June 24, 2026

JOHN FUND: The rise and rise of America’s radical left.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed three fellow socialists in the New York City Democratic Congressional primaries and all three won last night.

Democratic incumbent Dan Goldman lost to Brad Lander, who was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America until 2023. DSA Member Claire Valdez won nomination for a Brooklyn House seat.

But the eyepopper is the victory of Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old DSA member and PhD graduate student, in East Harlem and the Bronx. She defeated Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and will easily become the most radical House member since Vito Marcantonio of the American Labor Party represented the same area in the 1940s.

The night before his election in November, Zohran Mamdani filmed a video honoring his “radical” hero, Marcantonio.

Chevalier’s views would send even Marcantonio into orbit. DAC – as she will inevitably be dubbed – is so ideologically extreme that Jeff Maurer, a former writer for unrelentingly left-wing comic John Oliver’s HBO show, is gobsmacked by her. Maurer began his latest Substack post by announcing “My challenge is to find words to describe just how bonkers this Cirque du Soleil-level s—show truly is.”

DAC has called for abolishing police, prisons, and borders. As recently as last week, she refused to back down on those views when given an opportunity: “All deportations are wrong,” she says, even for those convicted of a crime.

She co-founded Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the militant student group behind the violent 2024 occupation of Columbia after the Hamas attacks in Gaza the year before. CUAD is explicitly anti-Enlightenment: “We are Westerners fighting for the eradication of Western Civilization. We stand in full solidarity with every movement for liberation in the Global South. Our intifada is an Internationalist one…”

Chevalier called the United States “a f—— disgrace,” and referred to the US as “occupied” Native American land. She’s written favorably about communism and seizing “all properties from landlords.”

She has criticized Bernie Sanders and AOC for being too pro-Israel, and is known as a key leader in the “left of AOC” faction of Democratic Socialists of America.

The never-Trump right are wondering how we got to this point: Oops! ‘Republicans Against Trump’ Are Figuring Out How Insane Democrats Have Gotten.

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll