candidates into places of power.”

Other campaign officials seen entering Platner’s Sullivan home include field director Spencer Toth, digital communications consultant Ryan Aquilina, campaign manager Ben Chin, and Chin’s deputy Eleni Neyland.

Some of them were seen with backpacks amid expectations that they will have to film a video message from Platner.

The Platner campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Here’s the latest on the bombshell sexual assault allegations against lefty Senate candidate Graham Platner:

Not long after the meeting convened, Chin reportedly sent out a text blast to Platner’s supporters seeking feedback for the oyster farmer and the Democratic Party.

“[Y]esterday, the Maine Democratic Party said that our movement will ‘have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like,'” he fumed in the text blast. “Both the state and national parties cut our team, our volunteers, and our vast networks of supporters out of the conversation completely.”

“We firmly believe that the supporters and volunteers who built this movement deserve to have a real role in any nomination process.”

On Monday, Platner announced in a video message that he was “taking the time to reflect on the best path forward” after a former girlfriend, Jenny Racicot, told Politico that he entered her home without permission and raped her in the dead of night in 2021.

Platner has denied Racicot’s accusations as “categorically false.”

If and when Platner does drop out, he is expected to announce his exit in a similar video message, CNN reported.

Following Racicot’s allegation, Platner’s most prominent backers — including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — publicly called on him to step aside.

Key financial and logistical backers, including the DSCC, have vowed to stay out of the race if Platner refuses to withdraw.

Under Maine law, Platner must withdraw of his own volition by close of business July 13 to be removed from the ballot. From that point, Democrats will have exactly two weeks to name a replacement.

State party officials are scrambling to develop a process to pick a new nominee, even toying with an ad hoc convention that is likely to be dominated by Platner supporters.

The Post reported Tuesday that the candidate himself wants assurances that any replacement will share his far-left ideology.

“[T]he Maine Democratic Party has been working around the clock to develop a process to replace our US Senate nominee that is open, inclusive, transparent and fair,” MDP Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson said in a video posted on X late Tuesday.

“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like.

“We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the US Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like.”

Platner’s team denied trying to meddle in the process, with a spokesperson saying in a statement: “The Platner campaign has reached out to the party to try and understand what this process would look like.

“At no point has the campaign tried to ‘put its finger on the scale.”

https://nypost.com/2026/07/08/us-news/accused-rapist-graham-platner-convenes-crisis-meetings-with-campaign-brass-as-he-holds-livid-dems-hostage/

Trump wants SCOTUS to rehear birthright citizenship ruling

United States President Donald Trump strongly condemned the US Supreme Court's recent ruling upholding birthright citizenship as "wrong."

The US president said he intends to challenge this decision, asking the high court to hear the case again. He added that "AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP IS NOT FOR SALE!" and said the judicial decision is a "miscarriage of justice" that could "destroy" the nation.

"Billions of Dollars will be illegally made by this SCAM, with Citizenship going to anyone willing to pay. It will be, by far, the number one way of becoming a citizen, and then the entire family will be allowed to follow," Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.

https://breakingthenews.net/Article/Trump-wants-SCOTUS-to-rehear-birthright-citizenship-ruling/66661430

'Taco Bell ramps up voice AI use across nearly 900 drive-thrus'

Taco Bell is expanding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) at drive-thrus and announced a new strategic partnership with an AI voice provider.

The fast food giant on Tuesday announced the expansion of a partnership with Omilia, a provider of a voice AI platform that the restaurant chain has deployed at hundreds of drive-thru locations around the country since 2023.

Taco Bell has deployed the Omilia voice AI capabilities at over 890 restaurants across 38 states to date, according to the announcement.

"Omilia's Voice AI gives us the ability to ease team members' workloads and provides them the flexibility to engage with customers in more meaningful ways," said Dane Mathews, global chief digital and technology at Taco Bell.

