No Schumer. No Jeffries. No Trump.
By Sarah Kendzior | Nov 12, 2026
The first Black Senator of Mississippi since Reconstruction. The first Muslim Senator in US history in Michigan. The first Democratic Senator of Texas elected this century. Upstart wins by working-class candidates and overdue ousters of rich relics who spent decades ruining lives. A national smackdown of stereotypes so hard, it caused 26 years of propaganda about “red” and “blue” states to collapse overnight. Clear-eyed in betrayal, Americans drew a cartography of redress.
And for that, they will be ruled by three corrupt men from New York City.
Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
The combined rule of Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, and Donald Trump is a disaster for democracy. The US cannot have a NYC trifecta — two of whom used to celebrate Roy Cohn’s birthday at Studio 54 (Trump and Schumer) and all of whom are drenched in AIPAC and Big Tech money — and expect its sovereignty to survive.
It would be wrong to have the House, Senate, and Presidency headed by three politicians from any one city. But to have all three from New York — a transnational mafia hub and the home of Wall Street — ensures that the corruption that voters condemned will not only continue but thrive.
The South, Texas, and the Midwest pulled more than their share of the midterms weight and should be represented in turn. Trump, Schumer, and Jeffries do not represent those states. They also do not represent New York. They represent Israel, Big Tech, and organized crime. They hurt the good people of New York City as much as they hurt the rest of the country.
The leadership crisis is not only a matter of too many New Yorkers, but which New Yorkers: their dirty donors, their avaricious agendas. Americans fought for freedom and were handed controlled opposition. Controlled opposition serves the same backers as Trump and protects his broader criminal network.
Whether actual opposition can oust controlled opposition will determine whether the US remains a mafia state.
You can’t vote out the mafia. But you can elect officials to build a bulwark against predatory forces that are infiltrating institutions at an accelerated rate. US power structures were already corrupt — otherwise they wouldn’t have been easy to subvert — but their Trump-era capture is near compete. Organized crime has abandoned even the pretense of legitimate government: that’s why Trump’s son-in-law is “negotiating” two wars as a private citizen. The litmus test of whether the US is a mafia state has always been Kushner. It is a test that Jeffries and Schumer repeatedly fail.
The midterms were a mass rejection of state capture by organized crime: one that would have come sooner were it not for the purposeful placation of the Biden Placeholder Presidency. Six years later, scars of betrayal run deep. No one expects the Democrats to stop corruption. They demand it.
They demand that leadership abide or step aside. Jeffries and Schumer deem the public irrational. They say fighting corruption is somehow antithetical to ending the affordability crisis caused by corruption. They claim we’re gunning for retribution.
“Retribution” is a word Vichy Dems say to make justice sound bad.
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Every November, I visit the Chain of Rocks Bridge over the Mississippi River between Missouri and Illinois. I go to watch bald eagles, the national symbol that nearly went extinct in my youth and now soars through the St. Louis sky.
But mostly I go because it’s where Snake Plissken escaped from New York.
In 1980, John Carpenter filmed his post-apocalyptic thriller Escape from New York in St. Louis because the city was so run-down, he didn’t need to build a set. Chain of Rocks is the 69th Street Bridge over which Plissken — the reluctant hero tasked with rescuing a president he did not respect to win his freedom in a country he no longer recognized — raced out of Manhattan, which had become a federal island prison.
“President of what?” Plissken sneers when he is told of his mission. No line better encapsulates the last decade. We all know it’s bad that Donald Trump is the president. But the real question is “President of what?” What remains of the USA that his cohort strips and sells for parts? Who is actually in control?
According to the treasonous triumvirate of Jeffries, Schumer, and Trump, the United States is a subsidiary of Israel and their job is to ensure it stays that way. Two of the three say they were divinely appointed to this role.
In 2007, Schumer said God selected him to be a “guardian of Israel”. He repeats that claim to this day, modifying it in 2025 to add that his job is “to keep the left pro-Israel.” Trump has referred to himself as the “King of Israel” and the “Second Coming of God”. (It’s a side hustle; Trump’s true destiny, according to the head rabbi of Ukraine via Democrat felon fave Lev Parnas, is “Jewish Messiah.”)
Jeffries has not yet revealed whether the Lord placed him among such spiritual luminaries as Donald Trump. But he is clear to which country his loyalty lies. In 2014, in response to the slaughter of Palestinian children, Jeffries approvingly paraphrased segregationist George Wallace. “Israel today, Israel tomorrow, Israel forever!” he cried.
