I remember being a young reporter on the women’s rights beat in 2012 when Missouri Republican Todd Akin instantly tanked his Senate campaign with a vile comment about rape and abortion. Asked whether he supports abortion exceptions for women who become pregnant from rape, Akin, said, “First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

That “legitimate rape” comment haunted Republicans for the rest of the cycle, which was later dubbed the “Year of the Woman” because of how many Democratic women crushed men like Akin to retake control of the House and Senate. And now Vivek Ramaswamy, the billionaire tech bro in a tight race for governor of Ohio, has made an equally repulsive move that’s drawing national, bipartisan outrage right before an election and could potentially hurt Republicans up and down the ticket.

Ramaswamy’s team dropped an ad yesterday about his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, featuring Acton’s estranged elderly mother. It’s essentially a long cut of Acton’s mom calling her mentally ill and a liar, disputing Acton’s claim that they lived in a tent when she was little, and saying Ohio can’t trust her.

The ad is so jarring and bizarre, as Sam Stein pointed out, that it just prompted folks to google what happened with Acton’s mother that would make her want to sabotage her own daughter’s political hopes. It turns out Acton has been estranged from her mom since she was 12 because her mom stood by the man who was repeatedly raping Amy and sexually abusing her brother. The husband—who’d been accused of molesting kids even before he came into the Acton family—was charged with child rape and indicted by a grand jury, and both he and Amy’s mom fled the state to avoid jail time. Nevertheless, Ramaswamy proudly claimed credit for featuring that woman in his ad yesterday and doubled down on it, spending $4 million to air it on TV across Ohio because he said he’s annoyed that Acton won’t debate him.

Acton put out her own ad last night in response to Ramaswamy platforming her vile mother, which ended up being quite powerful. Her brother goes straight to camera talking about the sexual abuse they endured as kids and how she shielded him from the worst of it:

Ramaswamy, now, is on record siding with a woman who enabled her own daughter’s rape and continues to abuse her from afar decades later.

The move was widely condemned by people across both parties, with some Republicans shaking their heads in disbelief that a candidate would do something like this right before the midterms. Republican commentators have been struggling to defend the video on cable news, and GOP political strategists were crashing out over it last night on X:

The critical Senate seat in jeopardy is that of Ohio Republican Jon Husted, who was nipping at Sherrod Brown’s (D) heels in the polls before Ramaswamy made the terrible ad. Republicans have been dumping money into the Ohio Senate race in the past couple weeks to try to save their majority, making it the second most expensive race in the country. Donald Trump needs Husted to win so badly that he’s been nonstop talking about the man’s ass at every campaign rally. I wish I were joking:

Husted has not denounced the ad yet, but the pressure on him is growing to do so—especially after his opponent directly called on him to say something.

Still, I’m not sure that any amount of denouncing this ad is going to be enough to wash the stink off the whole Republican Party, which at this point is pretty openly pro-rape. Their hero Donald Trump, a multi-accused rapist himself, recently sided with the 7 men that a young woman accused of gang rape at Cornell. That woman, unlike someone like Christine Blasey Ford, doesn’t even have anything to do with politics—the president just insinuated she’s a lying about rape for the love of the game.

Platforming the kind of mother that calls her young daughter a liar when she comes forward about sexual abuse is, at its core, what this party does. They regularly cast the victims of sexual violence as liars and the perpetrators as the real victims, because there are so many abusers in their own ranks that flipping the script is the only way to justify their continued support.

For a decade, the strategy has mostly worked. Republicans elected Trump after the “grab ‘em by the pussy” tape and then reelected him in what I argued was essentially a backlash to the Me Too movement. But now may be different; we’re experiencing a backlash to the backlash. Ramaswamy’s timing in outing himself as absolute gutter trash is looking especially terrible for him and the entire party, and I suspect there’s about to be a bigger reckoning at the polls than any of them were prepared for.

In case you missed this political earthquake, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico spent nine days off the campaign trail this month recovering from the flu. He’s a Type 1 diabetic, which can severely complicate a flu virus, and it was otherwise very nice of him not to campaign with the virus and spread it around Texas despite how close the election is. That’s the whole boring story of what happened, which wouldn’t be news during normal times.

But these are not normal times: Talarico appears to be winning the Senate race against Attorney General Ken Paxton in a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1988. And two damning stories were about to come out on Paxton in the WSJ and Washington Post that we might call “October surprises:” The Journal dropped video of him partying in Dubai with two fugitives who had failed to return to the U.S. to face federal healthcare fraud charges (plus his mistress, obviously), and WaPo published a story about him doing blatant corruption as Texas’ chief law enforcement officer. Even more blatant corruption than we already knew about, that is.

Republicans couldn’t let this be the thing lingering in voters’ minds as they head into a vote that poses an existential threat to the nation’s largest red state. So in the days before the Paxton stories dropped, his backers coordinated with a group of right-wing influencers (and probably the Trump administration, which pays conservative influencers on X to do this sort of thing) to concoct a viral smear about Talarico. Grifter “journalist” Nick Sortor, who’s wanted for arrest in Kentucky, claimed he had a recorded call proving that Talarico had been in a psychiatric hospital in Ohio while he claimed to be out with the flu.

Musk quickly boosted it from his own account, suggesting he knew the “scoop” was coming, and folks like Stephen Miller and Megyn Kelly and Spencer Pratt also latched onto it from theirs. All of these folks just pretended the story was proven fact, despite no actual news outlet being willing to run it. Here’s an excellent breakdown of how 50 conservative influencer accounts pushed the claim within 20 minutes, instantly giving it 9.3 million views on X:

Musk then prevented any community notes from appearing on Sortor’s post for many hours, ensuring that no one could debunk the bogus claim before it reached tens of millions of people, and suspended accounts that dug into its veracity.

The fake story got so big that the psychiatric hospital in Ohio was forced to post a tweet confirming that Talarico had never received treatment there, which must have been difficult for them to do, as they’re owned by Trump donors1. Talarico himself posted that he’s never even been to Ohio. And the NYT reviewed security footage from his home proving that he was, in fact, just out with the flu for nine days like he said. (Nevermind that Republicans have been wheeling Mitch McConnell out in a vegetable state to take votes he doesn’t even understand he’s taking after folks assumed he was dead the entire summer—a Dem candidate being out for a week is highly suspicious!)

Meanwhile, even Paxton’s people were embarrassed by how obviously fake the attempted psyop was. Here’s audio of Paxton surrogate Tony Ortiz calling it “shit work”:

Talarico still appears to be up by four points over Paxton, according to a new poll released today. But only four points of polling difference between one candidate who’s a decent, kind person who wants to help others and another who’s the most blatantly corrupt and lying piece of shit of all time is genuinely terrifying. This Texas Senate race, for me, is the one that decides whether there is hope for the United States or not. If one guy can be impeached by his own colleagues for corruption, party with fugitives in Dubai who are funneling money to him, blatantly cheat on his wife all over the world, spread wild fake stories about his opponent, refuse to even debate his opponent because he’s so afraid of what might come out about himself, run on calling Talarico a “queer vegan,” fight for the abortion ban that’s literally killing women in Texas, and still win there only because he has an R next to his name—there might just be too many voters in the country that are beyond reach.

On the bright side, Talarico’s got Kacey Musgraves.

This weekend was a real emotional rollercoaster. I got married on Saturday in a beautiful little civil ceremony in Rio, which my mom and a dear friend flew down to witness. (For new folks here, I moved down to Brazil in June in large part because of how the Trump administration was treating noncitizens like my partner.) And the next day, the far right swept Brazil’s elections. Flávio Bolsonaro—son of Jair Bolsonaro, the fascist ex-president who infamously let the Amazon rainforest burn and is on house arrest for attempting a coup—edged out leftist incumbent Lula for president. Multiple members of the Bolsonaro family, including former first lady Michelle, were also elected to the Senate and Congress on Sunday, creating a terrifying new political dynasty in Brazil that has close ties to paramilitary militias and gangs.

The only race that remains uncertain is Flávio’s. He won 47% of the vote to Lula’s 45%, and since neither candidate broke 50%, that means the election goes to a runoff later this month. But no candidate since 1985 in Brazil has come back from losing the first round to win the second, and Flávio is widely expected to become president barring some kind of miracle from the left.

In the past couple of days, some folks have been texting me questions and condolences about the election results. I’m far from an expert on Brazil politics, having only lived here for four months now, but I do have a few general insights about what happened here and what it probably means for the nation and world.

First and most obviously, a Bolsonaro win would be devastating for humanity. Flávio is deeply corrupt and every bit as fascistic and hardline as his dad, though he tries to present himself as a more palatable successor. He denies climate change and supports destructive agrobusiness at a time when the Amazon is at a critical tipping point of turning from a rainforest into a savannah. He wants to give away Brazil’s rare earth minerals to Donald Trump, keep the working class trapped into the six-day workweek, and privatize public transport and utilities. He wants to gut all of Lula’s investments in education and healthcare and the environment, which have lifted tens of millions out of poverty. He’s expected to appoint about five new Supreme Court seats, solidifying the far right’s power for a generation. And he would fully align South America’s largest country and economy with Trump and Israel, likely crashing its currency and turning Brazil, essentially, into a new American colony.