"Omilia's platform has proven itself at scale in select U.S. restaurants, and continuing this strategic partnership supports our long-term digital and tech strategy," Mathews added.

The Omilia platform helps automate the ordering process when a customer pulls up to a drive-thru speaker and is capable of adapting to an individual location's menu, real-time stocking levels, as well as limited-time offers that are available, which can make the ordering process more consistent and efficient for customers.

Dimitris Vassos, CEO and co-founder of Omilia, said that the "drive-thru environment is one of the most demanding – real-time, noisy, fast-paced, with menus that change by store and by day."

The company said that general-purpose speech recognition platforms tend to struggle with various challenges fast food drive-thrus pose, ranging from road noise and regional accents, to potentially complicated order modifications and the fast pace of drive-thru service.

Omilia's features, including noise filtering and real-time menu adaptation, were designed to address those challenges, according to the company.

The announcement said that Taco Bell's data found the transaction time in the drive-thru using voice AI is on par with, and in some cases faster than, traditional ordering methods.

Additionally, Taco Bell locations using voice AI reported higher employee retention compared with those where it hasn't been deployed, which the company said will help improve the guest experience.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/taco-bell-ramps-up-voice-ai-use-across-drive-thrus

Birth tourism is fraud and needs to stop

by Susan Quinn

SCOTUS may have decided incorrectly to approve birthright citizenship, but it also disrespected our Constitution by allowing birth tourism to continue. Although there are some folks who will continue to fight the overall concept of birthright citizenship, our legislators are thankfully already pursuing the banning of birth tourism.

Birth tourism refers to a pregnant woman coming to this country specifically to ensure that her baby is born here and will automatically be a U.S. citizen.

In his dissent to the decision, Justice Samuel Alito pointed out that birth tourism has serious national security implications:

Suppose that a person’s only connection to this country is that he was born here to a mother who was present just long enough to give birth and then quickly returned to her native country. Suppose that country is a strategic adversary or enemy of the United States. Suppose the child never visited the United States while growing up and was inculcated with hatred of this country. According to the Court, that person is a citizen of the United States. He can enter and leave the country as he pleases. He can travel the world on a United States passport. Even if he plots to harm this country, he cannot be deprived of his status as a citizen, at least under current precedent.

Allowing these women to enter this country is a travesty. It devalues the principle of American citizenship because its purpose is to exploit this loophole for personal gain, with our country having no way of knowing whether these tourists truly want their children to be U.S. citizens, complete with all the ensuing benefits. When they return to their home country (usually China), the mothers could also have gleaned all types of information that could challenge our national security.

Part of the problem is that companies have been established to streamline the birth tourism process. For example, a company called “Have My Baby” promised to handle all logistical needs and provide maternity services from start to finish for these foreigners.

To tackle these despicable businesses, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) has been appointed to the new Task Force on Defending Constitutional Rights and Exposing Institutional Abuses:

It should appall every American to know that there is a thriving birth tourism economy on our soil, perpetuated by foreign nationals who undermine our sovereignty and have no regard for our rule of law,’ said Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, in a press release.

Gill and House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., last week sent letters to four U.S. entities and businesses ‘that are engaged in and profit from birth tourism.’ Seeking company documents, the lawmakers accuse the delivery centers of exploiting birthright citizenship by ‘explicitly marketing their maternity services to foreign expectant mothers who take advantage of the U.S. immigration system to give birth in the U.S., which gives their child U.S. citizenship.

One way to deal with these fraudulent attempts is to screen visitors, particularly from China, for their intentions for coming to this country. If they misrepresent themselves on their visa applications, claiming they are coming only as tourists and not to give birth, that’s fraud.

How significant is this problem? The Center for Immigration Studies documents 70,000 births to temporary visitors in 2023:

‘Furthermore, if we assume, based on past experience, that births equal about 2 percent of the total temporary visitor population each year, then there have been close to 500,000 births to temporary visitors over the past decade,’ the think tank reported.

