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Foreign It's Thursday, November 6, 2025. I'm Albert Moeller and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. And so it begins. Those were the words offered by President Donald J. Trump in response to the election of Zoran Mamdani as the new mayor of New York City. It will now be just a matter of weeks before Mamdani, an openly identified Democratic socialist who won the Democratic nomination and is an immigrant Muslim. You add all that together and a lot of history has been made. And you can count on this. A lot of history is going to be made. But taking stock of the election of Zalran Mamdani as mayor, let's just consider the fact that New York City is the nation's largest city. Its economy is actually greater than that of many nations. Zoraim Dani has never run any major organization even for a day, even, even for a minute. He's had only a handful of employees and now he's going to be handed one of the biggest municipal employment bases in all of world history. Furthermore, he's gonna be handed a set of challenges that will be vexing even for the most experienced politician. And he's one of the least experienced politicians. A 34 year old Democratic Socialist Muslim has just been elected the mayor of the nation's largest city, one of the world's largest city economies, and of course one of the most influential cities in the world. Certainly starting the influence of New York on the United States of America. It is ground zero for so many of the cultural elites, for so many of the academics, those who are the producers of culture, those who are the major engines of ideology in the United States. New York City is a magneto of sorts for this kind of cultural energy. And it is the central address for the cultural elite in the United States. It has some academic addresses, it has some west coast addresses. You know, you could throw in cities like Chicago, but there's only one New York City. One and only one. And now it has elected a 34 year old who is in multiple ways unlike any mayor who's ever served in that city or frankly almost any American city before. The worldview issues are massive. Let's start with those two words, Democratic, socialist. Those are not just, say, adjectives. In his case, he is openly identified with, with the Democratic Socialists of America. That is a long standing political party. It goes back to Michael Harrington and the radicals of the 1960s. It was an effort to put two things together. Unlike say, the central Leninist and Marxist theory about revolution, the Democratic socialists sought to bring in socialism by democratic means, that is, by elections. So just get the hint. Zoram Mandani has now become the Democratic Socialist mayor of New York City. And so in this case, the democratic socialist experiment of gaining socialist influence and socialist power through democratic means, it just won big in the nation's largest city. And it did so almost a half century after almost everyone thought that socialism, straight out socialism, democratic socialism, or any other form of socialism was on the way out in the world scene in New York City. Well, the headlines are telling the story. It's now big time on the way in. There are so many people in the Democratic Party, also in the mainstream media, who are trying now to downplay the radical nature of Zalram Mandani. But the record simply speaks for itself. First of all, whether he wants to be saddled with it or not, he has to be saddled with the entire agenda of the Democratic Socialists of America. He has not only historically been a part of that party, he even after his win, asserted it again, sending a very clear signal. All those Democrats who said, oh, if he's elected, he'll temporize, he'll move to the middle, he, he'll moderate. Well, he may have to in one sense because of the available political options, but it's abundantly clear that's not what he intends to do. It's certainly not what he wants to do. Now, when we talk about socialism, remember the key idea behind socialism is government ownership, and especially more specifically with democratic socialism, government control of the economy. Now, when you're looking at New York City, it is a massive, it is a simply massive economy, bigger than any city economy in all of world history, but it is also built on capitalism. I mean, just think about it. New York City, Wall Street, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, about as economic establishment as you can get. But Zorah Mandani ran right at what he identified as some of the most urgent problems facing New York and New Yorkers. And he had democratic socialist answers to them. You have a housing crisis in New York City. No one can doubt that. And by the way, Democratic politicians are almost single handedly responsible for that because they have been limiting the growth of housing. People move into the city, politicians have limited the growth of housing. Guess what? Housing is scarce, housing is unavailable, and housing is increasingly expensive. So what is the socialist answer to this? Rent control. Now, rent control has been operational in New York for at least a sizable portion of the rental properties for some time. That means government says much. These folks