It's My Mind

Defined by the Fight

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 12:09:02 -0600

I saw the chart Patrick Ruffini posted this morning.

It is labeled “The K-Shaped Republican Party.” The subtitle reads: “Trump’s lane is defined by temperament, not ideology.”

The graphic from Echelon Insights starts on the left with the center-right establishment — Nikki Haley and Glenn Youngkin — labeled the pre-Trump governing wing. It runs through Marco Rubio, then splits.

One branch curves up to the high ground of policy conservatism: Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis.

A yellow branch goes to the national populists: Josh Hawley and JD Vance — socially conservative, economically interventionist.

The red branch drops alone to Donald Trump: the low ground, ideologically flexible, defined by the fight.

The axis underneath runs from “Appeals to Moderates” on the left to “Appeals to the Grassroots Right” on the right.

Ruffini is a pollster at Echelon Insights. He wrote Party of the People, the book that tracked the multiracial working-class shift toward the GOP. A few days ago he published a piece called “Deluge” arguing that the midterms were less a normal wave than a wipeout because Republicans lost working-class trust on the economy and cost of living.

The K-Shaped Republican Party https://t.co/xbzPm37o5Q
— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) November 10, 2026

The chart does not claim that any of these lanes is winning. It places them. Trump occupies a space that is not the policy conservatism of Cruz and DeSantis, and not fully the economic interventionism of the national populists either. His is the one defined by the fight itself.

Whether that lane can be shared, or whether the party now has to choose which branch it travels after the losses, is the question the graphic leaves open.

After the Results

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 9 Nov 2026 23:30:00 -0600

On Thursday’s PBD Podcast they walked through the California results. The one that stood out was Los Angeles mayor.

Watch the PBD Podcast clip here: VIDEO

City Councilmember Nithya Raman unseated Mayor Karen Bass. Raman is the progressive, DSA-backed candidate who endorsed Bass in January, then filed against her on the last possible day in February. Bass is the longtime establishment figure—former Assembly speaker and congresswoman, the first Black woman to hold the office. Early election-night counts favored Bass. Later-arriving mail ballots, the ones that typically skew younger and more progressive, moved the margin. By Thursday Bass had called to concede. Raman led by roughly four points.

Tom on the show called it a Democratic dirty trick that turned into a double cross. Raman was positioned, in that telling, as a spoiler who would soften Bass; she beat her instead. The pattern the panel notes is familiar in deep-blue cities: the further-left candidate gains once the later ballots arrive.

That is the California piece in the clip.

As an aside, there is the short video of young women chanting “Abortion is so back, baby.” The origin is a post from the Instagram/TikTok account @women_inamerica (Pari and Eve). They filmed a group reaction to the midterm results; the caption listed Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and others. It spread quickly on X. Texas still has a near-total ban in place since the 2022 Dobbs decision. The midterms changed control of Congress; they did not rewrite state statutes the same night. The clip is a celebration of the national result, not a change in Texas law.

The clip itself via Libs of TikTok on X

Demonic https://t.co/D26HeY6FoN
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 4, 2026

They Cheered Anyway

Regarding Los Angeles, I’m glad Karen Bass is out. I’m not glad she’s being replaced by someone further to the left. Raman’s City Council record already drew criticism for absences—the Bass campaign put up a whole “No Show Nithya” site over nearly three thousand missed votes. That doesn’t automatically tell you how she’ll run the city, but it is a fair question: how does a high no-show rate on the council translate to mayor?

There has also been discussion about whether she can be pushed around more easily than Bass. Her progressive base is smaller and more ideological than the broader coalition Bass carried. That can make a mayor more dependent on the loudest voices in the room, or more willing to give ground to keep them.

The June primary is worth remembering here. Spencer Pratt led on election night. Raman was in third and got emotional on stage — nearly in tears — while speaking to her kids. She did not concede. Later ballots then moved her past Pratt into the runoff. The same late-ballot pattern that lifted her past Pratt also lifted her past Bass in November.