Colin McDonald, the DOJ’s assistant attorney general for fraud enforcement, has been passionate about punishing those pursuing birth tourism and is looking for the organizations abetting those activities. Three cases that he has prosecuted were (1) Michael Wei Yueh Li and Jing Dong were sentenced to 41 months in prison, having charged tens of thousands of dollars to customers; (2) Ibrahim Aksakal spent 27 months in prison for a birth tourism scheme; and (3) Chao “Edwin” Chen whose 100 employees assisted 500 customers in traveling to the U.S, was sentenced to 37 months in prison.

In a different strategy, some legislators have insisted that women should be tested for pregnancy before they enter the country, and prohibited from entering if they are, but that approach may be considered an invasion of privacy.

With the commitment to stop this abuse of our immigration system, we can only hope that a remedy will soon be identified. It’s time to demonstrate the proper respect and honor that U.S. citizenship deserves.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/07/birth-tourism-is-fraud-and-needs-to-stop/

By ending junk degrees: Trump shuts down the Mamdani voter pipeline

by Monica Showalter

No more trash degrees.

That's what President Trump is getting rid of. And it can't come soon enough.

According to New York Post columnist Rikki Schlott:

Students will no longer be able to take out federal loans to pay for degree programs that fail to provide them a return on investment, thanks to a new federal policy that went into effect on July 1.
And it’s about time.
It’s a response to a shocking fact: Graduates of more than 800 college programs across the country — including at institutions like the University of Southern California and New York City’s New School — make less than the average high-school grad four years after getting a degree, despite all that time, effort and tuition money.
Now the American government will have no part in propping up degree programs that may not even lead to a livable wage. A provision of the Big Beautiful Bill cuts them off from federal aid access if they can’t break the non-grad salary baseline.

Programs that fail the test for two out of three consecutive years will no longer be able to bury kids in debt — at least not on the taxpayer’s dime.

The colleges will either have to cut their prices to a level where federal student loans are not needed, or else scrap these worthless programs, Uncle Sam is not going to be there to pay it for them, let alone provide student loan 'forgiveness' that the taxpayers have to pay for.

Which is a valuable thing.

Too many trash degrees out there, with underpaid degree-holders, is fueling some bad dynamics in society.

Fortune magazine describes how bad the picture has been since about 2005:

The data point that Scheiber returns to most is striking: The New York Federal Reserve has tracked the unemployment rate for recent college graduates since the late 1980s. For roughly three decades, it almost never exceeded the overall unemployment rate. Since 2022, it has stayed stubbornly above it.

“That’s just not something that we saw for 30 years before that,” [author Noam] Scheiber says. “It’s a pretty remarkable shift.”

As many students took out loans to pay for the soaring cost of tuition, they found themselves unable to get the high-paying jobs they needed to see a return on investment. Instead, they found themselves further in debt, living with their parents, and delaying milestones such as getting married or buying a house.

That's created an actual class known as 'downwardly mobile college graduates.' who are a core constituency -- and a growing one -- in the Mamdani Marxist movement.

As the author said: "Downward mobility is incredibly radicalizing."

Eric Hoffer wrote about this phenomenon in his 1951 bestseller, The True Believer, in the chapter titled 'The New Poor.'

This passage on downwardly mobile college graduates forming unions across many professions, from Fortune magazine, is telling:

That sense of shared precarity, [author Noam] Scheiber argues, is reshaping identity in ways that will define American politics for years. A plurality of the early Starbucks organizers he spoke to had volunteered for Bernie Sanders. The support for socialism among college graduates under 35 is, in his telling, not a fringe phenomenon but a mainstream one. He points to figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—a Boston University graduate who worked in restaurants and as a bartender before her political career—as both exceptional and emblematic.

“Downward mobility is incredibly radicalizing,” he says. “If you either grew up upper middle class and that’s no longer available to you, or you grew up with the promise of joining the upper middle class because you went to college like you were told to, and took out your loans. And now there’s no job that is available that enables you to come to the middle class. There are probably some more radicalizing forces in history, but not that many.”