So how did this happen? American interference may have played some small part in this outcome. We know that Trump tried to pressure Brazil’s Supreme Court to let Jair Bolsonaro out of jail, imposed heavy tariffs on the country to punish Lula, and is under investigation for funding right-wing causes in Brazil. Tech billionaires like Elon have been boosting far-right Brazilian agitators on their platforms for years, while Zuckerberg inexplicably blocked Lula’s ads from appearing on Facebook days before the vote. Trump tried to send two officials here to meddle in the elections, though they were denied visas when Lula discovered what was happening, and bizarrely closed American embassies across Brazil on election weekend due to vague “security threats.”

But there are many other factors at play here. Evangelical Christianity is sweeping Brazil, to the point where it’s poised to overtake Catholicism as the main religion here. Unlike Catholics, who generally preach that you should help the poor and feed the hungry and take care of the sick and welcome immigrants (see this incredible moment yesterday), Evangelicals tend to be very conservative and individualistic: Help only your own family, and if you go to church every Sunday and have a wife who’s subservient to you and persecute gay people, you’ll make it to heaven. Flávio presents himself as Evangelical and had preachers telling their congregations to vote for him.

Lula is also 80 years old and running for a fourth nonconsecutive term. When people are generally dissatisfied with the status quo and their own lives, they blame and demonize the incumbent president, and that’s clearly happening here. Folks are frustrated by perceived crime and high gas and food prices and economic stagnation, despite the many very good things Lula has done to improve people’s lives and reduce crime here. And Trump’s depressing effect on the global economy and the global oil crisis he caused is coming across to many voters here as a Lula problem. So even though Lula is trying to move Brazil from a six- to a five-day workweek and invest in social programs that help the poor and working class, the people who are being helped the most by his policies are still voting for “change.”

Ironically, I moved here to escape the U.S.’s fascist turn, and now the U.S. is swinging hard to the left while Brazil falls to the far right. I’m holding onto a glimmer of hope that the scare of a second Bolsonaro presidency inspires the 30 million or so people here who didn’t vote in the first round to get out and boost Lula, and that the people who voted third party swing to Lula too, though that hope is a little delusional. A slightly less delusional hope is that the blue tsunami in the U.S. in November significantly blunts Trump’s power before he and his puppet Bolsonaro are able to do maximum damage to Brazil’s future and sell off half the Amazon to tech oligarchs for data centers.

I’ll end on this quote from Assata Shakur’s autobiography that a friend sent me yesterday when I was really spiraling into despair and wondering how anyone could justify bringing children into this world amid all the doomsday horror. In case it helps you too: “I am about life. I’m gonna live as hard as I can and as full as I can until I die. And I’m not letting these parasites, these oppressors, these greedy racist swine make me kill my children in my mind, before they are even born.”

Keep fighting!

In October 2024, Cornell banned four students from campus for three years for participating in a pro-Palestinian protest. A university official said the students were suspended for having “disrupted university operations as part of a protest that shut down the Sept. 18 career fair.” Three of those students were also arrested, adding to the group of 24 Cornell co-eds who’d been arrested a few months earlier for their involvement in a campus sit-in against the genocide in Gaza.

That same October, a then-20-year-old Cornell student reported that she had been drugged and gang raped by seven men at a fraternity house. The young woman, who remains an anonymous Jane Doe, told campus police that a group of Chi Phis had plied her with ketamine, rum, and marijuana for seven hours and taken turns raping her and doing drugs off her body while she tried to hide under a sheet. One of the men, per a screenshot in her civil lawsuit, invited more frat brothers to come sexually assault the incapacitated woman by texting a group called Chi Phi Actives that there was “free pussy” upstairs.

Police at the time closed the investigation with no criminal charges, citing a lack of evidence. The local district attorney’s office, relying only on the campus police investigation, did not pursue the case at all. The school did ultimately expel two of the alleged rapists after a Title IX investigation, but the five others were offered a chance to “mitigate their conduct by submitting essays” and attending workshops, per the civil complaint. Jane Doe dropped out of Cornell to pick up the pieces.

Two years later, New York prosecutors are finally reopening the criminal case against the seven men—only because Jane Doe filed a new civil lawsuit that sparked massive public outcry. Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said he didn’t have the screenshot of the Chi Phi group text the first time around and that the evidence then was too scant to spur an investigation. “We want to reexamine whether there's additional evidence that we were not aware of in November of 2024, that exists now that would change our assessment of the case and would result in the grand jury finding that there was criminal conduct,” he told ABC News.

In reality, campus rape has never been considered a serious crime in the United States, where one in four women experiencing some kind of sexual assault at school. No amount of trauma and violence on a young woman can ever justify ruining a promising young man’s career and future in the eyes of a school administrator, a district attorney’s office, or presiding judge. Rape is only actually really considered rape in the general imagination if it’s committed by an immigrant or a stranger on a jogging path; certainly not by a young Ivy League Chi Phi against a young woman who’d also been drinking. The only way to get a prosecutor to give a shit about a gang rape on campus, it seems, is to splash the literal screenshot of evidence that it happened across social media and newspapers and build a national pressure campaign against the people that wanted to let it go. The American people have to force the justice system to care.

What’s worse is that we know now that if these seven men had painted signs and sat with their peers in a campus building demonstrating against genocide, they would have faced harsher legal consequences than they received from allegedly drugging and gang-raping a woman. You can perpetrate violence as a young American man, but you can’t protest it.

Did you hear what the president said at the unveiling of his new White House helipad today?

Me neither. Pretty much no one did. In fact, the only video of Trump speaking that aired anywhere today had no sound, because four out of five major networks in the White House press pool—Fox, ABC, CBS and NBC—essentially went on strike in solidarity with CNN, which Trump banned from the premises yesterday (along with POLITICO and MSNOW) for being “fake news.”

It was Fox News’ Washington bureau chief, believe it or not, who made the announcement. “The public has a vital interest in receiving accurate, independent information about its government,” the networks said in a joint statement. “No administration should restrict a news organization because it objects to its reporting.”

Even C-SPAN went dark on the president today, because there was no feed from the TV network pool from which to pull footage. Over on the alt right network Newsmax, which tried to air a video from the event provided by the White House, an anchor explained awkwardly why you couldn’t hear the sound from Trump’s remarks. “Okay so there’s no microphone because the pool cameras aren’t there,” she said. “So maybe, Ken, this is one example of this backfiring just a little bit…. Obviously the ramifications are here. You can’t hear what the president is saying.”

Indeed, nearly a year after Trump responded to an Epstein question by a female Bloomberg journalist with the words, “Quiet, piggy,” the mainstream media has finally said it back to him. The New York Times announced it will not publish or distribute images of President Trump as part of the protest. Even Fox News aired a segment about joining the boycott, explaining to viewers today how Trump is violating the First Amendment by banning news outlets whose coverage he doesn’t like.

Of course, you do not have to hand it to Fox News, which has defended its own anchors in court as being nothing but entertainers, spread election denial conspiracies, and is in large part responsible for putting Trump in the White House both times. But it is still very significant that Trump’s attacks on the free press have become so egregious that his most beloved and sycophantic network, which he reportedly watches all day to the exclusion of doing any of his actual job, actually took CNN’s side in this fight. For a TV-obsessed man who feeds on attention and was already spiraling about negative coverage of himself, nothing could be worse than Fox News refusing to send a microphone or camera to his event or Newsmax airing a silent video of his mouth moving. This war on the media really blew up in his face.

Trump has not reacted on social media yet to cable news shutting him out today, but the White House did suddenly announce an Orwellian, North Korea-style state-run media channel called “Trump TV” that feels pretty desperate. The president’s approval rating has finally dipped into the high 20s, he’s so unhinged that even Fox News is unable to give him the glowing coverage he craves, and they’re now just doing naked dictator shit.

Good; let him rattle about in his shrinking little echo chamber. When all of corporate media manages to locates their spine against a failing president, it’s pretty much over for him.

But today, other people’s wedding choices became the bad headline. Donald Trump Jr. and Palm Beach socialite Bettina Anderson, for some reason, decided to allow a Russian oligarch and alleged war criminal to pay for their lavish wedding in the Bahamas this weekend. ProPublica reported today that Umar Kremlev, a Vladimir Putin ally and relatively new “close friend” of Trump Jr.’s who’s been sanctioned for his involvement in the kidnapping and relocation of Ukrainian children, footed most of the bill for the wedding weekend. This included a two-day party on an ultra-exclusive private island and a fireworks show. Kremlev even appeared in the group photo, his little head poking out of the back row!

