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Bill Maher used Friday's episode of Real Time with Bill Maher to designate Darializa Avila Chevalier — the 32-year-old socialist who just won the Democratic primary for New York's 13th Congressional District — as "patient zero" of what he called the "woke mind virus," after the New York Times editorial board failed to extract a direct answer from her on whether a convicted murderer should go to prison.
Backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and running on a platform of abolishing ICE, prisons, and borders, Avila Chevalier is now the clearest test yet of how far left a major urban district will go — and Maher is arguing the answer should alarm everyone else.
The Moment That Crystallized the Critique The New York Times editorial board pressed Avila Chevalier repeatedly on what her prison abolitionist views would mean in practice for someone who commits murder.
She declined to endorse incarceration, offering instead that the violence itself was "a reflection of systems that allowed that circumstance to be possible." Maher's summary was surgical: "The New York Times asked her, 'If someone murders someone randomly, should they go to jail?' Couldn't get her to say yes for that." That exchange is the crux of Maher's case, and it is a hard one to argue around.
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