NY Democratic Socialists Boss Railed Against Landlords. His Rich Parents Rented Out Their Florida Mansion for $18,000 a Month, Bought Him a $1 Million NYC Home.

Gustavo Gordillo has benefited greatly from his parents’ real estate fortune, even as he denounces capitalism and returns on their investments, I report for the @FreeBeacon.

Gustavo L. Gordillo, the embattled co-chair of New York City's chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America @nycDSA, has made a name for himself railing against property ownership, landlords, and real estate investors who enjoy robust rates of return.

"It's time to take over apartments owned by landlords freeloading off hardworking taxpayers," Gordillo @unionGustavo, 38, posted on social media in June.

But Gordillo—a Yale-educated art-world staffer turned fired union electrician who once proclaimed that "inheritance is DEI for white people"—may want to take a look at the eye-popping rents charged by his wealthy parents, who’ve heavily subsidized his life.

Gustavo E. and Elizabeth Gordillo are successful real estate investors who recently rented out a Florida mansion they own for $18,000 a month. For six years, their socialist son lived in a nearly $1 million Brooklyn home owned by the couple, who had paid the younger Gustavo’s rent for at least three years prior. He’s now living elsewhere while the Brooklyn home undergoes an extensive, $1.4 million roof-raising renovation his parents have bankrolled.

To uncover the Gordillo family fortune and how it’s benefited the prominent DSA leader, the Washington Free Beacon scoured thousands of pages of documents obtained through public-records requests and searches of public databases. Many of the revelations are being reported for the first time.

The Gordillos immigrated with their son from Peru and have spent three decades flipping homes to acquire what is now nearly $5 million in South Florida real estate (that the Free Beacon could identify). They have recently charged $17,000 to $18,000 in monthly rent for a five-bedroom mansion they bought for $2.24 million in Weston outside Fort Lauderdale, a property they’ve struggled to sell at a robust rate of return.

In a July 17 @FoxNews interview, Gordillo notoriously criticized New York City landlords for enjoying what he claimed (absent evidence, and likely in error) was an average 12 percent rate of return on their investments. The prominent socialist said of his political tribe, "We don’t think that anyone should have a constitutional right to double-digit returns on their investment."

But the younger Gustavo has directly benefited from his parents’ profitable adventures in real estate, given that in 2019 they purchased for nearly $1 million a 2,400-square-foot, 2-family home in Brooklyn for him to live in, as his father told the New York Post. Voter rolls indicate his brother Gabriel, 33, in 2025 moved from their parents’ Florida home to Brooklyn. The brothers are both now believed to be renting temporarily as they await the completion of the seven-figure renovation of the spacious Brooklyn home owned by their parents.

This is actually a condescending view of working-class people. I grew up in a working-class immigrant family and we ate at Red Lobster and The Cheesecake Factory for "fancy nights out." But even we understood that the White House should not look like the inside of a Red Lobster. Working-class people are not culturally illiterate just because their experiences are shaped by their limited means.

Proposal for a new hybrid reality competition show/docuseries, in which contestants see who can become America’s favorite fraudulent burlesque dancer:

So You Think You Can See Everything

What shocks me most about John Oliver is that it turns out he and I are the same age.

Iowa Senate candidate Josh Turek’s campaign ad coming out against major tenets of transgender activism has ignited a fire of fury on Bluesky, with leading activists such as Erin Reed demanding followers not vote for him and ask for their money back.

Chicken tacos have entered the chat!

Is there any such thing as a Luddite bro?

Falling in love.

Sydney Bauer laments that the debate over trans inclusion in sports use to center around kids being categorized according to gender identity, which “feels so out of contact with how it’s [now] talked about because [of] the legitimization of the idea of ‘biological sex.’”

This whether the default position has always been to see humans according to gender and whether the concept of biological sex is a recent metaphysical invention, a mere social construct devised to oppress.

I do not know who Ethan Klein is. Does this make me a philistine? A cultural-coastal elite? I don’t know. Who is he?

This is an interesting argument, one that examines whether A24 behaved ethically in handling who stood to profit from what is becoming one of the most profitable documentaries in history. Someone should make a documentary about this.

How come you never hear politicians and activists parading around talking about how participating in school plays is fundamental for children’s mental health and well-being? Where is the child-actor lobby on this one? Totally asleep at the wheel.

Roughly 30% of PhD dissertations in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in the United States this year contained AI-generated text

Moreover, PhD graduates who use artificial intelligence to help write their dissertations are more likely to work in industry r academia. Those with AI-generated abstracts were 17% less likely to be employed in academia than were graduates who did not use AI.

This working paper analyzed dissertations from more than 226,000 STEM doctoral graduates

nature.com/articles/d4158…

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that chatbots, while imperfect, are more accurate than an improv comedy troupe and can actually be extremely helpful in myriad scenarios. But it is dogma on Bluesky that one must be an anti-AI absolutist.

This person asked why the media hadn’t covered Jason Arday supposedly being “cleared” of plagiarism. When I explained to him why—because Arday had not been cleared—he falsely claimed that the only people asserting Arday is a plagiarist are eugenicists. Then he blocked me.

This bad faith: only accepting the narrative that suits your priors.

There are plenty of journalists who are not “race realists” who have reported strong evidence that Arday committed plagiarism and academic fraud. But because this is politically inconvenient, people like @MaximoNewton just play the race card and dismiss these findings out of hand.

Reporting on Arday’s alleged plagiarism and fraud:

thetimes.com/uk/education/a…

theguardian.com/education/ng-i…
retractionwatch.com/2026/07/27/cam…
theguardian.com/education/2026…
irishtimes.com/world/uk/2026/…
timeshighereducation.com/opinion/i-was-…

npr.org/2026/08/18/nx-…
plagiarismtoday.com/2026/07/28/rac…

Max thinks Arday ran all those marathons. And yet he claimed to have run the last 9 or 10 with a hairline fracture in his leg, with the leg swollen twice its size. But there are photos of him after his last supposed marathon and his legs both look normal.

I spoke with Amy Chozick about the disputed Holmes quote for a new newsletter where we explore @nytimes journalism. It’s called The Backstory. We also talk with critics of our work and answer reader questions. You can sign up for The Backstory here: nytimes.com/newsletters

Was it a mistake to flatten all socioeconomic strata into simply “the 1%” and “everyone else”?

Also, a lot of the 1% work for a living, making them working class under the expanded definition.

Chris Geidner is not having Bill Clinton’s Liberace quip. Which reminds me of that old Joan Rivers joke: “Those assholes at the airline lost all my luggage. Everything I’m wearing has been borrowed or found. This dress, which I love, I found in the closet right next to Liberace.”

They are going with the Big Lie