Two men recently attempted to carry out an alleged terrorist attack in New York City, an attack that, according to investigators, was intended to kill as many as 60 people. Details are still unfolding, but the intent appears unmistakable: mass casualties and maximum fear.

For many New Yorkers, the immediate question wasn’t just how the plot was stopped. It was how the city’s new leadership would respond — specifically, how Mayor Zohran Mamdani would react. The answer was not encouraging, and it’s not a reassuring sign for the next four years.

After the 9/11 attacks, the city faced profound uncertainty. I was here then, working as a cop in Manhattan. No one knew what would come next or whether the city could recover. We initially didn’t even know who had attacked us.

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What steadied New York was leadership. Mayor Rudy Giuliani projected calm and resolve, offering reassurance when it was needed most. Just as critical was the role of the NYPD, which secured Lower Manhattan, restored order and helped normalize life. There was no prolonged military presence. The police handled it.

What followed was a remarkable recovery. Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, crime fell to historic lows, tourism surged and neighborhoods flourished. It worked so well that, over the ensuing years, many came to believe terrorism was no longer an immediate threat. In the Intelligence Bureau, where I served, we had a saying: “The further we get from 9/11, the closer we get to 9/10.”

Now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and with global tensions rising — including conflict involving Iran — New York once again faces that reality. And once again, it has been the NYPD that stepped forward. When the two suspects allegedly attempted to deploy improvised explosive devices, it wasn’t rhetoric that stopped them. It was police work — officers pursuing and tackling a fleeing suspect in real time.

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The response from city hall, however, was less inspiring. Mamdani appeared to pivot quickly to a favored political narrative, initially focusing on “White supremacy” before grudgingly admitting the terrorist attack. It is telling that the mayor’s and other city leaders’ reflex was to immediately focus on the idiotic — but peaceful — demonstration the terrorists were targeting rather than two allegedly ISIS-inspired perpetrators.

Compounding that concern was a highly publicized Ramadan event at Gracie Mansion featuring Mahmoud Khalil, who was previously taken into federal custody following his involvement in disruptive protests at Columbia University. 

The optics were hard to miss, particularly coming on the heels of a near mass-casualty attack. Khalil, facing deportation for campus activism, is the hero. The police, who just days earlier apprehended two terrorists, are not. None of the cops involved got their Gracie Mansion moment.

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Mamdani represents a younger generation that did not experience 9/11 in the same formative way. For many New Yorkers, that day still defines how seriously threats are taken. Yet the mayor’s dogged ideological posture — particularly his embrace of “collectivist” themes — suggests a naive worldview that risks prioritizing theory over hard-earned lessons. In short, when it comes to public safety, he does not appear to be learning.

At a time when New York is still recovering from COVID-19, that carries real-world consequences. Financial warning signs are already visible, with three different rating agencies raising concerns about the city’s fiscal outlook by downgrading New York’s bond rating.

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New York’s history makes one point clear: Everything begins with public safety. Investment, tourism, the economy and quality of life, all depend on it — and on a supported NYPD. There was a time when Wall Street could be counted on to drag us out of the doldrums. But in a remote worker economy, that cushion is gone.

So, at the 100-day mark of Mamdani’s administration, residents here — and indeed, in many blue cities around the country — are forced to consider: do we have leadership that is up to handling crisis?

Based on what we’ve seen so far in New York, the answer is far from reassuring.

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The Iran conflict appears to be winding down. If the fragile ceasefire holds, President Donald Trump may stand before the American people in coming days and declare victory — shipping lanes reopened, deterrence restored, the ayatollahs humbled. On its face, that would be a genuine achievement.

The Iran campaign wasn’t wrong. Confronting a nuclear-threshold regime that funded terrorism across three continents and threatened international shipping lanes was a legitimate strategic necessity. Trump acted where others hesitated.

But every consequential action carries second- and third-order effects — and those now unfolding extend well beyond what any victory headline can contain.

While Washington has been grinding down Iran’s military infrastructure, something far more consequential has been hardening in the background: a China-Russia-Iran strategic alignment accelerating the fracture of the post-Cold War world order — and that fracture now runs directly through the transatlantic alliance itself.

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Xi’s signal cannot be dismissed

That is not diplomatic boilerplate. That is a geopolitical declaration.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sharpened the message at that same Beijing meeting, declaring that Iran holds an “inalienable” right to enrich uranium — a direct, public rebuke of Trump’s core demand for zero enrichment, and proof that Moscow is not merely watching this conflict but actively shielding Tehran’s nuclear position.

