Note: I’m traveling so this post was written early Monday and might be a bit out of date.

Let’s start with the big picture view of the DHS — the villain of the first half of today’s post.

Even Under New Management ICE Keeps Killing

DHS and ICE might be under new management with the removal of “ICE Barbie” Kristi Noem by former MMA fighter turned US Senator from Oklahoma Markwayne Mullin, but their bloody handiwork continues.

Yea, it’s great that Noem’s personal gigalo (seriously watch Noem filibuster when asked directly if she’d had sex with Lewandowski at a Congressional hearing) senior aide and unofficial DHS uber-consultant Corey Lewandowski is not only out, but under investigation for improperly awarding contracts at an agency where he was never officially employed (although that didn’t stop him from personally firing the head of FEMA).

And it’s nice that Nazi larping Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino lost his job.

And I guess it’s even bueno that the grim sex farce that was Noem’s marriage is being put out of its misery, but is it really a good thing that Per Politico, Mullin has delivered on his promise of a “more discreet” Department of Homeland Security:

While the Department of Homeland Security continues to deport large numbers of unauthorized immigrants, it is making fewer arrests in public, holding back from deploying fresh waves of immigration agents to hotspots and has scrapped a plan to expand mega-warehouse detention facilities.

It’s all with the aim of fulfilling the president’s pledge for large-scale deportations — without attracting the kind of public attention that ignited widespread protests.

“It’s by design,” said one person familiar with strategic discussions within DHS, who like others was granted anonymity to speak freely about the conversations inside its agencies. “Just like Mullin and [acting ICE chief David] Venturella want — quieter and smarter operations. Finally.”

And how are those “quieter and smarter” operations working out for people in Houston, Texas?

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.

A Bold Proposal From Scam Altman

Regular readers might recall that not long ago, OpenAI and Amazon were involved in encouraging the Trump admin to crack down on rival Anthropic in a fairly nasty family blogging.

The Financial Times had the details on July 1 (archived):

OpenAI has discussed giving a 5 per cent stake to the US government as the $852bn AI start-up seeks to clear political obstacles by securing financial buy-in from the Trump administration.
…
The proposed arrangement would involve other US AI companies handing over a similar stake, although it is not clear if the other labs would be willing to do so.

Giving the government an ownership stake could help secure good relations with the administration and would mark an attempt to address political blowback by sharing the wealth generated by AI with the public.
…
OpenAI and its chief rival Anthropic have recently both had the release of their cutting-edge models held up by US scrutiny, while some Republicans and advisers to President Donald Trump favour much tighter regulation of the sector.
…
Altman and other OpenAI executives have suggested that each of America’s leading AI developers allot 5 per cent of their equity to a vehicle like the Alaska Permanent Fund, a sovereign fund that invests the state’s oil wealth into stocks and pays dividends to the state government and residents.
These companies might include Anthropic as well as Google, Meta and others, although it is not clear any of these groups would agree with OpenAI’s proposal.

You’ve got to hand it to Sam Altman; he’s got great comic timing.

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism.

“…the timing of the politically fatal accusation against Graham Platner stinks. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the successful campaign to force Platner to give up his Senate bid was not about his character but his politics.” Yves Smith

After Graham Platner was forced from the Maine US Senate race -- not because of the allegations printed in Politico, but rather because the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee and Maine Democratic Party announced they were withdrawing their financial and technical support from the campaign -- centrists have launched a campaign to purge the party of Platner’s voters, donors and key consultants.

Before we start…

I’ve already covered the machinery that forced Platner out of the race so this post will look at forces that are contending to capitalize on his campaign’s failure to punish political enemies or just boost their own clout.

I also covered the role of parasocial relationships, aka “stan culture,” in this situation in the previous piece. In short, I’m against cults of personality whether they’re built around putative progressives, fake-ass centrists, or reactionary fascists.

With that out of the way, let’s get into the current round of the Democratic Establishment vs. Progressive Populists. Go team!

If He’s So Innocent Why Is He Dropping Out?

From Platner’s video statement announcing the end of his campaign:

The brutal political reality is that they are going to take everything away from us. Those in power who have the ability to do so are using these allegations as an excuse to take away all of the things that we need to run a campaign.

We are going to lose our ability to fundraise. We are going to lose our ability to access voter data. We are going to lose all of the things that any campaign needs on the basic level simply to function.

Larger organizations. The national level party. The bigger donor networks. They have all committed to spending no money in this race if I’m in it.

They would rather see Susan Collins win than have me be the next senator from Maine.

In short, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), headed up by New York’s dynamic duo of genocide enthusiast Chuck Schumer and the astoundingly corrupt Kirsten Gillibrand (who also played a leading role in the defenestration of Al Franken), announced it “will not invest in the Maine Senate race if Platner remains on the ballot.”

Given that both Schumer and Gillibrand were Cuomo dead-enders in last year’s New York City Mayoral election — despite Cuomo having resigned from the Governor’s office after facing “credible accusations” from over a dozen women that Joe Biden’s Department of Justice confirmed — neither of them is a credible advocate against sexual violence and exploitation.

And as Ian Welsh pointed out a very long month ago in his prescient piece “Establishment Attacks On Platner Are Classic Woke Attacks On The Populist Left”, it was pretty gross that Cuomo was forced out of office for being a sex pest but no one seemed to care about the 12,000+ of New Yorkers who died directly as a result of his corrupt COVID policy decisions.

But let’s get to the fight for power.

The Big Dem Money Pulled Out Early

Fox News tells us that there was a sudden and massive withdrawal of ad support for the Platner campaign before the fatal Politico story dropped:

Two Democratic-aligned political groups shifted millions of dollars in planned Maine Senate ad reservations days before a rape allegation against former Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner became public, handing Republicans a new line of attack over whether party leaders had already lost confidence in his campaign.

WinSenate removed more than $6.2 million in Maine Senate ad reservations, including $5.9 million in broadcast reservations from July 7 through Aug. 31 and $330,000 in cable reservations that had been set to begin June 30, AdImpact, a leading ad-tracking and analytics firm that monitors political advertising, reported July 2. AdImpact also said a separate $240,000 in digital spending shifted from Majority Forward.

The ad shift came roughly one week before one of Platner’s ex-girlfriends accused him of rape, though Majority Forward denied the shift was due to recent campaign turmoil.

Very fishy, no?

Reminder: The GOP Incumbent Is A Disney Villain

From the archived piece:

Collins is not showing up to the fight empty-pocketed. According to federal campaign filings for the 2025-2026 election cycle, updated through June 7, at least 111 billionaires and their spouses from across the country gave just shy of $10 million to help her keep the seat.

These donations include direct campaign contributions–which are capped at $7,000 per cycle–as well as contributions to other PACs supporting her bid. Among these, Pine Tree Results, the main pro-Collins super PAC, has raised over $16 million and has already spent nearly $4 million opposing Platner.

But the Democratic establishment has other priorities than winning a Senate majority. There’s a populist uprising to nip in the bud!

Open Secrets points out what a deep deep hole the loss of Platner puts any Democrat challenging Collins in:

Platner’s withdrawal … exposed a deeper problem – a financial crater left behind in a pivotal race Democrats view as central to their hopes of regaining control of the chamber.

Before his populist campaign unraveled, the 41-year-old combat veteran and oysterman raised $16.3 million through May 20 and held nearly $2.2 million in cash on hand, according to filings his campaign submitted to the Federal Election Commission before the June 9 primary. While that cash total falls well short of the $10 million banked by Republican incumbent Susan Collins – who in 2020 kept her seat even though Democratic challenger Sarah Gideon outraised her by more than $45 million – it nevertheless dwarfs every potential Platner successor.

Send the Hordes Home In Their Hundred Thousands, 600 Insiders Will Choose

So here’s how the Maine Democratic Party intends to decide who the party’s official nominee for US Senate will be — this after overruling the wishes of a record 156,000 who voted for Platner in the June 9 primary — per the WaPo:

Since Platner suspended his campaign, a half-dozen Maine Democrats have announced they would run to replace him. On Thursday, the Maine Democratic Party said those candidates would need to submit a declaration of intent to run at a nominating convention, including a 300-word statement outlining their campaign vision and at least 500 signatures from registered Democratic voters in Maine.

Hours after Platner’s withdrawal, the Maine party announced it would hold a nominating convention July 25 with 601 voting delegates — 101 who are members of the Democratic State Committee and 500 who will be appointed at nominating meetings in each of the state’s 16 counties. The voting will be conducted in rounds, with the five highest vote-getters advancing to the second round and the candidate with the fewest votes eliminated in subsequent rounds until one remains. Only registered Democrats will be allowed to participate, the party said, citing Maine law.

“We are proud that this is one of the most open and inclusive processes that any state party has ever undertaken to replace a Senate nominee,” said Charlie Dingman, chair of the Maine Democratic Party.

Yea right.

There are many ways to organize far more representative caucuses which could engage far more than 0.002% of the 216,000 Mainers who voted in the June 9 primary — over 156,000 for Platner.

Call me crazy, but I really think an actually-democratic Democratic Party would have some kind of mechanism to remove a nominee through a vote of the electorate, but trial by social media followed by judgment by arbitrary elites is the system we’ve got instead, I guess.

Do the Mainers Even Buy This?

Morning Joe claims that Maine voters are not happy:

Joe Scarborough: I will say this, and this is just a word of warning to Democrats in Washington, D.C. Graham Platner was losing support with independents, no doubt about it. But I will tell you, me and [Mika?] have heard nothing — let me underline that, nothing but support from Maine Democrats on the ground for Platner.

Platner campaign signs are still up. They think that this is Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and the Washington establishment coming to get him.

They all have the same story. They started hearing 10 days ago that people were coming up to Maine and they were desperate to try to get Platner off the ballot because they thought Susan Collins had too much on him and would destroy him.

I will tell you, without revealing any names, that we have been bombarded by phone calls and text messages from people who want Graham Platner off the ballot, who are high up in Maine politics. And we’ve been getting that for the last two weeks.

So why do I say this? Because there’s a conspiracy? No, not at all.

Go back to what I said at the beginning — a warning to Washington Democrats. You do need to listen to Graham Platner, because whether it’s true or not just as Caddy said about her son who has been working on this campaign, rank-and-file Democrats who have been supporting Platner from the very beginning think that this was cooked up in Washington, D.C. with a lot of money behind it to find anything that could be found to get Graham Platner off the ballot.

And I will say, we know nothing about that. We just — [Mika] and I have been scratching our heads for the last couple of weeks going, why are we getting all these calls about Graham Platner needing to be off the ballot?

It’s almost like the last thing the Democratic establishment wants to do is engage an unruly, unusual coalition of real people.

At least that’s my inference based on this representative tirade from Dem “strategist” Karen Finney on CNN’s The Source:

Karen Finney: I think the the Democratic primary voters owe the rest of the Mainers an apology. Democrat primary voters knew Graham Platner was awful the whole time. They knew that he said society should be disrupted if you didn’t agree with him. They knew that women had credibly accused him of physical abuse. They knew that, in fact, Graham Platner said that he had a very flexible moral compass. The badness is why Democrat primary voters picked him, and they’re the ones that foisted this problem on us. Don’t just blame Graham Platner. Blame, blame Maine Democrats.

It’s hard to imagine why her MSNBC show Disrupt With Karen Finney was cancelled after less than a year.

With the Dem establishment having excluded the vast majority of voters, the right-wing decided to go full witch hunt.

Going After the Donors?

The right-wing Leadership Institute’s website Campus Reform immediately tried to relive the good old days of the Fall 2023 witch hunt on pro-Palestinian activists.

Progressives should remember that they’re always in the gunsights of the right and that the centrist Democrats do NOT have their back.

Regardless, this attack is weaker than pressing criminal charges on people who mocked the martyred Charlie Kirk.

Let’s look at another story that isn’t as scary as it seemed from a glance at the headlines.

Next, Let’s Kill All the Consultants

(I’m alluding to Shakespeare, not claiming anyone is advocating actual violence)

As annoying as that kind of contempt for the will of the voters is and as scary as GOP witch hunts are, the forces of reaction weren’t done yet, or maybe this one was just Left factionalism, the ol’ circular firing squad.

Turns out some members of the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) — the organization behind much of Zohran Mamdani and company’s success in New York City — have signed a letter calling for Platner and Mamdani consultant to no longer be hired by DSA affiliated candidates.

Here’s from The Intercept:

“We, the undersigned, call on DSA candidates and elected officials to no longer contract or work with Morris Katz or Fight Agency, his political consulting firm,” the letter reads.

Katz is not a member of DSA.

The letter also noted consultants at the agency like Rebecca Katz, who is not related to Morris, were also behind the campaign of Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., and said they continued to advise him even after he made a hard-right turn after entering the Senate.

Two sources with knowledge of the letter confirmed its authenticity.

“Morris Katz is one of the chief parties responsible for the catastrophic campaign of scandal-ridden Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner,” the letter says. “Billed as a top adviser to the campaign, Katz helped recruit Platner and supercharged his candidacy with slick video production, friendly media placements, and political connections.”

The only reason people are attacking Morris Katz is that he’s incredibly effective.

An as Ryan Grim pointed out, this is a trumped-up nothing burger: “This is not a DSA letter. There may be some DSA members writing one, but there are 120,000 DSA members doing lots of different things.”

But let’s follow that pivot at the end of the letter to Michigan.

The Attempted Pivot to Michigan

Former George W. Bush speechwriter, David “Axis of Evil” Frum chimed in with a strong pro-genocide statement:

Naturally, as a “Never Trumper”, the Dem establishment loves Frum — despite, or maybe because they have literally zero electoral appeal — and he feels free to pontificate as if he had the moral high ground.

Establishment apparatchick Neera Tanden agrees:

I’ll let David Sirota have the last word on this exchange:

156,000 Mainers Can’t Be Wrong, and Now They’re Pissed Off

Nathan Barnard has a story with a bit more substance for DropSite News:

The 15,000 member volunteer network behind Graham Platner is now using its considerable leverage to push whoever replaces him as the Democratic Senate nominee to be aligned with the same policy platform that drove the largest primary turnout in Maine state history.

Drop Site has obtained a draft letter addressed “to the Maine Democratic Party and prospective candidates” notifying them of their policy demands.

“The volunteer infrastructure that this movement built - the organizers, door-knockers, the small-dollar donors, the hosts, the people who make phone calls and staff tables between now and November - does not transfer automatically to whoever the Party selects,” the letter states. “That infrastructure exists because people believe in a specific platform. It will only continue to exist and only continue to be deployed for a nominee who publicly and explicitly adopts these core commitments as their own.”

…
The tension between organizers and Maine Democratic party officials has grown as they determine a process to replace Platner. A former Platner staffer told Drop Site “all field and data” staff were moved onto MDP payroll before the rape allegations broke for “accounting purposes,” creating an awkward situation for the Platner organizers—who, like the volunteers, are unhappy with the MDP’s manuevers.

On July 8, Platner campaign organizing director Spencer Toth resigned from the MDP over its lack of engagement with volunteers and organizers in determining the replacement process. Drop Site obtained his resignation letter.

“Together, organizers and volunteers built something much bigger than one candidate. They built the largest grassroots operation in Maine’s history, a people powered movement rooted in working class politics and the belief that ordinary Mainers deserve a real voice in the future of the Democratic party,” Toth’s resignation letter says. “But yesterday, the Maine Democratic Party said the people who built this movement will “have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for US Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like.”
…
“That work matters. It cannot be treated as disposable. The people who knocked thousands of doors, organized their communities, and built local teams across the state deserve transparency, respect, and a meaningful voice in what comes next.”

Toth concludes there is “no path forward to defeating Susan Collins without honoring and engaging the grassroots movement” the Platner campaign built across Maine. The future of the race should not be decided without the people who made the movement possible, Toth says.

“You deserve to have your voice heard and it is incumbent on each of you now to hold the Democratic Party accountable.”

Volunteers for Platner have broadly supported the nomination of Troy Jackson in place of Platner. On Friday morning, the Maine AFL-CIO also endorsed Jackson.

“We can pass Medicare for all, we can take on corporate power and the politicians in their pocket,” Jackson said in his Senate announcement video. “I’ve won in deep red Trump country and progressive cities like Portland and Bangor.”

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. My instinct is that the decision to destroy Platner’s campaign based solely on allegations with no due process has likely cost the Democrats the chance to defeat Susan Collins, but where there’s life there’s hope.

What Was This Really All About?

And I’ll end with Thomas Neuberger’s point about what the Democratic establishment really wants: to prevent change:

Someone wanted him gone, and they found a way. Someone who? And why? What will the outcome be?

Let’s take these one at a time. Someone who?

The perp, I think, is the Democratic establishment — the party in Maine, the Senate bigs in DC, the vast machine that composes the DNC, its well-paid consultant class and wide-ranging servicing groups like print and televised media. The pile-on, when the accusations were more smoke than fire, began early, were clearly political, and deployed in defense of Janet Mills, the establishment’s preferred choice. Platner’s anti-genocide, anti-AIPAC stance didn’t help with that group, and is likely a cause on its own of his strong opposition.

And chief among all the perps is Sen. Chuck Schumer, who clearly places seating compliant Democratics above beating Republicans.

…

That answers the why. Control of the party comes before winning elections. And support for Israeli genocide is clearly a must, certainly for Schumer and other top Dems of his type. In case he hadn’t heard, total Israel-related contributions to Schumer total $1,727,974. That money buys something, happily given or not.

What’s Next?

The battle is shaping up now. As I write, I’m watching Rebecca Traister on MSNOW say Platner was always disliked by establishment Maine and national Democrats, largely because he brought people real hope for change. Yes, that’s what she said: real hope for real change. In my view, only the genuinely anti-establishment can do that.

…

Watch how the Party decides, and whom they nominate. Will Maine get a Harris-like coronation? A loyalist, solid pretender, or someone more real?

Then watch how Maine voters respond, especially those inspired by Platner’s rebellious stance. You’ll learn a lot.

The fight to return the Democratic Party to its historic role as a representative for the working classes will be long and brutal, and it may be too little too late in the context of the fascist Trump regime, but it’s a long way from over.

