r/u_ReallyAmerican

Republicans and right wing media spent Zohran Mamdani's entire mayoral campaign warning that electing a Muslim mayor would bring Sharia law to New York City.

Today, Mamdani marched through Manhattan in the 2026 NYC Pride parade, walking alongside drag queens, LGBTQ+ families, and thousands of paradegoers celebrating one of the city's biggest annual traditions.

It's not just symbolic. Mamdani's administration has spent its first months in office building out real protections for queer and trans New Yorkers, including the city's first Office of LGBTQIA+ Affairs and millions in new funding for gender affirming health care. That's happening at the same time the Trump administration is ramping up attacks on the same community at the federal level.

The right wing spent a year painting Mamdani as a theocratic threat to American freedoms. He spent his first Pride as mayor marching with the exact people they claimed he'd persecute.

The fear mongering didn't predict reality. It just embarrassed the people who pushed it.

Jon Ossoff is calling for a Constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, the 2010 Supreme Court ruling that opened the floodgates for corporations and billionaires to pour unlimited money into U.S. elections.

This isn’t new for Ossoff. He’s refused corporate PAC money throughout his time in the Senate, and he’s called Citizens United one of the most destructive court decisions in modern American history. What’s notable now is the move from rhetoric to a concrete structural fix. A regular bill could overturn or weaken the ruling, but a future Congress could just as easily gut it again. An amendment, if it actually passed, would be permanent.

The catch is the process itself. A Constitutional amendment needs two thirds of both the House and Senate, then ratification by three quarters of the states. That’s an extremely high bar, and similar efforts have failed for over a decade. Other Democrats, like Rep. Joe Neguse with the Citizens Over Corporations Act, have pushed comparable legislation without success so far.

What makes this politically interesting is timing. Ossoff is the only Democratic senator up for reelection in a state Trump won, so he’s picking a fight over campaign finance in the toughest political environment a Senate Democrat currently faces. Whether that’s a smart bet on voter frustration with money in politics, or a tough sell in a tight race, is the actual debate here.