This raises so many questions. First: Why? Don Jr. is worth half a billion dollars thanks to his insider trading and could easily pay for a 50-person wedding himself. ProPublica reports that Don Jr. and Kremlev met only recently through their boxing connections, as Kremlev is the head of the International Boxing Association, and their “love for the outdoors.” But what obscenely wealthy man lets a new friend, or any friend, pay for his wedding? Especially when that friend is an incredibly sketchy Russian oligarch, and Don Jr.’s dad, the embattled sitting president, has fought for a decade to quiet both Russia collusion and child trafficking accusations and is supposedly trying to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. Just today, Trump was demanding that Ukraine stop bombing Russia’s oil refineries. Did the family not get together and discuss how it might look for one of them to accept a whole wedding as a gift from the Kremlin?

Don Jr. isn’t even disputing this reporting; he admits that Kremlev footed the bill and insists the wedding was just a no-strings-attached present from a pal. He and his new wife Bettina wrote this on Instagram today along with a carousel of wedding weekend photos: “It’s unfortunate that something so personal and happy can be recast as something political or sinister simply because of who someone is or where they come from. Friendship doesn’t require a political motive. Generosity doesn’t automatically come with an agenda. And sometimes a wedding gift is simply a wedding gift.”

Hilarious and delusional. Is this why big Trump didn’t attend his son’s wedding? Is this why little Trump has been on a year-long tirade against Zelenskyy and Ukraine, because he’s openly bought by Putin’s buddies? Are they just tired of hiding it at this point and know Trump’s supporters don’t give a shit who is bankrolling them?

A few years ago, Rachel Maddow was harassed into oblivion by the right and many on the left as well for propagating the so-called “Russia hoax,” though the facts very obviously spelled out ties between the Trump family and Russia. Trump admitted at the time that his son went to Russia under the guise of meeting about “Russian adoptions”—which looks extra creepy in retrospect—and actually went to collect dirt about Hillary Clinton. Everything Trump has done in his presidency has somehow benefitted Russia and Putin and damaged the United States and the EU. And now a Russian thug is literally paying for his son’s wedding?

Meanwhile a spokesperson for Eric Trump, who was at this intimate wedding with Kremlev on an island for several days, had the funniest possible thing to say when asked about the oligarch funding his brother’s wedding: “Eric has absolutely no clue who this person is, nor has never heard his name.” LMAO.

The sight of a leftist’s hog must have awoken something primal in that stadium, because things only got weirder from there. Here’s a brief run through the highlights and lowlights of the two-day trainwreck:

• Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) screamed his speech with wild eyes like a WWE presenter on bath salts

• Trump went off script and mocked the hell out of Ken Paxton, calling him ugly and poorly dressed for about two full minutes before managing to say anything positive about him, as James Talarico climbed over Paxton in the polls

• Paxton did look absolutely awful and low-energy

• Turncoat Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) appeared via video for some reason, sounding rather braindead and kissing Trump’s ass, after the Wall Street Journal reported last week that he doesn’t care about doing any of his job beyond Fox News hits about Israel

• Trump promised to pay every American $5,000 if Republicans win the midterms, alarming his own officials with a desperate lie they reportedly didn’t know was going to come out of his mouth

• Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is supposed to be representing all of the American people, became the first sitting AG to shame himself with an unhinged rant about immigrants at a partisan convention

• Trump begged people not to go to the bathroom so as not to show too many empty seats on the cameras

• J.D. Vance said in front of a sea of nodding white women, “We were tired of being called racist for noticing that our country was becoming dirtier”

• RFK Jr. accused Democrats of "turning our government into the biggest child trafficking operation in world history" as Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre’s family set up an Epstein files exhibit outside of the convention highlighting an actual child sex trafficker’s close relationship with Trump

And finally, Trump went full cult leader, making everyone raise their hands in the air and pledge to the “greatest leader in the history of the United States” that they will “cheat like hell” in the midterms. People who don’t vote, he said, will “go to hell.”

Trump’s defenders will try to write this off as a joke, I’m sure, but it absolutely was not a joke—it was a signal to his supporters to do whatever they have to do in November to save his ass. Because Democrats are now strongly favored to win the House, despite all the redistricting efforts across red states, and have about a 50/50 shot at the Senate as Trump’s approval circles the drain.

Ironically, Trump’s directive to cheat like hell in an American election arrives on the heels of Kash Patel releasing his much-anticipated sweeping federal investigation into “voter fraud” this week, which was meant to back up Trump’s claim that he lost to Biden in 2020 because of “3 to 5 million illegals” voting. The findings of that report? Possibly two undocumented people cast ballots. Only five illegal votes total across three states.

I would be deeply embarrassed, too, if I had claimed that millions of undocumented immigrants had stolen an election from me and then my own FBI director triumphantly announced that in fact I had just lost that one.

And so it’s come to this: Republicans had to invent the concept of a “midterm convention” to try and breathe some life into their depressed and suffering electorate. And the president, who loves to project an air of alpha energy and “winning” at all times, is so convinced his party is going to lose in November that he’s resorted to bribing voters with imaginary cash and begging them to cheat for him. Such a humiliating downfall of a global supervillain would be delicious to watch if Trump’s policies weren’t still actively killing people.

It’s been a very alarming couple of weeks for democracy. Whistleblowers at the United States Postal Service have warned that a faulty new system rushed into place by the Trump administration this summer is basically designed to reject millions of mail-in ballots this November.

Federal “monitors” sent to babysit Wyoming’s primary election (in what seems to be an early dry-run of Trump’s plans for the midterms) were so blatantly trying to meddle in the process that the state’s Republican governor called the DOJ agents “aggressive, irregular and disruptive.”

Texas suspended the voter registrations of 1.2 million people without notifying them, just two months before midterms, by flagging that they may no longer live at their current address. (Voters who live in the county can still vote on regular ballots by taking the extra step of declaring their residency when they vote; folks have until October 5 to update their registrations and can check their status on the Texas secretary of state’s website, at a county election office, or by mail!)

And now, a pivotal purple county in Texas—the state’s third most populous—has voted to slash 30% of its own polling places, cutting the number of locations from 316 to 224. The three Republican officials on the Tarrant County elections board voted for the change, and the two Democrats voted against it. The deleted polling places are, of course, at places like the campus of UT Arlington, which is expected to heavily support Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico over Attorney General Ken Paxton. The move is designed to create long lines at polling places—there will be about 5,800 voters per location now—and increase the distances people have to travel from their homes or offices to cast a ballot.

Voters Tarrant County heavily protested the move, showing up at town halls to register their disgust. “Nothing you can do can stop us from removing you in November,” one resident told GOP officials yesterday.

Tarrant County voters are also not buying officials’ claims that the move was to “save money” rather than to suppress turnout. “I’d love to know what you all think our tax dollars are for,” a local woman said at the town hall meeting. “They are to serve us, and I can’t think of a better use of taxpayer money than to encourage and support the democratic process.”

Tarrant County is the one Republicans fear the most this year, because it broke for Joe Biden by .22% and is also quite gettable for Talarico. Trump’s approval rating is 13 points underwater in Texas—and hovering just over 30% nationwide, which is horrible—and Talarico and Paxton are currently neck and neck in the polls. Suspending a million voters and removing polling places from college campus could provide just the amount of election fuckery the GOP needs to pull this one out.

On the other hand, voters really don’t like to be disenfranchised. Texans are especially activated against AI data centers and flock cameras right now, and Paxton is a historically foul candidate who was impeached by his own colleagues for corruption, bribery, and abuse of public office. I suspect that the more word gets out that Republicans are openly cheating to defeat Talarico, the more any given UT Austin student will be willing to travel miles off campus and stand in hours-long lines to make sure and vote their asses out.

Yesterday, Trump adviser and right-wing internet agitator Laura Loomer called a group of elected Black women “ghetto, entitled, race-obsessed, destructive black BITCHES who are completely unfit for the power they hold.”

When State Rep. Angie Nixon (D) clapped back by pointing out that Loomer once ate dog food on camera, Loomer went so low it actually shocked my sensibilities, which is hard for her to do these days:

These comments have not made the news at all—not only because we have come to expect them from Loomer, who is, again, ADVISING THE PRESIDENT. But because less than three months before a deeply consequential midterm election, the mainstream media have been hyper-focused on pressuring Democratic candidates to answer for recent remarks by Hasan Piker, a leftist Twitch streamer that most Democratic voters haven’t even heard of, about Israel and antisemitism.

For context: Piker essentially said last week that that Jewish people are not “monolithic” and that conflating Israel’s policies with the values of all American Jews may exacerbate threats of antisemitic violence in the US. Here are his words, condensed for clarity:

“Look, the anti-Zionist Jews in my community, you have a very tough job ahead of you, where you have to go back to your communities and try to get your elderly relatives to understand that this connection between Israel and Zionism that is expressed over and over again through a lot of these Jewish institutions…is teaching people the idea that Jews are monolithic. And this is a dangerous…mode of propaganda…If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone’s going to come around and take action. Not against the State of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews…I don’t know how many different ways I can explain this. I don’t know how people don’t recognize how dangerous this predicament is, how dangerous this is for Jews.”

