My latest for @CityJournal! In March, Hasan Piker, Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin, and dozens of other American activists traveled to Cuba with the Nuestra América Convoy, billed as a humanitarian mission. The convoy delivered more than 20 tons of aid in an effort Reuters characterized as “circumventing U.S. sanctions.” It also placed American activists in events facilitated by Cuban state-linked institutions, amplified regime propaganda, and gave Cuban officials a platform to address an American audience. Then came the enforcement... May - Treasury subpoenas sought information about the convoy and its participants. June - The United States sanctioned ICAP and Amistur, which helped facilitate foreign delegations to Cuba. ICAP has long been viewed by U.S. intelligence agencies and Cuban defectors as a front for Cuban intelligence. July - The State Department detailed decades of Cuban espionage and collaboration with far-left radical organizations in America. Hasan and Medea will attract the headlines. But the scrutiny surrounding the convoy may be only the opening phase of a much broader crackdown on foreign influence operations. Treasury has made the first move. DOJ, Florida’s attorney general, and others could be next as the administration mounts a full-court press against malign foreign influence.

Iran is currently plastered with massive “Kill Trump” posters while hostilities with the regime continue. And Mamdani’s top international affairs official still thought this was the right moment for an official meeting with Iran’s UN ambassador. Stunningly bad judgment.

🚨 Bill Ayers and Princeton’s Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Mark July 4th With No Patriotism, No Borders, and “Fuck the USA” As you celebrate Independence Day, remember that there is an entire class of activists, including many embedded in higher education, who spend their days trying to dismantle the country. Take last night’s “250 Years of Resistance” event at the National Public Housing Museum, featuring Brian Jones and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor in conversation and introduced by Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers. The event was framed around the 250th anniversary of America not as a celebration, but as “250 years of resistance.” Ayers recalled a 1976 underground press poster declaring “200 years is enough” and said, “Now it’s 250 years, and I kind of feel similarly.” At one point, Professor Taylor even acknowledged the vibe in the room, joking, “This audience is all like, ‘Fuck the USA.’” Taylor rejected patriotism outright, saying, “We have to reject the idea of loving a nation state, which is what patriotism is.” She called the nation-state “destructive,” said “borders are deadly” and “borders kill people,” and later declared that the nation-state “should not be revered” because it is “a tool of death and destruction” that should be “the object of political struggle, not embrace.” She also said, “I want nothing to do with claiming the United States in some patriotic fashion,” before joking that when someone handed her child an American flag at the airport, she did not set it on fire, though the thought “may have crossed my mind.” To put this into plainer English, when Taylor says the nation-state should be the “object of political struggle,” she is talking about delegitimizing the nation-state itself and advancing a worldview that would dismantle the United States as a sovereign country. No nation-state means no real borders. No real borders means no meaningful sovereignty. No sovereignty means the people have no country left to govern. This is the old Marxist fantasy of a world where workers are not bound by nations, borders, or citizenship, but are free to move wherever they want. In practice, it means dissolving the country out from under its own people.

🚨 Hasan Piker just shouted out DSA’s Liberation Caucus, the Maoist caucus that signed the “Free Elias Rodriguez” statement after Rodriguez allegedly murdered two embassy staffers. The statement framed the killings as building a “popular cradle of resistance.”

🚨 Media figures rushed to fact-check Trump by insisting Democratic Socialism is not Communism. But a majority of DSA’s national leadership is shaped by Communists, Marxist-Leninists, and members who see the org as fertile ground for radicalization. My latest for @CityJournal!

🚨 BREAKING: Hasan Piker addressed the reported Treasury investigation on his livestream, and even he admits the news is “not great.” “I’m not gonna lie to you guys. It’s not great. The news is not great, OK? I mean, it’s bullshit, but still not great that they’re after your boy. They’re up my ass.” He then joked with viewers chanting “free me,” responding: “Free me, free me. I can’t believe I’m saying that.” For all the bravado, Hasan clearly understands this is serious.