Related Posts:

• Dem Gerontocrats Try To Crush Graham Platner

• Platner Under Siege

• The Dem Establishment Goes All-In Against Platner

• The Machine Gets Its Man In Maine

Thursday’s New York Times brings back their old RussiaGate spirit with a front-page banner headline about “foreign interference” and data center opposition.

Here’s a key quote:

…a push by foreign adversaries to seize on what polls have shown is deep ambivalence — verging at times on hostility — about the spread of the data centers needed to power A.I. in the United States and elsewhere.

China, Russia and, to a lesser extent, Iran have sought to use state media outlets to turn the controversy over data centers in the United States into “a domestic fracture point,” according to a new analysis by Alethea, a threat intelligence company, which identified scores of articles and posts on social media this year.

These campaigns, whose impact on public opinion remains to be seen, have raised alarms in Washington, where A.I. is seen as a top issue heading into this year’s midterm elections.

The foreign efforts appear intended to stoke the debate over data centers that has united political figures across the political spectrum — from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a progressive, to Stephen K. Bannon, the erstwhile adviser to President Trump.

“Foreign actors aren’t manufacturing American debates over the future of A.I., they are exploiting them,” said Jessica Brandt, a former official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who tracked foreign influence efforts during the Biden administration.

The goal, she added, is to “deepen our divisions in order to dent our appeal and weaken us from within.”

Interesting sources: some company called Alethea and a former Biden admin DNI spook.

We’ll come back to them later, but first I’m curious as to why the NYT is only now covering this story when OpenAI put out a press release saying basically the same thing on June 10 except focused solely on China.

After all, OpenAI’s report was convincing enough to sway such luminaries as Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), Republican Leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the Bitcoin Policy Institute, and prominent tech investor Kevin O’Leary, per WIRED.

And what did the man Elon Musk calls “Scam” Altman’s company have to say that swayed such shrewd and critical thinkers?

In this report, we describe two clusters of ChatGPT accounts likely originating from China that we banned after they used our models in support of apparent covert influence operations that promoted narratives in an attempt to manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and wider tech policies.

The first cluster generated social media comments and images claiming that data center buildouts for AI were increasing electricity prices for average families. We named this cluster the “Data Center Bandwagon” campaign.

The second cluster generated comments and images criticizing US tariffs as attempts to dominate technological competition and specified in their prompts that the content should not include China’s leader Xi Jinping in the output and instead include only President Trump. This cluster was connected to a network of likely inauthentic social media accounts that were also likely targeting OpenAI by claiming ChatGPT user data had been compromised. These allegations were entirely false. We named this second cluster the “Tech and Tariffs” campaign.

The targeting of OpenAI and US data center buildouts is significant not because the operation appears to have shifted public opinion, but because it shows PRC-origin influence operators testing narratives against AI infrastructure – a foundation of US technological leadership, economic growth and the broader democratic AI ecosystem.

Although as Ben Nimmo, principal investigator of intelligence and investigations at OpenAI, said, per Politico:

“Neither campaign appears to have gained much authentic engagement,” Nimmo said during a Wednesday press briefing. “They’re important for what they reveal about the intentions of influence operators from China, and the narratives they’re testing and seeking to amplify, but not for the impact.”

And you’ve got to trust Ben Nimmo, despite keeping his LinkedIn resume refreshingly brief — as if he emerged fully formed at OpenAI like Venus on the halfshell, he’s actually left quite the trail, like a snail slicing itself open on an Occam’s razor of foreign disinformation.

Nimmo was named one of TIME’s “Democracy Defenders” in 2024. I can’t resist quoting from Ben’s TIME bio :

When Ben Nimmo first began tracking online influence operations targeting elections in 2014, he had to scroll for hours on Twitter, studying how networks of fake accounts tried to hijack partisan narratives.

A decade later, AI is changing the game—not just for foreign threat actors, but for those working to counter them. “So much of the conversation is around how the bad guys might use AI,” says Nimmo, who now works as the principal threat intelligence investigator at OpenAI (a TIME licensing and technology partner). “My all-time favorite misquote from Harry Potter is: We can use magic too.”

…

In May, OpenAI announced it had removed five covert influence operations, detected by Nimmo’s team, based in Russia, China, Iran, and Israel. All were trying to use the company’s AI tools to manipulate public opinion.

A big lesson from 2016, when Russia mounted a vast operation to meddle in the U.S. presidential election, was that influence operations were “a bit like mold in the bathroom,” says Nimmo. “They thrive in the dark, and they thrive when nobody is looking to wipe them up.”

He was also lionized in the New York Times in 2020, dig the heroism:

Of course the dude was involved with “investigating” RussiaGate. I also find it interesting that he references 2014. What else happened in 2014? Oh yea, the Maidan Coup in Ukraine.

Coincidentally, Nimmo was a press officer for NATO in 2014. Can you say “unprovoked”?

From there it was onward and upward for Ben, who founded the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) in 2015, where he developed his oft-cited “Four D’s of Disinformation: Dismiss, Distort, Distract, and Dismay.” We’re dealing with a regular William of Ockham here.

I wouldn’t want to rush past Ben’s time as Graphika’s first head of investigations (2019-2021) or as global lead of threat intelligence at Meta (2021-2024). Meta — doesn’t get more reputable than that, amirite?

I should also point out that WIRED pretty well demolished OpenAI’s claims with Molly Taft’s June 12 piece “China Didn’t Make Americans Hate Data Centers.”

Local opposition to data centers in the US has skyrocketed in recent months. A poll released last week from climate outlet Heatmap shows that more than half of Americans support a moratorium on data center development. Separate polling released in early June from UK-based policy research agency Public First shows that support for data centers in the US was the lowest of 15 countries surveyed.

They also quoted some experts, including someone from Graphika (which makes me wonder if Ben didn’t place an angry call to a former colleague or two):

• Dina Sadek, an analyst at Graphika: ““Our ongoing research indicates that domestic US actors are leading the online anti-data-center conversation”

• Kyle Chan, Fellow at the Brookings Institution: ““If you’re looking for prominent people from China who can speak about [AI], they are going to be the very people who would be in contact with and providing advice to the Chinese government—especially in academia, where there’s a lot of back and forth between academic experts and advising the government on policymaking. The framing of it can certainly sound ominous, but almost by definition, you would want people who matter in the Chinese AI debate to be there.”

• Graham Webster, research scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University: “You see US media covering these types of data center discourses,” he says. “It’s totally normal for the English-language Chinese media to pick up storylines that are in the US media. It’s just how wire services work…(Chinese coverage of data center opposition in the US is) part of a broader pattern of Chinese state media and connected actors amplifying legitimate social grievances in the US to make the US look bad. I’d be cautious in estimating the impact of these efforts before seeing more evidence…”

Hell even what’s left of TIME magazine managed to debunk this crap in a piece authored by Rebecca Lissner, Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations of all places (they’ll come up again later:

Popular opposition to data centers is likely the canary in the coal mine. Propelled by concerns about data centers driving up the price of electricity and water, and creating pollution, community resistance against data center construction is growing across the country.
…
I heard immediate, tangible complaints about the impact of AI on their communities: electricity bills climbing skyward and the incessant hum of data centers disrupting once-quiet neighborhoods.

Rather than a boon to the local economy, data centers were seen as a drain on local resources—operations that benefit from generous incentives, drive up utility costs for communities, and generate few permanent jobs in return. Tech industry insiders were bullish on the need for rapid AI innovation. Nearly everyone else sounded a note of deep pessimism.

So if the crack OpenAI team’s report wasn’t persuasive enough to merit coverage from the Gray Lady, what can we learn about former Biden administration official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Jessica Brandt and the team at Alethea?

After all they did provide news that “fit to print” by the “paper of record.”

Let’s start with Jessica Brandt. From the article screenshotted above:

Jessica Brandt’s career has come full circle. Her first job after college was at the Council on Foreign Relations, and she is currently the senior fellow for technology and national security. In between, she held positions at the Brookings Institution and the German Marshall Fund, before becoming the first director of the Foreign Malign Influence Center within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
…

And what a “welcome back from summer vacation, kids” essay it is:

CFR: What did you want to be when you were little?

Brandt: I don’t think I had a clear idea early on, but I knew I wanted to do something that combined my interest in government, history, politics, and travel.

CFR:When do you feel like your interest in foreign policy really developed?

Brandt: As a young person, I dragged my family around to history museums and historical sites. So that was an interest very early on. Over time, I developed an interest in politics, and then the broader world.

I definitely had a chapter as a young person where I wanted to be a marine biologist or a voiceover artist in an animated film. But what felt like a handful of different interests in politics and government and travel eventually came together in a career in foreign policy.

CFR: I was surprised, and delightfully so, that you actually started your career at CFR when you finished college. You joined CFR’s National Program and Outreach team. How did that happen? Were you drawn to the organization, or was it just sort of luck of the draw as you were applying?

Brandt:When I had a chance to come to the Council, I jumped on it. I worked on the National Program and Outreach team when we were launching a spate of programs doing outreach to non-traditional foreign policy constituencies. I got to talk to religious leaders, state and local officials—which continues to be a constituency I care a great deal about—academics, and others. I loved that work, connecting non-traditional audiences with the foreign policy research that the Council does.

CFR: That’s so cool. After a few years, you went to get your master’s in public policy from Harvard, and then after that, you joined Brookings. What drew you to the think tank world, rather than maybe going straight into government or private sector?

Brandt:It’s a good question. I think the kind of policy work that researchers at a think tank do is the careful work of examining trade-offs, proposing options and ideas, and finding ways to balance competing equities for the greater good. I was drawn to that opportunity.

Brandt:Before grad school, I had the opportunity to live and work abroad. In my twenties, I worked for a joint Israeli-Palestinian organization. Though I now work on a very different set of issues, the experience I had there left me with an appreciation for what civil society organizations can accomplish, and also with the conviction that there are some things that only governments can do—difficult decisions that only governments can take. That’s what led me to the master’s program and left me very interested in eventually working for the government.

CFR: I noticed that in that first stint at Brookings, you were also special advisor to their president.

Brandt:Yes, I had an opportunity to work for Strobe Talbott, who I greatly admired. I learned so much working for him as he led Brookings. Strobe was a journalist for twenty-one years, the editor of Time magazine, and got his start as a journalist. I think he always had a journalist’s fascination with people and with stories and connected with human beings in that way. I learned a great deal from the way he brought a journalist’s mind and a journalist’s approach to foreign policy problems. I also learned a lot about how organizations work. I’m so grateful to have had that opportunity.

Isn’t that cute, I’m sure Strobe Talbott, known as the house “Russia Hand” in the Clinton administration really enjoyed mentoring her and sharing his learning and wisdom. It takes a long time to expand NATO all the way to Russia’s borders but ol’ Strobe got the project off to a strong start.

There’s no evidence that he had the kind of relationships with his interns that made his boss’s second term so notorious and he was certainly no chick magnet like the late great Ron Brown, but a mentor’s a mentor and an intern’s an intern and there’s no better teacher of Russophobia than ol’ Strobe.

Now on to the crack team at Alethea. It’s Girlboss country, but don’t worry, there’s an experienced daddy in the background, too.

According to their web site, Alethea was founded in 2019 by Lisa Kaplan whose origin story according to her Linked In profile is that in 2018 “Kaplan served as the Digital Director on the Angus King for US Senate campaign, where she developed and implemented a proactive and defensive digital strategy to identify, understand, and respond to disinformation campaigns by analyzing social media and other relevant data to determine reach and impact on voters. She is among the first who can share first hand experience from the front lines.”

Lisa is also a 2013 graduate of Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs at Colby College in Maine. Go Mules!

So we’re dealing with an incredibly credible expert.

Don’t believe me? Check out her 2021 video on “How to Protect Yourself from Disinformation” (409 views in 5 years for the incredibly popular Girl Security channel which has 115 subscribers).

Her four key insights for avoiding disinformation are brilliant and insightful:

1. Look at the author

2. Look at the date

3. Get to know your own algorithm

4. Think before you share

So yea, obviously any study released by a a person who’s bringing genius level insights like this is worthy of front-page coverage on the NYT. Go Mules!

But Alethea is more than just a one-woman show, Senior Advisor Brian Besanceney has quite the LinkedIn resume, featuring several years in “Public Service”:

Notably he was running DHS public affairs during Hurricane Katrina. Heckuva job, Brian!

Followed by several years in the “private sector”:

Wow, Disney, Wal-Mart and Boeing. That’s heavy duty.

And our boy Brian was Comms Director for Boeing from 2022-2024? AKA the dead whistleblower years, the cabin door blew off years.

Surprisingly he didn’t last out the year, although his work was recognized by the influential MEK Group:

Essentially building an ongoing case study on how not to handle crisis communications, Boeing first issued tepid and faceless statements in 2019 and didn’t fare much better in 2024. Various sources reported widely that Boeing didn’t seem to know what to do, flattening confidence in an industry that lives on trust and confidence.

Experts noted that the dry statements seemed to be written jointly by a lawyer and an engineer. No empathy. No assurances, No proactive statements promising action and building confidence. No credible compassion. No video of the Boeing CEO striding aboard a 737 Max to confidently demonstrate its airworthiness firsthand.

No wonder Brian moved on before the year was done.

I hope this odyssey through the resume of some our top Disinformation Experts nonsense purveyors and propagandists served to delight and distract, if not warn and alert.

Cross-posted at IanWelsh.net

UPDATED: July 8 5pm EDT: Drop Site has the text Platner’s accuser sent him that Politico left out of their story. That’s at the bottom of the post.

UPDATED 2: JULY 8 8:30 PM EDT: The Hill reports Platner has dropped out of the race. There goes any leverage his campaign had to influence the choice of the nominee.

The Usual Caveats Apply

As always, I’m covering this in the hopes of providing a one-stop window into a race that has national (and thus international) implications and what it tells us about the American electorate and the forces attempting to sway it.

This is not an endorsement of any candidate, regardless of my (obvious) personal sympathies, or even of the American electoral system, which is impossibly corrupt and has led to the bought-and-paid-for US Congress being functionally impotent.

Americans won’t vote our way out of the polycrisis, so don’t get your hopes up.

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism

She leaves the field to a one-on-one battle between Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, former public health official in Wayne County, and AIPAC-favorite U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens.

I referenced the race previously in March and went more in-depth in April.

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism

This is happening even as the progressive Democratic party continues to purge its corrupt “let’s just get back to brunch” establishment (new progressive wins in Colorado just last night), but the one thing they got right was warning everyone that Trump has absolutely no class and no shame.

Let’s start with the aesthetics, get into the gossip, pass through the corrupt pardons, and then tally up the biggest financial scores and scams.

Drowning in Kitsch

Like his alleged favorite author, Trump has a taste for starting illegal wars and displaying tacky trash:

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism

I’ve been remiss about covering this story because so much has been blowing up on my electoral politics and AI/business beats.

Antifa Has Been Got but Good

Assistant Director for Public Affairs at the FBI Ben Williamsom tweeted the mugshots like he was showing off his catch after a big fishing trip:

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism

Mamdani’s Endorsees Sweep the Zionist NY Dem Establishment Aside

Monday I posted about the young Mayor’s bold primary bets and now we see that he and the NYC Democratic Socialists of America are playing a strong game.

Monday I posted about the young Mayor’s bold primary bets and now we see that he and the NYC Democratic Socialists of America are playing a strong game.

This made Fox News very sad.

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism

Mamdani’s endorsements puts these races at the forefront of the ongoing conflict between establishment Democrats and the progressives to their left.

Keep in mind that Mamdani discouraged the DSA from backing a challenge to Democratic US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries last fall.

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism

Meta’s Tea Spills All Over the Media

It’s been a season of remarkably bad press for Mark Zuckerberg and Meta.

First there’s this obituary for his core products written by Julia Angwin for the New York Times:

There is a moment when internet companies get the stink of death on them. For AOL, it was 2003, when it became clear that its users were abandoning its clunky dial-up internet service for far-faster broadband. For Yahoo, it was 2015, when its last-ditch acquisition spree failed and it sold itself to Verizon.

For Meta, that time is now. I believe the company — one of the most powerful media organizations in the world and one of the most valuable members of the S&P 500 — is at the start of a long, slow decline that will trigger aftershocks to our economy and our society.

…Meta’s earnings are starting to show the strain from years of growing consumer disaffection and reckless spending. The latest earnings, released on April 29, revealed a dip in user numbers for the first time since it started reporting these figures. And the slumping stock confirms what we have all known in our guts for a while: This is a company entering its zombie era.

Death is different on the internet. Lifeless companies like AOL and Yahoo are still technically with us. You can visit their websites. They have customers. They may even be profitable, as they cut staff and monetize their last remnants of traffic. But they are, as the kids say, peak cringe. Many teenagers wouldn’t be caught dead with an AOL account, a Yahoo email address — or a Facebook profile.

Then there’s this dramatic headline from Wired:

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism

They’re also getting hit by lawsuits from angry customers for putting limits on their $200/month plan.

Amazon Enlists Trump Admin Against Anthropic

Check this out from the WSJ:

The Trump administration’s decision to halt all foreign use of Anthropic’s most-capable AI models was prompted by conversations between Amazon.com Chief Executive Andy Jassy and U.S. officials including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, people familiar with the matter said.

Researchers at Amazon had used a series of prompts to get Anthropic’s Fable 5 model to provide them with information that could be used to aid cyberattacks and was supposed to be off-limits, Jassy told the officials, according to people familiar with the matter. Tech industry executives have been in regular touch with the administration about the power of cutting-edge AI tools.

…

The officials decided that the most direct way to address that risk was by preventing foreign governments, companies and individuals from accessing the tool, the people said. President Trump later signed off on the action despite reservations about its hindering innovation, a senior White House official said.

The administration had long felt that Anthropic, one of the leaders in America’s artificial-intelligence race, couldn’t be trusted to manage the security risks its new model presented. Friday’s call between some administration officials and Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei reinforced that idea, the people said. Some of the officials said the company indicated that it was unwilling to work with security experts in the government to address the issue.

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism

UFC Freedom 250 Defining Cultural Event of 2026

This US News report from March, when the event was officially announced, captures the normie view of the event pretty well:

Cage-match fighting is coming to the White House to fete President Donald Trump, a proud proponent of cage-match politics.

