| IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 6, 2026 Albuquerque, NM — Republican U.S. Senate candidate Larry Marker today condemned New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Independence Day address as a deliberate attempt to rewrite American history as a story of shame, exploitation, and oppression — and called it one of the most anti-American speeches ever delivered from a podium bearing the seal of an American city. “Mayor Mamdani stood at City Hall on the Fourth of July and used the 250th birthday of the United States to tell Americans they should be ashamed of their country,” Marker said. “That is not patriotism. That is not dissent. That is communist subversion.” In a speech delivered the day before Independence Day celebrations, Mamdani painted American history as a catalogue of cruelty — famine “manufactured by imperial cruelty,” sweatshop fires, nativist riots, oligarchs, and federal law enforcement agents he described as “masked agents terrorizing our streets.” He attacked Americans who support immigration enforcement as enemies of the founding ideals of the Republic. “Every generation of Americans has been told a story about this country,” Marker said. “The story of settlers who crossed an ocean and carved a civilization out of wilderness. Of pioneers who pushed west into the unknown. Of inventors who lit up the world, built the railroads, and put men on the moon. Of soldiers who crossed the Atlantic twice to save a continent that wasn’t theirs to save. That is the American story — and it is something to live, cherish, and be profoundly proud of. Mayor Mamdani doesn’t believe that story. He believes America is a crime scene, and he used the Fourth of July to say so.” Marker noted the deliberate sophistication of Mamdani’s approach — wrapping a hard-left ideological indictment of America in the language of the Founding Fathers and the imagery of the Revolution. “This is what makes it so dangerous,” Marker said. “He didn’t stand up and say he hates America. He quoted Thomas Paine. He invoked George Washington. He used Ellis Island and Weeksville and the Continental Army as props for an argument that ultimately ends with federal law enforcement officers being compared to British redcoats and American citizens being told their country belongs to people who crossed the border illegally. The Founders would not recognize that argument. They would be appalled by it.” Mamdani’s speech explicitly praised those who “link arms with neighbors — without asking how long they have lived here, or what papers they have — as ICE invades our neighborhoods” — casting obstruction of federal immigration enforcement as a patriotic act in the tradition of the American Revolution. “ICE agents enforcing the laws of the United States are not a colonial occupation force,” Marker said. “They are American law enforcement officers doing a job that Congress authorized, that the Constitution permits, and that the American people have repeatedly demanded. For the mayor of New York City to stand at George Washington’s desk on Independence Day and compare them to the British Army is an insult to every law enforcement officer in this country and a disgrace to the office he holds.” Marker drew a sharp distinction between the America Mamdani described and the America he is running to represent. “There is a reason people from every corner of the earth dream of coming to America,” Marker said. “Not because America is perfect. Not because our history is without darkness. But because no nation in the history of the world has done more to turn the ideals of freedom and human dignity into lived reality for more people. That is the American story. That is what 250 years means. And I will not stand by while a Marxist mayor in New York City uses our Independence Day to teach the next generation to be ashamed of it.” Marker called on Senator Ben Ray Luján and New Mexico’s Democratic leadership to condemn the speech. “This is the ideological home of the modern Democrat Party,” Marker said. “Mamdani didn’t invent this worldview — he just had the podium to say it out loud. New Mexico Democrats should tell us today whether they agree with the mayor of New York that ICE agents are terrorists and American history is a story of oppression. The silence will be its own answer.” Larry Marker is a Republican candidate for the United States Senate in New Mexico. ### |