Tom on the show suggested this could set up a scenario where LA voters eventually push the nation’s second-largest city toward something more purple. We also have to do something about these mail-in rules. I voted early myself. That doesn’t mean the current system is the one that produces the cleanest, most trusted count. Eligibility and counting rules both need tightening if people are going to accept the results.

As for the women in the “abortion is so back” clip, I don’t know what to say. It disturbs me that this was the thing they seemed gleeful about on election night. Most people on the right — and a lot of common-sense people outside of it — found that glee hard to watch. The men on the PBD panel did too.

Here’s my position, which I think is typical for a lot of people on the right. I’m pro-life. I think abortion should be allowed primarily for the health of the mother and in cases of rape or incest. I don’t use the R-word lightly; when I talk about that act I usually say sexual assault. That’s the narrow set of circumstances where I think terminating a pregnancy is appropriate.

Over the years the debate has often been framed in extremes. Pro-choice arguments frequently lean on the hardest edge cases. Parental notification is one example. It makes sense to me that parents should know if their minor daughter is about to have an abortion. I’m equally concerned about a minor being forced into one. Neither side’s extreme version of that scenario is the whole picture.

The clip also shows a woman in a Talarico cap. Georgia is worth watching. Governor-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms has said she wants to change the state’s abortion law. She may have a hard time doing it quickly: the House flipped to Democrats, but the Senate stayed under Republican control. Split government tends to slow that kind of change.

Texas and Georgia are both places to keep an eye on.

Not on the Ballot

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 9 Nov 2026 11:30:00 -0600

Trump sat down with Ross Douthat on 60 Minutes the Friday after the midterms. The interview aired Sunday. He sounded more reflective than he usually does after a loss, and he did not reach for fraud claims. He still put the result on things other than himself.

The version that went on television is the shorter one: [VIDEO]

In the broadcast cut, Douthat opens with the size of the Republican losses. Trump’s first answer is that he was not on the ballot. He says he campaigned hard, the rallies were large, and the personal popularity did not fully transfer to the candidates he endorsed. He points to the Iran war, the rise in gas prices after he had brought them down, and what he calls a great dislike for Israel. He agrees with most of JD Vance’s post-election analysis but adds that the right historical question is whether he would still hit Iran’s nuclear program if he had the decision again. His answer is yes.

The longer cut is below. It runs nearly twice as long and keeps more of the back-and-forth: [VIDEO]

The extended version expands the same subjects rather than introducing an entirely different interview. The midterm discussion runs longer: more on specific endorsements, low turnout, and the difficulty of transferring his voters to candidates some of them did not like. Gas prices and the Iran war get more air. Immigration receives a fuller exchange on the split inside his own administration. The corruption questions about World Liberty Financial go further. AI, succession, Ukraine, and the UFO pilot stories are also longer. The mortality section continues past the broadcast close.

What He Said

On working with Democrats, Trump says he can. He notes that he has already worked with them at times despite two impeachments, and he says he is open to a deal on legal status for long-term workers in ordinary jobs. He mentions that some of the new Democratic winners have already reached out. He also says he does not have to keep using the old nicknames if he does not want to.

An hour after the interview, he replaced chief of staff Susie Wiles with Stephen Miller. In the sit-down itself he had already said he would make a few changes even though he likes his Cabinet. Miller has been the strongest internal voice for broader removals.

On the economy, Trump calls the numbers historically strong and points to the stock market and 401(k) balances. He acknowledges that people are unhappy about the cost of living. He blames messaging more than the underlying figures and says the press does not cover positive Republican news, so he has to carry it himself. “We couldn’t get the word across.”

On the war in Iran, he defends the decision as necessary and says he would do it again. He describes it as quick, with no American deaths, and credits Pete Hegseth. He says he is not looking to escalate now and that the nuclear material is buried. He also agrees that the war and the higher gas prices that followed it cost Republicans seats. On Ukraine he says the war was inherited, that a deal is close, and that the main obstacle has been the personal hatred between Zelensky and Putin. He expects the eventual settlement to leave Ukraine in a different shape.