In the coming weeks, crews will erect a 6-foot (1.83 meter) wire-mesh fence shaped into an octagon on the lawn, where UFC fighters will use a combination of kickboxing, jiujitsu, wrestling and other martial arts in a June 14 mixed martial arts show timed for Trump’s 80th birthday and as part of the nation’s 250th anniversary.

The celebration of bloody, brute force dovetails with Trump’s gleefully combative charisma and extreme ideological masculinity — a brawling, no-holds-barred approach to the highest office in the land.

“I have respect for fighters, you know, when you can take 200 shots to the face and then look forward to the second round,” Trump told podcaster Logan Paul as he campaigned for his second term.

Trump was the first sitting president to attend a UFC show, taking in a 2019 fight that was stopped because of a cut over the loser’s eye that left blood pouring down the fighter’s face.

To the uninitiated, the sport celebrates violence. It is wildly popular with young men.

Read the rest at Naked Capitalism

Meanwhile Dems are doing their best to undercut the party’s presumptive nominee for a Maine Senate seat.

Let’s start with the big state out west.

Billionaire Likely Loser, Status Quo Candidate Ahead in Cali

California’s open or “jungle” primary system is explained by The Guardian:

Before the reforms, each political party chose a nominee to advance to the general election, with only the party’s registered voters participating in the primary election.

In 2010, California voters approved the Schwarzenegger-backed ballot measure to change that traditional partisan primary.

The new system folded the previously separate primaries for Democrats, Republicans and third parties into a single race. That means all candidates for a particular office run on the same ballot.

The two candidates who secure the most votes face off in the general, regardless of their party affiliation. In California, that often means a general election can pit two Democrats against each other.

The results so far, note that California’s large volume of mail-in ballots mean the final result won’t be known for days or weeks:

The BBC explains the broad background of the race:

A large field of Democrats jumped in due to the lack of a star politician who could have dominated the election.

It became the most expensive California gubernatorial race on record, with immense ad spending by Steyer and Silicon Valley support for another Democratic candidate, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.

Former Democratic congresswoman Katie Porter also joined the fray.

The contest was shaken up after one of the leading candidates, Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell, dropped out and resigned from Congress in April amid allegations of sexual assault, which he denied.

I wrote about the set backs that torpedoed Katie Porter’s campaign last fall. The Elizabeth Warren-style progressive former Congressional Representative seemed to turtle up after a contentious TV interview and allegations of verbally abusing staff (not to mention reports of dumping a hot pot of mashed potatoes on her ex-husband)

Once Porter was out of the running, it became a battle between former Biden Health & Human Services Secretary, California Attorney General, and U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra and billionaire Tom Steyer.

The NYT summed up that phase of the race:

Oil companies, real estate interests, tech giants, electric utilities, health care businesses and other interest groups collectively poured about $54 million into supporting Mr. Becerra and opposing Mr. Steyer. Mr. Steyer ran an anti-establishment campaign promising to break up utility companies, pursue single-payer health care and raise taxes on corporations and commercial property.

Mr. Steyer’s closing argument framed the primary as a choice between his populist campaign and that of a corporate Democrat, Mr. Becerra. One of the most counterintuitive developments was the way in which labor unions and Democratic Socialists got behind the billionaire, Mr. Steyer.

Our Revolution, the group Senator Bernie Sanders founded to fight “the billionaire class,” endorsed Mr. Steyer. He also won endorsements from a nurses union that backs single-payer health care and a powerful teachers union that wants to raise taxes.

Steyer’s billionaire-in-progressive-clothing bit doesn’t seem to have clicked with enough voters to get him into the finals despite spending at least $200 million of his own money on the race.

Becerra’s biggest donors tell a lot of the tale:

Becerra also may have employed some novel campaign tactics, per the LA Times:

Both his loyal supporters and well-financed critics have a hard time explaining Becerra’s rapid ascent, with theories ranging from outright luck to a nefarious social media push.
…
Becerra’s team also points to the fortuitous timing of their seven-figure political ad campaign that launched shortly before explosive allegations of sexual assault and misconduct against the then-leading Democrat in the race, former Rep. Eric Swalwell. After Swalwell suspended his campaign on April 12, Becerra’s ascent began.
…
Alf LaMont worked for Swalwell’s team as a digital communications expert until his firm quit on April 10 following news reports about the allegations against the East Bay Democratic congressman.

LaMont said he was “doomscrolling” that same night when he saw an “organic, random” push for Becerra on Threads and other social media sites. LaMont said he immediately called Becerra’s campaign team and signed up to work for him.
…
The push was so noticeable that Steyer’s campaign hired an intelligence software agency that’s part of a major Israeli firm to study the trend.

The agency’s report found about 3,000 fake accounts that amplified Becerra across social media platforms X, Facebook and Instagram while also criticizing Steyer, according to Steyer’s team. In all, the fake accounts generated 1.3 million views and 42,000 engagements, the report stated.

Steyer spokesperson Kevin Liao alleged a coordinated network from Becerra’s team or his supporters. Becerra’s campaign denied any role and dismissed the influence of the fake accounts.

Should Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton advance to the finals, Becerra is expected to be a heavy favorite.

The Los Angeles Mayor’s race is of interest as well with Republcan reality star Spencer Pratt who became politicized when he lost his home in 2025’s Palisades Fire.

The BBC has some background on Pratt and his campaign:

As one of the stars of MTV’s hit show The Hills in the 2000s, Spencer Pratt quickly became one of reality television’s favourite villains.

But could the 42-year-old former publicist-turned Celebrity Big Brother contestant soon win himself a new role: mayor of the second largest city in America?
…
Pratt is in pole position to get the second slot in November’s election. He is battling with Democratic city council member Nithya Raman to join Bass in the head-to-head.

In terms of fundraising during the race, Pratt has blown the other two out of the water, raising $2.7m (£2m) between 19 April and 16 May. That is nearly 10 times what Bass – a longtime LA politician – raised in the same period, and approximately seven times what Raman raised.

Pratt’s success as a Republican in such a liberal-leaning city has come after gaining widespread attention on social media through TikTok rants, reposted AI-generated videos that mock his opponents, and head-turning political adverts. His spokesperson has denied rumours that a reality show will produced if he wins the contest.

Real Clear Politics had more on Pratt’s campaign:

Pratt’s AI-powered broadsides gave voice to that frustration in a way that felt visceral and immediate – more social media provocation than traditional political ad. The conservative social media echo-sphere couldn’t get enough but no one could predict whether it would translate to a strong showing at the ballot box.

The strategy drew criticism from Bass’ camp and media commentators who called it manipulative and beneath the dignity of serious political discourse. But in a city where voters had grown tired of polished talking points and incremental promises, Pratt’s unfiltered approach found a receptive audience. His social media following swelled, his rallies grew louder, and what had once seemed like a publicity stunt began to look like a legitimate political movement.

Pratt ran an unapologetically combative campaign, hammering Bass on her handling of the January wildfires, the city’s persistent homelessness crisis, and a housing shortage that has driven residents out of California for years. Bass, who initially declined to engage with her unconventional challenger, eventually pushed back, dismissing him as a “TV reality star villain” while AI video after video cast Pratt as a superhero fighting the dark forces of L.A.’s Gotham-esque crime scenes.

And from the NYT:

(Pratt) has tapped into voters’ deep frustrations with Los Angeles’s homeless problem. Mr. Pratt has turned the tragedy of the Palisades fire into a broader story of corruption and mismanagement. His social media posts frame homelessness as a drug problem and talk about the “evil racket of corrupt politicians and NGOs.” So far his political identity is less about ideology than rage: One moment he is trying to save a trailer park, the next he is railing against building affordable housing in wealthy neighborhoods. The common thread that binds them is a theme that the people in charge have failed, which plays into widespread cynicism about the ability of Los Angeles politicians to solve problems.

That’s enough from California, lots of ground to cover today. Let’s head to Iowa where both Trump and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer saw their preferred candidates lose.

Iowa Voters Don’t Listen to Trump, Go For Schumer’s Guy

POTUS Trump put down a marker in the GOP primary for Iowa governor and lost. Per Politico:

Rep. Randy Feenstra lost the GOP primary for Iowa governor on Tuesday, a shocking upset after he earned President Donald Trump’s last-minute endorsement.
…
The three-term representative outspent Zach Lahn, a businessperson and former GOP operative, by nearly $1 million and leaned heavily into his MAGA credentials during the primary.

The loss is a blow for Trump, who has seen most of his chosen candidates this cycle sail to victory or advance to runoff elections — until now. He backed Feenstra just four days before the primary, a last-ditch attempt to bolster his loyal GOP ally in a race that became increasingly competitive in the final stretch. Feenstra had asked for Trump’s endorsement earlier this year and began calling himself a “Trump conservative” in ads even before receiving the president’s backing.

The NY Times has more:

Mr. Feenstra’s defeat makes him the highest-profile candidate endorsed by Mr. Trump to lose a Republican primary race in years — perhaps since Luther Strange, an appointed senator in Alabama, fell to Roy Moore in a 2017 special election primary. Mr. Moore went on to lose the general election to Doug Jones, a Democrat.

Mr. Feenstra was widely seen as having run a lackluster campaign that failed to win over the state’s conservative base. Mr. Trump’s endorsement was most likely just too late — there was no time to produce television ads highlighting it in the final days before the primary.

Democrat Chuck Schumer by contrast notched a W in Iowa.

Here’s how Politico sat the stakes:

State Sen. Zach Wahls is working to make one of the party’s most hotly contested Senate primaries a referendum on the embattled New York Democrat’s leadership in Washington. Brandishing an “Iowans over Insiders” pitch, Wahls has accused his rival, state Rep. Josh Turek, of being beholden to Schumer and slammed him for leaning on PAC money from groups associated with the party apparatus.
…
Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who chairs the DSCC, have both maxed out to Turek through their leadership PACs, according to federal campaign finance filings. The DSCC promoted an event benefitting Turek in February. Wahls and his allies have also criticized VoteVets, a group that works to elect Democratic veterans and has historically been aligned with Schumer, for spending nearly $10 million to boost Turek, per tracking firm AdImpact.

A VoteVets spokesperson said the PAC is not coordinating with Schumer, who is barred by campaign finance laws from working directly with super PACs. A spokesperson for Schumer, Allison Biasotti, did not address his role in Iowa directly in a statement, but said that under his leadership, “Senate Democrats are undoubtedly in a stronger position to take back the majority.”
…
Wahls is one of the numerous progressive candidates in contested primaries who have said they won’t back Schumer to run the caucus, wearing their opposition as a badge of honor to win over a base clamoring for its leaders to show more spine against President Donald Trump. They’re being boosted by a cadre of progressive senators who are openly defying Schumer by endorsing against some of his star recruits and perceived picks in critical races — including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who recently stumped for Wahls in Iowa.

The Lever detailed what they called Schumer’s “shadow campaign” in Iowa:

Millions of dollars in outside spending from groups affiliated with Democratic leadership and a dark money network have flowed into the Democratic Senate primary race in Iowa to support State Rep. Josh Turek over a progressive challenger ahead of the election on Tuesday.

The interlinked entities supporting Turek include a group run by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, despite assurances he was staying out of the race, and the Bench, part of a new billionaire-backed, corporate-aligned Democratic machine claiming to deliver younger leadership to the Democratic Party.
…
In May filings with the Federal Elections Commission, a political action committee run by Schumer called Impact reported $10,000 in contributions to Turek’s campaign, the maximum amount allowed under campaign finance rules, as Politico reported on Monday.

That disclosure, in the final month before the June 2 primary election, comes after Schumer denied any direct involvement in the race. In particular, Schumer rebuffed accusations from Wahls, Turek’s opponent, that he used an aligned political action committee, VoteVets, as a pass-through vehicle to pump $10 million into the race and boost Turek’s candidacy without appearing to pick sides.

Here’s the guy Schumer put his weight behind:

It worked:

Here’s how the WaPo described the outcome:

There are many lessons to take from Turek’s win, including that an overwhelming money advantage in a campaign is often synonymous with a win.
But another lesson from Wahls’s loss may be that there are limits on Democratic Senate candidates running against Charles E. Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate who has been vilified by candidates seeking to run as outsiders.
Wahls’s anti-Schumer message got a lot of attention, including by this newsletter, but it failed to resonate at a time when many are more worried about the economy, President Donald Trump’s administration and the war in Iran than the Democratic establishment. It’s also a warning sign for candidates in future Democratic primaries who talk about opposing Schumer.
“This confirms that voters care more about their own pocketbooks than inside-the-party politics,” said a Democrat close to Schumer. “Candidates who make the race about D.C. leadership instead of issues the voters in their state face are missing the mark.”

Hamaway Wins in NJ

I wrote about the NJ 12 Congressional race on Monday. The good doctor Adam Hamawy beat back the Islamophobic attacks and won, per The NYT:

Dr. Hamawy, a plastic surgeon who worked as an Army combat doctor during the Iraq War, was ahead of his closest opponent, Brad Cohen, by about 12 percentage points with roughly 85 percent of ballots tallied, according to The Associated Press. He is expected to compete in November against Gregg Mele, a Republican who has run several long-shot campaigns for office and faces steep odds in a district where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two to one.

“You’ve heard throughout this race that I said over and over again: health care, not bombs; to abolish ICE; and to unrig this economy,” Dr. Hamawy told supporters gathered in Princeton, N.J.

“They are solutions to a crisis that was born out of a broken and rigged political and economic system — a system that floods money overseas to bomb children’s schools, while at the same time says that child care here in America is pie in the sky,” he added.

Dr. Hamawy, a first-time candidate, owns a cosmetic surgery practice in Princeton. One reason he jumped into the race, he said, was a sense of feeling ignored by Washington lawmakers when he tried to discuss the devastation he witnessed during a 2024 humanitarian mission to the European Hospital in southern Gaza.

Dr. Hamawy spoke after his win:

But let’s keep moving, because the kerfluffles in Maine are just too much.

Centrist Dems Working Overtime to Sabotage the Presumptive Maine Senate Nominee

I’ve been covering the Maine Senate race since last fall and now there are some updates I must share.

First, sitting governor Janet Mills dropped out of the race for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination there at the end of April Janet Mills dropped out of the race saying:

“Over the past six months, I have had the privilege of campaigning across Maine and doing what I love most: meeting with Maine people. I am grateful beyond words for the outpouring of love and support I have received from folks in every corner of the state, from Madawaska to Kittery, from Rangeley to Eastport,” Mills said. “I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources.”

She added, “I step back from campaigning with unending love, admiration, and hope for Maine people — a people whose hearts are filled with love and whose integrity and humility is surpassed only by their kindness, generosity, and compassion.”

But suddenly this week, Gov. Mills is reminding voters she’s still on the ballot per the Portland Press-Herald:

“People have the impression that I ‘withdrew’ or ‘dropped out,’” Mills told Press Herald columnist Steve Collins on Sunday, “but I simply suspended active campaigning. I am still on the ballot.”

Mills cited a lack of money when she suspended her campaign on April 30, but she was trailing Platner by double digits in most public polling. A March survey by Emerson College had Platner up 27 points.

A poll released last week by the University New Hampshire had Mills registering at 10% support. The survey was conducted nearly a month after she suspended her campaign.

Mills’ name will remain on the ballot and votes for her will be counted because she has not filed the necessary paperwork with the Maine Department of the Secretary of State to nullify them. Unlike many prominent Maine Democrats, Mills never endorsed Platner after she dropped out of the race.

And what’s got the grand dame’s hopes up?

Why a new attack on Platner, coming from his former campaign manager, alleging that he had been bit sexty early in his marriage, via the NYT:

Mr. Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, told a senior campaign aide that he had been exchanging sexual messages with multiple other women.

Mr. Platner’s exchanges with women were confirmed by current and former campaign officials, who gave different accounts of some of the details. Ms. Gertner said the couple, who had married in November 2023, according to the town clerk of Sullivan, Maine, was working through his indiscretions in marriage counseling.

Genevieve McDonald, a former state legislator who was the Platner campaign’s political director before leaving in October, said Ms. Gertner reached out just days before a big Labor Day rally with Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and was concerned her husband’s behavior could become a political liability.

Ms. McDonald said Ms. Gertner told her that her husband had been exchanging sexual messages with as many as a dozen women.

A current Platner campaign official said Mr. Platner had been communicating with up to six women. The conduct had stopped, the official said, before the campaign launched.

As soon as the Times story broke a number of prominent centrist hacks and Democratic operatives crawled out of the wood work to bag on Platner.

Centrist’s centrist Bill Scher advised Maine voters in Washington Monthly that “It’s Not Too Late to Save Democrats from Graham Platner“:

The damage of a Platner nomination could go beyond Maine. Already, we are seeing Republicans nationwide gleefully use Platner to charge Democrats with hypocrisy. Painting the Republican U.S. Senate nominee Ken Paxton—the Texas Attorney General who was impeached over bribery allegations connected to the employer of his mistress—as ethically compromised becomes harder if Democrats are also downplaying Platner’s controversies. Charging Donald Trump’s Republican Party with taking us down the road of fascism is harder when Democrats must argue that Platner, self-styled military history buff, didn’t know about the Nazi origins of his Totenkopf.

There’s no such thing as a zero-risk candidate, but Platner’s campaign has been a series of red flags warning he is a high-risk candidate, each one redder than the last. Why would Maine Democratic primary voters take such a risk? Yes, he ran the best campaign in the winter and spring. Yes, he raised the most money. Yes, his poll numbers have been good to date. But if more shoes drop, all that will be meaningless.

And yes, Governor Janet Mills suspended her lackluster campaign. (I argued last week that Mills should unsuspend her campaign, but even if she doesn’t, she remains on the ballot.) David Costello, a career government aide, is currently running a lackluster campaign for the Democratic nomination, too. Yes, it is unlikely that either will best Platner on June 9. But they definitely won’t if voters who would rather not vote for Platner do so out of resignation.

If you are a Maine Democratic primary voter (both Democrats and unenrolled voters can participate in the June 9 primary) who believes either Mills or Costello would be more likely to beat Senator Susan Collins than the guy who spewed racist and misogynist rhetoric online, blamed women for getting raped, mocked a Purple Heart recipient for getting shot on the battlefield, has a profile on a notorious messaging app and was using it to sext behind his wife’s back last year, then there’s no harm in ranking them number one and number two, in whatever order, on your ranked choice ballot.

