Zohran Mamdani’s promise to bring “the resurgent flame of hope” to “the January chill” as mayor of a literally frozen New York City during his January 1 inaugural address got the cold shoulder from conservative commentators.

Despite his vow to move the city to unity past “a tale of two cities, the rich versus the poor” and highlighting constituents “who supported President Trump a year before they voted for me,” some just aren’t buying Mamdani’s narrative. At most, reactions to lines such as the pledge to “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism” in City Journal or The Wall Street Journal don’t go quite as far as National Review‘s Noah Rothman in invoking “the warmth generated by torchlit marches, book burnings, and crematoria.”

Yet those red-baiting Mamdani’s “Red Apple” could stand to scratch the surface and see how much the gilded apple of Trump Tower pokes through — and not just because he won’t be able to “deliver universal childcare for the many by taxing the wealthiest few” if those fat cats pull up stakes.

Mamdani at least acknowledges that Bill de Blasio took office via the same winning “tale of two cities” rhetoric in 2014 — and the precedents of David Dinkins and Fiorello La Guardia, both memory-holed by the subtitle of Run Zohran Run! Inside Zohran Mamdani’s Sensational Campaign to Become New York City’s First Democratic Socialist Mayor. The contrast to such predecessors as former mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and election competitor Andrew Cuomo is left unsaid.

Yet Mamdani’s assertion that subsidies for rents and rides are “not simply about the costs we make free, but the lives we fill with freedom” parallels Giuliani’s infamous line about how “freedom is about authority.” Rudy’s concomitant qualms about using such authority to “solve problems that government in America was designed not to solve” are nullified by certitude that “there is no need too small to be met” by statism — itself an echo of Cuomo’s confidence that in the New York state he then governed “there is no small solution to big problems.”

Mamdani assures us that his administration is one for which “no longer will City Hall hesitate to use its power” in the face of “those who insist that the era of big government is over.” He doesn’t specify whether their ranks include the husband of former United States Senator Hillary Clinton who originated that phrase, but it’s not that far from William Jefferson Clinton’s anti-Jeffersonian claim to find “nothing patriotic about … pretending that you can love your country but despise your Government.”

For New Yorkers who love their city despite its government, that’s not the result of what Mamdani dubs “decades of apathy” but of understanding reality.

New Yorker Joel Schlosberg is a senior news analyst at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

1. “OPINION: Humanitarianism is the warmest place to hide” by Joel Schlosberg, The Richmond Observer [Rockingham, North Carolina], January 6, 2026

I’m writing this column on the morning of Saturday, January 3, with initial news trickling in. “The facts” are still thin, and some of them will likely turn out to be either incomplete or not “facts” at all, but a few real facts are foundational and not subject to change. Let’s go through them:

First, US president Donald Trump’s attack on Venezuela is illegal under US law and should result in his impeachment, conviction, removal from office, and eventually imprisonment. Congress has not declared war on Venezuela; therefore Trump has zero authority to wage said war. But he’s been doing so at low intensity for months and just kicked it into high gear with multiple strikes on, and the claimed abduction of the titular “leader” of, Venezuela.

Second, Trump’s attack on Venezuela is an illegal war of aggression under international law — and since the Venezuelan regime is a member state of the International Criminal Court, Trump and everyone below him in the chain of command who participates in it are now subject to indictment, arrest, and prosecution for all of the crimes the attack entails.

Third, Trump’s attack on Venezuela was entirely optional. There was no plausible, let alone imminent, threat against the United States by the Venezuelan regime that could have served as an excuse for “retaliation” or any plea of “necessity.” Whatever Trump’s reason for ordering the attack (personally, I suspect it’s just another attempt to distract from his long, close, personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein), those reasons are his own, not “America’s.”

Fourth, the whole thing is indescribably stupid and evil. US troops’ lives are being put at risk. US taxpayers’ money is being wasted. And the operation has the makings of extending that risk and increasing that waste by way of reproducing past “regime change” / “nation-building” fiascos such as South Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

The very best possible outcome of the attack is that the Venezuelan people rise up, overthrow the current regime, and replace it with something more to their liking — but probably not to the Washington, DC regime’s liking. Which they could have done at any time, without Trump’s help, had they chosen to.

The more likely outcome is that US forces will install a puppet/quisling regime to rule Venezuela to Trump’s (and Big Oil’s) liking, then spend years bleeding American blood and treasure into the place before an ignominious departure (with or without formal surrender).

What’s NOT likely is that Trump and his accomplices will be removed from office/power, charged under US law, or extradited for trial under international law.

That’s a shame. Letting violent criminals get away with violent crimes is an invitation to continue committing those crimes.

So much for a peaceful 2026.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Well, that about wraps it up for 2025. As I write this, the old year only has four days left to produce any delightful — or nasty — surprises before giving way to the new one.

I can’t say 2025 produced much in the way of good news. Many of its events and developments will continue to annoy and impoverish us  well into 2026. Rather than spend an entire column going over those things, allow me to offer a cautionary note on what is or isn’t worth expecting NEXT year.

We live in the age of the permanent campaign, and everywhere I turn I see Democrats, actual Republicans (as opposed to Trumpists), and supposed “independents” looking forward to next November’s midterm congressional elections with hope, even excitement: Democrats will take the US Senate and the House, they hope, thwarting Donald Trump’s policy agenda.

The odds are not with those hopes or that excitement.

The Cook Report, a sort of gold standard when it comes to predicting outcomes, rates only two Senate races as “toss-ups.” Both those seats are currently held by Democrats, who need to pick up a net four seats for a majority. Very unlikely.

The House situation isn’t as dire for Democrats, but Polymarket, a betting/prediction market with a pretty good record, only gives them a 45% chance of flipping three seats to get a majority.

But, let’s suppose that, through some quasi-miraculous chain of events, next November produces a Congress controlled by Democrats.

What changes?

The sitting president has demonstrated — multiple times over an entire first term and the first year of another — that when Congress doesn’t give him what he wants, he just takes it. The court system has proven itself fairly ineffectual at stopping him.

And even if, in a second set of miracles, Trump simmers down or gets routinely thwarted in the courts, it’s not like the Democrats are THAT different from the Republicans.

First-term Trump gave us massive tax increases in the form of tariffs. Joe Biden kept most of those tariffs and even expanded some. Second-term Trump put them on steroids.

First-term Trump escalated every war he inherited from Barack Obama, re-started an old war in Somalia, and handed it all off to Biden, who continued down the same path everywhere except Afghanistan.

And both Republicans and Democrats in Congress let both of them get away with it, while increasing government spending and increasing government debt, introducing new “national security” and surveillance state horrors, etc.

Neither Republican nor Democratic politicians want to fix things even if they could, and they can’t. Various third party and independent candidates might want to, but even given an opportunity they’d likely be unsuccessful.

Government THROUGH politics is not going to get us out of the mess we’ve been putting and keeping ourselves in WITH politics for more than a century now.

Our only hope is that the system collapses — which isn’t likely to happen in the next year — and that we can replace it with something better, which seems even less likely.

Happy New Year, I guess.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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