On artificial intelligence he is bullish. He prefers the term “super intelligence.” He treats it as a race with China that will decide which country holds power, and he says he has already met with Xi on the subject. He calls the doomsday estimates overblown. He is open to some bipartisan safety rules but says the priority is that the United States not fall behind a China that has no guardrails.

On immigration he gives himself high marks for closing the border and removing serious criminals. He then says some of the deportations of people who had been working for years in landscaping, hotels, or similar jobs were too tough. He describes the policy as something that both helped and hurt in the midterms, and he repeats that he is willing to work with Democrats on status for the long-term residents who are not serious offenders.

On a Republican successor he says he will probably endorse someone but not necessarily. He calls the bench strong, praises Marco Rubio’s work as secretary of state, and notes that MAGA is common sense (borders, a strong military, wealth creation) and can continue without him. He also says he might be better off staying out of the 2028 primary.

His Stock Went Up

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 7 Nov 2026 11:30:00 -0600

Florida stayed red while the rest of the map turned blue. That is the clip.

Via Memeology 101: [VIDEO]

Ron DeSantis spent years making Florida a place people moved to on purpose: lower taxes, fewer lockdowns, school choice that actually passed, and a property-tax amendment that drew Republicans to the polls on November 3. The national night was brutal for the party. Florida was not. The amendment helped drive turnout; the rest of the coalition he built held. Republicans kept the state when almost nowhere else did.

Success is visible. People notice when a governor delivers results they can measure in registration numbers, in-migration, and election margins that do not require a national wave to hold. DeSantis already had a record. The midterms turned it into a contrast. While other Republican candidates struggled to make a positive case, Florida’s results did the arguing for him.

His stock went up because the evidence did. The rest of the party is still sorting out what that means for the next two years. Florida already has an answer.

Musk’s Big Bet Flops: The Real Winners and Losers of the Midterms

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 6 Nov 2026 13:53:14 -0600

Patrick Bet-David’s panel didn’t do a full results recap. They went straight to ranking who actually won and lost—and why. [VIDEO]

The clear losers, in their telling: Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and Trump’s endorsements.

Musk spent heavily (reports put his total GOP-related outlays near or over $400 million, with a massive chunk on Ken Paxton in Texas). Paxton lost decisively to Democrat James Talarico, who flipped a Senate seat Democrats hadn’t held since 1988. The panel treated it as proof that even unprecedented cash has limits when the candidate is flawed and voters have other priorities. Rogan got grouped in for the same reason: the manosphere/influencer energy that mattered in 2024 didn’t hold young men or low-propensity voters well enough this time. Trump’s endorsements produced a string of losses as Democrats gained ground in both chambers.

On the winner side, the panel zeroed in on Muslim candidates—most notably Abdul El-Sayed’s win in Michigan, making him the first Muslim U.S. senator. They framed it as more than a single race: a signal about shifting coalitions and who shapes the future. Ron DeSantis came off as a relative survivor (his 2028 positioning strengthened even as he warned of GOP problems). Prediction markets like Kalshi also got credit for calling key outcomes and drawing heavy volume.

The through-line was simple: traditional power levers—mega-donor cash, celebrity endorsements, pure brand—underperformed relative to candidate quality, affordability concerns, and other forces. The segment was less a neutral scoreboard and more an argument that money’s influence has clear limits.

That’s the panel’s take. Not a full recap—just who they think walked away stronger, and why.

Want the broader context?

The clip above is a short excerpt. The full episode digs into JD Vance and Ron DeSantis’s reactions to the GOP’s midterm losses, Trump’s Election Day announcement on ending nearly $4 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel, exit polls, and more of the panel’s back-and-forth on what the results actually mean.

Full podcast: [VIDEO]

They Counted the Wins by Color

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 6 Nov 2026 01:03:19 -0600

After the midterms the celebration I kept seeing treated the results as a return of something. Not a return of policy. A return of categories.

Bill O’Reilly put up a short clip on it the next day: [VIDEO]

He starts with the numbers. Democrats took the Senate (54–44 as he had it) and the House (228–139). He had expected the House loss. The Senate was the bigger surprise. Money, bills, gas, utilities. The filibuster stays, so sixty votes still matter for a while.

