Minneapolis is already a hot box, deteriorating in plain sight, and city leaders decided to begin the year by making it worse. The Minneapolis City Council opened the year by consolidating power in a way that should concern anyone paying attention to local governance. Like a fast-spreading virus, the Democratic Socialists of America are taking over.

De Facto One-Party Dominance in Minneapolis

I am reaching the point where nothing shocks me anymore, and that might be the most dangerous part of all this. I’m not shocked, just angry.

Minneapolis is not legally a one-party city, but it is beginning to function like one. When the same ideological faction controls both majority and minority leadership, sets the agenda, and dominates committees, opposition still exists on paper but has no meaningful power in practice. That is how one-party dominance takes hold without ever being formally declared.

Progressives on Minneapolis’s city council used the council’s first meeting of the year to install members of the Democratic Socialists of America as both the “majority leader” and “minority leader,” seemingly installing a one-party state designed to ice out representation for the council’s moderate minority.

Aisha Chughtai will be majority leader, saying her role would be to “identify uncontroversial ideas that the rest of the body largely agreed with,” as the Star Tribune paraphrased, while the minority leader would be tasked with convincing others to accept more controversial ideas.

Chughtai nominated Robin Wonsley as minority leader. Wonsley explained the role differently, saying the minority role would be to “recognize the political diversity” of the council, specifically the four members of the Democrat Socialists of America–a group that includes Chughtai, as well as Jason Chavez and Soren Stevenson. – Daily Wire

Violence spikes. Fraud explodes. Public trust collapses. Normal people watch their cities rot in real time and assume this will finally be the moment leaders change course.

It never is.

This is how it spreads.

This will not stop with Minneapolis. Activist movements do not take power and then politely stand down. Once they secure control in one city, they replicate the model elsewhere, targeting local offices where turnout is low, scrutiny is minimal, and resistance has already checked out. What looks like a local oddity is almost always a test case.

Meet Aisha Chughtai

The newly installed majority leader is Aisha Chughtai. Let’s talk about her for a second. Surprise surprise, she grew up in a Muslim immigrant family with parents from Pakistan, and built her political career as a community organizer and union activist. Chughtai also worked on progressive campaigns before taking office, including serving as a campaign manager for Rep. Ilhan Omar’s 2018 run. Shocking.

Little Miss Chughtai was born in 1997, making her the youngest figure to hold real power in the Minneapolis city government.

On Monday the Minneapolis city council appointed Democratic Socialists as both the majority leader *and* minority leader (!)

The unprecedented action, creating a one-party state, was done in the name of “diversity,” with furious moderate members pointing out the irony. pic.twitter.com/oAUb5v8Mbz

— Luke Rosiak (@lukerosiak) January 8, 2026

Meet Robin Wonsley

As for Robin Wonsley, the new minority leader thanks to Aisha Chughtai, she was just 30 years old when she was elected to the Minneapolis City Council in 2021. Before taking office, Wonsley built her résumé not in government or the private sector, but in activism and organizing. She worked as a community organizer, including roles tied to teachers’ unions and progressive advocacy groups, and was involved in left-wing political movements focused on criminal justice, labor activism, and protest politics following the George Floyd unrest. She later joined the Democratic Socialists of America and entered city government directly from that activist pipeline, not from any background in municipal management or executive leadership.

The New Politician – Activists

As you can clearly see, this is the activist-to-government pipeline in action, and it is something organizations like Turning Point USA should be building locally and replicating.

It often feels like the Americans who carry a working knowledge of history, civic norms, and national responsibility are quietly fading from local leadership. In their place is a younger political class shaped almost entirely by academic ideology and activist training. The shift is subtle, but its effects are not.

City government used to attract people who had already proven they could manage something. Now it attracts people whose primary qualification is ideological alignment and time. That is not a coincidence. It is the result of responsible adults exiting a system they no longer recognize.

The Cost of Checking Out

Minneapolis did not collapse overnight. It complied. This is the same quiet takeover that already remade New York City and continues to grind down Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. It does not happen because activists are especially brilliant or persuasive. It happens because the people who once ran cities walked away.

Adults with careers, families, and real responsibilities decided local government was no longer worth the cost.

Activists did not leave. They stayed, organized, waited, and filled the vacuum. Now they hold the titles, write the rules, and call it representation. By the time everyone else looks up from their businesses, their jobs, and their lives, the system has already been claimed. And once that happens, voting becomes a formality, not a remedy.

If this feels uncomfortable, it should. Local government no longer belongs to the people who ignore it. It belongs to the people who show up early, stay late, and never leave.

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