can charge in rent that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the real economy. And now you have Zoram Mandani wanting to expand that, more or less creating a vast socialist experiment when it comes to rental properties in New York. He promised to solve the housing problem. Now, I'll just say this right up front. I am not the prophet. I am not the son of a prophet. But Zoran Mamdani is going to come nowhere close to solving the housing problem in New York City. Frankly, it's almost impossible to imagine how that crisis can be resolved under a single mayor's terms in office, regardless of who he is or what his ideological position is. But when you're talking about socialism, even if you want to call it democratic socialism, here's the problem. Socialism is based upon control. And the one thing no mayor of New York can control is the fact that a lot of people with money will simply decide to move elsewhere or make their investments elsewhere. Why in the world would you want to in new rental properties in New York if you're going to have a socialist mayor tell you what you can and cannot charge regardless of the market conditions? I mean, frankly, that would be idiocy. Furthermore, you also have the fact that he wants to tax the rich. Now, everyone wants to tax the rich because the rich are the easiest target, but the rich also have the ability to move. And so if New York City does what Zoram Mandani has promised, and there's a footnote there as well, even if that happens, it's not going to produce what he promised. Because as much as so many wealthy people want to live in New York, I'm just going to make a prediction right now. They like their money more than they like their New York address. How about grocery prices? Well, you know, in truth, the American grocery system, the American food retail system, is one of the marvels of the modern world. Honestly, I grew up in that business, even just in Spain Today, my wife and I walked into a grocery area, a grocery store. We wanted to take a look at it simply because it tells you so much about the culture. And in the United States, one of the truths that has to be kept in mind is that groceries have one of the thinnest profit margins of any retail product whatsoever. It's one of the reasons why grocery stores want you to fill that cart because it takes an awful lot of transactions and with what are actually defined as groceries, to make much of a margin at all. Furthermore, the abundance is the big story of the American supermarket. You walk in the supermarket, you want mustard well, how many varieties of mustard are you going to have from which to choose? The reality is that on item after item, that is how a market economy has produced abundance. You want to kill that abundance? Have a government branded mustard. How good do you think that's going to taste? So you can put your socialist mustard on your socialist hot dog in a socialist bun. And you know what? I don't think anyone thinks that is a recipe for success. Furthermore, what exactly would that look like? Just consider the groceries available in socialist economies. It is brown, it's gray, it's beige. And that's about all there is to it. Just ask people on the island nation of Cuba. How's that for a communist and socialist experiment? It is well known that in Cuba food is very hard to come by. It also comes in a very irregular pattern so that guess what? The store has rice. This week, everybody's eating rice. Next week it has wheat. Everybody's eating stuff made out of wheat. This week it has meat. What kind of meat? Well, whatever kind of meat it has, that's what everybody is eating this week. I'm going to tell you, people in New York are not looking for that kind of grocery store. So he wants to raise taxes on the rich. He wants to control rental prices. At the same time he wants to produce more housing. He wants to bring down grocery prices and then sell groceries in city owned stores themselves. You just go down the list. On issue after issue, he's about as far left as you could consider. Then add what I think is even more important. He is an anti Zionist. He is a leading critic of Israel. His father is a critical theorist when it comes to the studies of empire. He is himself ideologically cut out of this cloth. He was raised in this cloth. He was raised with a father very committed to the Palestinian cause. And he himself has used slogans about the elimination of Israel. And yet, just consider this. The voting pattern already reveals that a sizable number of Jewish citizens in New York voted for Zoran Mamdani. You have to ask the question, what in the world is the allure of this candidate? And furthermore, just what does it say about how leftward or even leftist New York City voters have actually now become? It's almost impossible to describe just how radical Zoran Mamdani is when you look at the American political spectrum. The editors of the Wall Street Journal put out a statement, simply stated, zoram Mamdani captures New York. Captures is not exactly a peaceful word here. The subhead in the editorial statement, if he governs as a leftist, he may find that capital and people are mobile. That means they can leave town. And of course, that's true. It's going to take some time for all this to