Xi and Putin spent the Iran war watching from the sidelines — but not standing still. According to a Ukrainian intelligence assessment reviewed by Reuters, Russia provided Iran with satellite imagery and cyber support — unconfirmed, but consistent with Moscow’s pattern of proxy warfare.

Russia also publicly called on Washington to abandon “the language of ultimatums” on Tehran, proposed taking custody of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile, and reaped a windfall as Brent crude surged toward $120 a barrel — a price surge that directly bankrolled Putin’s war of choice in Ukraine at the precise moment American forces were tied down in the Gulf.

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China’s support stopped short of confirmed combat involvement, but its strategic weight was substantial. Beijing purchased over 80% of Iran’s exported oil at discounted prices, keeping Tehran financially viable through the bombardment. Chinese-linked tankers remained active in Iranian oil transit even amid blockade conditions.

Trump acknowledged the concern directly: he exchanged letters with Xi Jinping after hearing reports that Beijing was supplying shoulder-fired and anti-aircraft missiles to Tehran. Xi’s response, in Trump’s own words, said “essentially, he’s not doing that” — and Trump threatened a 50% additional tariff if proven otherwise.

In January 2026, Iran, China, and Russia formalized a comprehensive trilateral strategic pact — not a mutual defense treaty, but a framework for nuclear, economic and military alignment. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has tracked this emerging “CRINK” alignment — China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea — and the data shows it hardening, not softening, under American military pressure.

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This is the strategic trap Washington has walked into. Pressure on Iran did not isolate Tehran — it drove the axis tighter.

NATO is fracturing on Washington’s watch

The Iran war has done more damage to the Western alliance than any Russian influence operation in decades.

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Former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reminded the world from the official NATO lectern that NATO “is a defensive Alliance …  not threatening anyone” — an alliance built in 1949 to defend Western Europe against Soviet aggression, not to launch discretionary wars of choice in the Middle East.

When Trump demanded warships from NATO allies France, Germany, Italy, and Britain — and separately from non-NATO partners Australia and Japan — to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, France, Germany, Italy, Britain, Australia, and Japan all refused.

Trump called their refusal a stain on the alliance that will “never disappear” and announced he is strongly considering withdrawing the United States from NATO — calling it a “paper tiger.” The administration has since discussed pulling American troops from European soil.

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Jim Townsend, former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO, put it plainly: “We are closer to a break than we have ever been.” Seventy-seven years of collective deterrence — the architecture that kept Soviet tanks out of Western Europe — is teetering, not because Putin outmaneuvered us, but because we fractured it ourselves in the middle of a Middle Eastern war.

Both understand that a United States estranged from its democratic allies is a United States strategically weakened — regardless of how many Iranian bunkers lie in rubble.

The real battlefield is bigger than Iran

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Across three books — “Alliance of Evil” (2018), “Preparing for World War III” (2024), and “The New AI Cold War” (2026) — I have tracked the civilizational contest now underway. The Iran war is a chapter in it.

China and Russia have used this conflict as a live training exercise — studying American carrier operations, missile intercept patterns and logistics flows in real time. Every signature revealed in the Gulf feeds directly into Beijing’s Taiwan invasion planning.

Meanwhile, the December 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy still treats China and Russia as separate problems — a strategic blind spot that would have alarmed President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who spent careers preventing exactly that coalition.

Proverbs 11:14 states it plainly: “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.” A strategy that isolates its allies and misreads its adversaries is not strength. It is the architecture of eventual defeat.

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The real question is not whether Trump can declare victory over Iran. He likely can. The question is what that victory costs: a NATO alliance pushed to its breaking point and a Sino-Russian partnership hardened by American overextension.

Great-power competition is decided in the accumulation of alignments, relationships and credibility built or squandered over years. Winning in Tehran while losing in Brussels and Beijing is not a net victory. It is a strategic setback dressed in tactical success.

President Trump has the instincts of a dealmaker. The moment to make the critical deals — with NATO, against the axis — is right now, before the victory speech becomes the last act rather than the opening of the next strategic chapter.

Because Xi Jinping is not congratulating us. He is calculating.

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It’s election year, and in a midterm year, sometimes holding a coalition together can feel as tough as getting your family through spring sports, spring musicals, spring break and spring allergies all at once. This is where Republicans can take some advice and inspiration from the very suburban parent voters whose support they need in key districts this fall.

As someone who’s spent years talking to center-right women, I can tell you this: health and wellness are not niche issues. They’re not “woo-woo” or fringe. They’re kitchen-table, group-text, grocery-aisle stuff. It’s what moms are talking about while swapping tips about sleep, anxiety and the cleanest snacks they can find for their toddlers.

