The money runs out: Socialism, on the rise in NYC, is being routed elsewhere

Latin America is turning right at a speed that would have seemed impossible five years ago. Meanwhile, America’s largest cities are turning left at an equally remarkable pace.

In June, Colombia elected a hard-right outsider. Peruvian voters, after an ill-fated experiment of electing a Marxist-Leninist president, chose to re-establish a right-wing political dynasty. But New York City’s Democratic voters headed in the opposite direction. They nominated socialists up and down the ballot last Tuesday, throwing multiple Democratic incumbents out of office.

That’s two hemispheres, two directions, and possibly one explanation tying them together.

President Trump froze new foreign aid obligations the day he took office. Within weeks, the website of the U.S. Agency for International Development was taken down and its Washington headquarters shuttered. By March, Secretary of State Rubio announced that 83 percent of the agency’s programs had been cancelled and roughly 5,800 employees laid off. USAID officially ceased independent operations that July.

I am not the first to point it out: In the time since since Trump ordered cancellation of the bulk of USAID’s programs, center-right and conservative candidates have swept to victory in Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Honduras, Costa Rica, Peru, and Colombia. In fact, not a single left-wing government has won a national election in the region. Seven consecutive wins, zero losses, across eighteen months, in a region once described as a permanent pink tide.

Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa won his April 2025 runoff with 55.6 percent on law-and-order; Bolivia’s Rodrigo Paz ended two decades of socialist dominance; Chile’s Jose Antonio Kast won 58.2 percent, soundly defeating the Communist Party candidate; Trump-backed Nasry Asfura prevailed in Honduras after a contested December count; Costa Rica elected right-wing populist Laura Fernandez in February 2026; Peru’s Keiko Fujimori edged to victory in a razor-thin runoff early last month; then Colombia went hard right last week.

That is a clean sweep in seven countries, and it sure doesn’t feel like a coincidence.

The left’s explanation is predictable. They blame crime,........

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