Democratic political pros are piling on as well:

Michael LaRosa, former spokesman for First Lady Jill Biden, has been leading the centrist Dem attacks on Platner:

Perhaps this has something to do with it:

Meanwhile, Platner went to D.C. and met with Schumer and other Democratic Senators, per the NYT:

Graham Platner, the likely Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine who is facing new scrutiny of his past behavior, came to Washington on Tuesday and drew a nervous and somewhat standoffish reception from the Senate Democrats he hoped to join.

Mr. Platner, an oyster farmer who is running against Senator Susan Collins, a five-term Republican, invited the entire Senate Democratic caucus for an afternoon meeting, but only about half a dozen senators were seen entering the building for the meeting.

Earlier, Mr. Platner had a 30-minute, one-on-one session with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, according to two people briefed on the meeting. Mr. Schumer had endorsed Mr. Platner’s primary opponent before she suspended her campaign a month ago.
…
“I met with Graham Platner today,” Mr. Schumer said. “We’re going to beat Susan Collins and take back the Senate.”

As reporters pressed Mr. Schumer about his confidence in Mr. Platner, he repeated three more times that Democrats would defeat Ms. Collins — and noted once that he had endorsed Mr. Platner — before ending his news media availability.

David Sirota had more on the race at The Lever:

On CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) was asked whether all the controversies surrounding U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner mean he doesn’t “pass the character test.” Murphy offered a subtly radical answer: “Character involves standing up to people who are bankrupting and corrupting this country.” It was an echo of Rep. Ro Khanna, who credited Platner with “having the character to stand up against the war in Iran, against genocide, and against an unfair & lopsided economy.”

What’s radical here is that Murphy and Khanna are suggesting the possibility of a new political reality, one that I think the affluent class of New York/D.C. media and political elites literally cannot process: A reality in which many voters are so economically pulverized and politically disillusioned that they now define “character” in a politician solely as whether or not they are single-mindedly focused on destroying oligarchy and ending corruption.

…stop and consider those polls showing Platner’s laser-focused anti-oligarch candidacy maintaining a general-election lead amid all the revelations about his past. That survey data suggest a new paradigm of materialist politics may be upon us. It is, potentially, a new era in which voters who can’t afford anything and who feel totally ignored by their government have reimagined their entire definition of political “character” on economic/anti-corruption terms — rather than on old definitions of personal moral rectitude.

In this potential new reality, the personal shortcomings of individual politicians — which often have little effect on voters’ actual lives — are less important and electorally salient than the policies those politicians support and oppose. And such a shift would make sense in the current moment.

Ken Klippenstein had an amusing take:

The question on Washington’s mind now is: Why can’t Maine just nominate an asexual, Harvard-educated McKinsey consultant as candidate rather than some tatted up, ex-Marine riff-raff like Platner?

The answer is simple: That’s not what Maine voters want.

People are done with the clean-cut types who’ve harbored ambitions for political office since they were on high school student council and have lived every waking moment accordingly. I call them smoothgroins: real-life barbie dolls with smooth plastic where a sexual organ should be. Think of the telegenic types like Gavin Newsom who never have a strand of hair out of place or much of anything to say (certainly not against the establishment). Think of Cory Booker, who at age 56 announced his first marriage, complete with a made-for-media rollout — clearly on the ridiculous assumption that people still give a shit about their presidential candidate having a typical family. Think of Pete Buttigieg, a politician so allergic to public displays of affection with his spouse that his own communications director publicly called him “the Tin Man.”
…
Platner will survive this — not because voters are thrilled he was sexting other women, but because they already assume half of Congress is doing the same, or worse.

And it’s not as if I’m some Platner booster. He’s always struck me as an impulsive dumbass (not unlike me I suppose, except I would never run for Congress). But I’ll take a dumbass over Susan Collins, a three-decade incumbent who has rubber-stamped every war she’s ever met and just about every major Washington disaster since I was in elementary school.

Consider how she answered Platner’s remark that she’d voted to send him to Iraq. She said “that was Platner’s decision to serve. He was not drafted.”

Historian Rick Perlstein brings up the fact that Platner is a veteran, many Mainers are veterans and the pundits of D.C. and New York don’t have a clue about either veterans or Maine:

Readers of this page know I’ve spending most of the last several months living in my cabin in a rural county in Illinois. It’s been a particularly illuminating place with which to observe this story unfold, because it’s such a powerful reminder of the scandalously narrow sociological ambit of the people who do that job of explaining America to Americans, from perches in New York and Washington DC. Their judgement that Platner might be cooked is political their wisdom speaking. It is their sociological biases.

…
Such people. and many ordinary observers too, seem shocked to see their theories unconfirmed that the Maine electorate must be expected now to rear up in righteous indignation against Platner’s sins. But theory must built upon political evidence. And as yet, we have no such evidence that the Maine electorate cares much about any of them. “I want a senator, not a saint,” one voter told a reporter on the ground, speaking for all the Mainers he spoke to.

…
If you live in a place like this—you love veterans.
…
I visited rural Maine once, doing research in the hometown of a 1964 presidential candidate. The secretary of the candidate’s museum and library took a shine to me, and took me for a tour of the neighborhood. The trailer parks and shacks reminded me of my image of the Mississippi Delta, only with white people. There are towns that look like that around Princeton, Illinois, too.

The sense that veteran and the loved ones who care for them—or, God forbid, mourn themare ignored by the dominant culture of the United States, because they come from places like this…

Platner’s public presentation as a broken, healing, moral work in progress, in a place like Maine—where 8% of the population are veterans, fifth place among American states, territories, and districtss, behind Alaska’s high of 10.5% but far ahead of New York with 3.6% and, in second-last place, Washington D.C., with 3.2%—might be more of a feature of his electoral appeal than a bug. Eight percent of the citizens of a state, each one with who knows how many friends, family, and assorted love ones: that’s a lot of voters.

Recognition is a very powerful thing: in politics, one of the most powerful forces of all. Platner is a symbol of that recognition. America’s agenda-setting elite political media is not making a big deal of this. It is an instance of the way they are very bad at their jobs.

The story has brought up some unsavory aspects of incumbent Senator Susan Collins’s personal life as well:

There’s also the matter of Collins’ funding:

Time will tell how this all shakes out, but the Maine race may determine which party controls the U.S. Senate.

Originally published at NakedCapitalism on June 3, 2026.

This is happening in a context of immense and building political, cultural and economic pressure.

American politics are under pressure from seismic forces — war, genocide, internal oppression, corruption, inequality, deep and bitter divisions — that threaten to lead to political earthquakes and greatly expanded violence.

And a number of leading centrist Dems chose their side this week at New York’s Israel Day Parade and an anti-ICE protest in New Jersey.

First We Take Manhattan

New York Governor Kathy Hochul and US Senator Chuck Schumer proudly marched next to as yet unindicted Israeli war criminal Bezalel Smotrich at New York’s annual Israel Day parade, while Zohran Mamdani took heat in the press for not attending.

The flag of the infamous ambulance murdering Golani Battalion was proudly flown at the parade.

Here’s the view from NY Times:

Some key quotes from the piece:

Pro-Israel New Yorkers gathered on Sunday for the annual Israel Day Parade, a celebration of the Jewish state, but for the first time in recent memory the mayor of New York City did not join them.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani decided not to participate, citing his longtime opposition to the Israeli government. Parade organizers said they believed he was the first mayor to skip the parade since its start in 1964.

Many other elected officials marched in Manhattan on Sunday, including Gov. Kathy Hochul and Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner.

Ms. Hochul said at a news conference as the parade started that the group was marching “in defiance.”
…

Also attending:

Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, also marched, according to a spokesman from his Religious Zionist Party. He was not on the official list of attendees that the Israeli consulate sent to The New York Times before the parade.

Also note how deftly Mamdani handled it with an assist from his billionaire zionist Police Commissioner:

“I said on the campaign trail I would not be attending the parade, and I have made my views on the Israeli government abundantly clear,” Mr. Mamdani said at a news conference last week focused on security preparations for the parade.

Standing by his side, Ms. Tisch indicated that she would march as a representative of his administration. She and Mr. Mamdani said security for the annual event would be tighter than ever.

“As the mayor of our city, I take seriously my responsibility to protect the safety and well-being of every New Yorker and every event, regardless of my attendance,” the mayor said.

Ms. Tisch, who is Jewish and has been a longtime supporter of Israel, described the parade as “one of the most joyful days of the year.”

She added: “It is the mayor’s decision not to march, and it is my decision to march proudly.”

This analysis from X user انوس is well worth reading:

Honestly, Mamdani and his PR team are incredibly savvy. They’re doing exactly what they promised: rebuilding the people’s trust in government, but through perception first.

Take the Israeli parade. First, he announces he’ll be skipping it. That dominates headlines and reinforces the image of a mayor willing to take a bold stand, even at political risk. People who were skeptical start questioning their skepticism because the move feels authentic and principled.

Then, after that positive perception takes hold, you get something like the video below. He still announces that he won’t attend the parade himself, so he keeps the positive publicity. But at the same time, he says he’ll send a member of his administration instead: Jessica Tisch, whom he chose to retain despite her family’s well-known ties to Netanyahu.

Most people won’t notice the distinction. A small number like myself will criticize it, but by then the mass deception has already been established. The public focus shifts from scrutinizing the contradiction to defending the image of a “principled mayor.” The net result is growing support, deeper belief in the system, and no political cost for it.

This is the same pattern I saw with his pro-Palestinian messaging. “Free Palestine” goes viral, his supporters rally behind him, and his popularity grows. Then later, he starts saying in interviews that “Israel has a right to exist.”

When I called it out and challenged him directly, the base had already been manipulated into a loyal following built around a radical image of him. Only months later did my criticism start to go mainstream, but by then the cycle had already reset and repeated itself.

That’s what makes the strategy so effective. The headline-grabbing position comes first. The nuance comes later. By the time people notice the difference, the public perception has already been set and he’s onto the next thing.

Rafael Shimunov has a very useful thread that also spots other Israeli notables at the parade, including Itzhak “a blessing on the one who seizers babies and dashes them against the rocks” Wasserlauf, Cabinet Minister Amihai “Starve Gaza, Nuke Gaza” Ben-Eliyahu, Ariel “A Nakba in Gaza ” Kellner, Knesset Speaker Amir “If you want a Palestinian state, build it in London” Ohana, and many many more such worthies that Democratic officials could not be prouder to march with.

And we must let the Senior Senator from New York have his say:

Alright, let’s move on to New Jersey where ICE kicked off some kino and is now hiding behind the skirts of Dem centrist Governor Mikie Sherrill who’s deployed the state police to crush the protests.

Sheltering ICE in the Garden State

Here’s a quick catch up on the situation in New Jersey:

Links to stories above: The Guardian, CNN, DHS.

Let’s let the NYT set the scene, grand arbiters of truth that they are:

Violent clashes between demonstrators and federal agents erupted early on Friday outside an immigration detention center in Newark after nearly a week of protests over living conditions at the facility.

Just past midnight, about 50 activists convened in front of about 30 federal agents. A group of officers charged into the crowd, and several protesters were pushed to the ground as officers sprayed a chemical irritant. One officer beat a demonstrator with a baton across the torso, thighs, knee and calves as he tried to flee. Three protesters were arrested, restrained with zip ties and carried past a razor-wire fence into the detention center.

The skirmish Friday morning followed confrontations earlier in the week.

A group of demonstrators was arrested on Wednesday as tensions built between protesters and federal agents who were heavily armed while they stood watch at the facility’s gates.

On Thursday, relatives of detainees and advocates for immigrants said that migrants incarcerated at Delaney Hall were being beaten and subjected to pepper spray following a hunger strike by some inmates.

For months, many detainees have complained to family members and elected officials about rotten food and inadequate medical care at Delaney Hall, which is overseen by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Democratic officials in New Jersey have focused on the issue and toured the facility, echoing the concerns raised by inmates.

Now let’s get to the U.S. Senator who got himself pepper sprayed by those peacekeeping, law-abiding ICE agents.

Senator Kim spoke to New York Magazine who used a supercilious headline that outraged me “Andy Kim Wants Delaney Hall to Outrage You”:

Delaney Hall, a federal immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey, has been the site of escalating clashes in recent days as demonstrators have gathered in support of detainees on a reported hunger strike over poor conditions in the facility, only to be met with force from federal agents. Over the weekend, the skirmishes continued, with authorities arresting several demonstrators who refused to leave the premises after a curfew imposed by Newark mayor Ras J. Baraka.

Last week, New Jersey senator Andy Kim visited the site to conduct oversight and was hit with pepper spray alongside protesters. Kim is just the latest local politician to find himself on the front lines of the fight over Delaney Hall, which was reopened as a detention facility last year. LaMonica McIver, a New Jersey representative, is currently facing federal charges after being accused of assaulting an ICE officer during an attempted oversight visit last year, allegations she denies.
…
Sen. Andy Kim: I went to Delaney Hall — I’ve gone several times, but I went in particular because of the reports of protests inside. I wanted to hear why this hunger strike was happening. I showed up on Monday and, first of all, was not allowed inside even though I had an appointment. Geo Group, the company that runs Delaney Hall — the guards just decided they weren’t going to let me in, which just shows you they just don’t care at all about what the American people or Congress thinks about them, or about oversight. I actually had to call Secretary Markwayne Mullin directly and talk to him personally to be able to get access into the facility. And when I went inside and told the Geo Group head about being denied entry, he actually just looked me in the eye and called me a liar. Just said that I was making the whole thing up, which is, again, just absolutely mind-boggling that taxpayers are giving them a billion dollars to run Delaney Hall.

I went and talked to the detainees. Trump often calls them the worst of the worst, saying that these are the violent criminals. But the people I met were a pregnant woman that’s not getting the medical care that she needs. She’s being held there indefinitely and she literally just asked me, like, does she need to be prepared to have her baby in Delaney Hall? There was an 18-year-old high-school senior who just wants to go to prom and graduate. A stage-three lung-cancer patient who actually wants to leave the country. He wants to just go back home and spend whatever remaining months he has with his family, but he’s stuck and can’t even go. These are the people that I met.

The other thing I just want to hit, because the detainees were very clear with me, is that they have concerns about the conditions, but the main thing they’re protesting is the fact that there’s just no movement when it comes to their cases — that they are not having anything that resembles some type of opportunity to have their cases heard.

Note the role of Newark Mayor Ras J. Baraka in ordering local law enforcement to back up ICE and suppress protest.

But wait, Governor Mickie Sherrill stepped up too, via WHYY:

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill visited a private immigration detention center in North Jersey Monday, where a hunger and labor strike began before the weekend.

The governor was joined by U.S. Sen. Andy Kim and other members of the state’s congressional delegation, including U.S. Reps. Rob Menendez and Analilia Mejia.

While addressing a protester upset that Sherrill had not reported to the facility sooner, the governor said she was not allowed access.

“People have been asking for you,” the unidentified protester said to the governor. “They started their strike on Friday and the first thing they said is we want to talk to Governor Sherrill, and it took you four days to be here.”

Sherrill explained that her office has been working with federal immigration officials to gain entry to the facility. She committed to continuing to attempt to gain access.

“These private detention facilities, which I have long opposed, are not treating people in the humane way we want,” she said.

Never fear, the Governor did step up and send in the New Jersey State Police…to protect ICE from her constituents:

Sherrill’s decisions triggered some online debate between centrist Dems and activists:

For her part, Sherrill played the time honored “outside agitators” card, per The Gothamist:

New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill on Saturday blamed out-of-state agitators for clashes that erupted between protesters and local law enforcement outside the Delaney Detention Center in Newark.

Sherrill said five of the six people arrested Friday night in clashes outside the detention center for immigrants were not New Jersey residents. State police said the five out-of-staters were from New York and Pennsylvania.

“To the people coming from out of state to create chaos and dangerous situations: You should not be here,” Sherrill said at a Saturday afternoon press conference. “You are not helping the people detained at Delaney Hall, you are not helping detainee families and you are certainly not keeping New Jersey safe.”

And Sherrill even got herself flagged by the Community Notes at X for allegedly misrepresenting events:

And by on the ground witnesses:

Progressive influencer Hasan Piker made an appearance along side Dr. Adam Hamawy, NJ-12 candidate (more on him in a bit), and said, “the governor of New Jersey Mikie Sherrill sent the NJ police to beat protestors outside of Delaney Hall ICE detention center at the behest of the Trump admin” on TikTok.

The right wingers at NewsForce present at the protests had this to say:

Hasan Piker praised activists tied to Neville Roy Singham’s network—which has received over $285 million in funding—as “wonderful people” while appearing at the Newark ICE protests.

Piker dismissed concerns about the network’s activities as he dodged questions about a Treasury Department subpoena tied to his recent Cuba trip with the same groups.

The fine folks at Cartel Watch tied Piker to Cuba

Left-wing streamer and political influencer Hasan Piker has arrived at Delaney Hall in New Jersey, site of ongoing protests against ICE operations. Piker, who describes himself as a Marxist, recently received a federal subpoena from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The subpoena is part of an investigation into whether he and others violated U.S. sanctions during organized trips to Cuba earlier this year, including possible financing, logistics, or support related to the Cuban government. This comes amid broader scrutiny of activist trips and potential foreign influence concerns tied to Cuba.

Other right wingers explained the origins of the protests as top-down and organized:

One right wing influencer present at the protests repeatedly crowned himself in masochistic glory as the crowd pwned him again and again:

But I should talk more about the adjacent NJ Congressional race before I close.

The Much MSM Maligned Dr. Adam Hamawy

Hasan Piker was not alone in getting the reality distortion field treatment. This sampling of headlines should help readers get started:

Links shown above: NYT, The Guardian, The Times of Israel, National Nurses United.

From the Guardian:

After returning from a medical mission in Gaza in 2024, Hamawy went to Washington to describe the crisis – which he viewed as a US-funded genocide – to lawmakers, only to encounter “too many doors that were closed, that didn’t even want to listen”.

“I could only define it as a genocide, because I saw the bodies of the people that came in,” the veteran army trauma surgeon and political newcomer reflected, while walking between houses. “And it wasn’t an accident. You can’t have an accident, every single day for three years.

“When the hospital shakes and I see the bodies come in, I’m paying for it with my tax dollars,” he said. “I don’t want my tax dollars doing that.”

