The White House News

A former Obama administration official has been captured in a number of viral videos harassing a New York City food cart vendor with racist rants.

The videos, originally posted on X by a Columbia University student on Tuesday, show Stuart Seldowitz, who served as acting director for the National Security Council South Asia Directorate from 2009 to 2011, using disturbing language to mock the unnamed Upper East Side halal vendor’s English-speaking skills, citizenship status and Islamic religion.

“Did you rape your daughter like Muhammad did?” Seldowitz asks the vendor in the first video, referring to the Prophet Muhammad, the most revered figure in Islam. The video shows the vendor repeatedly saying he doesn’t speak English and asking Seldowitz to leave.

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Seldowitz then appears to take a photo of the vendor and threatens to send it to his “friends in Immigration” and the Mukhabarat, Egypt’s intelligence agency, before suggesting the organization would torture the vendor’s family by removing their fingernails. It’s unclear if the vendor is Egyptian.

He then calls the vendor “ignorant” for presumably not being able to speak English.

The second video shows Seldowitz harassing the vendor on a separate occasion by asking if he has a permit to sell food on the street and if he has a visa.

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The vendor tells Seldowitz that if he doesn’t intend to buy anything, then he needs to leave, but Seldowitz continues to hound him, appearing to accuse him of being a Hamas supporter.

“You support killing young children,” Seldowitz said, to which the vendor replied, “You kill children, not me. Go.”

“I didn’t kill children,” Seldowitz responded, before saying, “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, it wasn’t enough.”

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Another video posted by a different X user shows Seldowitz again asking if the vendor is in the country legally, before a bystander jumps in to defend the vendor.

After the videos surfaced, Seldowitz told the Daily Beast that they only show one side of the whole story. He admitted to starting up the initial conversation with the vendor but claimed the latter instigated the escalation by expressing support for Hamas.

“I regret the whole thing happened, and I’m sorry,” he later told City & State. “But you know, in the heat of the moment, I said things that probably I shouldn’t have said.”

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“If I had to do it all over again, I would not have raised the religious aspect,” he said. “I don’t think I’m an Islamophobic guy. … I’ve spoken up for equal treatment of Muslims on numerous occasions with numerous different people.”

The New York City-based lobbying group Gotham Government Relations, where Seldowitz was a consultant, ended its relationship with the former Obama official Tuesday evening.

“Gotham Government Relations has ended all affiliation with Stuart Seldowitz, an individual who hasn’t contributed to our work in years,” a statement on group’s website read. “The video of his actions is vile, racist, and beneath the dignity of the standards we practice at our firm.”

An Oregon judge blocked the state from enforcing a voter-approved law dubbed the nation’s “most extreme” gun control measure by critics, ruling it violates the state constitution.

“This Thanksgiving, we can be thankful for Article I, section 27 and its continued protection of our right to bear arms,” Tony Aiello Jr., who represented two Harney County gun owners in the case, told Fox News via email.

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum immediately vowed to appeal the ruling, which could eventually end up before the state Supreme Court.

“The Harney County judge’s ruling is wrong,” Rosenblum said in a statement provided to Fox News. “Worse, it needlessly puts Oregonians’ lives at risk.”

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Oregonians passed Measure 114 one year ago with 50.65% of the vote and just six of the state’s 36 counties supporting it. The law requires a permit to purchase any gun, bans the sale of magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds and has been called “the nation’s most extreme gun control Initiative” by groups like the NRA’s legislative arm.

Measure 114 never took effect due to immediate legal challenges at both the federal and state level.

On Tuesday, Circuit Judge Robert S. Raschio ruled both the magazine ban and permit-to-purchase requirement violate Article 1, Section 27 of Oregon’s constitution, which reads in part, “the people shall have the right to bear arms for the defence [sic] of themselves, and the State.”

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Much of the state’s case focused on which firearms were common at the time Oregon ratified its constitution in 1857. History professors testified for the state that firearms capable of holding many rounds were “vanishingly rare,” according to Oregon Public Broadcasting.

“Semiautomatic technology and automatic technology are such profound ruptures in the history of firearms technology, that I find it very difficult to believe that anybody — even someone very well informed — in the late 1850s could have predicted the emergence of smokeless powder, detachable cartridges, automatic reloading,” said Bryan DeLay of the University of California, Berkeley.

But Ashley Hlebinsky, a former firearm museum curator, testified for the plaintiffs that many early guns could fire multiple rounds and that some models with magazine-style devices existed around the time Oregon became a state.

Raschio ruled that large capacity magazines were available in the early 1800s and that gunsmiths were actively trying to improve upon the technology.

“The idea that Oregon’s pioneers intended to freeze the firearm technology accessible by Oregonians to antiques is ridiculous on its face,” Aiello told Fox News on Wednesday. “If there is any evidence of such an intention, Defendants certainly did not present any of it at trial.”

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The permit system has been one of the most controversial parts of the measure. Gun buyers would be required to complete an “in-person demonstration of the applicant’s ability to lock, load, unload, fire and store a firearm before an instructor certified by a law enforcement agency” — a much stricter process than what is currently required to obtain even a concealed handgun license in Oregon.

