On Wednesday evening, two young lives were tragically cut short when a gunman opened fire outside a museum in Washington, D.C. Thanks to his actions, two souls will no longer have the chance to see the future they had planned for themselves—a future that was to include an engagement (set to take place next week) and years of happiness together.
That’s what the story should be. Not a story of politics and ideologies and groups, but a story of two individuals. Those individuals deserve to be mourned for their own sake—not to have their story become one of politics, religion, or ideology.
But in taking their lives, the gunman also took that possibility.
Because Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgram weren’t just random individuals—they were employees of the Israeli embassy. The museum they were at wasn’t just any museum—it was the Capital Jewish Museum. And their deaths weren’t just the consequence of being in the wrong place at the wrong time—they were the result of premeditated actions by a radical who proceeded to don a keffiyeh and cry, “Free, free Palestine,” forever dooming their stories to be associated with his vile political statement.
Their story can no longer be told without diving into the revolutionary Marxist ideology that brought about their deaths. That’s because Elias Rodriguez, the suspect in the shooting, is a person rooted in the ecosystem whose ultimate end is the destruction of the United States.
Rodriguez is formerly associated with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, an American communist party linked with pro-Hamas activists like the ANSWER Coalition.
In an X post following the shooting, the PSL denied any ongoing association with Rodriguez, describing their relationship as “a brief association with one branch of the PSL in 2017.” Yet at that point, Rodriguez was deeply affiliated with the PSL, which portrayed him as a member in a story for its Liberation news outlet.
In that story, the PSL quoted Rodriguez regarding a Chicago protest he participated in—one denouncing so-called gentrification and demanding justice for Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old killed by a police officer. That protest was organized by (among others) BLM Women of Faith and ANSWER Chicago.
These are organizations deeply embedded in the anti-American movement. In the words of its own activists, ANSWER is dedicated to “getting rid of America. Getting rid of the West.”
ANSWER has worked with organizations like CodePink, American Muslims for Palestine, and Students for Justice in Palestine—but as Mike Gonzalez and I detail in our report, “How the Revolutionary Ecosystem Sustains Pro-Palestinian Protesters and the BLM Movement,” its involvement in left-wing causes doesn’t stop there.
Representatives from ANSWER attended the original Movement for Black Lives convention, and ANSWER has organized protests alongside various BLM chapters. Further, ANSWER receives funding from Neville Roy Singham, a Shanghai-based multi-millionaire with strong ties both to the CCP and the various convenors of the Shut It Down for Palestine movement—a movement that praises the Palestinian “’resistance’” and seeks to “combat… material support for Zionism and weaken… the handmaiden of U.S. global imperialism.”
This is just a glimpse of the full ecosystem detailed in our report—an ecosystem responsible for the violent uprisings and protests that have plagued our country for over a decade.
And it’s clear that this is a network of which Elias Rodriguez was very much a part.
In addition to his involvement with ANSWER and PSL, Rodriguez (as recently as July 2024) worked for The HistoryMakers, an organization whose goal is to fashion a “more inclusive record of American history” and “elevate the cultural equity of the African American community.”
That organization receives funding from, among others, the Mellon Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Knight Foundation—all organizations with their own ties to the revolutionary ecosystem.
Neither the PSL nor The HistoryMakers responded to a request for comment.
Rodriguez’s murder of Lischinsky and Milgram stems at least in part from the ideologies of that ecosystem and his immersion in it, even if these specific organizations and their sponsors played no direct role in causing the shooting.
In a 900-word manifesto allegedly by Rodriguez and posted shortly prior to the shooting, he terms Israel a “genocidal apartheid state” and the U.S. as an “abett[er of]… slaughter.” Ultimately, he concludes, his action is “highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane thing to do.”
Evil and unconscionable as his actions are, Rodriguez is right—if one buys into the radical Marxism peddled by BLM, ANSWER, and others, there’s only one logical conclusion: that America and its allies are oppressive states that must be overthrown, no matter the cost.
Ideas have consequences. And nowhere is that clearer than in the events of last night, where ideas meant the deaths of two beautiful young people with their whole lives before them.
Those individuals deserve to have their stories told unsullied by a radical ideology—but Rodriguez’s actions made that impossible. All we can do now is recognize that ideology for what it is: a vile, destructive sentiment that must be rooted out before it tears us down from the inside.