settle out. One of the things about New York City, by the way, is that it doesn't get to make many of these decisions unilaterally. A lot of the biggest issues, the biggest promises that Zoram Mandani raised and the promises he made, many of them will require the cooperation of the state government, of the Democratic governor there, who at least has tried to present herself as a moderate. But now she has a challenger from the left herself. Guess what? You might see not only New York City, but New York State move significantly to the left. And of course, when you look at the other positions, LGBTQ issues, abortion issues, you just go down the list. It is almost incomprehensible to imagine just how radical, just how liberal Zoran Mamdani is. And now he is the mayor elect of New York City. That's a big thing for us to consider. What does it say, though, not just about New York City, but about the politics of the Democratic Party nationwide? Well, what it says is that they have a new star. And guess what? He intends to redefine the entire party. The editorial board of the Journal put it this way, quote, Mr. Mamdani also poses a challenge to national Democrats. One problem will come if his victory inspires more leftist candidates to challenge incumbent Democrats in primaries. They may be less able to win swing districts. The other challenge will be in message and image, if Mr. Mamdani begins to define the Democratic Party in the public mind. And then the editors went on to say, president Trump will try to drive that impression, end quote. I think it's going to be easy for President Trump to drive that impression, because I think it's more than an impression. And you just look at the celebratory statements made by Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, aoc, as she is known, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. They're absolutely convinced, along with many others, that they're pushing the Democratic Party their way. They'll point to some significant voting patterns in the mayoral election in New York City just this week. They're going to say, look at the younger voters. Look at how younger voters turned out in droves, not only as volunteers for the Mamdani campaign, but also effectively in getting out the vote and in voting themselves. So you're going to have a lot of people, especially the vacuum of leadership in the Democratic Party, who are going to see a figure such as Zoran Mamdani filling the void. But, of course, I think even most Democrats recognize there's a big jump from Mayor Mamdani to, say, Governor Mamdani, not to mention President Mamdani. The issue is not so much this candidate all of a sudden ricocheting up into the national picture. It's more this candidate exerting a great deal of influence inside the Democratic Party. And here's something to know about the Democratic Party. It is different than the Republican Party when it comes to some of the mechanisms of even the presidential nomination process. There is more opportunity for insiders in the party to have influence among the Democrats than among Republicans. And you couple the Mamdani win with two gubernatorial wins, one in New York and one in Virginia, that leads to pieces such as the one by Lisa Lehrer, the national political correspondent for the New York Times. The headline, the Democrats just took a Big step toward Getting their groove back. She makes some interesting arguments. She says, quote, the results showed a level of determination and energy among Democratic voters that was missing in that 2024 election. This time, their candidates were stronger. Their campaigns focused intensely on affordability and an intense desire to deal a blow to President Trump, end quote. That was a big part of the picture here. And this tells us something about where the Democratic Party is, how frustrated Democratic voters are, and where a lot of people think the Democratic Party has to go. Well, okay, so let's talk about those two gubernatorial elections. Let's just take the two states, New Jersey and Virginia. Both of them have very strong gubernatorial positions. In Virginia, the governor cannot be reelected to a second consecutive term. So as you're looking at the state of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, a Democratic member of Congress, was elected the governor. And she, by the way, ran as a moderate Democrat. But you know what? Moderate Democrat compared to what or compared to whom? The reality is that Abigail Spanberger is moderate only when compared to someone like, say, Zoram Mandani. And I went deeply into her material, her website, her speeches on abortion, LGBTQ issues and such. She is way, way, way on the left. I could find no statement accepting any restrictions on abortion in all of her material. And she not only ran say on that issue, she ran loudly on that issue as well. So also did Mikey Sherrill. And she's now been elected also, by the way, a Democratic member of Congress elected the new governor of New Jersey, a very powerful state, very Democratic state, and yet she won convincingly. So you have two women who had been in the Democratic caucus in the Congress, in the House of Representatives. They are now the governor's elect of two big states, Virginia and New Jersey, when it comes to both of