The Democrat Party has always been good at one thing: reinvention. When the record gets inconvenient, they don't apologize; they rebrand. And they always rebrand in a way that runs away from who they actually are and what they believe. They literally try to convince the public that their agenda is something completely different from the policies and values they actually hold.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.) wants Americans to believe his party invented freedom. He sat down for an interview recently and delivered a line so detached from his party's actual record that it's worth picking apart. Not just because it’s hilarious, but because it reflects his entire party’s distorted worldview. It’s important too because he’s being floated as a 2028 contender, packaged as the moderate alternative to the rest of his party.
Once you hear what he actually claimed about freedom, you'll wonder how anyone could call him a moderate at all.
"I think Democrats are the party of real freedom," Shapiro said. "Real freedom that allows women to make decisions over their own bodies. Allows parents like me and my wife, Lori, to make decisions over what vaccines our kids are going to be able to get. That they can read the books that they want to read, not have certain ones banned by certain politicians."
Josh Shapiro: "I think Democrats are the party of real freedom. Real freedom that... allows parents like me and my wife Lori to make decisions over what vaccines our kids are gonna be able to get."
— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) June 23, 2026
pic.twitter.com/5InsEgudnf
Let's be honest, here: the irony is staggering.
This is the same Democrat Party that spent 2021 and 2022 demanding COVID vaccine mandates for adults just to enter public spaces and for kids just to set foot in a classroom. Does anyone else remember being told you’d need a vaccine card to enter a public building? I do. Democrats did that. And for kids, it was even worse. COVID was less fatal to children than the seasonal flu, yet Democrats wanted to force the shot on them anyway.
No Republican has ever campaigned against parents choosing to vaccinate their own kids. Republicans objected to the mandates. There's a difference, and Shapiro knows it, even if he'd rather you didn't notice.
I also challenge Shapiro to name a single book that Republicans have tried to ban.
Then there's the abortion line. Shapiro and his fellow Democrats love to dress up abortion as a "women's rights" issue, a matter of personal freedom and reproductive autonomy. It's a convenient frame and a dodge. Abortion ends a human life. No amount of rebranding turns that into a freedom issue, no matter how many times Shapiro repeats the talking point.
ICYMI: Stick a Fork in James Talarico. He's Done.
And yet, Shapiro kept going. "The point I'm making here is that we can be a pro-freedom party and a pro-growth party, a pro-safety party," he continued, "a pro-education party. That is what we're doing in Pennsylvania. We're winning in Pennsylvania, the toughest state in the country to win in, and that is what I think we need to see more of."
Pro-education? Seriously? Democrats have fought school choice at every turn, trapping low-income families in failing public schools while their own kids attend elite private academies. And the freedom to raise your own children? Democrats have pushed policies that strip parents of custody if they refuse to "affirm" a child's gender identity. Back in January, a family in California lost custody of their teenage daughter, and the parents were put on a child abuse registry for the crime of refusing to “affirm” her gender identity. Does that sound like freedom?
Shapiro wants credit for protecting parental decision-making, yet his party has spent years working to override parents the moment they disagree with the leftist line on gender, taking a page right out of George Orwell’s 1984.
Shapiro is widely seen as a 2028 presidential prospect, marketed as the reasonable, moderate alternative to the rest of his party. A real moderate doesn't rewrite the last five years of his party's record and call it freedom. He's offering the same oppressive agenda his party has pushed for years, just dressed up with a friendlier face. It won’t matter because he’s Jewish and the Democrat Party won’t ever nominate a Jew, but make no mistake about it, freedom isn't a word Democrats get to claim just because they say it enough times on camera.