Was this artfully stated? No. Was Piker actually blaming Jewish people for any future attacks against them, as the worst faith interpretations of his words claim? Probably not. Piker has condemned antisemitism many times and was trying to echo a point that has been made by many others, including Jewish scholars, about the dangers of conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

More importantly, you do not have to listen to Hasan Piker or give one shit about anything the man says! He is not running for anything, was not elected to anything, and does not work for the Democratic Party in any capacity. He’s not a politician with media training and message discipline; he’s a leftist Twitch streamer who broadcasts his random thoughts for something like eight hours a day. Sometimes he uses his platform of 3+ million Twitch followers to advocate for candidates he likes on the left, much like Elon Musk wore a cheesehead on stage in Wisconsin to campaign for a conservative state Supreme Court candidate.

But this does not explain, for instance, why Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia was pressed to answer for Piker’s remarks, despite never campaigning with him and having nothing to do with him. An Ossoff spokesperson responded to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s repeated questions about Piker this week that the senator “unreservedly rejects reckless and dangerous rhetoric suggesting that policy advocacy invites violence against the Jewish community or any community.” This generated headlines all over the MSM that Ossoff has joined the chorus of Democrats condemning the a beloved figure on the left, which in turn prompted Piker to snipe at Ossoff back. All of this was completely unnecessary and, frankly, stupid.

Likewise, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El Sayed is repeatedly being forced to answer for Piker’s words, to the extent that no reporter lets him talk about anything else. Here he is getting grilled about it again two days ago on MSNBC:

CNN has panelists talking about how El-Sayed campaigning with Piker is more "depraved" than the president having dinner with literal neo-nazi Nick Fuentes. Democratic congressmen are even going on Fox News to condemn Piker:

Meanwhile, whose “extreme” comments and ideology are Republican candidates being pressured to answer for? Not those of virulently racist Loomer, who says all Muslims are terrorists and once wrote that if Kamala Harris won the presidential election, "the White House will smell like curry and White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center.”

Not Elon Musk, who spends his days spreading white supremacist propaganda, is about to nuke the Louisiana coastline, believes “childless” people should not be allowed to vote, and is spending hundreds of millions to elect Republicans this cycle.

Not right-wing influencer Matt Walsh—probably the closest equivalent to Piker on the right—who wants women confined to the kitchen and said the country is better off because of slavery.

Not even the president himself, who recently posted a video of the Obamas as monkeys, called an entire African country “low IQ,” and does so much wildly offensive and corrupt shit on a daily basis that it’s hard to pluck out specific examples.

No, Republicans are mostly being allowed to use their media hits to condemn so-called “extremists” on the left, like Piker. The only words that seem to matter in U.S. politics right now is this one ungenerously interpreted paragraph of Hasan’s; everything else is just background noise!

The irony here is that Piker is really the first successful left-wing personality in the streaming space, which has long been weaponized by right-wing provocateurs to activate young men toward Trump and Republican candidates. Independent media is full of well-funded reactionary quacks like Tim Poole, but very short on left-wing equivalents, as Taylor Lorenz pointed out in my Elle profile of Jessica Reed Kraus. It clearly drives Republicans crazy that there’s a Twitch streamer demanding Medicare for All rather than the subjugation of women, which is why his words are being treated as the Gospel of Mainstream Democratic Opinion.

If Democrats want any shot of flipping the Senate this year, they need to recognize this trap for what it is. Republicans will call left-leaning candidates extreme socialists and communists no matter what they say or who they campaign with; the task here is not to alienate half of their own base by stumbling over themselves to track to the center.

And now for…

A Brazil update!

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Guys— I must say that Jon Ossoff has been growing on me like a fungus. The buzzy young senator from Georgia, who is probably going to run for president in 2028, has come a long way from being known as the “hot Hank Johnson staffer” by DC media circles circa 2012. I’d argue that he’s now one of the best communicators the Democrats have, delivering barn burner speeches on the regular, destroying men like Pete Hegseth with unrelenting lines of questioning in Senate hearings, and incisively articulating the Trump administration’s corruption and dysfunction in a way I haven’t seen many other politicians be able to do.

But I was not prepared for what Ossoff did yesterday when he name-checked Natalie, the young blonde Trump aide who’s reportedly obsessed with him in an unhinged way, and insinuated what everyone else has been thinking about the two of them.

“While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings,” Ossoff said at a rally in Atlanta yesterday. “He golfs and trades stocks. So he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”

Ossoff’s whole speech last night was brilliant, and even just in the clip above he managed to fit in so much damaging material: the sailors jumping overboard on the USS Lincoln because their conditions have deteriorated so badly; Trump losing the Iran war; his constant falling asleep in public; his golfing and insider trading and unpopular ballroom; the naked corruption and stupidity of Trump accepting flying palace from Qatar. Brilliantly communicated. But it was the “and travel with Natalie” Ossoff slipped in there that exploded like a bomb among people in the know and made everyone else curious enough to google who she is.

For reference, Natalie Harp is Trump’s longtime aide known by White House insiders as the “human printer,” because her job is basically to follow Trump around with a tiny printer and keep him happy by printing out positive articles and comments about him. She also transcribes Trump’s ramblings directly into Truth Social and makes his signature stream-of-consciousness posts for him, which you can see happening in real time here:

But this is not a normal professional relationship. Harp and Trump appear to be obsessed with each other; she’s reportedly written him love notes that “raised the eyebrows of Secret Service,” including one that said, “You are all that matters to me,” and another that said, “I want to bring you joy, to feel like we can get through a day without ever having to talk ‘work.’” When she worked on Trump’s campaign in Bedminster, New Jersey, she reportedly slept in the women’s locker room to be as close to him as possible. She believes that Trump is responsible for curing her bone cancer, even though he’s probably not. Melania supposedly can’t stand her.

In turn, Natalie is Trump’s “binkie” or his “comfort blanket,” per NYT’s Maggie Haberman, and goes everywhere with him from official business trips to golf games. When Trump recently had to hide in a catering truck and then secretly board a small plane out of Turkey due to a safety threat from Iran, he left several members of his cabinet like Marco Rubio and Scott Bessent on the decoy plane to potentially be shot out of the sky—but he made sure this random girl Natalie was aboard his safe plane alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Media gossipers have been referring to Natalie as Trump’s side-piece for years, but the legacy MSM—and certainly actual members of the U.S. Senate—have avoided really going there the way Ossoff finally did last night.

Ossoff’s dig appears to have hit a major nerve in the Trump administration. Stephen Cheung, White House Director of Communications, had a bit of a meltdown about it, calling Ossoff “the biggest cuck loser in politics.”

Another White House spokesman (who looks very much like a theatre kid) called Ossoff a “cringeworthy, feminine theatre kid cosplaying as Barack Obama,” which just feels like a reluctant acknowledgement that Ossoff is a great communicator.

And Trump himself, who’s really lost the juice in terms of nicknaming his opponents, called Ossoff “Pee-Wee Herman” in an interview today while dodging the whole Natalie part.

My point in diving into this story is not that Trump having an affair with his 35-year-old aide would be an earth-shattering or even remotely surprising revelation to anyone. We know Trump’s a cheater and a creep. This is all more to say that Jon Ossoff, who’s known for being quite serious and disciplined and on message, said something really funny and cutting in his speech last night that opened up an embarrassing can of worms for Trump and makes me think Ossoff might have the juice. One of the most effective aspects of the Kamala Harris campaign, which they should have leaned way harder into, was Tim Walz calling Republicans weird little freaks in his TV interviews. The right would call him “Tampon Tim” and obsess over the genitalia of children, and Walz would just go on TV like a normal guy and say, hey, these people are weird! The message was true and perfect, and it’s the one thing that needs to be carried forward from that campaign.

I still have my reservations about Ossoff in terms of policy. I’d love to see him get behind Medicare for All and abolishing ICE and some of the other broadly popular proposals by the left that he hasn’t been able to embrace as a Democrat in a purple state. I believe he might be able to get there in a general election. But nevertheless, I love seeing this disciplined, telegenic young senator let loose a little bit and make genuinely funny asides about things that people have been afraid to say out loud. The days of Democrats being punching bags for the right and playing by a different set of standards and rules— “when you go low, we go high” type shit—are over. The public wants someone who can fight and land satisfying blows, who feels as genuinely angry as we are, who has an edge and a sense of humor alongside their strong moral clarity with which to pounce on Trump’s 33% approval rating and galvanize the country against him. I need to see more from Jon Ossoff, but he’s starting to look pretty good.