Then he plays the tape of Ro Khana. Diversity and Inclusion is back. Three Black governors. First Latina governor in Texas. First Muslim U.S. senator. First gay senator. “I love this America.”

His question is simple. Why does the skin color, the race, the sexual preference matter here? That is the mentality of the extremists, he says. DEI is not actually back. Courts have ruled against it almost everywhere. What happened is that some extremists got elected.

He is not against diversity or inclusion as words. He has said as much before. He is against the counting. Against treating equal opportunity as insufficient and equity as the required correction. Race mattered a hundred years ago. It does not organize the outcome now, he argues, if you develop the skills. The extremists want the other situation because it leads somewhere else.

On the Republican side he says they do not care about DEI. The problem is empathy. People who cannot pay the electric bill or the gas do not need to be told the other side is radical. They already know. They need the party in power to notice the bill. He says he told Trump to sit the utility, insurance, and oil heads down and tell them they are killing the golden goose. One statement came out. No follow-through. The message that actually reached voters was mostly “look at the radicals.” True, he grants, and not enough.

Two years will go fast. The next presidential campaign starts next summer.

That is the clip. The celebration treated the seats as proof that the categories still organize the win. O’Reilly treats that as the extremist habit, not as the reason the votes moved. The affordability argument sits underneath both readings.

Not a Mandate

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 5 Nov 2026 00:15:54 -0600

The night produced a blue tsunami. The reading that follows is that Democrats now have a mandate. That is not what the Daily Wire segment treats it as.

This clip is from their Election Day livestream, with Cabot Phillips hosting Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, and Andrew Klavan.

Watch the clip here: [VIDEO]

They start from the results and move to the larger claim. This was a midterm. Midterms are a referendum on the party in power. People are angry, so they punish the people holding the offices. Democrats won because they are not the ones implementing policy right now. None of their ideas are in force. Voters were not choosing left-wing policies. They were voting against what is currently in place.

They note the usual cycle. In 2004 it felt like Republicans would never lose again. By 2006 Nancy Pelosi was Speaker. Obama won in 2012 and it felt permanent. Then 2016 happened. The disappointment tonight is real, but it is not a permanent condition. The test comes when Democrats actually have to govern. They have already moved further left—celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk and other conservatives—without paying a clear price. That price arrives only if voters still punish them once the policies are theirs.

They treat the night as transitional. Westerners are leaning right in places like Poland and France, even when the left overreacts. The British example is the one they reach for: Conservatives in power long enough to go stagnant, a Labour wipeout, then the governing party becomes unpopular and the other side rises again. The same pattern is available here. The real reason Democrats won is that they do not have power.

The Kalshi numbers come later in the same conversation. Impeached and removed sits at 31 percent. Resignation during the term sits at 27 percent. Shapiro and the others call both easy money on the no side. Removal requires a major scandal that actually frightens swing-seat Republicans, and even then it hands the presidency to Vance. Resignation is simpler: no way. Trump does not walk away. Those markets are noise next to the larger point the segment is making about the night itself.

The midterms were a referendum on the party in power. They were not a mandate for what Democrats would do with it.

You can watch the Daily Wire Livestream from November 3rd here: [VIDEO]

The Map Moved

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 4 Nov 2026 00:47:19 -0600

Wow. I hear tsumani but the Democrats performed very strongly in a number of races from Governor to US Senate to US House. It appears they will take control of Congress for two years. There were a few surprising results from these midterms.

Created by A.I.

