Senator Elizabeth Warren embraces a Democratic socialist mayoral candidate in New York, highlighting a growing rift between the Democratic Party’s far-left and establishment wings. The standoff over Texas redistricting continues as blue state governors like Gavin Newsom threaten to gerrymander their own maps in retaliation. Oklahoma will require teachers from blue states to pass an “America First” test to screen out woke ideology before they can teach in the state’s classrooms.

It’s Wednesday, August 6, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.

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Warren Embraces Socialist, Deepening Democrat Divide

Topline: Senator Elizabeth Warren has endorsed self-described Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral race, signaling her support for a sharp leftward turn that many in the Democratic party establishment fear will alienate moderate voters ahead of the 2026 midterms.

While senior Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) have remained silent on Mamdani’s candidacy, Warren has come out in strong support of his most controversial policies, including rent control, government-run grocery stores, and massive tax hikes on high earners.

“When someone stands up and says, I will lead this city by making it more affordable… that is the democratic message,” Warren said on the campaign trail. Her stance has drawn criticism, with Obama’s Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warning that Mamdani’s proposed tax hikes will drive businesses out of New York.

The divide highlights a larger struggle within the party. Younger, far-left figures like Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett are gaining prominence with extreme rhetoric, such as calling Donald Trump a “piece of s***” and claiming the Supreme Court is “complicit” in his actions. Mamdani has also courted controversy by refusing to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada,” claiming it reflects a “desperate desire for equality.” This embrace of the far-left comes as the Democratic Party’s popularity has hit a record low, with a recent Wall Street Journal poll finding that many voters view the party as too extreme.

 

 

Texas Redistricting Standoff Continues

Topline: The political standoff in Texas continues as Democratic lawmakers remain out of state to block a Republican redistricting plan, while blue state governors are now threatening to gerrymander their own maps in retaliation.

The Democratic lawmakers who fled Texas to break quorum remain in a stalemate with Republicans, who are exploring legal options to compel their return. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said his office is considering trying to have the lawmakers arrested or even removed from office. The lawmakers face a $500-a-day fine for breaking quorum, a measure instituted after a similar walkout in 2021. Paxton defended the need for redistricting, citing the state’s massive population growth of several million people over the last five years.

The fight has escalated to the national level, with Democratic governors threatening to retaliate. California Governor Gavin Newsom promised to “fight fire with fire,” saying any gains Republicans make in Texas “will be neutered in the state of California.” Meanwhile, some Democrats in Texas have resorted to extreme rhetoric, with state congresswoman Jolanda Jones comparing the redistricting effort to the Holocaust.

 

 

Oklahoma to Require ‘America First’ Test for Teachers

Topline: Oklahoma will now require teachers moving from liberal states to pass an “America First” test to ensure they do not bring woke ideology into the state’s classrooms.

Starting this school year, teachers who move to Oklahoma from blue states like California, Maine, and New York will be required to pass a test to prove they align with Oklahoma’s curriculum standards. Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction, Ryan Walters, told Morning Wire the test was created in response to “the insanity coming outta California,” such as requirements to teach “27 genders.” “We are absolutely not going to take social justice Warrior, woke indoctrinated into our classrooms,” Walters said.

The pass/fail written test is being developed with PragerU, an organization also in partnership with The Daily Wire. According to Walters, it will cover “the biological differences between men and women” as well as an “understanding of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence… [and] American exceptionalism.”

The move is part of Walters’ broader effort to bring “free market principles to the classroom.” He noted that Oklahoma is actively recruiting the top 10% of teachers in the country and has implemented a merit pay system, with over 1,000 teachers now on track to make $100,000 a year for achieving “exceptional results.”

Lina Khan, the head of the Federal Trade Commission under former President Joe Biden and one of the administration’s most far-left members, billed taxpayers for a luxury car service while barnstorming the country on the eve of the presidential election, according to a inspector general probe.