them, they're presented as moderates, but they're only moderate in their approach and in the fact that, well, let's put it this way, they're not identified as socialists. But nonetheless, given the trajectory of the Democratic Party, it is at least imaginable that Abigail Spanberger or Mikey Sherrill could have true presidential ambitions within that party. And you know, you consider the 2024 election, you fast forward to 2028 or even beyond that, 2032, 2036, it's hard to imagine that the Democratic Party would move even slightly to the right. It's far more imaginable that it would continue to move further and further to the left. And that's where you could have figures such as Kathy Hochul, who is the governor there in New York, and Governor elect Spanberger, Governor elect Sherrill. All of them could well be vying for the definition of the Democratic Party. It would be to the left of where it has been. It would be to the left of President Obama and even President Biden. It would be to the left of just about any Democratic position over the course of the last generation or so. It would nonetheless not be as far left as Azoran Mamdani. And the Democratic Party is going to have to make a choice. So even in considering the meaning of the election, Lisa Lehrer at the New York Times, she did say this. Prominent Democratic leaders want to have it both ways, saying on Tuesday that it's time for a new era of big tent politics within the party, accommodating both Mr. Mamdani's fellow progressives and center left establishment Democrats. These leaders think the key for Democrats and a lesson from Tuesday's results is combining winning issues like the high cost of living with a be everywhere, be authentic style of campaigning and communicating while focusing less on policies and lithmus tests that divide the party. One spokesperson, in this case Senator Elissa Slotkin, she's a Democrat, represents Michigan. She said, quote, what works in Manhattan will not work in Virginia and what works in Virginia won't work in Michigan. And that's all right, end quote. She went on to say, quote, winning in different places around the country with very different voters and experiences should be celebrated, not attacked, end quote. The problem is, however, when you look at the national situation, by the time you get to a presidential election, you're not just running in Michigan or Manhattan or Wisconsin. You're going to have to run in all those states at the same time. And you're going to have to have a message. This was one of the big problems with Kamala Harris in her 2024 campaign. She was caught in statements that she had made in one place that didn't sell so well in another, and that's an awkward position for anyone. She didn't pull that dance off very well. It's going to be very difficult for any Democrat in the future to do better. But in terms of the Christian worldview and how we observe cultural change, I want us all to pay attention to the fact that every one of the big name winning candidates in the Democratic Party is way, way, way to the left of the American consensus on LGBTQ issues, on the abortion issue and many others. And those are central to our concern. Understand that you have someone such as Abigail Spanberger, who in Virginia made the argument that there should not be any blanket policy that would say that biological males can't play on girls school or athletic teams. She said it needs to be decided on a case by case basis. Let me just say that's a recipe for insanity. And she's smart enough to know that it really means the transgender agenda wins. And eventually, even as so many in the media are saying, look, that issue won for President Trump in 2024, but it's a losing issue now. I don't think so. Not when you bring parents into the equation. And when you have the issue stand alone, it's going to be very, very difficult for some of these Democrats to run from their own positions. But here's the scary thing. I don't think they want to. I don't think they think they need to. That, in worldview terms, should really tell us something. Okay, let's shift gears. I want to point to something else that should tell us something, and that is the fact that Brazil is going to be hosting this month's United Nations Climate Summit. Okay? That's a big deal. And remember that Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lua da Silva has been a big pusher of the climate change agenda. He has wanted to be a major figure. He is a figure on the left. He wants. He wants to be a figure in terms of opposing climate change. He wants to use international coercion in order to bring it about. He wanted to host this summit, and he's about to host the summit. The summit was given to Brazil because it was supposed to be a classic case of what the liberals want in terms of ending the use of fossil fuels and all the rest. But what is President da Silva doing? He is drilling Oil. Just like President Trump says, drill, baby, drill. In his own dialect, in his own way, with his own actions. That's what the president of Brazil is doing as well. And that presents a quandary. By the way, he is now drilling for oil in the Amazon, one of the most high risk ecological regions in the entire world. He's doing so, he says, because Brazil needs the