Free Republic

"MOM, WHY ARE YOU STILL AT WORK?” Ms. Akhtar’s 24-year-old son, Humza Mehfuz, wrote to her. “YOU HAVE TO VOTE!” While Ms. Akhtar had previously supported Mr. Mamdani’s main opponent, Andrew M. Cuomo, when he ran for governor and, years before that, had voted for his father, former Gov. Mario Cuomo, she told her children to calm down. After their relentless campaign of showing her TikTok videos of Mr. Mamdani — “This kid is brilliant,” she had to admit, “and so friendly!” — she had made her decision. “All of Cuomo’s ads tried to make Mamdani look like a terrorist,”...

Trump and Israel dismantled Iran’s terror mystique in days—no nukes, no saviors, just a regime stewing in its own impotence as the world quietly moved on. It is hard even to digest the incredible train of events of the last few days in the Middle East. Iran had been reduced to an anemic, performance-art missile attack on our base in Qatar—the last Parthian shot from a terrified regime, desperate for an out—and a ceasefire. Iran would have been better off not launching such a ceremonial but ultimately humiliating proof of impotence. Even worse for the theocracy, Iran’s temporary reprieve came...