The headline and photo read as if Hillary herself was calling Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed communist as a pejorative and warning that the Democratic Party has moved too far left. It was designed to fuel frustration and bitterness among progressives and to suggest that the party fault lines are dangerously deepening ahead of the midterms.

Few people, I’m going to assume, actually clicked through to get the full context of Clinton’s quote. Here is what Hillary actually said on Kara Swisher’s podcast about the Senate Democratic primary that Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel moderate, just lost this week to the more progressive El-Sayed:

“The real fight will be, how do we make sure that people who voted for Haley feel comfortable voting for Abdul El-Sayed, and how do we get Independents to feel comfortable?” Clinton said.

“It’s not just about Michigan, but the Republican messaging is ‘communist, socialist.’ It’s going to be a very effective attack,” she said. “People on the left have to be prepared to answer that and be effective in answering that.”

When Swisher asked if Clinton actually believes that the “communist” label is going to work against Democratic candidates in 2026, Clinton said, “All I know is that is the attack Trump is leading with, and I assume they’ve tested that and I assume they have reason to believe it’s effective or they wouldn’t be beating the drum on it.”

Nothing about what Hillary said here should actually piss anyone off. This was reasonable political analysis made, ultimately, in support of leftist candidates. It’s true that Republicans are going all in on reviving the Red Scare and that the “commie” thing might actually work on some low-information Boomer voters. If you found yourself seething at Hillary Clinton this weekend over this supposed betrayal, then Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post headline definitely had its intended effect on you.

And it’s not just the (overtly fascist) NY Post; much of the mainstream media seems to be latching onto this narrative that the left is currently eating its own. Here’s the New York Times talking about a “war” by the Democrats against the ascendant left:

…but when you click through to the piece, it’s just an interview with the president of the moderate corporate think tank Third Way saying they’re spending money to help Republicans win in November.

Here’s Fox News, likewise, featuring James Carville as the quintessential moderate Democrat threatening to leave the party over Hasan Piker (lmao), even though Carville has been a raging conservative and irrelevant dinosaur for at least a decade:

Guys: Nobody need give a shit about what James Carville has to say. There’s also no need to give a shit about John Fetterman, who literally had a stroke and woke up Republican, “threatening to leave” the party over a leftist podcaster who is not running for anything. Fetterman would lose his Pennsylvania Senate race to a ham sandwich right now if he were running; he doesn’t represent any voters.

Smart Democrats who actually care about clawing the country back from its current condition understand the reality at play here, which is that they have to be a big tent party if they want to control anything. Centrists can worry that the left has hijacked the party and the left can be angry that centrists are holding it hostage to corporate interests, but the factions must find common cause right now in rooting out the current administration or the entire exercise is pointless. The way to do this is simply to respect primary voters: If El Sayed is who Michigan Democrats choose, the party enthusiastically rallies behind him; if Jon Ossoff is the choice in Georgia, the party gets behind him with the same vigor. It’s okay to send socialist-adjacent candidates to the Senate alongside neoliberals—let them battle it out with ideas on the Senate floor, rather than having an existential crisis right before the midterms.

Also, this is pretty much what’s happening! Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a Democrat who I have very little in common with ideologically, is nevertheless doing what I would like him to do right now and reaching out to El Sayed to offer his full backing and support. “I said to him, ‘I don’t need you to like me,’” Schumer said this week. “‘I just need you to win.’” Pete Buttigieg joined El Sayed at a unity rally in Detroit this weekend. Most prominent Dems aren’t actually spinning their wheels trying to quash the leftist insurgency right now; they’re focusing on clawing the majority back from Republicans in November, as they should be.

There may be a strong argument to be made that a man like Schumer and a man like Zohran Mamdani do not belong in the same party. The two-party system inherently disadvantages the side that tends to be pickier and more thoughtful in choosing its candidates, as opposed to just voting for whatever bozo hates immigrants and has an R behind his name. But the reality of the current moment is this: The Trump administration has erected concentration camps in our backyards. They’ve started a pointless war, lost that war almost immediately, and humiliated the US on a global stage. They’ve tanked the economy, driven up food and gas prices, stripped pollution regulations and protections for endangered species, and opened up national parks to logging and drilling. They’ve defunded medical research and driven hordes of scientists out of the country. They let Elon Musk feed USAID into the wood chipper, killing millions upon millions of children who needed help.

The goal right now must be the broader fight. Defeat this administration; root it out; hold it accountable; attempt to reverse its damage. When a candidate in your party wins by actually listening to his or her voters, that is a win for you. This election is still very much the Democrats’ to lose.

Rep. Max Miller, an Ohio Republican running for re-election this year, released a bizarre video on X yesterday attempting to defend himself against allegations of brutal domestic abuse against his ex-wife and 2-year-old daughter. Miller's ex Emily, who happens to be U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno’s (R) daughter, claims he threw boiling water at her, held a gun to her head, shoved her against a wall, slapped her, and broke their toddler’s collarbone. Emily Moreno is the second woman to accuse Miller of physical abuse after former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.

After nearly a week of silence from Republicans, including from the accuser’s own dad, Miller announced yesterday that he’s staying in his House race. He claimed his ex-wife has “struggled with significant mental health challenges,” called the boiling water incident during a custody dispute “horseplay in the kitchen,” and added, “If I had assaulted her, would she have offered to cook me dinner six days later?”

Calling his ex mentally unwell and describing the textbook appeasement and peacekeeping behavior of a domestic abuse victim only made Miller look worse, of course. But the congressman went even further, releasing what he considers to be exonerating audio of himself: a conversation between him and his ex-wife after the incident, recorded for his lawyer, in which he admits to spraying her with hot water. In the clip, his ex-wife is audibly upset about the fact that he threw scalding water on her, and he tells her it’s impossible for water to come out of the faucet at a boiling temperature. (Tap water gets as hot as 140 degrees Fahrenheit in standard homes; 120 is considered scalding.) “I told you not to come over and screw around with me,” he adds.

Textbook abuse and manipulation. It’s plain as day that the man is terrifying.

Republicans, you’ll recall, shrieked for weeks about the accusations of rape and abuse against candidate Graham Platner (whom Democrats rightfully pushed out of the Maine Senate race). RNC Chair Joe Gruters said that “Democrats rolled in the mud with Platner, and now they are completely stained by their association with this sick monster.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R) did multiple Fox News hits about the Platner allegations and pretended to care about women on X. “Women who dated Graham Platner say he was demeaning, volatile, physically threatening, ‘cavalierly contemptuous’ of women,’” Cruz wrote. “This is not one bad Reddit post. It is a pattern. And Democrats own every bit of it.”

Meanwhile, as their own Max Miller is accused of beating two women and breaking a baby’s bones, a hush has fallen over the party. Virtually all elected Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, joined Republicans in condemning and ousting Platner, despite the vital importance of Platner’s race for their control of the Senate. But facing an uphill battle in the midterms, the GOP would rather greenlight severe domestic abuse than potentially lose even one House seat this year. (Miller is in a tough district; he won his last race by only 51%).

Even Sen. Bernie Moreno (R) dragged his feet for days on calling for his daughter’s abuser to drop out of the race. He finally became the first to say something yesterday, only after Miller publicly smeared her as crazy. “If there are any basic standards of character required to hold elected office, Max Miller fails them. He should not serve in the House of Representatives,” Moreno posted yesterday morning.

“I believe Max Miller needs to seek professional help to end the clear pattern of abuse he has left in his wake,” he added.

As of today, no other prominent Republicans have condemned Miller or called for him to step aside. That’s because there’s a classic double standard between the parties: Democrats are expected to hold their own monsters accountable, and Republicans only ever hold bad men accountable when they’re Democrats. The media is complicit, too: Whereas the Platner allegations were a front page story for weeks, most Americans probably still haven’t even heard of Max Miller—in part because it’s simply less surprising for the GOP to protect abusive men. They elected an accused rapist president, twice, and his entire cabinet is revenge for the Me Too movement.

Of course, the Democrats should not stop pushing out their own bad men, even though it’s incredibly frustrating to watch the parties play by two different sets of rules. The game is rigged and the hypocrisy of the “Christian right” unbearable. But it’s important not to become groomed or desensitized to the fact that rapists and wife beaters are allowed to thrive in Congress if they belong to the right party. Be loud about Max Miller. Ruin his life. It’s long past time for a reckoning.

Hi readers,

There’s a severe diarrhea parasite in your lettuce, and Donald Trump’s administration sure appears to be in cahoots with the company to which it was traced.

Taylor Farms, the company linked to the contaminated shredded lettuce causing a massive cyclosporiasis outbreak throughout the US and Mexico, donated $1 million to a MAGA superPAC in March 2025, according to an investigation by public health lawyer Matthew Cortland. That same week, the FDA announced that it was delaying implementation of its new "Food Traceability Rule”—which would have made tracing the parasite back to Taylor Farms much easier—by 30 months.