I had my A.I. assistant list the results that are key:

Texas: James Talarico beat Ken Paxton for Senate; Gina Hinojosa beat Greg Abbott for governor. No Democrat had won statewide there since 1994.
South Carolina: Annie Andrews beat Darline Graham for Senate. Democrats had not won a Senate race in the state since 1998.
Maine: Troy Jackson beat Susan Collins for Senate.
Kansas: Adam Hamilton beat Roger Marshall for Senate. First Democratic Senate win there since 1932.
Iowa: Josh Turek beat Ashley Hinson for Senate; Rob Sand flipped the governor’s race.
Ohio: Sherrod Brown beat Jon Husted for Senate; Amy Acton beat Vivek Ramaswamy for governor. Democrats had not held the governorship since 2006.
Georgia: Keisha Lance Bottoms won the open governor’s race. Democrats swept the major statewide offices.
Michigan: Abdul El-Sayed beat Mike Rogers for Senate (Democratic hold). Jocelyn Benson beat John James for governor (Democratic hold).
House: Kentucky’s 6th District flipped (Zach Dembo over Ralph Alvarado; Trump carried it by about 15 points in 2024). Multiple Pennsylvania seats flipped, including Brian Fitzpatrick’s district and the ones held by Ryan Mackenzie and Rob Bresnahan. Democrats also held or won seats in Florida that Republicans had redrawn earlier in the year to favor themselves.

Texas is the one that still does not sit right. Both the Senate and the governorship went Democratic in the same cycle. Paxton carried baggage. Talarico moderated enough to win. That is the result. Whether he fits the state is a different question, and the election already answered the only one that mattered on Tuesday.

South Carolina feels less surprising in hindsight. Running the late Lindsey Graham’s sister for his old seat may have been the wrong bet.

Georgia was closer to expected than Texas. The state had already elected two Democratic senators. Bottoms will be the first Black woman governor in the country. That is a fact about the result. Her record as mayor of Atlanta is a separate conversation about governing, and this election did not settle it.

Michigan was the one I thought Rogers could take. El-Sayed still won. Jackson in Maine was not a strong candidate on paper. He still beat Collins. In both cases the Republican side did not produce a better alternative.

What happened is still open. Broken promises from the new administration are one possibility. Higher prices tied to the Iran war are another. Momentum on the Democratic side—progressives and Democratic Socialists included—is a third. None of those explain why the map moved where it did.

Ben Shapiro said on Election Day that a Democratic win would bring a resurgence of "wokeness". That is a prediction about the next Congress, not an account of the results. Whether it looks like 2020 is a separate question.

A few other notes. Byron Donalds is the first Black Republican elected governor of Florida, succeeding Ron DeSantis. In Wisconsin, David Crowley will be the first Black governor after defeating Republican Tom Tiffany. Milestones are recorded. Performance is the test.

Trump has said he will work with a Democratic Congress. Whether that relationship can function is the practical question. Further attempts to impeach him are probably a non-starter. He will not be able to govern the way he has since he returned to the Oval Office in 2025.

It's About Trump

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 3 Nov 2026 13:19:16 -0600

Bill O’Reilly was on NewsNation last night, the day before the votes are counted. Leland Vittert asked why Republicans would win the midterms. O’Reilly’s answer was short.

They are not going to.

He said the House goes to the Democrats, the way Obama’s House went in 2014. The Senate is still open. That is the same call he put out yesterday on his own site: Democrats take the House on the economy, Republicans keep the Senate.

Here is the clip: [VIDEO]

O’Reilly’s reason is not the usual one. He does not say the polls are fixed or that the candidates are weak. He says the trouble started with Iran.

The plan was never really confronted. Once the war began, inflation and oil prices rose. Americans watched the numbers move and remembered what they had been told. O’Reilly’s line: “They’re not voting on macroeconomics. They’re voting on Trump promised this and it never happened.”

He added that Trump’s emotional responses have not helped. The election, in his view, is not about affordability as a policy problem. “Today it’s about Donald Trump. Tomorrow it’s about Donald Trump.”

That is the whole case he made. The rest of the segment wanders into Alaska and Talarico and tax talk, but the prediction sits on those two sentences: the Iran operation was left unfinished, and voters are measuring the result against the promise.

Whether that reading holds after the counts come in is a different question. O’Reilly has been consistent on this point for weeks. The House loss, if it arrives, will be read as a judgment on the president’s unfinished work, not on a list of economic charts.

Have you voted today?

