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Tribune News Service on Jun 26, 2025

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Trump staffers, supporters target Zohran Mamdani with barrage of Islamophobic hate

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump’s right-wing supporters have hit Zohran Mamdani with a barrage of Islamophobic hate since he stunned the political world Tuesday night by winning the Democratic primary for New York City mayor.

MAGA loyalists have claimed that Mamdani might impose religious Shariah law in the Big Apple or even spark terrorism like the Sept. 11 attacks if he becomes the city’s first-ever Muslim mayor.

“NYC is about to see 9/11 2.0,” right-wing media figure Laura Loomer tweeted, adding in another post: “There will be another 9/11 in NYC and (Zohran Mamdani) will be to blame.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, posted a fake photo-shopped image of the Statue of Liberty draped in a burqa, the covering worn by some observant Muslim women. “This hits hard,” Greene tweeted.

—New York Daily News

Slotkin outlines economic 'war plan' for Democrats to expand middle class

WASHINGTON — Michigan Democratic U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin on Thursday laid out an economic "war plan," declaring the country's shrinking middle class an existential threat to U.S. national security and calling on her party to go on the offense and "ruthlessly" focus on the economy.

In a speech in Washington billed as an alternative vision for the country's future, the former Pentagon official and CIA officer urged her party to "face up" to what's not working, change course and pursue "an economy that works for everyone."

"Michigan is ... a place where people feel like it's harder and harder to get in and stay in the middle class. ... This is the thing that many Democrats have, quite frankly, lost touch with. When you can't provide for your kids, you feel anger, you feel shame, you lose your dignity, and you look for something or someone to blame," the Holly Democrat said Thursday.

"That anger, that suspicion among Americans, that right there is what I mean by an existential threat because in a multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy like ours, when people don't feel like they can get ahead, when the system is rigged against them, they start blaming people who don't look like them or who sound different, or who pray different. It's how we begin to tear each other apart from the inside."

—The Detroit News

Deadly virus spread by deer tick kills 1, hospitalizes 2, Wisconsin officials say

A deadly virus, transmitted through tick bites, killed one and hospitalized two others as of June, Wisconsin health officials said.

Details about where and how the three individuals contracted Powassan virus in the state were not shared, however the Wisconsin Department of Health Services is recommending health care providers quickly test patients with symptoms of the “rare” disease.

“POWV is rare, but there has been an increase in the number of cases reported in recent years,” officials said in a June 24 email to health care providers in the state. “This increase could be from more people becoming infected with POWV, improvements in testing and diagnosis, or some combination of both.”

Powassan virus is transmitted through the bite of an infected blacklegged (deer) tick, officials said. The ticks contract the disease when they bite an infected animal, then pass it onto a human as they latch onto them.

—The Charlotte Observer

Spain’s leader calls US levies ‘doubly unfair’ in trade spat

Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez defended his decision to break with his NATO allies over increases in military spending and called President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Spain “doubly unfair.”

“Europe and the world have been suffering from a trade war, from tariff measures that we have considered — at least in Spain — from the first minute as unfair and also unilateral,” Sanchez told reporters in Brussels Thursday. “In the case of Spain, they’re doubly unfair.”

Sanchez pointed out that Spain has a trade deficit with the U.S. — whereas it’s the trade surpluses that many other countries have with the U.S. that have driven Trump’s tariff policy.

Members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreed at a summit Wednesday to raise their spending on defense to 5% of GDP. Sanchez, however, has refused to meet the new target, saying Spain will only raise its defense expenditure to 2.1%, “nothing more, nothing less.”

—Bloomberg News