A year later, a cyclosporiasis outbreak has spread throughout 34 states, sickened thousands of people, and sent hundreds to the hospital. The Trump Administration first pointed the finger at Taco Bell shredded lettuce, which comes from the produce giant Taylor Farms. And the FDA finally revealed on Saturday—more than a month after the outbreak started—that Taylor Farms lettuce has tested positive for traces of the parasite, prompting a mass recall of their product from 27 states.

It seemed like the problem was finally on its way to being fixed. Then Taylor Farms CEO Bruce Taylor, a Trump donor himself, visited the White House this weekend. And just one day after the FDA had announced the positive test on Taylor Farms lettuce, they reversed the announcement, called it a “false positive,” and apologized to Taylor Farms.

The company has now claimed it’s exonerated and deleted posts about its own bagged lettuce making people sick.

Now, there’s a chance that this really was a false positive and we’re back to square one on pinning down the sources of the shitty lettuce. But Trump is running an openly pay-to-play administration. He literally sells pardons to white collar criminals; he’s rewarded donors to his ballroom with billions of dollars in federal contracts and other blatant policy favors. He’s not even trying to hide his corruption. So when a Trump donor makes a trip to the White House and his food company is suddenly absolved of spreading the explosive diarrhea parasite, the situation probably is exactly what it looks like.

Cortland says Taylor Foods is still implicated in the outbreak and that you should still avoid shredded lettuce, not that anyone was going to flock to the bagged salad aisle upon word from the Trump Administration that they made a mistake. I personally believe that humans have a right to uncontaminated food, and that right shouldn’t be for sale to any random MAGA donor who needs a favor. If we take any message home from this whole debacle, let it be that the Trump Administration is inextricably linked to thousands of people having explosive diarrhea and millions more being afraid to eat produce for the foreseeable, all because public health and food safety rank below money and loyalty on this president’s priority list.

In other news…

• A Fox News host “joked” about the U.S. military committing mass rapes after Hegseth treats the soldiers with testosterone

• We learned that the ICE agent who murdered a man in front of his 3-year-old in Maine this week once threw boiling water at his own wife and child

• Andrew Tate, arbiter of alpha masculinity, got arrested in capri pants

• Evangelical House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is fundraising for a Texas House candidate who calls children “cum trophies”

• The Odyssey had a monster opening weekend and rave reviews after months of Elon Musk meltdowns over a Black woman playing the fictional Helen of Troy, who was literally hatched from an egg in the poem

• Trump was brutally booed at the World Cup final, where his team lost

Hey guys, happy Sunday. Genocidal warmonger Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who was recently spotted holding a Little Mermaid bubble wand at Disney World after personally convincing Trump to bomb Iran, is dead. Theories about his death abound: The news says he had a heart attack; MAGA types are convinced that Putin poisoned Graham over his support for Ukraine and plan to sanction Russia; I’m convinced that the explosive diarrhea parasite got him in the end. Graham reportedly joked “I can’t die now” on the phone before his death Saturday night and refused to seek medical attention, despite feeling ill, because he was scheduled to appear on Meet the Press Sunday morning. (This would be the most Lindsey Graham way possible to go out, as he lived for those godawful Sunday shows.)

Whatever actually happened, it’s important to remember Graham as a spineless monster who never met a war he didn’t like, said Israel should use nuclear bombs on Palestinian babies and fought to strip abortion rights from American women. This was basically me this morning:

Donald Trump had the funniest possible reaction to the demise of his good friend Lindsey, with whom he apparently played golf “more than any other two folks in public office at any time I think in history,” firing off a flippant post that the senator “is dead!”

“So sad!”

Trump then called into Meet the Press, the show Graham supposedly died trying to go on, and claimed that Graham had used his final words to announce that he’d finally, miraculously gathered the votes to pass the SAVE America (voter suppression) Act.

This conversation didn’t happen. The SAVE America Act still does not remotely have the votes to pass the Senate, and Graham had just returned from a trip to Ukraine where he was not working on that bill at all.

So what happens to Graham’s senate seat? When he died, he was just three points ahead of his Democratic challenger, pediatrician Annie Andrews, in the polls. This is certainly a boost to her chances this November, depending on who steps up to run against her. South Carolina’s GOP governor, who was a member of a whites only country club until recently, gets to appoint Graham’s interim replacement, but I’m not seeing any options with remotely the name recognition and power that Graham had. Flipping that seat is a long shot, but far from impossible in a state slowly creeping to the left.

Speaking of states creeping to the left, over in Maine, Graham Platner was forced to drop out of his senate race this week after being accused of rape. I hate to say I warned y’all about him, in this very newsletter, back in October. The whole Nazi tattoo / Blackwater mercenary thing was enough of a red flag for me to want to drop Platner before his ex-girlfriends had to start publicly bearing their trauma, but the bar for white male senate candidates is apparently on the floor. At least the Dems remain a party that, for the most part, will push their own candidates out based on credible rape allegations, whereas Republicans will elect those men again and again.

As to Susan Collins’ seat, I believe it’s still winnable for Dems. Platner’s implosion was a huge setback but not a reason to abandon hope. We don’t know who the Democratic candidate will be quite yet, but I think the smart choice is logger and former Maine senate president Troy Jackson, who’s endorsed by DSA and apparently not a rapist with a Nazi tat.

In sum: Maine still winnable; South Carolina now at least more winnable than it was. A rapist out, a warmonger dead. And Mitch McConnell, who seeemed brain dead long before he was wheeled unconscious into the hospital a few months ago, is mysteriously missing. Republicans wouldn’t admit it if Mitch died before August 3, because doing so would trigger a special election for his seat, and GOP turnout during special elections in Kentucky is notoriously bad. But the speculation about McConnell’s death has reached such a fever pitch that if that man wasn’t at least medically brain dead, we’d be hearing recordings of his voice assuring us that he can still speak and form sentences; instead, we’ve got this photo today of McConnell touching a newspaper in the hospital like a hostage and looking very Weekend at Bernie’s. (The date of the paper is not clear, which might’ve helped their case.)

His full statement here insisting he’s alive. Either way, he’s not representing his constituents in the Senate and hasn’t shown up to work in months. Kentuckians deserve more than a smiling, propped-up corpse for a senator.

Everything feels like a metaphor lately, and I believe that terrible white dudes dropping like flies out of some of the most important senate seats and races in the country due to old age and heart attacks and rape allegations is trying to tell us something. Maybe that it’s time to replace all of these people with something vastly different.

Where do you think is the funniest possible place that Trump supporters at the Freedom 250 July 4th celebration would be forced to shelter in place due to severe weather?

After a week of Trump’s absolutely disastrous Great American State Fair that pointedly diminished the role Black people played in the nation’s history, extreme heat and lightning storms delayed the fireworks for hours and forced thousands of MAGA attendees to take shelter inside the Museum of African American History and Culture. The National Guard had to herd them off the mall and into the museum like cattle.

“Currently trying to evade the DC storm by staying in the African American Museum with 5,000 Trump supporters,” Liberal Currents writer Sami Gold posted on X. NBC reported that the museum hit full capacity with over 1,000 people still stuck outside, and people on the floor were singing “God Bless America.”

Virginia State Senator L. Louise Lucas, the Black woman who led Virginia’s redistricting push and was punished for it with a federal raid on her office, called it “God’s plan to educate them.”

This had to be the Trump Administration’s worst nightmare of a shelter location, considering that Trump has been locked in a standoff with the museum over its refusal to change its exhibits to sanitize slavery. Trump demanded in an executive order last year that the Smithsonian take action to ensure the museum does not “contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.”

But the New York Times reports that when the feds tried to direct storm evacuees to shelter in the Department of Commerce yesterday, all the doors there remained locked as a Secret Service agent just shrugged at clumps of people trying to get in. So a Black history museum basically saved the day after a week of nightmares for the MAGA folk trying to view Trump’s white-centered version of history. Eleven people had been sent to the hospital the day before due to the extreme temperature, and then festivalgoers were made to stand in long lines in 100+ degree heat again just to get onto the mall yesterday, while the event offered them no shade or water.

“In line for two hours for the fireworks on the mall,” posted right-wing commentator Glenn Beck. “It is 105 and we are all standing on the street, no shade. To say the mood is declining a bit might be an understatement. :)”

To make the metaphor more abundantly obvious, masked white dudes in the neo-Nazi group Patriot Front marched around D.C. with Confederate flags all day, terrorizing the residents. Here’s a future Pulitzer Prize-winning photo (by Cheney Orr of Reuters) depicting a Black woman surrounded by members of Patriot Front, who were too cowardly to show their faces in public, on Independence Day. (ICE must’ve had the day off in order to free these men up for a D.C. trip.)

Fox News’ Laura Ingraham was so embarrassed by the Patriot Front guys that she claimed it was a false flag operation by the left. “I call fake,” she posted on X. “Looks more like Antifa in costume. No one should be allowed to cover their faces.” (Republicans used to claim the “feds” were behind Nazi marches like the one in Charlottesville, but they can’t claim that anymore because the feds are on their team.)