He draws a line from the current moment to a broader historical pattern explored by the political scientist Peter Turchin, whose work on the “overproduction of elites” has gained a wide audience. The theory: when societies produce too many highly educated people competing for too few positions of status and prosperity, the result is political instability.

That smells like Mamdani in spades, the phenomenon of the underpaid college graduate, saddled with mountains of student loan debt they will never be able to repay, demonized by the woke, affirmative-actioned out of any jobs even against illegals, and no prospects for anything better, is what's fueling the Mamdani phenomenon.

A huge percent of Mamdani's base in New York City's mayoral election was from this base of young people.

"Mamdani's youth support goes beyond New York," NPR crowed.

A couple days ago, Evan Barker, a former Democrat operative appalled a the takeover of his party by DSA radical leftists wrote in the Free Press that the problem was just beginning:

As a former Democratic operative, I worked with many of today’s rising far-left candidates. What you’re seeing now is only the beginning.

Shutting down the radicalizing pipeline which goes through the colleges, not just from wokester instruction, but from the money structure itself that bankrolls worthless degrees and angry leftists is a critical step towards stopping this terrible dynamic. We all know that young people view socialism favorably, unlike past generations and gladly vote for these maniacs against all common sense. Had these people gotten decent degrees instead, with known usefulness as stepping stones towards well-paid jobs, this radicalism phenomenon might never have happened/

The Trump administration has seen it, and moved to shut it all down. This may be one of the most valuable achievements in a long line of achievements. Getting rid of the worthless degrees and all that follows from it is one critial way socialism will be defeated. America owes President Trump a debt of gratitude for this valuable service.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/07/new-student-loan-standards-trump-shuts-down-the-mamdani-voter-pipeline/

A Blood-Red Line in Maine

The eyes of the nation are on the 2026 U.S. Senate race in Maine, since a peculiar Marxist won the Democrat party nomination this past June.

In an explosive Politico report released Monday, July 6, it was alleged that Democrat nominee Graham Platner sexually assaulted his former girlfriend, Jenny Racicot in 2021.

The nominee categorically denies the charge.

They apparently agree that their relationship was “on again, off again,” having met on Bumble in 2019, which makes it somewhat murky, but of course if she said no at the time, that’s rape. She reports that she ended the relationship permanently after this 2021 incident.

Several prominent Democrats have begun retracting their endorsements of the nominee, apparently in the hope that he will drop out of the race in time to meet Maine’s July 13 deadline for the party to be allowed a two-week window in which to select a replacement.

Incumbent senator Susan Collins (R) has been a resilient political icon in Maine for decades. As a moderate Republican, she has comfortably won, consistently, in a state that Democrats always expect to capture. Would the Democrats have won this time, with Platner? It’s difficult to imagine. But the party continued to at least pay lip service to their confidence in Platner until this latest story broke.

The Statute of Limitations

We shouldn’t move on to discuss this issue without addressing the elephant in the room, from the perspective of the criminal justice system: If this happened five years ago, why didn’t the victim come forward before this?

The victim claims that she didn’t come forward about it earlier because she was conflicted; Being a leftist like him, she was hesitant to hurt his campaign. But Platner wasn’t a politician five years ago, when the alleged assault occurred. There was no political reason to protect him at the time.

Society has statutes of limitations for two primary reasons.

First, we want a prosecution to be fair to everyone involved — both suspect and victim — so we want to move on it while the evidence is fresh, witnesses’ memories are at their most reliable, and we have the best odds of getting it right.

The second reason is arguably even more important from a public policy perspective: We want to remove criminals from society as soon as possible, in order to protect potential future victims. The longer a crime goes unreported or unprosecuted, the longer the criminal is out loose in public, able to victimize other innocents.