Is it strange for a Black man to cite a notorious racist to defend an apartheid state? Yes. But it is less strange when said man was groomed for the Speaker role by Nancy Pelosi, the spawn of a political dynasty whose militant Zionism dates back nearly a century and who said in December 2018, “If the Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain would be our commitment to our aid, I don’t even call it our aid, our cooperation with Israel.”
Pelosi was speaking at an Israeli lobbyist conference to Haim Saban, a one-issue Democratic megadonor (the issue was Israel). Schumer sat alongside her and nodded in approval. Pelosi brought up the “Capitol crumbling” out of the blue, and two years later, the Capitol was attacked. After January 6, Pelosi recited her favorite poem, “I have no other country.” The poem is by Ehud Manor. The country it refers to is Israel.
In December 2018, the political environment of the US was similar to now. A “blue wave” had given the Democrats control of the House and new, feisty members. “Impeach the motherfucker!” cried representative-elect Rashida Tlaib. Pelosi spent her tenure trying to avoid that, despite mass pressure. When the Democrats finally impeached Trump in 2019, they took pains to avoid incorporating Trump’s background in organized crime, which is deeply tied to Russia — and to Israel.
This background had been documented for decades by journalists like Wayne Barrett and David Cay Johnston and reinvestigated in the 2010s by journalists like Craig Unger and me. Damning information was hiding in plain sight. Instead of telling the backstory, the hearings focused on a brand-new offense that created a false binary of Biden/Ukraine versus Trump/Russia. The crime was real — Trump tried to shake down President Zelenskyy — but the divide was not. When Biden welcomed Trump home to the White House, he meant it.
Pelosi’s reluctance to impeach Trump the first time — even ignoring the Mueller Report, which laid out a clear case of obstruction of justice — was followed by an even more shocking reluctance to impeach after he committed sedition. The seditionists were funded by AIPAC, as were those pretending to condemn them.
Under Pelosi and Schumer, the Democrats truncated impeachment hearings and turned proceedings over to the deliberately toothless January 6 committee and a DOJ probe overseen by Merrick Garland, the best friend of Jared Kushner’s “ethics lawyer”, Jamie Gorelick. Gorelick got Kushner White House access despite his security clearance violations. Had Garland investigated Kushner, he would have had to investigate Gorelick — who was advising the January 6 committee as well.
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For ten years, officials in both parties have conspired to protect Kushner, despite him not being a member of government. They now allow him to oversee multiple wars.
The reasons for this are murky. But it begins with the criminal Kushner family’s lifelong ties to the criminal Netanyahu family. While serving as UN ambassador in New York in the 1980s, Netanyahu grew very close to the Kushners and Trumps and often stayed at the Kushners’ home. Schumer was also a close Netanyahu friend who spent the 1980s blasting anyone who sought peace with the Palestinians, including presidential candidate Jesse Jackson.
Their circle has expanded to include Jeffries, who calls Jerusalem “New York City’s sixth borough.” Having repeatedly declared his unyielding fealty to Israel regardless how many children it murders, Jeffries became a confidante of Kushner, meeting with him privately in August 2026 to discuss “affordability”: an odd topic to raise with someone alleged to have stolen billions of dollars in corrupt schemes involving multiple nations. The meeting was widely condemned by members of both parties.
While Schumer maintains that his political path is divinely mandated, and has focused on supporting Trump in controversial religious moves like moving the capital of Israel to Jerusalem, Jeffries is arguably the more fanatical when it comes to displays of vicious Zionist politics.
Like Pelosi, Jeffries has backers who threaten Democrats who want to end aid to Israel, like Ohio’s new Congressman Don Leonard, who said senior members in the Democratic Party vowed to ruin his life unless he backed Jeffries and his pro-Israel policies. (Pelosi behaved similarly to members of “The Squad”, outspoken critics of Israel, when they were newly elected.) Like Pelosi, Jeffries avoids organizing impeachments of dangerous political actors, most recently Pete Hegseth. Jeffries is arguably worse than Pelosi in both regards. I don’t want to learn by how much.
When the Democrats swept the midterms, Jeffries responded by denying it was a partisan win. This makes sense given his proclivity for reveling in sadistic rituals with his GOP counterparts. The midterms have reshaped the GOP leadership, but like the Democrats, the focus remains the same: loyalty to Israel above all. While the Democrats pay lip service to criticizing Netanyahu, top GOP officials openly embrace the most fanatical Israeli government officials: the Kahanists.