Trump didn’t say a word about literal white supremacists descending on the mall for America’s 250th birthday, but he did wait out the storm watching a live Fox News feed of himself watching Fox News.

And when the president finally managed to give his speech at 11 pm, after his supporters were freed from the Black history museum, he badly misquoted the Declaration of Independence. "And as our Declaration of Independence tells us," Trump said, "we are all made in the image of one almighty god. And a communist will never say that."

Indeed, a communist would probably not say that because it does not appear anywhere in the document. The Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” But that’s the kind of principle more likely espoused by a place like the African American History Museum than the guy desperately trying to pass a voter suppression bill to stay in power.

Anyway, here’s what Mamdani’s New York looked like on Independence Day eve:

The Supreme Court did a lot of very bad things this week and then one decent thing: They reaffirmed that the 14th Amendment confers citizenship to anyone born on U.S. soil, regardless of whether their parents are citizens. The Constitution states plainly that birthright citizenship must be extended to “every free-born person in this land,” so the fact that the Supreme Court accepted this case at all and that it wasn’t a 9-0 decision is a sign of how illegitimate this court has become.

Justices Barrett, Roberts, and Kavanaugh (kind of) joined the three liberals in striking down Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship in a decision that changes absolutely nothing about the way the country has been operating since 1868. This opinion simply upholds the law of the past century. But the way Republicans are melting down about it, you would think Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson personally showed up at their houses to confiscate their guns and tattoo the transgender pride flag onto their necks.

Here’s Matt Walsh, a right-wing podcaster with millions of followers, losing his goddamn mind because the status quo was maintained:

Nazi shadow president Stephen Miller, whose grandparents were immigrants, went on Fox News to say, “If your ruling requires you to SUICIDE your civilization, your reading of the Constitution is wrong….This is absolutely a deep knife wound in the heart of the American republic.”

J.D. Vance, whose wife Usha is only a citizen because of birthright citizenship, said the midterms are incredibly important because Republicans are only one SCOTUS seat away from ending it.

And Trump, who’s fathered kids with two immigrants and whose properties in Florida literally profit from pregnant Russian women paying to come stay there and give birth to US citizens, said the decision was a gift to…China?

Of course, as with all topics that make Republicans angry, the conversation quickly turned to punishing and policing and even sterilizing women’s bodies. The discourse started with a few right-wingers on Twitter before percolating up to primetime Fox News segments with actual policymakers.

I’m curious as to how this would work. Will ICE be performing ultrasounds and asking women to pee on sticks at the airport, or will they just try to eyeball women’s bodies for suspected pregnancies? Will they start doing mass genital inspections at LaGuardia the way they’re trying to do to little girl athletes? Will Mexican women have to get doctors’ notes confirming they haven’t been knocked up before being able to visit relatives in Arizona?

Some Republicans are taking it even further. Here’s the founder of The Federalist, a once respected conservative magazine, suggesting sterilizing foreigners and denying entry to all women:

It’s incredible to me that these same men who crow about the declining U.S. birth rate and fight to ban abortion, insisting they’d rather see women bleed out and die on hospital tables rather than lose a single precious fetus, will turn around threaten to ban pregnant people from giving birth in their country. It’s almost as if there’s a certain color of baby they don’t want on U.S. soil, and they’d go full Gilead to control which women have babies and where.

Birthright citizenship is as American as apple pie. Will this become yet another excuse to demonize women and treat us like cattle?

I thought there couldn’t be a stronger metaphor for the United States under Donald Trump than last week’s reflecting pool saga—until a 54-year-old MAGA influencer named Manny was arrested for jerking off in patriotic garb at an empty Great American State Fair.

The YouTuber known as Manny is Gian Rachtelli, a self-described “God fearing patriotic American” who livestreams from protests and political events. Per the Independent, he was caught masturbating and vaping to performances by the Cirque Mechanics while dressed as Uncle Sam at America’s 250th birthday party:

One witness told police they were standing behind Rachtelli while he vaped and filmed the female acrobats, before observing him place his hand inside his pants. A second witness reported seeing him return for a later show and repeat the behavior. A third witness stated that a member of the acrobatic team approached them to report that an older white male was making the performers uncomfortable by making lewd gestures in his pants while they were on stage.

Rachtelli’s arrest for lewd acts was somehow the most notable thing that happened at the Great American State Fair, which was supposed to be a massive, unifying celebration of the nation’s birthday, similar to the vibrant and successful Bicentennial celebrations in 1976. Instead, hardly anyone showed up, including the bands Trump’s team had booked. Nearly every artist except Vanilla Ice had backed out of the fair weeks ago after realizing that Trump intended to turn this supposedly nonpolitical event into a rally for himself. (Trump said in a speech at the fair, “I hate [Democrats]—I can’t stand them,” in case there were any lingering questions about that.) Hilariously, even Vanilla Ice’s performance ended up being canceled yesterday due to supposed “inclement weather” that never materialized.

More snippets from America’s birthday party: The ice cream melted due to power outages. North Carolina’s delegation was asked to remove the Confederate flag it was displaying in the state’s booth. A dozen states didn’t show up to their booths at all. The ferris wheel mostly sat idle. One guitar player’s sunglasses reflected that roughly six people were watching him play. And Dean Cain, the Superman actor who later became an honorary ICE officer, posted this photo of the deserted event from the ferris wheel, accidentally countering Trump’s claim that 45,000 people had attended:

Things that were better attended than the Great American State Fair this weekend include Minneapolis’ annual Cat Tour, Iran’s World Cup match in Seattle Friday night, and NYC’s Dyke March.

But at least Manny was at America’s party, with a hand in his pants and a vape in his mouth, epitomizing what “patriotism” has become under Trump: a masturbatory exercise in objectifying women, humiliating oneself, and alienating anyone who’s ever admired the country.

Trump will probably pardon him.

Listen—I have never been particularly invested in our national reflecting pool, much like I did not care about the Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philly before Giuliani accidentally held a press conference next to a porn shop. But much like with the Four Seasons disaster, the dumpster fire Trump has created for no reason with this reflecting pool “repair”—and some of the hard-to-believe characters and details that have surfaced from the drama—has turned out to be one of the most entertaining political own goals of this century. A TV writers’ room would balk.

It started when Trump demanded national attention on his reflecting pool renovation earlier this month, in the middle of the Iran war, by holding up this bizarre chart that showed its size compared to various skyscrapers. Reporters expected a serious press conference with national security updates on June 3, and instead, the president spent much of the time bragging about the length of a pool that someone else built in 1922.

Trump bragged about his plan to spend $14 million to paint the bottom of the pool, which had been a concrete grey color, “American flag blue” and posted dozens of times on Truth Social about how his reflecting pool would be better than Obama’s. In other words, he dreaded the ego blow of having to accept an Iran deal that’s objectively worse than Obama’s and needed to defeat Obama in some visual, demonstrable way, and one thing Trump should be better at than Obama is renovating pools, right? A guaranteed win.

Unfortunately, Trump has only ever dealt with swimming pools in his professional life and, being anti-science, failed to consult actual scientists about how to deal with a body of non-chlorinated standing water. The dark blue paint color he chose immediately warmed up the water and fueled an algae overgrowth that turned it murky and green. Embarrassed, he sent in National Park Service employees to dump containers of hydrogen peroxide into the pool to try and kill the algae quickly, which only caused an overgrowth of a new genus of green algae. Meanwhile, the peroxide caused the blue paint to peel off the bottom, creating an even more humiliating situation for him in which tourists flocked to collect peeling paint chunks at the reflecting pool as a relic of this ruined regime, much like people collected pieces of the crumbled Berlin Wall.

The situation escalated from there: Protesters wearing “Team Algae” shirts began to gather at the pool, some of them chanting, “Let’s go algae, let’s go (clap clap).” Right-wing reporters showed up to the pool to claim Democrats were lying about it being green, while CNN reporters collected samples of the nasty water live on camera. Random pool repair guys with mullets traveled from other states to gaze upon and diagnose this monumental pool failure in interviews with reporters.

As America’s collective fascination with the shade of the pool grew, some incredible new details emerged about some of the players involved. Trump had awarded a lucrative no-bid contract to one of his cronies, a crook with a rap sheet and a bribery scandal named John J. Cafaro, who somehow looks like this:

But it gets better. The name of Cafaro’s company that was hired to make the reflecting pool blue (and not green!!) is…. wait for it…

Greenwater Services. You can’t make this shit up.

Naturally, as media narratives around this whole saga turned unrelentingly bad for Trump, he came up with a plan to spin this as not his fault: Trump claimed, without evidence, that left-wing “vandals” were dumping algae and chemicals into the pool and slashing the paint to embarrass him, and he sent the National Guard to stand around the pool and arrest anyone who touched it. (They’ve already arrested a 67-year-old Olympian, David Hearn, for “destruction of government property,” which is ridiculous considering that Trump pardoned all the guys who smeared literal shit on the walls inside the U.S. Capitol.)

