Category: Constitution
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Mamdani dares ICE to come get him — and throws the Constitution in the trash
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?
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.
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How the Senate’s phony ‘deliberation’ crushes working Americans
The United States Senate is broken, and most Americans know it — including President Donald Trump. A chamber that once passed laws with a simple 51-vote majority, a practice that held for more than a century, now demands 60 votes for nearly anything of consequence.
Defenders call this the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” guarding minority rights. In reality, the 60-vote threshold is a rule the Senate invented in the last century — and one it can discard tomorrow.
The filibuster transformed from a test of stamina into a tool for avoiding hard votes — and, today, a convenient excuse to delay or kill the America First agenda.
Article I lists exactly seven situations that require a supermajority: overriding vetoes, ratifying treaties, convicting in impeachment, expelling members, proposing constitutional amendments, and two obscure quorum rules. Passing ordinary legislation is not on the list.
The Senate’s tradition of unlimited debate — the seed of modern filibusters — wasn’t designed to create a supermajority requirement. It was an accident.
In 1806, on Aaron Burr’s suggestion that the Senate rulebook was cluttered, the chamber deleted the “previous question” motion, the mechanism the House still uses to end debate and vote. No one understood the implications at the time. Filibusters didn’t appear until the 1830s, and even then they were rare because they required real endurance. Senators had to speak nonstop, often for days, until they collapsed or yielded.
How the filibuster became a weapon
Everything changed in 1917. After 11 anti-war senators filibustered Woodrow Wilson’s bill to arm merchant ships on the eve of World War I, the public revolted. Wilson demanded action. The Senate responded by creating Rule XXII — the first cloture rule — allowing two-thirds of senators to end debate.
Instead of restraining obstruction, the rule supercharged it. For the first time, a minority didn’t need to speak until exhaustion. They only needed to threaten it. The majority now had to assemble a supermajority to progress.
The filibuster transformed from a test of stamina into a tool for avoiding hard votes — and, today, a convenient excuse to delay or kill the America First agenda.
The Senate has rewritten its filibuster rule many times since. In 1975, it lowered the cloture threshold from two-thirds to three-fifths (60 votes). In 2013, Democrats eliminated the filibuster for most presidential nominees; in 2017, Republicans applied that same exception to Supreme Court justices.
These changes all point to the same reality: The filibuster is not a sacred tradition. It is a standing rule, created and amended by simple-majority votes. The Senate can change it again any time.
The myth of ‘unprecedented change’
Filibuster defenders insist that ending the 60-vote rule would be radical.
It wouldn’t. In reality, it would restore the practice that governed the Senate for its first 128 years — unlimited debate, yes, but no supermajority threshold for passing laws.
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Defenders also claim the filibuster forces compromise. History says otherwise. The biggest legislative achievements of the last century — Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — all passed when the filibuster was weakened, bypassed, or irrelevant.
What we have now is not deliberation. It is paralysis: a rule that allows 41 senators, representing as little as 11% of the country, to veto the will of the rest. The Senate already protects small states through equal representation and long tenures. Adding a 60-vote requirement for routine governance is not what the framers intended.
The fix
The solution is straightforward. The Senate can return to simple-majority voting for legislation. It can keep unlimited debate if it wishes — but require a real talking filibuster that ends when the minority runs out of arguments or public patience. Or it can leave the system as it is now and watch President Trump’s America First agenda stall for another generation.
The filibuster is not a 230-year constitutional safeguard. It is a 108-year experiment born in 1917 — and it has failed. The Senate invented it. The Senate can un-invent it.
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