In 2020, Mike Johnson, then the new Speaker of the House, proclaimed that his visit to Jerusalem’s Temple Mount was “the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy.” Johnson is one of many Republicans working with Israeli Kahanists who seek to destroy Al Aqsa Mosque, build the Third Temple, and usher in the apocalypse. The only congressman to meet with the Kahanists more than Johnson was Jim Jordan. In November 2026, Jim Jordan became the new minority Speaker of the House.
On September 11, 2024, Jeffries introduced Johnson at a Chabad fundraiser, where Johnson was awarded a menorah made from the remains of rockets from Gaza. “There is a special relationship between the US and Israel and our commitment to Israel’s security is ironclad and unbreakable,” Jeffries said, adding that he and Johnson are committed to ensuring that support for Israel “remains bipartisan.” Jeffries gave a speech citing the obligation to “remember what Amalek did to you,” echoing the 2024 genocidal rhetoric of Netanyahu.
In 2025, Jeffries was the recipient of the same award that had been given to Johnson. He shared it with technofascist Alex Karp, who co-founded digital surveillance company Palantir with Peter Thiel. Karp is a devotee of Chabad, along with Kushner, Netanyahu, Rudy Giuliani; Berel Lazar, known as “Putin’s rabbi”; Chaya “Libs of Tik Tok” Raichik; mafia associates Michael Cohen and Felix Sater, the latter of whom was Chabad’s 2014 “Man of the Year” at the Port Washington branch, which was investigated in 2017 by the Mueller probe; oligarchs Lev Leviev, Roman Abramovich, Tevfik Arif, and many more in the Trump fold.
Many high-power Chabad associates are not Jewish, including Jeffries. Their common ground is wealth and corruption, not religion. None of this should be conflated with Judaism. As Craig Unger noted in his book House of Trump, House of Putin, “Chabad provides some of the richest and unexpectedly direct sets of connections between Putin and Donald Trump.” Those connections now extend to the technofascist world. It was after praying at Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn that Trump and Howard Lutnick decided to recruit Elon Musk for DOGE.
Both Jeffries and Schumer are heavily funded by notorious and invasive tech corporations, including Palantir and cryptocurrency interests for Jeffries; and Facebook for Schumer. In 2016, Schumer received more money from Facebook employees than any member of Congress. One of Schumer’s daughters has worked for Facebook since graduating college; the other was the longest-serving member of Amazon’s lobbying team until she left in September 2026 to join OpenAI. Calls for Schumer to recuse himself from bills involving the companies have gone unheeded.
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I can keep going for a long time, detailing Jeffries and Schumer’s histories of corruption, fanaticism, and ties to transnational criminal operatives. But in the words of Snake Plissken, “I’m too tired.” I want an escape from New York.
I want an escape from corruption, duplicity, and a political culture of threat. Under Jeffries and Schumer, we will not get it. Trump and his partners will continue to operate with impunity while Vichy Dems abuse their own power.
I’m not interested in revenge. I’m interested in a way out of this prison. I love my country and I would like the people in leadership roles to love it enough to want to help its most vulnerable people, to contain plutocrats and oligarchs who strip its resources and sell out its citizens, and to curtail the military-industrial-AI complex that murders with impunity abroad, and increasingly, within the US.
There are Democrats who want this too. But 2021-2023 showed the length bad Democrats will go to silence those who dare fight for a better future. It will be harder to do that now — how does a Senate leader find six Fettermen? — but I have faith that Jeffries and Schumer will impede any righteous agenda. They overlap with Trump and Jordan in backers and, at times, in goals.
Americans have already chosen a better future. The midterms smashed stereotypes and raised hope. In the early 2020s, I watched hope get destroyed by the Vichy Dems. Americans have been through enough. Now it’s time to demand more.
To quote Snake Plissken: “I don’t give a fuck about your war or your President.” Vichy Dems trained liberals to treat Trump as a novelty and stay in a reactive crouch. They screech about Trump crimes that they refuse to stop while playing down their own greed and fanaticism. Those days are done. Trump can represent New York alone. There are better people to lead our House and Senate and they live all over this land.
It’s “We the people” vs “Them the reprobates”. If we’re honest about that, we may win something bigger than an election.
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Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