The MAHA movement, championed by figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and embraced rhetorically by President Donald Trump, taps into something real that appeals to people across income, racial and party lines: Americans are exhausted by chronic disease, ultra-processed food and rising childhood obesity. A broad spectrum of parents are also concerned about increased screen time, social media use and their effects on children’s mental health.

Women — especially moms — are often the chief health officers of their households. They are looking for leaders who acknowledge that something is off and are willing to challenge entrenched interests, which moms often suspect are making their health choices harder.

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That’s the opportunity. Along with them, I’ve moved from trust in institutions to skepticism. I’ve been burned by big promises and become more concerned about having options that serve my family by being preventive instead of reactive.

A 2025 KFF/Washington Post poll found that more than 80% of parents, both MAHA and nonaligned, agree on the need for change and transparency on additives, highly processed foods and sugar content. A whopping 75% of parents ranked social media use as a major threat to children’s health and have led a sea change in support for practical solutions, like cellphone bans in schools. Those parental priorities are reflected in the MAHA Commission Report, released in 2025, which covers them all. It was a welcome change from the surgeon general’s report on youth mental health during the Biden administration in 2021, which managed to reduce school closures and increased screen time required by those closures to a literal footnote.

Republicans who frame MAHA around these concerns — and around empowering families to solve them by giving parents better information, improving food quality, supporting maternal health, investing in metabolic health and encouraging transparency — can build a coalition that includes suburban women who may not agree with the GOP on every issue but desperately want a culture shift around health.

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And it’s not just words, but actions. An expansion of Health Savings Accounts in the One Big Beautiful Bill allows millions more Americans to use their own money for their own decisions, tax-free, and to put it toward primary care and telehealth. Congressional Republicans also required more price transparency from benefits managers as a tool for bringing down drug prices.

But here’s where the danger creeps in.

When the conversation turns to limiting access to common medications like Tylenol during pregnancy, broadly casting doubt on vaccines, or heavy-handed censorship of healthcare information through avenues like drug ads, which creates speech concerns, the political calculus changes — fast.

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One reason President Trump had such a strong coalition in 2024 was the response to overreach during the pandemic — with an administration that believed it knew better than I did what was good for my kids. But if MAHA means simply substituting RFK’s personal pet views on things like vaccines and pharmaceutical ads for Dr. Fauci’s, then we’re not solving the problem.

Voters distinguish between “We want more transparency and safety data” and “We want to make it harder for you to access routine care.” The latter sounds destabilizing, and when it comes to health issues, the Affordable Care Act gave them enough of that to last a generation.

There’s also a deeper risk: conflating skepticism with cynicism.

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Many voters want reform because institutions have lost their trust. I’m one of them. But they don’t want to burn those institutions down. Democrats held a 20-point edge on the issue of education for generations, but long-term school closures by politically motivated school boards and unions gave Republicans a chance to peel off some of those voters with common-sense, concrete approaches as simple as opening schools and unmasking toddlers. Healthcare is another perennial Democratic strong suit, but bad pandemic policies degraded trust and gave Republicans a shot at these voters in 2024.

To keep these voters, keep it common-sense and concrete. For instance, where education and health intersect — kids, school and screen time — it has become a bipartisan no-brainer, as 38 states have enacted some kind of screen limitation in schools, with Republican-led states like Florida, Indiana and Virginia under former Gov. Youngkin leading the charge.

Polling shows that, even in the MAHA coalition, support for routine vaccines like MMR is high, while skepticism remains about COVID and flu vaccines, or their timing, which these voters put in a different category. Their thinking, like the coalition itself, is not simple or monolithic. They want improvements, guardrails and accountability, but get nervous about sweeping restrictions that feel like experimentation.

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And it doesn’t hurt to have the food pyramid finally catch up with common sense in a concrete and beautifully designed graphic that inverts the bad advice of yore. I knew at 12 years old that 11 carb servings wasn’t a great idea. More Eat Real Food, less RFK and Kid Rock in a cold plunge, is where you find persuadable voters.

The MAHA coalition includes a range of voices — some mainstream reformers, some longtime skeptics of pharmaceutical companies and some who have made a career out of questioning vaccines and established medical consensus. Republicans heading into a midterm year have to decide which lane they’re running in.

It can absolutely be a blessing. It broadens the party’s appeal, especially with women who want a healthier country for their kids.

Midterms are decided in the margins, by addition, not subtraction. They’re decided by voters who may like parts of the Republican economic message but still worry about cultural turbulence or instability. If Democrats are able to run ads accusing Republicans of threatening access to vaccines, pain relievers or basic healthcare information, that errant pitch will not stay confined to cable news debates. It will land in the t-ball stands on Saturday mornings.

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