Midterms: Michigan, Maine, Texas, and the Rest

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 2 Nov 2026 23:30:00 -0600

I didn’t have a lot of strong predictions going into tomorrow’s midterms. I early voted already, and my clearest read is on Illinois. Beyond that, control of Congress looks tighter than the conventional wisdom has suggested.

Democrats probably have an edge in the House. Republicans should hold the Senate, though that depends on a handful of races I’m not fully confident about. I don’t expect a blue wave either way.

Credit: (JDawnInk/Getty Images)

Michigan

Republicans have a real chance here against a weak Democratic nominee. Michigan is still nominally a blue state, so the edge may still favor Democrats, but Abdul El-Sayed has looked shaky in more ways than one. He beat the more moderate Haley Stevens in the primary. Over the weekend Stevens endorsed Republican Mike Rogers, citing issues with El-Sayed’s associations and record. I’ve written about El-Sayed before; for a fuller breakdown of the Stevens endorsement and Shapiro’s take on the race, see my post on the latest Ben Shapiro episode. Rogers could still pull it off, but Michigan’s lean makes it far from certain.

Maine

Susan Collins has the edge as the incumbent. On the Democratic side there was real turmoil. Graham Platner won the primary, then faced controversy over some of his positions and an alleged Nazi tattoo. He was ultimately replaced by Troy Jackson. Jackson hasn’t been an especially strong candidate either. Candidate quality has been a problem on both sides in this race.

Texas

The edge goes to Republicans in a still-red state, even if it’s trending more purple. James Talarico’s stated positions (some of which appeared to shift closer to Election Day) don’t fit a conservative state well. Ken Paxton isn’t a strong candidate either, and polling has kept the race close. If Paxton wins, I expect it to be relatively narrow.

Iowa and Ohio are also in play. I haven’t followed those races as closely. Iowa looks more likely to stay Republican; Ohio is less clear.

A few broader notes. Polling has been unreliable this cycle, partly because of methodology—who gets called and whether the samples actually reflect the electorate. Turnout also matters more than usual in a midterm. Trump has been telling crowds to vote like he’s on the ballot; that message is an attempt to offset the typical drop-off when the presidential race isn’t on the ticket.

We’ve also seen the further emergence of Democratic Socialists, several of whom are positioned to win House seats. If Democrats take the chamber, the question is how much influence that wing will have inside the caucus and, longer term, inside the party itself.

My main prediction: Democrats could take the House while Republicans hold the Senate, and there will not be a blue wave.

Stevens Breaks with El-Sayed

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 2 Nov 2026 14:02:45 -0600

In the latest episode of The Ben Shapiro Show, Ben Shapiro walks through a striking development in the Michigan Senate race just days before the midterms: Democratic Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who narrowly lost the primary to Abdul El-Sayed, has endorsed Republican Mike Rogers. The bulk of the episode is devoted to that story — the endorsement, the furious Democratic reaction, El-Sayed’s record, and the broader implications for the party. Shapiro also analyzes the state of the Senate polls, speaks with Mike Rogers, and covers a constitutional crisis in Poland.

You may watch this episode here: [VIDEO]

Haley Stevens did not make the endorsement quietly. After appearing with Rogers at a Detroit church, she released a video stating that El-Sayed had made clear she was no longer welcome in his campaign. “Who we are as Michiganders is not hate,” she said, “and it is not what we are getting out from our Democratic nominee right now.” She specifically cited El-Sayed’s past campaigning with streamer Hasan Piker and his handling of an outside ad that blamed high grocery prices on U.S. aid to Israel (which she and others characterized as antisemitic). “We can’t stand with hate. We can’t stand with Hasan Piker.”

Shapiro treats this as more than a local feud. He argues it exposes the Democratic Party’s current priorities. Stevens is a mainstream Democrat who has served in Congress since 2018. When she concluded she could not support the nominee over issues involving Jews, America, and associations with figures who traffic in anti-Israel and anti-American rhetoric, the party response was expulsion-level fury — Chuck Schumer and others labeling her a traitor, the Michigan Democratic Party moving against her, and progressive voices attacking her motives. Shapiro contrasts this with the praise Democrats once gave Republicans like Liz Cheney for breaking with their party.