Trump now laments that he will have to drain the pool and start over—not because he flushed $14 million down the toilet in a failed attempt to beat Obama at something, but because the left is pro-algae and hates America. He even found a specific journalist to blame: “Lightweight ABC Reporter, Jonathan Karl, was seen sticking his hand into the Pool, and trying to rip the rubber off of the surface,” Trump wrote on Truth Social this weekend. Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the media “deranged” yesterday for focusing on the reflecting pool story over other things happening in the world—nevermind that it was Trump, himself, who literally forced us to change the subject from the Iran war to this dumb fucking pool.

It’s unclear to me, at this point, if there is any scandal that could turn off Trump’s core base. At least 30% of the country will buy his excuses about what happened with the pool because they’re in a cult, and the right-wing pundits are parroting Trump’s story about vandals and saboteurs. The rest of the Americans who see devastating images of dead ducklings floating in algae-plagued water will recognize this as a metaphor for Trump’s entire presidency: Claim something is broken because of a previous president, spend a fortune trying to fix it, make the problem exponentially worse, and blame others when things go south.

Last week, a reporter asked Trump at the White House if he’d been paying attention to the local mayoral race. “Here in Washington D.C., there's a Democratic primary for mayor,” the reporter said. “One of the two leading candidates, Janeese Lewis George, is running a Zohran Mamdani campaign focusing on socialist policies. How would you feel if she emerges victorious?”

"Maybe we take back Washington and run it on a federal basis,” Trump replied. “We won't put up with it. We’re not gonna lose our businesses. By the way, Washington now is a safe, beautiful place.”

In fact, Trump’s fascist deployment of the National Guard has had no measurable effect on violent crime in D.C., his reflecting pool “repairs” have left it green with algae and floating chunks of paint, his gaudy proposed arch would block the view of Arlington National Cemetery from the Lincoln Memorial, and he demolished the historic East Wing of the White House to build a taxpayer-funded ballroom for himself. These are only a few of the reasons why D.C. voters have overwhelmingly chosen democratic socialist Lewis George to replace outgoing neoliberal mayor Muriel Bowser, who is best known for capitulating to Trump at every turn.

Lewis George, a D.C. public school graduate and attorney, defeated establishment, “pro-business” candidate Kenyan McDuffie pretty handily—by 16+ points with 73% of the ballots counted—in the primary by running on affordability and better support for public school teachers. She won every ward in D.C. except Ward 3, the whitest and most affluent part of Upper Northwest. (She still technically has to compete in the general, but a Republican can’t win in D.C.)

“The history being made tonight is not being made by me,” Lewis George said on election night. “It’s being made by all of us. Over the past year, we assembled the most diverse coalition in this city’s history, united by a simple notion that government must put people first.”

Socialist democrats appear to be having a moment. Nithya Raman just defeated Spencer Pratt for a runoff spot in the Los Angeles mayor’s race. DSA member Mathewos Samson of Atlanta just became the second democratic socialist member of Georgia’s state legislature. Even the Trump-friendly betting market Kalshi is trying to piggyback on the popularity of socialism in New York by associating their brand with Zohran Mamdani in fake street videos.

Mamdani deserves all of credit for this. In addition to being one of the most talented and charismatic politicians this country has ever seen, he’s objectively been effective as mayor of New York. Violent crime is at record lows. He balanced the city’s budget, shrinking the deficit from $12 billion to zero. He’s filling potholes at warp speed. His pied-à-terre tax on ultrawealthy people’s vacant second homes in NYC is genius. And he’s riding this wave of Knicks-induced dopamine to new heights of likability just by enjoying the team like a regular fan, cheering them on from local dive bars, and live-streaming the games all over the city for free.

His speech today during the Knicks parade, for instance, charmed the pants off of everyone:

Republicans (and die-hard Israel supporters of both sides) were in hysterics when NYC elected Mamdani, warning that he would institute Sharia law throughout the city (lol) and that New York would immediately go to shit in his care. The very opposite has happened, and now D.C. and Los Angeles and even Atlanta are trying to get a piece of the Mamdani bliss for themselves. The seal is broken; no one can be afraid of the word “socialism” anymore.

It will be interesting to see D.C., in particular, house both a democratic socialist (Black woman) mayor and a fascist president who hates her at the same time. Trump claims he’ll “take back Washington and run it on a federal basis” when she wins, but he can’t even keep his own name on the Kennedy Center. If Janeese Lewis George produces even half the results for D.C. that Mamdani has for New York and stands up to Trump in a meaningful way, I think DSA candidates are really going to start to pop up across the country and pry working class voters back from a Republican Party that pretends to care about them.

I wanna start by saying, KNICKS IN FIVE!!! I’m incredibly happy for New York, for Timothée Chalamet, and for all of my friends who appeared to be having one of the greatest nights of their lives last night in a city that was absolutely vibrating. It will never not be funny that the one game the Knicks lost was the one Trump attended—an absolutely perfect example of everything he touches turning to shit.

It is also genuinely hilariously to me, personally, that the Knicks began winning the championship literally the day after I left the city, generating such headlines in my first week living abroad as “NYC IS PEAKING RIGHT NOW,” “THE VIBES ARE IMMACULATE,” “WE’VE NEVER BEEN MORE BACK,” and from Vanity Fair, “NEW YORK IS ALIVE”—the absolute funniest (dark, designed in a lab) possible things to read about a city you just left after nine years. Alanis Morissette could never.

Speaking of a sports team thriving the moment you leave, I also joked aloud last night, right before I elbowed through a crowd at a World Cup watch party in Rio, that Brazil—which was down at that point 0-1 against Morocco—was probably going to score a goal the second I sat on the toilet. And guys, I shit you not (no pun intended), the actual moment I sat on the toilet after standing in a ten-minute line to the bathroom, I heard thunderous cheers. Indeed, Brazil had scored its only goal of the game while I was in the john. (The men I was at the game with told me I had to go get back on the toilet for the remainder of the match if Brazil had any hope of winning. I didn’t, and they tied. Sorry.)

But enough about me, let’s get to Nightcap’s Schadenfreude Weekly:

DC’s weather gods are playing in Trump’s face

First, a double rainbow appeared on Friday evening as workers were about to chisel Trump’s name off the Kennedy Center. A crowd had formed to watch the letters come down, and they all started singing "God Bless America” in unison at the sight of the double rainbow appearing in that moment, which is so corny in a DC way but still kind of iconic.

A judge had ordered Trump’s name removed from the building, because you can’t just add your name to another man’s memorial. And the spectacle of men climbing on to scaffolds to physically rip the letters off was not only humiliating to the president, who demanded a white curtain go up behind the men to shield them from view, but also reminded the world of how shoddily Trump’s name had been added in the first place. They failed to remove the original “the” and got the typeface and spacing of the lettering slightly off, so it kinda gave the impression of

THe DonAlD tRuMp aNd

THE JOHN F. KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

Absolute clown stuff.

Meanwhile, the weather for tonight’s ridiculous UFC event for Trump’s 80th birthday on the White House lawn is looking downright apocalyptic. Capital Weather and the Weather Channel are predicting scattered severe storms, damaging wind gusts, triple digit heat, possible hail and tornados, and massive gnat and mosquito swarms at the actual event, which is being touted by MAGA as a “return to masculinity.” (Note that an accused rapist and stalker is headlining.)

The White House melted down about the above weather prediction, quote tweeting it with the complaint, “This event is about celebrating America’s unmatched greatness after 250 years — which apparently doesn’t sit well with the friendless loser who wrote this bullshit clickbait headline. Rain or shine, we’re celebrating our great country no matter what.”

I’m going to be watching DC weather updates tonight as I would an Olympic sport, considering that these men fighting in a cage at the White House is so important to Trump that Rubio compared it to JFK putting a man on the moon. (Also, they invited the wrong Jon Favreau.)

Elephant pisses on Texas GOP convention

Republicans paraded an elephant through a convention of the worst people in the world on Friday, which is straight-up animal abuse. But I very much appreciate this elephant peeing all over the floor inside of that arena and stinking it up for them. Team elephant, always.

Great Knicks tweets throughout the week

Massive inflatable shirtless Elon Musk goes up in Times Square

The day SpaceX’s IPO made him the world’s first trillionaire, New York exposed Elon’s nipples and accused him of making AI child porn. (He does.) And since no amount of money can fill the hole in his heart that so desperately craves love and admiration, you know this thing is driving Elon insane.

Lee Raymond, known as the “Darth Vader of global warming,” is dead

The Exxon executive oversaw the biggest corporate merger in the history of the oil industry and fueled America’s climate doubt. Bye.

That’s all for today, folks. xx