by Kenin M. Spivak
Democrats’ DHS funding blockade, framed as civil liberties, instead weakens core security agencies during wartime—exposing Americans while advancing an increasingly radical agenda.
Democrats’ refusal to fund the Department of Homeland Security has exceeded any hypothesis of good faith. It is an unpatriotic attack on America’s frontline of defense during a time of war and potential Iranian sleeper cells, and an inexcusable burden on the department’s employees.
Last week, all Senate Democrats, except John Fetterman, again voted to block funding for DHS.
Financed in part by malign foreign powers who seek to defeat the United States, radical left activists have co-opted the Democratic Party. Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois, head of the supposedly centrist New Democrat Coalition, typifies the illogic. “My concern about DHS is their absolute disregard of the Constitution and American citizens’ civil rights,” he said, adding, “So until we see officers who abuse citizens’ civil rights held to full account, until we restore full congressional oversight, I’m not giving another penny to ICE and CBP.”
But neither ICE nor CBP has been defunded, as their budgets were previously appropriated. Instead, Democrats have cut funding for the Coast Guard, TSA, Secret Service, FEMA, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, among other DHS departments charged with protecting Americans against terrorist threats, drug dealers, and cyberattacks.
Democrats revealed their mindset when they refused to stand during President Trump’s State of the Union address for the principle that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”
Their hyperbole is muddled. Although the killing of two Americans protesting in Minnesota was shocking, those deaths came amidst aggressive and well-organized efforts to interfere with federal immigration enforcement. Renee Good, in particular, willfully or recklessly endangered ICE agents. The overwhelming majority of federal agents have demonstrated remarkable restraint in the face of thousands of protestors, egged on by Democratic elected officials, to obstruct their operations.
Moreover, Democrats have already achieved their legitimate objectives. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was fired. Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino was demoted back to his sector in Texas. White House border czar Tom Homan withdrew most federal agents from Minneapolis. ICE and CBP acquiesced to Democrats’ demands for bodycams (though some Democrats now fret that protestors’ illegal activities will be recorded).
By providing the energy, funding, and activists who increasingly guide the Democratic Party, the Marxist wing has become its base, electing avowed Socialists including Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani, Rashida Tlaib, and more than 100 other officials. A Fox News survey released last week found record 38% support for socialism, including 66% of very liberal voters.
Many Democrats are defunding Homeland Security because of the current Middle East war, not despite it. In their heavily refracted perspective, Iran is a peaceful nation that, as Sen. Mark Warner, top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, claims, poses no threat to America. To the Marxist wing and growing numbers of other Democrats, Iran balances the “genocidal” or “apartheid” regime in Israel.
Elected Democrats situationally claim the offensive against Iran is unconstitutional because Congress has not declared war. That cynical talking point is contrary to the views of nearly every U.S. president, including James Madison, the Constitution’s principal author, and George Washington, another signer, as well as many of the same Democrats before Trump’s election. Not to mention Barack Obama.
The Constitution’s framers distinguished the power to “make” war, which they gave to the president, from the power to “declare” a state of war, a diplomatic construct they gave to Congress, along with the authority to defund wars.
There have been 11 declarations of war in U.S. history, most of which related to the two World Wars. All but two presidents have committed American troops to foreign military engagements without a declaration of war. A Congressional Research Office report lists hundreds of examples, including lengthy wars undertaken without a declaration or other congressional approval.
Moreover, in 2001, Congress authorized the president to prevent future terrorism by striking nations he determines planned, committed, or aided in the September 11 attacks on the United States. In a federal lawsuit arising from those attacks, U.S. District Court Judge George Daniels found that Iran provided “direct support to al Qaeda specifically for the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Washington, D.C. (Shanksville, Pennsylvania), on September 11, 2011,” including “planning, funding, facilitation of the hijackers’ travel and training, and logistics.”
With similar hypocrisy, Democrats who defended or ignored the sustained doubling of gas prices during the Biden administration now bemoan what likely will be a brief spike during the Iran war as a critical threat to the American economy.
It is more important to many elected Democrats to disparage Trump or the United States than to protect or defend the country or its citizens. This is a self-made trap—and puts them in league with people who do not share their values. Most of my friends are liberal Democrats who retain a generally favorable view of America’s founding principles and its goals. I believe they are often mistaken as to the facts and policy, but they are good people seeking good outcomes.
This is not true of the ever more powerful Marxist wing of the Democrat party. They seldom have a favorable view of America, its founding principles, or its goals. They despise straight white men and denigrate organized religion (other than Islam), along with law enforcement, families, private property, merit-based achievement, and Western culture in general.
Polls show that radical left Democrats support violence to achieve their goals, including murder. They believe opposing voices have no right to speak. They view the Constitution and the smallest dissent as instruments of the “white patriarchy,” whatever that means. It’s the same logic that led to Mao’s Cultural Revolution and Pol Pot’s killing fields.
According to the leaders of the Democrats’ Marxist wing, the United States was founded in 1619 to enslave blacks and subjugate women, while today, the patriarchy and ”settler-colonizers” are suppressing non-binary and transgender people and non-whites and pursuing genocide in the Middle East. They delude themselves into thinking that Iran and Palestinians embrace their goals and lifestyles.
Auric Goldfinger told James Bond that he didn’t want a dialogue; he wanted Bond to die. Likewise, the Marxist wing isn’t seeking compromise. It seeks to bring down American exceptionalism by replacing American history with the 1619 Project, action civics, and critical race theory. My center-left friends steadfastly want it to be true that radical leftists share common values with other Americans. They don’t. And they are turning traditional liberals against civil society.
Progressives tried to imprison, bankrupt, and censor Donald Trump, his supporters, people of faith, and conservatives. Fearful of being primaried, Chuck Schumer threatened violence against Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, demanded Benjamin Netanyahu resign, and now claims that requiring voter ID is racist. Most congressionally elected Democrats are marching to the progressives’ drum.
The Marxist wing of the Democrat Party hates America and isn’t reticent to admit it.
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This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
Kenin M. Spivak is founder and chairman of SMI Group LLC, an
international consulting firm and investment bank. He is the author of
fiction and non-fiction books and a frequent speaker and contributor to
media, including RealClearPolitics, The American Mind, National Review,
television, radio, and podcasts.
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/03/19/the-marxist-wing-of-the-democratic-party/
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