One of the few representatives on Capitol Hill who met with him was his own: Bonnie Watson Coleman, who has served New Jersey’s 12th congressional district for more than a decade.

When she announced her retirement in November 2025, after six terms, Hamawy decided it was no longer enough to seek the attention of those elected to serve in Washington – and launched his campaign to join them.

In six months, Hamawy has gone from a political nobody to, deemed by most measures, the frontrunner in a crowded race, endorsed by prominent progressive and Democratic figures including Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Tammy Duckworth. His work history has driven him to call for Medicare for All, advocating for sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel, and the abolition of ICE – and to say openly he cannot support the Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer.

Naturally he’s being hit by trumped-up kerfluffles, the Huffington Post summarizes the situation:

(Hamawy’s) potential triumph, however, has elicited howls of protest from pro-Israel organizations, who have attempted to argue that Hamawy has unacceptable ties to Muslim radicals, with Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) going as far as to label Hamawy an “actual terrorist.”

The attacks have two prongs: A Wall Street Journal op-ed by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey laid out his ties to the so-called “Blind Sheikh,” who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison following an investigation of the 1995 World Trade Center bombing; and a Jewish Insider story last week noting Hamawy volunteered with a medical charity in the Balkans that was accused years later of being a front group for Al-Qaeda.

Hamawy has condemned the attacks as smears. He has disavowed the blind cleric’s views, and the charity Hamawy worked for was widely praised – including by President Bill Clinton’s administration – in the years before their exposure.

“Attacks calling Muslims terrorists is not a new thing, and they’re just falling back to their old playbook,” Hamawy told HuffPost. “So I’m just going to continue talking about everything that I have done for this country in uniform and out of uniform.”

Here’s how the NYT carries AIPAC’s water:

His critics have been trying with growing urgency to highlight an earlier part of Dr. Hamawy’s history: a gap year the future surgeon spent between graduating from Rutgers University-New Brunswick in 1991 and entering the university’s medical school the next year.

It was then that Dr. Hamawy began spending time with Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind, militant Islamist who lived and preached in New Jersey. Four years later, Mr. Abdel Rahman would be tried and convicted of inspiring violence that contributed to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He died in 2017 while serving a life sentence.

During Mr. Abdel Rahman’s trial in 1995, Dr. Hamawy, then 26, was called as a defense witness by the sheikh’s lawyers as they tried to undermine the federal government’s star witness, Emad Salem, who was paid $1 million by federal officials while working as an informant and also admitted lying under oath. Mr. Salem had testified that during a road trip to Detroit the sheikh had encouraged him to kill a former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak. (Prosecutors had also charged Mr. Abdel Rahman with being at the center of a plot to assassinate the president during a planned visit to New York in 1993.)

Dr. Hamawy, who traveled in a van with the two men, testified that he did not recall hearing Mr. Abdel Rahman say that to Mr. Salem. In the course of his testimony he also told jurors that he helped the blind cleric translate a fax from Egypt in 1993, spent time in his apartment and listened to him speak at area mosques.

Dr. Hamawy, who is now 56, was never accused of wrongdoing and went on to serve with distinction as an Army combat surgeon during the Iraq War, where he helped to save the life of U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a Democrat who has also endorsed him. On Sept. 11, 2001, he and other residents at NewYork-Presbyterian went to ground zero to treat those injured in the second terror attack on the World Trade Center.

Andrew C. McCarthy, the lead prosecutor in Mr. Abdel Rahman’s trial, and Michael B. Mukasey, the federal judge who oversaw the case and later served as President George W. Bush’s attorney general, published essays earlier this month reminding readers of Dr. Hamawy’s link to the infamous cleric.

This isn’t the first MSM attempt to link Hamaway to terrorism. Drop Site debunked the first:

The New Jersey Globe has the horserace stuff on Hanaway’s race:

When a new super PAC called American Priorities announced that it would spend $2 million supporting a first-time candidate named Adam Hamawy in New Jersey’s 12th congressional district, it was seen as the opening salvo in what promised to be a brutal, bloody super PAC war. Would the American Israel Public Affairs Committee come in to sink the fiercely pro-Palestine Hamawy? Would cryptocurrency or AI groups see an opportunity in the district?

Instead, with just a few days left to go until the Democratic primary, Hamawy has remained essentially untouched, and there’s an increasing consensus that he’s the most likely person to be the district’s next congressman.
…
“The rest of the field is so divided that even if there were a viable Stop Hamawy movement, there’s no coalescing behind one candidate,” said Micah Rasmussen, the director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. “A divided field against a unified frontrunner is always what you want.”

In the news, some less-than-ideal stories have trickled out over the last month: the conservative Washington Free Beacon has reported on Hamawy’s past ties to the so-called “Blind Sheikh,” who was later prosecuted for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and Jewish Insider added that Hamawy had volunteered for a medical aid organization in Bosnia that was later discovered to be an Al-Qaeda front. Even if they haven’t made as much of an impact in the local media, the stories have been making the rounds in the district.

But Hamawy said that outside the “right-wing media,” he hasn’t heard anything from voters in the district related to the Blind Sheikh or anything of that sort. “I think this is a frantic attempt in the last days to discredit all the work that I’ve done, and it’s garbage,” he said.

There hasn’t been any negative paid media against Hamawy sent by his opponents or by super PACs, and when speaking with the New Jersey Globe, several other 12th district Democrats declined to criticize him with any level of specificity. The one exception has been Plainfield Mayor Adrian Mapp, who called Hamawy a “radical extremist” – but Mapp is not seen as one of Hamawy’s top competitors for the nomination.

“I definitely sense that his opponents are feeling a real risk of backlash,” Rasmussen said. “All the candidates are hoping somebody else will do it. They’re hoping somebody else in the field will take the swipe. They’re hoping somebody will start spending some money to drive the message against Hamawy, to raise concerns. But they don’t view it as their job themselves.”

That’s all I’ve got time and room for today. Stay safe, y’all.

Related posts:

• Trump Deploys National Guard to LA

• Posse Comitatus and Trump’s Post-Constitutional Order

• Dems Runs Centrist Girlbosses for NJ and VA Governor

• Will Trump Work Himself Into a Shoot Versus Illinois Governor?

• ICE, Antifa, and the Ever Expanding Definition of Terrorism

• Minnesota on ICE: Somaliand, Fraud, Frey, Walz and Trump

• Democrats React to Minnesota on ICE With a Total Lack of Seriousness

• Stephen Miller vs ICE Barbie & Corey Is a Distraction

• Israel Dominant Issue in Michigan Democratic Senate Primary

• Democrats Tangle Themselves on ICE and Israel

Originally published at NakedCapitalism on June 1, 2026.

Let’s start with the Republican primary for U.S. Senate.

Trump-Backed Paxton beats Cornyn

This wasn’t even close. Paxton won all but 2 of Texas’ 254 counties:

A newly copper-topped Ken Paxton thanked Trump, calling him “the most powerful force in politics”:

And why did Trump back Cornyn’s rival? NBC summed it up:

Unlike Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., another recent Trump target who lost his primary, Cornyn voted to acquit Trump on impeachment charges in 2021. But he remained deeply critical of the Capitol riot and argued in subsequent years that Trump shouldn’t run again in 2024, calling him unelectable and backing a new direction for the GOP.

Months later, as Trump was dominating early primaries and cruising to the nomination, Cornyn backtracked and endorsed him.

Profile in courage.

The NYT had multiple takes on the race:

In the Senate race, Mr. Paxton tore at Mr. Cornyn and the establishment wing of the party that he represents. Mr. Cornyn responded by drawing attention to his opponent’s ongoing divorce — which has included allegations of adultery — and releasing ads featuring an AI-generated Mr. Paxton and two faceless women who were not his wife.
…
More than $128 million was spent on advertising in the Senate race alone, with most supporting the ultimately doomed task of trying to save Mr. Cornyn. Millions more poured into the state attorney general race in its final days.

Republican candidates also engaged in new forms of name-calling, occasionally blending their insults with the party’s recent embrace of anti-Muslim rhetoric.

So does this mean Democratic nominee James Talarico has a chance?

Can Democrats Take the Senate via Texas?

TIME’s Philip Elliott claims Paxton blew a $250 million hole in the GOP national budget:

For more than a year, Republicans beseeched President Donald Trump’s advisers in the White House with a simple ask: if he couldn’t find his way to endorsing Sen. John Cornyn, could he at least keep his mouth shut?

Of course, he could not. Trump last week endorsed Cornyn’s primary opponent in Texas, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, and on Tuesday Paxton made it through his contentious, costly run-off and into the general election this November. Senate Republicans spent $90 million on defending their amiable colleague and sinking the scandal-soaked Paxton. They failed, and are now left with the jarring reality that they had hoped to avoid: $250 million. That’s the internal price tag being circulated among Republicans for the task of helping Paxton to hold the seat—all at the expense of chasing flipping Democratic seats in places like Georgia, Michigan, or New Hampshire.

The NYT’s Nate Cohn argues Democrats have a real chance to take the seat:

extraordinary demographic shifts have put Texas Republicans in a much more vulnerable position. To an extent few would have imagined a decade ago, Texas’ status as a reliably Republican state now depends on elevated levels of support among Hispanic voters.

In the latest national polls, Mr. Trump’s gains among Hispanic voters have vanished — and the Republican grip on Texas is in danger as a result. The latest New York Times/Siena poll is representative: It shows Democrats ahead by 30 points, 54 percent to 24 percent, among Hispanic registered voters nationwide. That’s better than Joe Biden’s margin in 2020 and getting close to Hillary Clinton’s margin in 2016.
…
Alone, major Democratic gains among Hispanic voters would be enough to make Texas a plausible battleground in November. Now consider the party’s expected gains among other demographic groups — including white voters — in this national political environment, and suddenly the conditions would seem to be in place for a Democratic breakthrough.
…
Democrats have made significant gains among Texas’ white voters during the Trump era. For comparison, the gains are basically equivalent to those Democrats made among white voters in Georgia, which drove that state toward the left over the same period.

The Democratic gains among white Texas voters would have been enough to make Texas competitive in 2024, if everything else had stayed constant. Of course, everything else did not stay constant: Mr. Trump made even larger gains among nonwhite voters, especially Hispanic ones, canceling out Democratic gains — and more. Now, those gains have been reversed.

And what about that other force in American politics?

Cornyn did his best to be the AIPAC candidate in the race, but it wasn’t enough:

The Texas Tribune had more on the dark money role in the race in a post that is just too information rich to quote adequately here.

The Tribune points out some of Cornyn’s top donors including:

• Former President George W. Bush
  His $5,000 donation to Cornyn was his first political donation to a federal candidate in Texas since the 2022 cycle. That year, he also donated $125,000 to his nephew, George P. Bush, who challenged Paxton in the attorney general primary and lost in a runoff.

• Rupert Murdoch
  Murdoch gave Cornyn $200,000 on New Year’s Eve.

They also listed some of the dark money backing Cornyn via the Texans for a Conservative Majority PAC:

• Ohio Works Inc. + America Works Fund Inc.: $8.6M
  …funded (as of 2024) by oil and gas-linked groups, Republican leaders in Washington and one Texan — Dallas billionaire Kenneth Fisher

• Stephen Schwarzman: $1.5M
  Schwarzman is the billionaire CEO of Blackstone

• Jim and Robson Walton: $1M
  The Walton brothers, Arkansas billionaire heirs to the Walmart fortune, each gave $500,000 to the PAC.

Paxton’s top money marks include:

• Michael Rydin
  The retired Houston software developer, a major funder for right-wing movements, gave Paxton $17,000. … He has given over $1 million to the Freedom Caucus Fund…

• Darwin and Doug Deason
  Darwin, the late information technology billionaire, and his son, Doug, have been massive Republican donors and contributors to Paxton over the years.

Paxton also enjoyed PAC support, notably from the Lone Star Liberty PAC whose donors include:

• Jonathan Knutz: $1.1M
  Knutz is the CEO of a medical device company in Houston.

• Preserve Texas Inc.: $950,000
  This Virginia-based dark money group was formed shortly after Paxton launched his Senate bid.

• Gary Heavin: $500,000
  Heavin is a Waco area-based businessman and founder of the Curves fitness chain. An anti-abortion advocate…

• Chelsey Milton: $500,000
  Milton, an Arizona homemaker, is a Trump donor whose husband was pardoned last year by the president. Trevor Milton, who gave Paxton an additional $100,000, was previously the CEO of an electric vehicle manufacturing company. In 2022, he was found guilty of securities fraud and wire fraud in federal court and sentenced to four years in prison. The couple donated more than $1.8 million to a pro-Trump group; Trump pardoned Trevor Milton in early 2025.

• Two Toads LLC / SSC Inc. / Baloney Feathers LTD: $300,000
  These mysterious groups each gave $100,000 to the PAC on March 17. Each is registered to the same PO Box address in Lubbock, and none have made any political contributions beyond Lone Star Liberty PAC.

We’ll let our rulers return to the shadows now as we preview Paxton vs Talarico.

Talarico Aiming for Cornyn Voters

Per Politico:

Donald Trump etched another notch in his kingmaker’s crown with Texas AG Ken Paxton headed to a showdown with James Talarico — a move Democrats believe could be his Senate majority’s undoing.

Tuesday night was a big one for Talarico’s campaign, which told Playbook exclusively that in the first two hours following Paxton’s win, the Democrat hauled in $600,000 — the strongest two hours of his entire campaign, which ended the first quarter raising $27 million and $10 million cash-on-hand.

Talarico told Playbook last night that to win in November, he’ll have to convert supporters of Sen. John Cornyn — a conservative by almost any metric, except when measured against Paxton. After Cornyn conceded, Talarico told his supporters “you have a place in our campaign.”

It’s all part of his general election pitch.

“I have a legislative record that I think has a lot to offer supporters of Senator Cornyn. Ken Paxton has a criminal record. I have a legislative record,” Talarico said of his freshly anointed opponent after the results came in. (Paxton struck a deal where he paid restitution and securities fraud felony charges were dropped). “I’ve called out the extremes in both parties, on the right and left, and as you know, called out President Biden for failing to secure our southern border,” he added. “I’ve pushed back against national Democrats who want to hurt the Texas oil and gas industry.”

“I think I have a strong case to make to Senator Cornyn supporters.”

GOP Leans Into Ad Hominem

Per Mediaite:

Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters went off on Texas Senate candidate James Talarico (D) on Wednesday morning, branding him a “creep” who wants to “mutilate” kids and is a vegan — a cardinal sin in the Lone Star State.

Gruters skewered Talarico during an interview on Newsmax. He also tapped into his inner President Donald Trump and dubbed him “Talafreako” — a nickname he also used during an interview on Fox News a day earlier.

Wake Up America co-host Sharla McBride asked Gruters how the RNC plans on keeping Texas red. Gruters said it was simple — everything about Talarico is revolting to true Texans.

Talarico denies the vegan allegations saying “He’s Been ‘Eating Barbecue Since Before Ken Paxton’s First Indictment’.”

He also has a planned pivot off the “freako” allegations:

And as for the controversial Adam Hoffman, Esquire, Houston Public Media has background:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is under fire for a plea deal his prosecutors offered last month to a Waco man charged with repeatedly sexually abusing a young boy.

The deal in the case, which Paxton’s office took over about three years ago after the locally elected district attorney recused himself, would have let the man plead guilty to two misdemeanors and serve a total of just one day in jail.

Paxton’s office did not respond to emailed questions for this story. A spokesperson pointed to a letter that two of his prosecutors who worked on the case sent to Leach last week, in which they explained that the case went to trial last year but ended in a hung jury, and the young victim did not want to testify a second time.

“The child emphasized that he preferred to move on with his life and prioritize his mental and emotional health,” wrote the prosecutors, Brenda Cantu and Dorian Cotlar.

Beyond Paxton’s immediate political rivals, the deal has attracted criticism from local officials in Waco, including the McLennan County district attorney, a state representative from the area and even the judge presiding over the matter.

There’s also the matter of Paxton buying a mansion for his mistress with dark money, per the Daily Mail (archived):

Paxton, 63, has quietly moved into a $2.1 million mansion inside a gated community in the coveted Dallas suburb of Frisco.

The sprawling five-bedroom, five-bathroom property spans nearly 5,000 square feet and includes a swimming pool backing onto a manicured golf course and an exclusive $100,000-a-year country club.

Multiple political insiders told the Daily Mail that Paxton is playing house in the luxury home – which property records show was purchased on February 13, just in time for Valentine’s Day – with girlfriend Tracy Duhon, 58.

Paxton is still married to Angela Paxton, who is herself a sitting state senator. Duhon was also married when she and the MAGA firebrand first met two years ago – an affair first revealed by the Mail.
…
‘I’m honestly baffled,’ one Paxton insider told Daily Mail when asked about the proximity of the mistress’s house to the wife’s house.

‘Maybe he (Paxton) feels that his voter base is in Collin County.’

Another source who has known the AG for years added: ‘I’d be lying if could tell you what’s going on in that’s man head at any given time.’

Now let’s look at AIPAC’s role in the Democratic primary run-offs in Texas.

When AIPAC Wins We All Lose

And why did AIPAC want to oust Al Green?

AIPAC wasn’t alone in supporting Menefee. The new Democratic nominee also enjoyed the support of Crypto-backed U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett — who lost the Senate primary to James Talarico. Per Politico:

Crockett has become a key surrogate for Rep. Christian Menefee in a primary runoff contest against fellow Democratic Rep. Al Green, as well as for former Rep. Colin Allred against Rep. Julie Johnson.

In the Houston-based TX-18, where Crockett is backing Menefee, the crypto-aligned super PAC Protect Progress has spent $3.7 million on two ads supporting the recently-elected U.S. representative against the fellow Congressional Black Caucus member 40 years his senior — both of which feature Crockett’s endorsement.

There was one other primary run-off that was of some interest.

The Case of the ‘Anti-Semitic’, Secretly GOP-Backed Democrat

The 35th Congressional District run-off got a lot of attention in the last week, here’s Politico’s coverage from last week:

Lead Left has poured more than $900,000 into promoting Maureen Galindo, a left-wing sex therapist who has been broadly condemned by Democrats over a string of comments they say are antisemitic, including calls to turn a local ICE detention center into a “prison for American Zionists.” The group has put more than $640,000 toward ads, per tracking firm AdImpact. Federal campaign finance filings show the group is also spending on mail.