As part of a “Charge Card Act review,” the FTC’s inspector general found “unusually high expenses for travel,” including nearly $19,000 for booking a private car service during 16 trips to other cities, plus additional costs for using the service to get around Washington, D.C. It found that Khan had used the service for “ease of transportation,” without addressing “a less expensive alternative.” On one trip to Denver, Khan spent $1,128 on a private chauffeur service when she could have rented a car for $407, it said.

Some of the expenses billed to taxpayers may have come as she was accused of using her government position to campaign for Democrats ahead of the November 2024 election.

On October 2, 2024, Punchbowl News said Khan was “zig-zagging” the country to appear with Democrat politicians, where “Khan’s events with lawmakers have nominal policy themes…but the timing so near the election is hard to ignore.” That included an event in Chicago with Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi and in Wisconsin with Rep. Mark Pocan. The car service fees highlighted by the inspector general include October 2 travel in Chicago at $1,021, and October 3 travel in Madison, Wisconsin, for $2,215.

The findings come as Khan, who has consistently attacked the greed of large corporations and CEOs, has prominently boosted the campaign of socialist Zohran Mamdani in New York.

FTC management replied to the inspector general that the spending did not violate existing rules, but highlighted a need to update the agency’s policies. The inspector general recommended “enhanced requirements for the justification and documentation of these travel expenses.”

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) faulted the politically tinged trips even before the luxury car service was known about, saying Khan had a pattern of playing fast and loose with rules. He wrote in October 2024 that “Federal law and FTC ethics rules prohibit you from participating in political events, and from using appropriated funds for any political activity… This concern is particularly significant given your history of ignoring agency ethics advice concerning the appearance of partiality, including ignoring the advice of the agency’s Designated Agency Ethics Official.”

Khan faces additional questions after she placed a Democrat political appointee into a top long-term job at the FTC in the final hours of the Biden administration, essentially infiltrating the incoming Trump administration. Nathaniel Segal worked as Special Assistant to President Joe Biden and Deputy Advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris until January 18, 2025, when he was placed in a non-political FTC job after Khan personally overrode staff’s concerns, three Trump officials previously told The Daily Wire.

As someone who had just started his job at the FTC, Segal should have been on new-employee probationary status. But he was falsely put on the FTC’s payroll as a non-probationary employee, making it harder for Trump administration officials to fire him. When the Trump administration fixed the error, which would have made Segal worry that he would be laid off, he created false, backdated paperwork to try to get paid through Elon Musk’s “Fork in the Road” buyout offer, for which he was not eligible and had not actually applied, according to the officials.

The Segal situation is now the subject of a criminal investigation by federal prosecutors, and it could implicate not just Segal, but also Khan.

Since The Daily Wire broke that story, it has uncovered more questions about Segal’s hiring, finding no record that the FTC ever advertised the job to the public (most openings are required to be advertised on USAJobs.gov). That would mean that Khan gave a civil service job to a Democrat insider without giving the public any chance to apply.

Converting political appointees to career employees at the tail end of an administration is known as “burrowing” and is only permitted with permission from the Office of Personnel Management, which said it had no record of approving the move.

Some Biden administration officials schemed to evade those regulations by creating “three-year term” positions that would implant a Democrat operative through the bulk of the Trump administration, but which they argued didn’t count as burrowing because the job wasn’t permanent. But such positions also need to be advertised to the public, and wouldn’t be eligible for the buyout, which was designed to get rid of employees who could otherwise be on the payroll for decades.

Khan’s possible abuse of the civil service for partisan purposes is particularly egregious as Democrats claim it is a conspiracy theory for conservatives to believe in a “deep state.”

Although no job postings appear to show the FTC giving others the change to apply to the Deputy Technology Officer job that went to Segal, they do show a frenzy of attempted hiring activity in the FTC’s tech and information departments between the election and inauguration. Those include:

A cyber adviser at up to $191,900, posted December 21 An IT specialist at up to $88,926 posted December 23 A “Supervisory Information Technology Specialist (Mission Success Manager)” at up to $195,200 posted January 15

Khan, now on the faculty of Columbia University, did not return a request for comment.