Lawyers for the state argued the permit system and magazine capacity limit were necessary to curb homicides, suicides and mass shootings.

In 2015, a man armed with five handguns, a rifle and several magazines killed nine people and wounded eight others at Umpqua Community College. Last year, a man wielding a shotgun and what police described as an “AR-style” rifle killed two people and injured two more at a Safeway in Bend.

But Raschio wrote in his ruling that state lawyers “failed to provide any convincing evidence of a threat to public safety requiring a permitting process” and that, to the contrary, the potential delays in processing a permit application would flip the protections of the right to bear arms “on its head.”

“This legal battle is not over,” Aiello wrote after the ruling. “However, we hope that the strength of the Court’s ruling gives our Attorney General pause on filing that appeal and continuing to spend millions of taxpayer dollars defending this ill-conceived ballot measure.”

Federal Judge Karin Immergut previously ruled in July that Oregon’s law is in line with a U.S. tradition of “regulating uniquely dangerous features of weapons and firearms to protect public safety.”

Plaintiffs are currently appealing that ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The House Ethics Committee voted against opening an investigation into Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., for pulling a fire alarm in a House of Representatives building ahead of a critical vote in September to avert a government shutdown.

The committee’s decision comes just a few weeks after Bowman pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge in Washington, D.C.

Since a majority of the House did not vote to launch an ethics investigation, lawmakers “did not agree to establish an ISC or report to the House regarding Representative Bowman’s conduct,” according to a statement from the ethics committee. 

House ethics rules require when a member is indicted or formally charged with a criminal offense to either launch an Investigative Subcommittee (ISC) or report its reasons for not launching one within 30 days.

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Bowman was charged with one misdemeanor on Oct. 26. 

An arrest warrant filed by U.S. Capitol Police Supervisory Special Agent Joseph McAtee stated police were notified on Sept. 30 at 12:05 p.m. that a fire alarm had been pulled inside the Cannon House Office Building on the second floor.

When Bowman was interviewed by Capitol Police agents, he told them he responded “yes” when asked if he knew anything about the fire alarm. The Democratic representative said he was in a rush because votes were being called, adding that the door is usually open.

Bowman, according to the arrest warrant, told the agents he saw the nearby doors with a sign that said, “emergency exit only push to open,” so “he pushed on the door and pulled the lever next to it, which must have been the alarm.”

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“[Bowman] advised that usually when votes are called, all doors are open, and that door is usually open (the second-floor door leading to Independence Ave). The defendant further stated that this door was a usual door he uses. The defendant advised that he then went to a Dem (Democratic) meeting and a vote at the Capitol, then the House Sergeant at Arms contacted him,” the warrant states.

Bowman told Fox News after being charged he was “happy for the quick resolution,” adding that he has a plea agreement with prosecutors.

According to Bowman, the plea agreement requires him to pay a $1,000 fine and “stay out of trouble for three months.”

“It was a lapse of judgment if you will. … Wasn’t a conscious decision to do something wrong,” he said.

Fox News’ Adam Sabes and Kelly Phares contributed to this report. 

The historic South Carolina city of Charleston has elected its first Republican mayor since the Reconstruction Era.

William Cogswell, formerly a Republican state lawmaker, defeated incumbent Democratic Mayor John Tecklenburg by about 2 percentage points in Tuesday’s runoff, according to the South Carolina Election Commission. Results posted online by the commission showed a 569-vote margin separating the two candidates.

Cogswell, 48, had secured the most votes in the Nov. 7 general election but not a majority, meaning that he and Tecklenburg headed to Tuesday’s runoff.

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Charleston’s municipal elections are technically nonpartisan. But Tecklenburg is a well-known figure in the state’s Democratic politics, endorsing Joe Biden in South Carolina’s pivotal 2020 presidential primary.

Cogswell, who served three terms as a Republican in the state House and describes himself as a moderate, earned endorsements from others within South Carolina’s GOP political circles, including Sen. Tim Scott.

Charleston last elected a Republican mayor in the 1870s, according to historical records from the city and other municipal areas. Republicans including state GOP Chairman Drew McKissick and U.S. Rep. Russell Fry, who served in the state House with Cogswell, celebrated the GOP win in social media posts and statements.

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“We can confidently say that I’m going to be the next mayor,” Cogswell said Tuesday night, as final results came in. “The people have spoken, and we’re ready for a new direction … a new direction that puts labels aside, so that we can find pragmatic solutions to our problems.”

In a concession speech Tuesday night, Teckleburg called his eight years as mayor “the honor of my life” and asked his supporters to rally around the new mayor.

“I’d like to congratulate our new Mayor-Elect William Cogswell … and I’d like to ask each and every Charlestonian, everybody out there, to give him your support,” Tecklenburg said. “When Mayor Cogswell succeeds, Charleston succeeds, and that’s something we’re all in favor of.”

The City of Charleston has become the second reliably blue area in South Carolina — where Republicans dominate congressional and statewide politics — to choose a Republican mayor in recent years. In 2021, Daniel Rickenmann, a longtime city council member backed by Republicans, was chosen as the mayor of South Carolina’s capital city of Columbia.