On El-Sayed himself, Shapiro reiterates points he has made throughout the cycle: the nominee’s associations with the Muslim Brotherhood orbit (family ties, Muslim Student Association activity, certain mosque connections), past statements framing borders and police in racial terms, support for abolishing ICE and expansive versions of Medicare for All, and his evasiveness on whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. Dearborn’s heavily Muslim electorate delivered overwhelming support for El-Sayed in the primary; the general election is testing whether that coalition plus progressive energy can overcome skepticism among Jewish voters, some Black voters, and moderates in a state Trump has carried recently.

Shapiro is not declaring Rogers the favorite. Polls have generally shown El-Sayed ahead or the race within the margin of error, and early voting has favored Democrats in some metrics. But he notes Michigan’s history of Republicans outperforming final polling averages, El-Sayed’s own primary performance (he was often shown far ahead of Stevens yet won narrowly), and the fact that Democrats are deploying high-profile figures like Barack Obama. The Stevens endorsement, in his view, is evidence that El-Sayed’s vulnerabilities on Israel, antisemitism, and radical associations are real enough that even a defeated primary rival from his own party felt compelled to walk away.

The larger point Shapiro keeps returning to is institutional. The Democratic Party is demonstrating that loyalty to the nominee now overrides concerns about antisemitism, anti-American rhetoric, or open borders radicalism. When a Democrat who lost the primary says she cannot “stand with hate,” the party’s reaction is not to address the substance but to treat her as the problem. In a swing state with significant Jewish, Black, and Muslim populations, that choice has concrete electoral consequences.

Whether Rogers capitalizes on it remains to be seen — Michigan Senate races are often decided by small margins, and the national environment is not favorable to Republicans. But the episode shows why Shapiro and others have treated this race as one of the most consequential of the cycle: not just for control of the Senate, but as a measure of how far the Democratic Party is willing to go in tolerating (or elevating) figures whose records on Jews and American identity are openly contested.

During the episode, Shapiro also speaks with Mike Rogers. Rogers discusses the state of the race, the significance of Stevens’ endorsement, and the broader stakes in Michigan. He frames the endorsement as a statement about standing against hate and prioritizing the future of the state and country over party lines, while emphasizing the need to defeat El-Sayed given the nominee’s record and associations.

After the Michigan discussion, Shapiro turns to the broader Senate map and current polls. He examines where the key races stand heading into Election Day, including the implications for Republican control of the chamber, and notes the limitations of polling in this environment. He also speaks with Mike Rogers about the state of the race in Michigan.

The episode closes with coverage of a constitutional crisis in Poland. Shapiro walks through the latest developments there, placing them in the context of institutional fights over the judiciary, executive power, and democratic norms.

This full episode is worth watching for the Michigan analysis alone, but the additional segments on the Senate polls and the situation in Poland round out Shapiro’s view of the political moment both at home and abroad.

The Supersite Was Easy

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 11:30:00 -0500

I went to the early voting supersite in downtown Chicago for the 2026 midterms. My goal was to get it out of the way.

It was an easy experience, like going to my usual polling place on election day.

There was no option for a paper ballot. Voters at the supersite get a quick education on the electronic machines. Simple enough. I prefer a paper ballot. Maybe you only get that on election day.

They didn't check IDs. In my experience as a Chicago voter, precinct workers never do. They make sure you're registered. At the supersite they had to determine my actual precinct so I could vote. They probably got the information to confirm I was legitimate.

Given that they didn't check IDs, perhaps I could have presented myself as my late father. Would they have accepted that? Who knows.

I can talk about who I voted for, though only for select people.

Start with judges. In Illinois we elect our judges. There are articles in Chicago media about the electioneering for candidates who aspire to the bench. Just like for other offices, if the Democratic machine slates a candidate, that's an endorsement. It goes a long way, though not a guarantee.

The problem with electing judges is that you don't know who many of them are. If I didn't know the judges, I didn't vote for them. I voted no on retention for all of them. Some bad judges were in the news for one application of the Safe-T Act.