It’s the latest in a string of interventions by the new super PAC that appears to be trying to elevate weaker Democrats against Republicans to ease the GOP’s path in November. But unlike in more traditional swing districts where the PAC spent big in Pennsylvania and Nebraska, Texas’ 35th District should be safe Republican territory after GOP state lawmakers gerrymandered the San Antonio-area seat into one President Donald Trump would have won by about 10 points in 2024.

Galindo’s opponent. county sheriff's deputy Johnny Garcia, won with 63% of the vote.

That’s all for today. See y’all next week.

Related Posts:

• Texas Is the MAGA vs RINO Frontline

• Is James Talarico just another TINA candidate?

• Ken Paxton Takes His Anti-Antifa Fight Undercover

• GOP Lures Jasmine Crockett Into US Senate Primary

• Texas Primary Results Could Flip US Senate

• James Talarico, Lis Smith and the Abundance Bro Dark Money

Originally published at NakedCapitalism on May 27, 2026.

Before we start the article proper, there’s a scary prelude that might frighten some oligarchs.

Unionizing Tech Workers

Blood In The Machine reports:

…thousands of IT employees across the statewide University of California system have voted to unionize. They join over 6,000 tech workers already represented by University and Professional Technical Employees (UPTE), expanding the total to 8,400 workers across the bargaining unit. That makes the new unit the largest tech worker union in the nation.
…
Historically, the tech industry has been under-organized; for decades, tech firms have sought to pre-empt or ward off unionization by offering cushy perks and leaning into the entrepreneurial, laissez-faire ethos of Silicon Valley. But times are changing, and organized labor has made inroads. Hundreds of Google employees and contractors voted to form the Alphabet Worker’s Union in 2021—it doesn’t have full bargaining power but has proved influential nonetheless—and workers at tech companies like Kickstarter and at the New York Times’ tech desk (which was previously the nation’s largest tech worker union) have successfully organized in recent years. More recently, workers at Google’s DeepMind headquarters in London have voted to unionize.

But never fear, while the specter of organized tech labor is frightening, the technocracy has a tool or two in its humble warchest with which to fight back.

Let’s start the post proper with corruption, since America, like a fish, rots from the head down, and the tech bros are nothing if not au courant in the Trump 2.0 era.

Crippling the Commodity Futures Trading Commission

The New York Times has a major feature explaining “How Prediction Markets and Crypto Firms Steamrolled a Watchdog Agency.”

Key points:

Three companies — each with ties to the Trump family’s business empire — needed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to bless their ambitions in the white-hot field of prediction markets.
…
Senior career officials worried about whether Crypto.com was treating small bettors fairly. They feared that a second firm, Polymarket, did not have strong enough protections against fraud. A third, an offshoot of the crypto firm Gemini, had yet to pass the agency’s required review to open for business.

Despite these concerns, Caroline D. Pham, then acting chairman of the commission, and her senior counsel intervened to help the firms get what they wanted…

In the past 16 months of the Trump administration, the commission has shrunk its work force, purged career officials, sharply curtailed crypto enforcement and helped out prediction markets at virtually every turn, The Times found.

The gutting of the agency is particularly notable because of the Trump family’s deep ties to the crypto and prediction industries. The Trumps have sold their own digital currencies, generating enormous wealth for the family, while striking deals with prediction market operators as well.

The C.F.T.C.’s transformation has been muscled through by leaders with connections to those industries. Ms. Pham recently left the agency to work for a crypto company that has a partnership with Polymarket. Her senior counsel, Brigitte Weyls, was hired by a prediction market company whose application she had helped shepherd.

Good work if you can get it!

And here’s a timely reminder of why it’s so critical to bring the C.F.T.C. under control:

It’s not just federal regulators that have to be handled, state level laws can be pesky too, and that’s where a captured federal commission can be put to good use.

Minnesota vs Prediction Markets & the Federal Government

The state of Minnesota got a little full of itself last week, per the NYT:

A day after Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota signed into law the first state law explicitly barring prediction markets, the Trump administration sued the state on Tuesday, seeking to block it from going into effect this summer.

The law, which had the backing of a bipartisan group of state legislators, would make it illegal to host or advertise a prediction market site in Minnesota.
…
At least 14 other states have introduced legislation seeking to regulate prediction markets, according to the National Conference of State Legislators, but Minnesota was believed to be the first this month to pass as sweeping a measure into law. The legal battle comes as states have struggled to police prediction markets, which have surged in popularity over the past year.

On Tuesday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal agency that regulates certain markets, filed a federal lawsuit against Minnesota, arguing that the state does not have the authority to put guardrails around prediction markets, such as the popular betting websites Kalshi and Polymarket.

“A federal agency that regulates certain markets” — that’s pretty rich.

Lawfare comes in handy when dealing with municipal trouble-makers, too.

Town Votes Down Data Center, Too Bad

Talk about uppity, the local government of Saline Township, Michigan, tried to vote down a massive data center, fortunately oligarchs can fight city hall, via Fortune (archived):

…an enormous AI data center—at 21 million square feet, the largest construction project ever undertaken in the state and one almost universally opposed by local residents—seemed to race through the process from application in late summer to groundbreaking in November.

Even more surprising: The $16 billion data center for OpenAI and Oracle’s Stargate AI infrastructure initiative, which will fundamentally reshape the area with its construction, traffic, electricity demand, and environmental impact, was flat-out rejected by both the town’s board and its planning commission in September. But those votes turned out to be only minor bumps on the project’s path: The developer quickly sued, the town settled, and the construction vehicles rolled in.
…
Politicians from both sides of the aisle are embracing the build-out, trying to get a piece of the economic development it promises for the communities they represent—including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who has been actively courting the hyperscalers building massive data centers since late 2024. At the end of October, Whitmer lauded the Saline Township project, saying the facility expected to create 2,500 union construction jobs, alongside 450 permanent jobs on-site and 1,500 more in the community.
…
Eight months ago, when Saline’s planning commission gathered in the 200-year-old white clapboard township hall to weigh arguments for and against the proposal from Related Digital to rezone 575 acres of farmland for the AI data center, the reasons for rejecting the plan looked straightforward: The land was zoned for agriculture, and much of it was considered prime farmland. The project would introduce industrial noise and environmental stress into a rural landscape and place new demands on emergency responders. It also conflicted with the township’s long-standing master plan, which envisioned development elsewhere.
…
The commission rejected the plan to rezone the farmland. The township board followed suit, voting 4–1 to deny it. But locals quickly discovered that amid the frenzied AI infrastructure gold rush, “no” does not always mean no.
Two days later, on Sept. 12, Saline Township was sued by Related Digital and the site’s landowners. Their lawsuit alleged “exclusionary zoning”—that the community had unreasonably barred a legitimate land use under Michigan law, and it hinged on the fact that Saline Township had no land zoned for industrial use, and that a data center qualified as a “necessary” use that could not be excluded altogether.

The lawsuit underscored the township’s limited leverage. Even if officials had fought it, their lawyers advised them, the project could likely have moved forward via other avenues, such as partnering with an institution like the nearby University of Michigan, which can build projects that are not subject to local zoning in the same way as private developments. Meanwhile, a prolonged legal battle against well-resourced developers risked significant costs for the township, without securing concessions.

The best part is, not only can citizens not stop data centers, we’re going to get to pay for them, too!

Larry Fink Tells Texans How It’s Gonna Be

Earlier this month, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink sat down with Texas Governor Greg Abbott and revealed where the money to pay for these unstoppable data centers is coming from:

Transcript:

Larry Fink: If we could get more and more Americans to think about growing with the United States, we will have more than enough money to invest in this infrastructure.

But as the governor was talking about, the need for electrons is growing every day. Some of these, you know, if we’re going to be the leader in technology, which we are, If we are going to be the leader in AI, which we presently are, it’s just going to require trillions of dollars of investments. And if we don’t invest in it, China will be the global leader in this. And so to me, it’s not whether. This is a must.

And if you think about how that translates, it translates into a more dynamic economy. We need the United States economy to grow at over 2 percent. We need the U.S. economy to grow at 3 percent, especially with the growing deficits the federal government has.

And so much of this money, not just the private, is going to be coming from the private sector, from savings accounts, from pension accounts, from insurance companies, and on and on and on. The whole world is in need of improving the infrastructure.

And if people don’t want to sacrifice their pension funds, then perhaps their electricity can be diverted elsewhere.

No Power for You, Lake Tahoe

Concerned citizens everywhere can learn from the example of patriotic Lake Tahoens who are surrendering electricity they would only waste on personal use for much needed data center use instead, via Fortune:

NV Energy, the Nevada utility that has supplied the bulk of Lake Tahoe’s electricity for decades, told Liberty Utilities—the small California company that services the region—that it will stop providing power after May 2027. The reason? NV Energy needs the capacity for data centers. As in: the energy supplier for the Lake Tahoe region is telling the utility company that it has less than a year to find another power source.

Northern Nevada has become one of the fastest-growing data-center corridors in the country. Google, Apple, and Microsoft have either built or are planning facilities around the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center east of Reno. The Desert Research Institute, using data from NV Energy’s 2024 Integrated Resource Plan, found that the 12 data center projects located overwhelmingly in Northern Nevada could drive 5,900 megawatts of new demand by 2033. At a regional business event last fall, NV Energy’s director of business development called the moment “unprecedented,” saying the company was eager to serve the new industrial load but that it would not “impact our existing customer base.”

But Liberty’s 49,000 California customers may already be bearing the cost. Liberty Utilities generates about 25% of its power from solar facilities it owns in Nevada. The other 75% comes from NV Energy, and that source will no longer be supplied to the region by this time next year.

“It’s like we don’t exist,” Danielle Hughes told Fortune. Hughes is a North Lake Tahoe resident, CEO of the nonprofit Tahoe Spark, and a supervisor within the California Energy Commission’s Efficiency Division.

It is like we don’t exist, isn’t it?

And how did a potentially unruly plebe class attain that blissful state?

Complete Media Control Is the Secret Ingredient

Two recent pieces hammer home just how manipulated the American information diet has become.

First from FAIR:

Each month, Press Gazette, a London-based magazine for the journalism industry, ranks the top 50 news websites in the US in order of monthly visits, based on data from the marketing firm Similarweb. FAIR tallied Press Gazette’s results over a 12-month span, from December 2024 to November 2025, to get a figure for total US visits to major news sites over that period: 45.6 billion.

More than half of those visits, nearly 25.5 billion, went to news sites controlled by just seven families or corporate entities.

https://twitter.com/natwilsonturner/status/2058950073091055862

Direct ownership of online media outlets, it turns out, is a fairly crude mechanism, manipulating algorithms is the more elegant solution, per Vulture (archived):

Joe Lim estimates that 90 percent of what you see on the internet is advertising in disguise, and he should know. For three years, Lim ran a company called Floodify, which at its peak operated 65,000 dummy social-media accounts used to drum up attention on behalf of paying clients. On a typical day, he says, Floodify posted 50,000 videos across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and X, all of them designed to pass for the unscripted output of ordinary users.
…
The point of this kind of marketing is that nobody is supposed to notice it. But lately, the machinery has started to show. In March, Jesse Coren and Andrew Spelman, co-founders of the digital music-promotion agency Chaotic Good Projects, gave a live interview to a Billboard reporter at South by Southwest in which they breezily described using sock-puppet accounts to manufacture enthusiasm for artists at every level of the music industry, from major-label pop stars to niche indie acts. Spelman called the practice “trend simulation.” His motto: “Everything on the internet is fake.”
…
the same techniques that Coren and Spelman bragged about onstage are now being used to fool people on every app they go to in order to find out what other people think, not just in music but across entertainment, politics, consumer products, and celebrity gossip. Shady marketing and propaganda aren’t new, of course, but what is new is that the entire infrastructure of public conversation has been quietly captured by both. On social media, popular opinion is being formed, measured, and manipulated all at once, and every signal the platforms produce — a trending song, a backlash, a talking point, the feeling that “everybody” is suddenly talking about the same thing — can now be fabricated by unseen actors with hidden agendas. We’ve locked ourselves in the stupidest possible version of Plato’s cave, where what looks like the spontaneous consensus of the hive mind is often just shadows on the wall, put there by marketers, political operatives, foreign-influence campaigns, or anyone else with a few hundred bucks and something to sell.

And with the masses duped into an obliging mood, the tech oligarchs are taking their fight to the top.

Lobbying Pope Leo

Politico has some background on the tech bros’ desperate efforts to influence Pope Leo’s first encyclical:

representatives of Meta, Google and Amazon, part of a small group gathered in Rome to discuss child protection in the age of artificial intelligence. The encounter with the pope was brief. The meeting that followed, in the French embassy to the Holy See in central Rome, lasted for hours.

There, Paolo Ruffini, the Vatican’s top communications official, sat across from the tech representatives to wrestle with a question now at the center of Leo’s young papacy: How should one of the world’s oldest moral authorities judge the cutting-edge technology Silicon Valley is racing to build?

The April 29 gathering was the latest in a series of meetings that, taken together, amount to a quiet lobbying push by the tech industry ahead of Leo’s first encyclical, according to interviews with seven people for this article. An official papal document due Monday will set out the Catholic Church’s position on artificial intelligence.

How’d that work out?

Pope Leo XIV Warns Against New Tower of Babel

The encyclical, humbly titled “MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS” dropped today.

Opening lines:

Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together. Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible. Yet every era also runs the risk of creating an inhumane and more unjust world.

For all the TL;DR’ers out there, Pope Leo quoted some scripture that Silicon Valley is familiar with, The Lord of the Rings:

https://twitter.com/catholicourtney/status/2058847378698858706

And from the conclusion:

Our world is filled with attempts to seize control of markets and spheres of influence, often shrouded in reassuring rhetoric and seductive ideologies. Yet our hearts yearn for an approach that is wise and benevolent…

In the promises of transhumanism and some posthumanist currents of thought, which seek an enhanced and almost disembodied humanity, we recognize a yearning that is of concern to us, namely the need for a fuller life, less exposed to limitations and suffering. Yet the Incarnation opens a different pathway. On the one hand, old and new ideologies alike urge humanity to overcome limitations through technology, and to rise above others by asserting dominance. Contrary to this, the mystery of the Son of God entering into our human condition promises something quite different. The living God descends into our history in order to free us from all forms of slavery.

Maybe that’s why Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel warned Vice-President J.D. Vance about Pope Leo last fall.

Catholic Substacker Jack Whelan has some thoughts:

Most people, even Catholics, don’t pay attention to papal encyclicals. They are exercises in preaching to the choir that rarely change the minds of the people who don’t already know the words to the hymns. Humanae Vitae, the one banning artificial birth control, was ignored by most Catholics—or drove them out of the church. The others on environment or the economy, well, you know, whatever. Maybe a priest here and there from time to time will quote them from the pulpit. But how many Catholics quit their jobs on Wall Street after Caritas in Veritae in 2009 or their jobs in the fossil-fuel industries after Francis’s Laudato Si? Did it make anyone whose livelihoods depend on their jobs in those industries pause to think about it, even for a minute? And so why should we expect Silicon Valley to pause to think after Magnifica Humanitas?

The challenge in the long run is not to persuade the Altmans and Musks. We should assume they are unpersuadable. So the challenge instead is to galvanize opposition to them—not only to them but to all efforts wherever huge amounts of money and energy are being burned in this manic project to build the Tower of Babel.

It’s not the tech that’s the problem; it’s the accelerationist mania that’s driving it. Whatever the source of that mania, it isn’t good, it isn’t healthy, and isn’t taking us anywhere any sane person wants to go. And so there needs to develop a counterforce, not to stop it, but to direct it toward sane, humane ends.

The Tower of Babel is an archetype. And as with all archetypes, it points to a fundamental metaphyiscal reality, to something about cosmic law, which in this case, concerns human hubris and its consequences. It never ends well with hubris. It’s the law.

And why are the mighty mighty tech bros so confident that they should be telling the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion Catholics what to think?

Shh, We’re Building God

According to author Karen Hao, there’s a “Dark Reality” in the AI race to “create God,” via the Times (UK) (archived):

Hao was given unprecedented access to OpenAI’s offices in 2019, and has since spoken to hundreds of former employees and people within Altman’s inner circle to piece together the story of how OpenAI went from an ideological non-profit, with the purpose of “saving humanity”, to an engine of record financial investment and controversy…

Speaking to insiders later on, she would hear how what had begun as an organisation throwing ideas at the wall “to see what stuck” had been transformed under Altman’s singular obsession: to achieve AGI before everyone else. This included competitors, such as Google, but also states, such as China.

Its scientists and researchers were some of the brightest minds in the industry. But, Hao says, their belief in AGI was something more akin to a religious fervour. She calls it “the ideological pursuit of the machine god”.
…
OpenAI decided that the best way to achieve AGI was to take its large language models (LLMs) and dramatically scale them up. This meant “pouring ever more data into them and training them on supercomputers larger than anyone has ever built in human history”, says Hao. All this new processing power cost money, and OpenAI began a for-profit arm in order to find it.

“We’ve seen this collapsing of the entire AI field and the entire industry towards a singular approach that is intellectually extremely lazy and societally deeply harmful,” argues Hao.

“All of the things that we see in terms of the negative impacts of AI come from this scaling idea.”

The vast, water-consumptive data centres popping up all over the world, driving up local energy prices, are a result of AI companies feeding LLMs more and more data in an effort to expand their knowledge base. Meanwhile, companies trawling the internet for morsels of information on which to train them has eroded our privacy and intellectual property…

Well, good luck with all that.

Related Posts:

• Silicon Valley Ideologies as a Lens for Viewing Current Events

• Palantir, Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, and the Antichrist

• Silicon Valley Accelerationists Take On the World and Everyone in It

• Palantir’s Manifesto Drops and So Does Objection

Originally published at NakedCapitalism on May 25, 2026.

But it might be all for naught as Trump has been awarded a $1.8 billion political slush fund and seems to have bad intentions to manipulate the mid-terms.

Kentucky Results

Per the NY Times, Ed Gallrein won the Republican primary in KY-4 with 57,822 votes or 54.9%. Massie lost with 47,539 votes or 45.1% of the vote.