oil. And the reality is that the political base there, even in Brazil, is demanding oil. And the reality is the president of Brazil cannot afford to. To do what he has told the rest of the world to do. And he is now. Well, it doesn't appear he's so embarrassed, actually. But United nations officials had to be embarrassed that they're going to be holding a climate summit and they're going to be hosted by the man that was their hero, but is now tearing down trees in the Amazon to drill for oil. And he's intending to sell that oil and use that oil. He said this, quote, as long as the world needs it, Brazil will not throw away wealth that can improve the lives of the Brazilian people. End quote. So, in other words, so long as the issue worked for him, he was all for it. But the bottom line is he never, ever meant it. It was all political posturing. It was all a matter of political maneuvering. Or to put it in another way, so long as Brazil could afford it, he was all for the agenda. Once Brazil needed the oil and needs the money, guess what? Everything turned around. And it's not just Brazil. On a related issue, the front page of yesterday's edition of the Financial Times had the head. Norway pauses ethics rules to avoid divesting big tech stakes. And that means big holdings in the stock market of big tech companies. But look at the headline. Norway Pauses Ethic rules. Okay, how serious can you be about ethics rules if you decide to pause them? Because if you don't pause them, it's going to hurt your economy. What would the ethics rules in this case be? Norway adopted a policy that stated that it would have to sell any major equities in firms that continue to work for the Israeli government. Guess what? Almost all of Big Tech does. Guess what? Norway is deeply invested in Big Tech. Guess what? It has paused its ethics rules. Now, just imagine this. Let's just put it in a family context. Junior's in big trouble for breaking a rule. And you bring him in and you say, all right, you're going to have to answer for this disobedience. And he says, well, I followed the rules. I really did. I followed the Rules. And I was committed to the rules, but I decided to put them on pause. Here's how the Financial Times reported the story. Richard Milnes, the reporter, quote, norway has suspended its ethical investing rules to avoid the nation's $2 trillion oil fund being forced to sell out of Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet owing to their work for the Israeli government. According to the finance minister, this is said with a straight face. It's above the fold. Lead headline in the Financial Times. Just imagine this again, Norway pauses ethics rules to avoid divesting. Notice, by the way, it hasn't been honest enough to change the rules. It's just saying, you know, we stand by those rules. And we stood by those rules until it got a little too expensive to stand by those rules. Kind of like the President of Brazil saying, I want to stand on the soapbox against the use of fossil fuels. I'm going to say that it's my role to protect the Amazon. I'm going to politically posture against all those big nations like the United States and others that drill for oil, use oil, and don't abide by so many of these international agreements. And then he breaks virtually all the rules because he says, I'm not going to let Brazil let all of that oil go unsold. In other words, there is no definition of hypocrite he is not determined to meet. And now it appears that Norway is in the same position again. Let me just state, you really don't have ethics rules if you pause them because they become too expensive. You have revealed the true morality of your position, which means your ethics are up for sale. Or to put it another way, you meant absolutely that ethical statement until all of a sudden you don't mean it anymore. Or like in the case of Norway, you just gotta love it. Just put it on pause. Finally, for today, I think most of the world knows about the horrifying plane crash that took place in Louisville, Kentucky. A giant fireball that destroyed the lives of all three of the UPS personnel on the plane and several people on the ground. Some are now very severely injured and others are still unaccounted for. It's a reminder to us that we take so many things for granted. We watch plan planes take off, we watch them land, and thousands and thousands and thousands of times. It works and everyone's safe. But we are reminded that we live in a world in which the laws of physics say that when something like this goes wrong, it can go catastrophically wrong. Another reminder to us, we take nothing for granted. Another reminder to us that we need to pray for those whose lives have been directly and indirectly touched by this disaster. And you look at those images and you realize you can't look at that and not understand something horrible, truly horrible, has happened. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmohler.com you can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x.comalbertmohler for information on the Southern Baptist Theological seminary, go to sbgs.edu. for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com I'm speaking to you from Madrid, Spain, and I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing. Sam.