Statutes of limitations vary, both from state to state and from crime to crime. As it happens, it would still be legal for Ms. Racicot to press charges today, if she wanted, because Maine has no statute of limitations for rape. But as of the reports available at press time, she has not filed charges with the state — only with the press.

One wonders why.

Society is at its best when there are as few crimes as possible. You accomplish that goal by removing guilty criminals from society as soon as their predatory behavior is known. Regardless of statutes of limitations, victims should always file charges right away, not after discussing it friends or therapists for years and years.

Why Come Forward Today?

It is widely theorized that Democrat machers have been watching this campaign with fear, seeing their hopes of knocking out Susan Collins diminish as embarrassments and allegations about Platner mount.

He has been accused of abuse against women (Ms. Racicot is hardly the first), and of countless misogynist statements online, and of racist views, and of Nazi sympathies, all of which he blames on PTSD and other personal problems, but all of which he naturally wholeheartedly “regrets.”

We’ve had politicians with tattoos before, but Graham Platner is the first U.S. Senate candidate to sport a Nazi concentration camp guard tattoo on his chest. Is saying “I’m sorry” enough?

As his polling suffered from greater public awareness of his flaws, without causing him to drop out, some suspect that it was members of his own party who went looking for more allegations, just so they could force his hand while there might still be time to salvage their chances against Senator Collins.

So when this young lady showed up out of the blue, in recent weeks, choosing at long last to come forward, just under the wire, how did she know whom to call to ensure maximum impact?

Why did she reach out to Politico rather than the local police, as normal assault victims do?

Even if the allegation is 100 percent accurate, this is as clear a political hit as you can get, and it is just as clearly friendly fire.

The Lesson for 2026

When Platner is almost inevitably forced out of the race this week, the Democrats will proudly attempt to claim the moral high ground for doing the right thing and replacing their deeply flawed candidate.

But should they be able to get away with that?

The Democrats, after all, nominated this guy in an open primary. Democrat voters selected him over more “normal,” relatively inoffensive mainstream Democrats just three months ago, when virtually all his many shortcomings were already known to their Maine primary voters.

There is no difference on the issues, after all, between Platner and the less obviously reprehensible Democrat candidates he defeated. They all agree on everything from confiscatory taxation to rabid overregulation, from their lockstep disdain for human life to the open borders policies that the intersectionality of Democrats require every modern progressive to champion, no matter how much damage such policies do to their constituents, their country, and their world.

The only difference between them is that Mr. Platner made his offensiveness too visible, through a tattoo, some published posts, and a few cases of past behavior. If it were about issues, the primary voters could have chosen any of the others, but they consciously chose the most blatantly repulsive one of the group.

If he had continued to be just as reprehensible a candidate as the rest of his fellow Democrat candidates, but had the sense to keep it more of a secret, he would enjoy the full support of the Democrat party going into the general election.

Platner had his Nazi tattoo covered up. He had his social media scrubbed. He apologized for past behavior and said he was a new person. Until this latest allegation arrived on the scene, the Democrats hoped that simply repudiating all his past writings, his past actions, and his past tattoos would be sufficient to coast to victory.

But this raises yet another question: What is the election process for, if not to evaluate the full life experiences of the candidates and choose among them?

If, in district after district, state after state, we allow Democrat nominees to evade responsibility for past positions, behaviors, and beliefs, holding Republicans’ feet to the fire for every past indiscretion while forgiving a mountain of Democrat sins, what is the point of holding elections at all?

It’s time the American public stopped letting candidates get away with any of these alleged rebirths. “You got a Nazi tattoo, you shook down a car dealer, you used drugs, you dated a Chinese spy, you forced the closure of a business, you destroyed our health care system? Well, that’s what we’re judging you on, against your opponent’s equally real résumé.”

If you wouldn’t deserve the support of your desired constituents once your real identity got exposed, you shouldn’t have run in the first place.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international trade compliance trainer, public speaker, and consultant at The Trade Compliance Coach.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/07/a-blood-red-line-in-maine/

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