That’s 105,361 total votes. For comparison 41,569 were cast in the Democratic primary which saw Melissa Claire Strange win the nomination.

For comparison Trump won 67% of the district’s vote in the 2024 Presidential election.

AIPAC and their allies invested big in Gallrein’s win:

Eliminating Massie is a big step towards AIPAC’s goal buying of 100% bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress:

As for which voters chose Gallrein over Massie, polling made that clear:

Taking Credit/Assigning Blame

And for those who want to call out “anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists”, let’s hear from neo-con zionist John Podhoretz:

Or from AIPAC itself (via MTG):

What Next for Massie?

Massie is blocked from running in the general election as an independent or third party candidate by Kentucky’s Sore Loser law, but CNN has some speculation about his future:

As Massie becomes the latest Republican added to Trump’s growing list of revenge and retribution, his concession speech Tuesday night here in Kentucky sounded like anything but. He delivered a forward-looking message to supporters, who seemed more energized than crestfallen.

“What started out as an election turned into a movement,” Massie said. “We stirred up something. There is a yearning in this country for someone who will vote for principles over party.”

The message of optimism – and defiance – sets the stage for the next chapter of Massie’s political life. His congressional term ends in January. His loyal fans made clear they have bigger things in mind.

As someone in the crowd shouted, “Massie for president!” his supporters erupted in booming applause. For his part, Massie smiled and laughed on stage and kept delivering a speech that was interrupted again and again with loud chants of “2028!”

Time will tell if Massie re-emerges on the political stage, but there was another primary last night where AIPAC did NOT win. Let’s go to Pennsylvania.

Rabb Beats Two AIPAC-Backed Rivals in Philly

I should have covered this race Monday when I previewed Massie-Gallrein, as it was also on the front lines of AIPAC’s efforts to impose total control over the U.S. House.

First the results:

The Philadelphia Inquirer has the basics:

State Rep. Chris Rabb, a democratic socialist who has repeatedly challenged Philadelphia’s political establishment, has won the tightly contested 3rd Congressional District primary — a striking victory for the city’s left-leaning coalition after a combative and rare open contest.

…

In the bluest district in the country, the result sets Rabb on an almost guaranteed path to succeeding U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans, who is retiring after a decade in the seat. Rabb’s election would mark a significant shift from half of Philadelphia voters being represented by a more mainstream Democratic voice to one in the most left-wing faction of Congress.

City & State PA has more:

Given the district makeup, which includes Center City and parts of North and West Philadelphia, the Democratic primary field initially included as many as a dozen candidates. The field narrowed throughout the last few months, with three front-runners leading the way as the May primary election approached: Dr. Ala Stanford, state Sen. Sharif Street and state Rep. Chris Rabb. The fourth remaining candidate is a political newcomer, Shaun Griffith, a tax attorney who previously worked for the state government before opening his own firm in Roxborough.

Street had the name recognition and party connections to fuel a successful campaign from the jump, but has faced stiff competition for the deep blue seat. Rabb sought the progressive crowd and pitched himself as an anti-establishment candidate, while Stanford – who entered the race with a medical background, no legislative experience and the endorsement of Evans – balanced her message as being both a new kind of representative and an experienced public health professional with support from the incumbent.

Aside from the issues at home, the ongoing conflict in Gaza became a flashpoint during the campaign – another instance where Rabb seemed to set himself apart from the more moderate orators in Stanford and Street. Stanford, whose campaign was also accused of accepting funds from pro-Israel groups, had her response to the Israel-Palestine conflict become an albatross among progressive voters who attended community forums.

Philly Voice has a little more:

The costly campaign, estimated at $9.84 million by financial data platform Quiver Quantitative, has been a reflection of the political fault lines between the centrist arm of the Democratic Party, represented by Street and Stanford, and its progressive wing championed by Rabb.

Rabb was first elected to the Pennsylvania legislature in 2016 and has served five terms in the 200th District, which spans Mount Airy and Cedarbrook in Northwest Philadelphia. The former business professor and union organizer at Temple University authored the 2010 book “Invisible Capital,” examining the barriers that societal inequality imposes on entrepreneurship.

In his campaign, Rabb identified as a Democratic Socialist and anti-establishment candidate poised to build on the electoral success of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other progressives. He’s been an outspoken critic of Democrats, including Street and Stanford, who recoil from using the word genocide to describe Israel’s military operation in Gaza.

Rabb’s platform calls for Medicare for All, the Green New Deal and legalizing cannabis for adults. He also wants to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement and end funding to Israel.

And here’s Rabb speaking for himself:

Are the Dems Showing Signs of Breaking Free?

Chris Sosa on Substack argues that last night’s results show a GOP that is eliminating dissent and a Democratic party that is moving towards freedom from foreign control:

As the GOP continues to consolidate into something between a personal party of the sitting president and a purchasable entity by major super PACs, a populist revolt continues in the Democratic Party.
…
Rabb’s win is yet another example of how the pro-Israel consensus on the Democratic side has collapsed amid the Gaza genocide and is unlikely to rebound. However, the sentiment that animates this collapse is rooted in broader value shifts: a growing sense of global community among Democratic voters, who have become more ardently anti-war across the board, more concerned about global human rights and more aware of how systems of power impact their own daily lives.

As the Democratic result demonstrates organic realignment among the party’s own base, the Republican result demonstrates personal fealty to the president’s cult of personality without a clear path toward long-term success under a democratic system.

The president himself is remarkably unpopular, Democrats are favored in the generic ballot for this midterm cycle (despite gerrymandering), and it seems increasingly clear that the Republican Party’s plan for continued success is directly tied to eroding the democratic system further and further to ensure disapproval cannot interrupt its own rule.

And about that…

Does Trump Have a Non-Electoral Victory Map for the Mid-Terms?

Let’s start with Bloomberg’s coverage of Trump’s new $1.8 billion slush fund:

President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service has ended under the shadow of corruption: In exchange for dropping the case over leaked tax returns, the government will set aside money for Trump’s allies, all under his ultimate control and without independent oversight.

The $1.776 billion fund — an apparent nod to the nation’s founding — seems more about advancing political narratives than achieving justice. In fact, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche refused to rule out payouts to individuals who attacked Capitol Police officers on Jan. 6, 2021. Blanche also added an outright gift to Trump and his sons: releasing them from any claims that could be brought against them by the IRS forever. It’s a legally questionable move, since it’s unrelated to Trump’s claims in the lawsuit.

The original lawsuit, brought by the president and his sons, sought an astonishing $10 billion in damages for alleged violations of the Internal Revenue Code and the Privacy Act after an IRS employee shared Trump’s tax returns with the media in 2019. To resolve the conflict, the Justice Department announced Monday that it would establish the so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund to offer financial relief to other individuals, who were not parties to the suit but purportedly targeted with legal action on ideological grounds.

“The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” Blanche said.

Trump and his sons can now cast themselves as benefactors who magnanimously declined to accept any money themselves for the benefit of would-be victims of the DOJ’s alleged weaponization. For good measure, the agreement also requires the IRS to issue an apology to the Trumps. But the money serves two obvious purposes, despite the administration’s lofty claims: creating a false narrative that the Biden administration engaged in “lawfare” and paying off the president’s political henchmen alleged to have suffered from it.

And as for what might be done with this slush fund, Brian Beutler outlines how Trump may plan to put a thumb on the scales of the mid-term elections:

• Trump’s first major official act in term two was to pardon all January 6 rioters, whether they were under indictment, on trial, convicted, or roaming free.

• Then on Monday, with the complicity of the Justice and Treasury Departments, Trump stole almost $1.8 billion from taxpayers to create a slush fund nominally designed to pay off pardoned January 6 insurrectionists—but which Trump will control entirely, without oversight.

• Trump ordered Republicans across the country to rig their House maps mid-Census.

• When Democrats responded by redrawing their own maps just as aggressively, Republican judges on the U.S. Supreme Court, plus the Supreme Courts of Texas, Virginia, and (soon, it seems) Florida stepped into the fray, allowing Republican gerrymanders to take effect, while throwing out Democratic counter gerrymanders.

• Trump’s Justice Department has sued the Washington, DC, bar for having the temerity to consider disciplinary action against Jeffrey Clark, a participant in the 2020 coup attempt.

• Trump threatened to harm the state of Colorado by illegal means, unless its governor, Jared Polis, sprung the 2020 insurrectionist Tina Peters from prison. (Polis complied.)

• Trump issued an executive order claiming power over mail ballots—specifically, the order requires the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security to create an unverified list of eligible voters, and prohibits the Post Office from sending mail ballots to anyone not on the list.

• A DOJ lawyer told a federal judge that the government has taken no concrete steps to implement this executive order, but he appears to have lied: According to NOTUS, officials from the White House, DHS, DOJ, and the Postal Service—including a notorious election denier named Heather Honey—have met regularly in recent weeks to discuss implementing the order and defending it in court.

Most liberals believe the nightmare scenario involves federal jackboots surrounding swing-district polling places and scaring off enough nonwhite citizens to flip results. And there is surely some risk there. If control of the House comes down to, say, 10 races, and Trump thinks he can tamper with two or three by sending ICE agents in droves to Long Island and Pennsylvania, why wouldn’t he give it a shot?

Oh boy.

Stay safe, y’all.

Originally published at NakedCapitalism on May 20, 2026.

Last week I wrote about the GOP primary in Kentucky’s fourth congressional district which is already the most expensive House race in U.S. history and also how the partisan national fight over mid-decade redistricting might determine control over the U.S. House of Representatives.

Today I want to follow up on that race, the redistricting fight and a couple of other primaries that speak to larger political trends.

Let’s start with the redistricting fight

Did the Supreme Court Change the Odds?

The Supreme Court’s April decision to allow states to re-draw congressional districts without regard to the Voting Rights Act has Republicans hopeful they may still have a slim chance to retain control of the House.

Real Clear Politics did some analysis on post-redistricting House odds:

The result for the moment is nearly a level playing field in the House races. The authoritative Cook Political Report rates 188 seats as solidly Republican and 184 seats as solidly Democratic. It rates 22 seats as leaning or likely Republican and 23 seats as leaning or likely Democratic. That’s 210 seats at least leaning Republican, 207 as leaning or likely Democratic, leaving 18 seats, four currently held by Democrats and 14 by Republicans, as tossups.

So if Democrats win all the tossups, they would control the House 225-210, a net gain of 10 seats — a win, but not the blue wave they’ve been hoping for. If Republicans win half of the tossups, they would control the House 219-216, a net loss of just one seat.

Those numbers are beginning to look familiar. The House was 222-213 Democratic in 2020, 222-213 Republican in 2022, 220-215 Republican in 2024.

But this is May, and the election is in November — early voting starts in September. Republicans entered Trump’s first term with a 241-194 majority and had better numbers at this point in the cycle than they do now, and Democrats ended up with a 235-199 majority in November.

But, as per usual, some Democrats accuse their party of not playing hardball.

With Democrats Like Gov. Spanberger…

The New Republic calls out Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger in particular:

At issue is the Virginia state Supreme Court’s decision to throw out the amended congressional district maps that voters just approved—in a referendum that cost the Democrats some $70 million, as they painstakingly played by all the rules to get it over the line. In the immediate aftermath of the ruling, Spanberger offered a limp proclamation, saying that she was “disappointed” by it but that her “focus as Governor will be on ensuring that all voters have the information necessary to make their voices heard this November.”

But it turns out that Spanberger was missing some vital information of her own: a lawful solution that could save the day and uphold the will of Virginia voters. As Quinn Yeargain at The Downballot reported, the state constitution includes a provision that allows lawmakers to change the mandatory retirement age of state Supreme Court justices. The idea Yeargain poses would be to lower the official retirement age to 54 by placing a modification in the annual budget bill that’s due by June 30, pass the legislation, and replace the hack justices—all of whom are older than 54—with seven new ones picked by Spanberger.

“Democrats might prefer other solutions,” Yeargain concluded, “but if they want to see the will of the voters respected in time for the November elections, there are virtually no other options—and none with as good a chance of success as this one.”

Spanberger isn’t going for it.

I wrote about former CIA agent Spanberger during her campaign, and she is about what I expected as Governor.

Her aversion to bold action in the redistricting fight not even as much as her decision to veto a collective bargaining rights bill that she campaigned in support of.

Her “explanation” is a master class is talking long and saying nothing:

https://twitter.com/LeftyWinter/status/2055140812976271779

Read the transcript and weep:

Gov. Spanberger: In all of my conversations as it relates to the collective bargaining bill, public sector collective bargaining bill, I’ve been clear in my desire to be a governor who signs that bill into law, but also clear in what I consider my mandate, which is to get it right as the chief executive who will be, you know, moving Virginia towards a place where for the first time state employees would have the ability to collectively bargain and where local employees would be able in any community across Virginia to be able to have the opportunity to collectively bargain. There’s certainly many of our communities across Virginia want to have great clarity in terms of what that would mean for them and how they would manage that shift. And it’s a substantial and consequential one. It’s one that I support. But ultimately, it’s going to be about ensuring that I’m signing a bill that is something that I know that my administration can implement, implement well and put into durable policy.

And that includes ensuring that we are proactively answering many of the questions that the localities and those who will be on the, you know, while I might be on the sort of front end of implementation at the state level, that our localities who will be at the front end of implementation at the local level, you know, whether they may be fully aligned or not, at least have all of the information and the parameters necessary to be able to implement that bill. So I look forward to working with a whole array of folks into the future to ensure that when I sign that bill, it is a durable bill that will change the lives of so many Virginians by giving them that collective voice, but also serving the very important shared priorities of continuing to strengthen our schools and our public safety and the function of our local and state governments.

So yea, bet the house on Centrist Democrats bringing butterknives to every gun fight.

Now let’s follow up on the Kentucky primary that’s become the front lines in AIPAC’s battle to maintain absolute control over the U.S. Congress.

The View from the Wall Street Journal

In a GOP primary, it’s always important to watch how Rupert Murdoch’s flagship publication is covering the race. With that in mind, here’s a few samples from the big feature article on the race that the Wall Street Journal dropped yesterday:

When President Trump decides to oust a Republican from office by backing a primary challenger, the most powerful man in the world draws on unusual powers to hit his mark.

In Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie’s case, Trump flew to his district to call him a “complete and total disaster.” Then came billionaires launching attack ads and allies going silent for fear of presidential retribution.
…
“I’m actually really happy that this isn’t a tepid fight,” Massie said last month after making a two-hour drive from the farm where he lives to campaign in Hebron. Trump, he said, is all in to get him out. “And so if I win, I feel good about it. And if I lose, I fought the biggest fight there was,” he said, the circles under his eyes hinting at fatigue.

Recent polls showing Massie with a modest lead over Gallrein suggest he has a shot at survival, though Gallrein has pulled ahead in at least one new survey. Gallrein has made relatively few public appearances, giving Massie an opening to make his case in person that he has sided with Trump 90% of the time yet also isn’t afraid to cross him, as he did when he voted against Trump’s tax-cut and spending package.
…
First viewed as a fringe lawmaker, Massie quickly figured out how to wield influence. When conservatives pushed out Republican House Speaker John Boehner, it was Massie who identified the arcane procedural mechanism that made the ouster possible. In 2020, Massie successfully forced a majority of House lawmakers back to the U.S. Capitol in person to vote for a $2 trillion Covid-19 relief package when they had hoped to stay home to avoid contagion. That prompted Trump to label Massie a “third-rate grandstander.”

All along, Massie has been a persistent critic of foreign interventions. He voted against funding for Ukraine and Israel. He was one of a handful of Republicans who voted to stop military action in Venezuela and led an effort to stop Trump from entangling the U.S. in Iran, sponsoring a resolution to force a military withdrawal that narrowly failed this year.

It was Massie’s vote against Trump’s $3.4 trillion tax-cut and spending package that prompted Trump to turn sharply against him and get behind his primary challenger.

The New York Times welcomed Katherine Mangu-Ward, the Editor–in-Chief of the Libertarian Reason.com to support Massie on their op-ed page:

Mr. Massie votes with his party 91 percent of the time. He shares MAGA’s distrust of the administrative state and MAHA’s suspicion that federal health and agriculture bureaucracies are too cozy with the industries they regulate. He was drinking raw milk before Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made it cool.

But the overlap has limits, especially on trade, spending and executive power. And above all, Mr. Massie is against being told what to do and refuses to submit to the final test: unquestioning loyalty to the president. Mr. Trump recently called him “disloyal to the United States of America,” but what the president really meant was that he wasn’t sufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump. His independent streak is what makes him so irritating to his party, and so useful to it.

A movement that cannot tolerate a Thomas Massie has become exactly what its critics say it is — a personality cult with principles grafted on after the fact.
…
The Epstein files were the fight that transformed Mr. Massie from one of Mr. Trump’s occasional Republican irritants into a declared enemy. The issue brought together several things Mr. Trump hates: a Republican acting independently, a procedural maneuver the White House could not easily control and a persistently troubling topic MAGA had promised to resolve before suddenly deciding there was not much to see.

For years, Mr. Massie told me, he thought the Epstein files were probably “an internet conspiracy” he did not have time to investigate. Then the Trump administration released binders that seemed to him to contain nothing much at all. Why are they going to these lengths to pretend they’d released something they hadn’t? he wondered.

The question stayed with him. So did the testimony of Epstein survivors. It “was like a level of evil I hadn’t even contemplated,” he told me.
…
The Kentucky primary is next week. In 2024, Mr. Trump won the district with 68 percent of the vote. An early April Quantus Insights poll showed Mr. Massie ahead 47 to 38 percent, with 14 percent undecided.

Mr. Massie argues that the race is not really about Mr. Trump, and not only about him. He says the primary challenge against him is also driven by his refusal to support foreign aid and pro-Israel resolutions that he believes compromise the First Amendment or commit the United States to another country’s wars.

The Washington Examiner has a much less subtle take:

The Massie vs. Gallrein battle comes not long after some Indiana state senators found out what happens when opposing the sitting president. Trump has been pushing red states to employ the Democrats’ playbook in blue states and redistrict in an effort to make it more difficult for the Blue Team to take back the House. Most states have heeded the call, led by Texas, Florida, Tennessee, and South Carolina. The result could be an additional 10 to 12 House seats for the GOP, which may make all the difference.

Some Indiana Republicans, however, resisted the president’s call. Result? Trump called for all five lawmakers to be primaried. All five lost in elections earlier this month.

The same fate may be awaiting Massie, the guy who joined Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and The Squad in opposing congressional funding for Israel’s Iron Dome in 2021. If not for that defense system, Israeli citizens and their government would be subjected to constant bombardment from enemies that surround the country. Thousands or more would have been killed. That vote thankfully survived his opposition, however, 420-9.

AIPAC Open About Its Agenda

Based on AIPAC’s pre-victory lap in Politico they are feeling confident about their candidate’s chances:

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other pro-Israel interest groups have uncorked over $9 million in a bid to unseat Republican Rep. Thomas Massie on Tuesday in a competitive primary that has shattered spending records. Prominent pro-Israel GOP donors have funneled millions more into a super PAC stood up by President Donald Trump’s political operation that has spent nearly $7 million on the race. Overall ad spending has topped $32 million, making it the most expensive House primary on record, per tracking firm AdImpact.

Pro-Israel groups got the opening they needed to spend big against the isolationist lawmaker whenTrump decided to front a primary challenger to Massie, presenting the first serious threat to his reelection in over a decade. The Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund and United Democracy Project, AIPAC’s super PAC, have attacked the incumbent for his votes against symbolic measures supporting Israel.

And unlike in recent Democratic primaries where United Democracy Project has used shell PACs to shield its involvement, the powerful pro-Israel group’s political arm is investing directly in taking Massie out.

“He’s the most anti-Israel Republican in the House,” United Democracy Project spokesperson Patrick Dorton said of Massie. “This is a competitive, close primary situation. It’s always hard to defeat incumbents. … But we think there’s an opportunity here.”
…

RJC Victory Fund has unloaded more than $4 million on a sextet of ads attacking Massie over his opposition to the joint U.S.-Israel war in Iran and promoting Trump’s endorsement of Gallrein. It’s the most the group has ever spent in a House primary, according to AdImpact. AIPAC, meanwhile, has put almost $5 million behind a trio of spots slamming Massie for siding with progressive Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) in rejecting pro-Israel resolutions, including ones reaffirming U.S. support for Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack and  on the country in 2024. Their combined spending has helped propel Massie’s primary into the record books, eclipsing the more than $25 million in combined ad spending tracked by AdImpact when pro-Israel groups groups successfully targeted Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) in 2024.

We can see their money being put to work in the ad below:

Ken Klippenstein has thoughts about Ed Gallrein, Massie’s opponent:

There’s a heated primary election for Congress this Tuesday that is nothing short of a referendum on “national security.” Fittingly, one candidate’s background is almost entirely unknown because, he claims, it’s classified.

His name is Ed Gallrein, a Trump-backed retired Navy captain challenging incumbent Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. The focus of Gallrein’s campaign (and one of the few things he seems willing to talk about) is his claim of having served in SEAL Team 6, the secretive commando group most famous for the killing of Osama bin Laden. He certainly knows how to operate in the shadows: I can count on one hand the number of interviews Gallrein has sat down for, and he’s skipped literally every debate, each attended alone by Massie. Gallrein’s campaign touts endorsements from unnamed military officers, their identities and other supposedly sensitive details redacted to burnish the security theater. He’s even called civilians “sheep.”

The strategy seems to be to let Trump’s endorsement and the SEAL mystique do the work — and to avoid as much public scrutiny as possible. In the few appearances Gallrein has made, his message to voters is consistent: the most important things about him are classified, the president has seen the file, and that should be enough.

And seeing Gallrein in action demonstrates that whoever crafted his debate-ducking, constituent-avoiding strategy has something on the ball:

For his part, Massie hasn’t been shy about calling out his opposition:

We’ll find out the verdict of the voters of Kentucky’s fourth disctrict tomorrow.

Before we close, there are a couple of other primary races that merit a mention.

Louisiana GOP Purges Impeachment Heretic

Louisiana voters decided not to return incumbent Bill Cassidy to the US Senate over the weekend. NBC has some analysis:

Cassidy failed to advance in the Republican primary in Louisiana, as Trump-backed Rep. Julia Letlow and state Treasurer John Fleming are projected to face off in a June 27 runoff. The winner in the GOP contest will be the heavy favorite this fall in ruby-red Louisiana.
…
Cassidy’s cardinal sin, in the eyes of Trump and his supporters, was voting in 2021 to convict the then-former president on impeachment charges of inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6.

Trump never forgot it, having waged a largely successful campaign to oust Republicans who voted to impeach or convict him. Just two of the other six GOP senators who voted to convict Trump are still in office: Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. And just two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him are still in office, with only one running for re-election this year: Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif.

They also include this dandy graphic outlining the electoral fates of Congressional Republicans who voted against Trump:

Clearly, Massie will be bucking the Trump-GOP tide if he wins his primary.

I’ll be back Wednesday with a follow up.

Originally published at NakedCapitalism on May 18, 2026.

UPDATED: May 15, 8:15AM ET

I missed the Saudi non-aggression pact proposal and they did a massive prisoner swap with the Houthis. Added that after the Straits section.

But there was a little bit of ship seizing, a sprinkle of ship sinking, continued fighting in Lebanon, and some votes in Washington, D.C.

Trump responds to Xi’s ‘Thucydides Trap’

Xi’s opening remarks included a reference to the “Thucydides Trap” which is popularly understood to mean that conflict between a rising and a declining power is inevitable:

Xi Jinping: The whole world is watching our meeting. Currently, transformation not seen in a century is accelerating across the globe and the international situation is fluid and turbulent. The world has come to a new crossroads. Can China and the United States overcome the Thucydides Trap and create a new paradigm of major country relations? Can we meet global challenges together and provide more stability for the world?

Trump interpreted this to mean that Xi was putting China in the rising power position and the U.S. in the declining power position and he responded on Truth Social to Xi’s remarks and here are the key bits:

When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the Biden Administration, and on that score, he was 100% correct. Our Country suffered immeasurably with open borders, high taxes, transgender for everybody, men in women’s sports, DEI, horrible trade deals, rampant crime, and so much more!

President Xi was not referring to the incredible rise that the United States has displayed to the world during the 16 spectacular months of the Trump Administration, which includes all-time high stock markets and 401K’s, military victory and thriving relationship in Venezuela, the military decimation of Iran (to be continued!) — Strongest military on earth by far, economic powerhouse again…

Trump also spoke to Fox News’ Sean Hannity and added the following about the Iran War, via the NYT:

“He said he’s not going to give military equipment, that’s a big statement,” Trump said, attributing the remarks to Xi. “He said that today, that’s a big statement, said that strongly. But at the same time, he said, you know, they buy a lot of their oil there, and they’d like to keep doing that. He’d like to see Hormuz Strait open.”

Today Xi and Trump will engage in smaller meetings that Trump likely hopes will produce some of those famous “deals” he likes to brag about so much.

Now let’s move from East Asia to West Asia and talk about the Strait of Hormuz.

Ship Seized, Another Sunk

The AP reported on the day’s maritime doings in the war zone:

A ship anchored off the United Arab Emirates was seized and taken toward Iran and another — a cargo ship near Oman — sank after being attacked, authorities said Thursday, as tensions escalated near the Strait of Hormuz.

It wasn’t immediately clear who was behind these incidents, but they happened as a senior Iranian official reiterated his country’s claim of control over the waterway and another said it had a right to seize oil tankers connected to the U.S.

The BBC had more on the ship that got seized:

A vessel reportedly operating as a “floating armoury” in the Gulf of Oman has been seized by Iranian military personnel, according to the maritime risk management company Vanguard.

The ship is now “bound for Iranian territorial waters”, the UK’s Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) organisation said.

BBC Verify has checked ship-tracking data from MarineTraffic which shows the vessel – identified by Vanguard as the Honduras-flagged Hui Chuan – last broadcast its location 70km (40 miles) north-east of Fujairah in the UAE on Wednesday.

Hui Chuan’s operators told Vanguard it was operating as a floating armoury which stores weapons for security firms who protect ships at sea from attack by pirates.

And the ship that got sunk:

…an Indian-flagged vessel was attacked off the coast of Oman on Wednesday, according to Indian officials.

The Haji Ali “reportedly sank” off the coast of Oman, following a suspected explosion believed to have been caused by a “drone or missile”, according to Vanguard.
“All Indian crew on board are safe and we thank the Omani authorities for rescuing them,” Indian authorities said on Thursday.

Ship-tracking data from MarineTraffic shows the 57m (187ft) vessel left Berbera Port in Somalia on 6 May. Its intended destination was Sharjah in the UAE, the Indian shipping ministry said.

The ship was carrying livestock “when a fire reportedly broke out onboard, forcing the crew to abandon ship before the vessel sank,” Vanguard said.

Iranian leadership also went on the offensive on social media with Parliamentary Speaker MB Ghalibaf hitting the US defense budget and Trump’s Secretary of Defense War Pete Hegseth:

The Saudis have been busy.

Saudis Making Moves Against the War

FT had the scoop:

Saudi Arabia has discussed the idea of a non-aggression pact between Middle East states and Iran as part of talks with allies on how to manage regional tensions once the US-Israeli war with the Islamic republic ends, diplomats said.

Riyadh is eyeing as a potential model the 1970s Helsinki Process that eased tensions in Europe during the cold war, said two western diplomats, as the region anticipates a postwar Iran that is weakened but still poses a threat to its neighbours. They added that the non-aggression pact was among various ideas being considered.

…the months of war have created a new sense of urgency among Arab and Muslim states to rethink their alliances and the region’s security apparatus.

Many European capitals, and the EU institutions, have swung behind the Saudi idea and have urged other Gulf countries to support it, the diplomats said. They view it as the best way to avoid future conflict and provide Tehran with guarantees that it also would not be attacked.

They also did a prisoner swap with Ansar Allah, again per the FT:

Yemen’s warring parties have agreed to the biggest prisoner swap in more than a decade in a sign that Saudi Arabia is stepping up efforts to de-escalate tensions in the Arab state and keep Houthi rebels out of the war in Iran.

Under the deal, the Iranian-aligned Houthis and Saudi-backed Yemeni government will release 1,750 detainees, including seven Saudis held by the rebels.

It is the largest prisoner swap since Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015 to lead a coalition against the Houthis, after the rebels ousted the internationally recognised government and seized control of the capital, Sana’a.

Analysts say the deal is an important trust-building step as Saudi Arabia seeks to revive a stalled UN-led peace process, keep a check on tensions in Yemen and encourage the powerful Houthis not to become further involved in the US-Israeli war with Iran.

Now let’s drop by Lebanon.

Hezbollah Support Still Strong

This is per the BBC:

Last Saturday an Israeli air strike, at lunchtime and without warning, destroyed a building where a family displaced by the war were sheltering in a town in southern Lebanon called Saksakiyeh. A ceasefire, announced last month, has failed to stop the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the Shia Muslim armed group. In this part of the country, Israel’s attacks come day and night.
…
Nine people were killed there. The Israeli military said it had targeted Hezbollah members who were operating from a building that was being used for military purposes, and that they had posed an “immediate threat”.

It did not give details. Relatives said the victims were a woman in her 70s, a son and his wife, another son, her four grandchildren, and her great-granddaughter, who was two years old. (The Israeli military said it was “reviewing reports regarding harm to uninvolved civilians”.)
…
Some of the people I met were exhausted from constant wars but, as the Israeli attacks and occupation continued, many still believed Hezbollah was the only force capable of defending them.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese government, a force capable of defending no one, and Israel continued their negotiations in Washington per Reuters:

The United States cast Israel-Lebanon talks held in Washington on Thursday as “productive and positive” and a State Department official said more discussions aimed ​at ending their conflict will continue on Friday.

A senior Lebanese official said earlier that Lebanon will demand that U.S. ally Israel cease fire in the face-to-face ‌talks, as Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah continued to trade blows despite a U.S.-backed truce declared last month. An Israeli government spokesperson said the talks were taking place with the goal of disarming Hezbollah and reaching a peace agreement.

That wasn’t the only Iran War related action happening in DC on Thursday.

War Powers Vote Fails in the House

The Democrats’ “Rotating Villain” game was strong as they lost a War Powers resolution by one vote, when the co-sponsor of the bill voted against, via the WaPo (archived):

The House on Thursday failed to advance a resolution requiring the Trump administration to end its war in Iran — the first time it has considered such a measure since the lapsing of a legal deadline for lawmakers to authorize the conflict.

The measure failed after a dramatic tie vote of 212 to 212, with three Republicans joining nearly all Democrats.

The Senate on Wednesday rejected a similar initiative.
Rep. Jared Golden (Maine), the lone Democrat to vote no, indicated in a statement that he would support a forthcoming “clean” bid to halt the war.

The measure that failed Thursday was proposed early in the war by a faction of pro-Israel Democrats — Golden among them — as a compromise intended to win some Republican backing. It would have given the Trump administration 30 days to seek lawmakers’ explicit authorization to prolong the conflict.

In explaining his no vote, Golden argued that those terms are no longer relevant because hostilities have already gone on longer than the War Powers Act permits.

Three Republicans voted to end the war in the House: Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, and Tom Barrett of Michigan.

Wednesday’s failed vote in the Senate featured three GOPers breaking with Trump: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Rand Paul of Kentucky.

That wasn’t the only Iran War related activity in the Senate this week.

Before we get to the depressing lies of the Trump regime, I want to shout out Virginia Senator Tim Kaine for telling the Iranian side of the conflict with the U.S. in the Senate. He reviews the 1953 coup, the brutal U.S. backed dictatorship of the Shah, America’s role in backing the Iraq-Iran War and shooting down an Iranian passenger jet:

Now let’s get back to the usual lies.

Only One ‘Civilian Casualty Event’

US Admiral Brad Cooper testified in the Upper House and the NYT typed it up:

The senior officer overseeing U.S. combat operations in Iran told senators on Thursday that the destruction of an Iranian school, which Iranian officials said killed 175 people, may have been caused by a U.S. bomb and was the only civilian casualty event he knew of in a campaign of more than 13,600 strikes.

Admiral Brad Cooper’s testimony suggested that he believed that the U.S. military’s record since that Feb. 28 strike had been near perfect, a fact belied by investigations from human rights groups and news media organizations. Senators greeted Admiral Cooper’s claims with deep skepticism, and a human rights group that investigates civilian casualties in war called it “ridiculous.”

The U.S. military still has not taken responsibility for the school strike, which Admiral Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, said remained under investigation.

The New York Times has verified damage to 22 schools and 17 health care facilities. The Iranian Red Crescent Society, the country’s primary humanitarian relief organization, said on April 2 that at least 763 schools and 316 health care facilities had been damaged or destroyed in the war.

At least 1,700 Iranian civilians have been killed in the war, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency.

University of Chicago Prof. Robert Pape argues we likely haven’t seen the last casualties of America and Israel’s war on Iran, civilian and otherwise.

Escalation Trap Snapping

Pape responded to Robert Kagan’s “Checkmate in Iran” piece on his Substack:

…Kagan argued that the United States may already have suffered what he called a strategic defeat “that can neither be repaired nor ignored.” He warned that “there will be no return to the status quo ante” and acknowledged that Iran had fundamentally altered the regional balance despite weeks of devastating American and Israeli strikes.

That assessment matters because it amounts to a delayed recognition of the very structural problem many of us warned about before the war began.

For months, I argued that limited bombing campaigns against Iran were unlikely to produce decisive political outcomes because Iran’s dispersed missile systems, denial capabilities, and regional leverage made durable coercion extraordinarily difficult. The danger was never simply failed airstrikes.

The danger was that tactical frustration would generate pressure for broader escalation.

Kagan is now implicitly acknowledging the first half of that mechanism.

But his conclusion points toward more escalation.

Once policymakers accept that tactical military success has failed to produce strategic resolution, pressure grows inside Washington for expanded escalation. If short bombing campaigns fail, advocates demand longer campaigns. If airpower alone proves insufficient, pressure shifts toward broader targeting, expanded regional operations, cyber escalation, maritime confrontation, or eventually some form of ground commitment tied to securing missile sites or nuclear infrastructure.

That is the “trap” in the Escalation Trap.

Let’s wrap with some videos.

Prof Marandi Meets Sneako

Sneako is a massively popular live streamer with more than 1 million followers on YouTube and another million on X, and lately he’s been hosting Iranian spokesprofessor Seyed Mohammad Marandi on some of his Kick.com livestreams.

The link above should go directly to the 48 minute mark of the livestream which is where Sneako welcomes Prof. Marandi and their hour-long discussion begins.

But here’s the excerpt that’s getting shared on X:

Readers may enjoy comparing Marandi’s discussion with Sneako with his visit with Judge Napolitano yesterday.

Janta Ka on the Xi-Trump Summit

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday failed to convince his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to pressure Iran to allow the free passage of ships through the Persian Gulf. On the other hand, the Chinese president warned the US to not meddle with affairs in Taiwan. Rifat Jawaid argues that this a huge setback to Trump, who was hoping to get China on his side during this historic visit.

Aguilar on Nima

Green Beret Lt. Col. Anthony Aguilar is best known as a whistleblower on Israeli atrocities in Gaza but he was talking tactics with Nima:

Lt. Col. Anthony Aguilar: What’s very interesting to me is that the battlefield in southern Lebanon has not only become a peripheral conflict in the war with Iran in a way it has become the driving factor because Israel’s stance on the war in Iran not ending overall because Iran has tied Lebanon to (ceasefire negotiations) and that Israel intends to continue to fight in Lebanon.

Hezbollah has gained not only motivation for standing against an existential threat to Lebanon, but they are having quantifiable, measurable effects against the IDF in southern Lebanon militarily and psychologically.

When you look at the success that Hezbollah is having on the battlefield in southern Lebanon south of the Litani River (it) has become the the the rock of the Litani.

That is not surprising because it is clear to see the Israeli defense forces are designed to conduct defensive homeland style operations. They are very good in Gaza when they are dropping 2,000 pound bombs on neighborhoods and fighting unarmed women and children. when they have to go up against an enemy that is well equipped, well-trained, has motivation to defend, we see that they are not doing well.

Next let’s widen our scope a tad from the usual alt-media suspects.

That’s all for today, hang tough, y’all.

Originally published at NakedCapitalism on May 15, 2026.