Some of the judges who made the news did so because of electronic monitoring under the Safe-T Act. The law ended cash bail and left judges to decide between detention and release with conditions. Monitoring is the main condition they use when they do not detain. It is not the same as jail. People cut the ankle monitor, leave the house, or go missing, and under the rules they are not treated as escapees until they have been gone for 48 hours. The people who track the monitors often cannot arrest anyone. They report the violation and hope a judge will act. When someone charged with a serious crime is later charged with a new one while on that monitoring, the original decision is what ends up in the papers.

I wish we could do better on choosing our judges. There probably isn't a huge movement to change how judges get seated on the bench in this state.

I was surprised to see Libertarians running for county offices such as County Board President and Sheriff. No Republicans at all. In fact there weren't too many Republicans running statewide in the 2026 primaries aside from Governor. The Republican candidate for state treasurer actually ran in the primary as a write-in.

We need an opposition party in this state. Cook County needs an opposition party too. And so be it if it's the Libertarians. If only members of the Libertarian Party just joined the Cook County Republican Party.

I voted for Alexi Giannoulias for Secretary of State. He's running for Mayor of Chicago next year. I'm a long way from predicting next year's mayoral race. He's my favorite to win the mayor's office. There are a number of serious candidates running. Judging by how he's run the secretary of state's office, he could probably handle being mayor of Chicago.

It's amazing that I'm saying this. Giannoulias served one term as state treasurer, tried to run for Barack Obama's old Senate seat, and narrowly lost to Republican Mark Kirk in 2010. He spent a little time in the wilderness until running for IL Secretary of State.

Everyday Illinoisans have to go to the Secretary of State to renew driver's licenses and vehicle license plates. There are other functions, but we go to them for our driver's licenses especially.

My prediction for Illinois: Pritzker gets his third term and all the executive offices will be swept by Democrats. Alexi will get another term as Secretary of State and will immediately go into campaign mode again for Mayor of Chicago. We need someone capable and competent in office there for sure.

The main thing is the opposition party of this state will continue to struggle. They have another four years to get it together.

Not a Joke to Him.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 02:19:30 -0500

The Free Press ran a piece on a Michigan man who got filmed while he was stocking frozen pizzas. The clip is the kind of thing that usually dies as content. This one did not.

Walt Z works direct-store delivery for Red Baron. He was in a grocery store in the White Lake area, restocking the freezer, when someone asked him the time. He pulled out his phone. The person filming played an Apple Pay sound and told him $10 had just been taken. Then $20. The account was @thea.ctiveworld. It is gone now.

Walt did not treat it as a bit. He said he was already an hour late getting home. Four kids. Mortgage. Up at 5 a.m. for ten more stores. “It’s not a joke to me.” “My life is hard enough as it is.” The company later said the incident itself happened in August. The video is what went around this week.

People watched it and started a GoFundMe. Luke Oakenshield set it up. As of early Saturday it had reached $655,521 from more than 18,000 donations, with the goal at $700,000. GoFundMe itself noted the campaign nearing $600,000 on Friday. Walt posted that he is blown away and that his family is doing well. He is keeping the full name private. His wife has already turned down media requests. He is thinking about talking later, only with people who will treat the family carefully.

Red Baron posted on X that employee-of-the-month nominations are closed. “He’s still here. He’s got a fan club. Including us.” The parent company confirmed they checked on him after the August incident and that he remains employed.

Glenn Beck watched the same clip and got emotional. The general idea is that the person filming was nothing more than a parasite treating other people as content. Walt was already spending long hours doing the job. This time the prankster picked the wrong man. [VIDEO]

The original clip is gone. Copies are still circulating. The man who was late getting home is still working. The people who filmed him are not.

Multiculturalism Says No Rank

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 12:33:37 -0500

A short clip from John Anderson’s conversation with Melanie Phillips draws a line between ordinary respect for other people and the doctrine that treats every culture as interchangeable. Phillips is a British journalist and commentator who has written for The Guardian, The Observer, and The Times, and now contributes to The Jerusalem Post and The Jewish Chronicle. She has long argued that the West has lost confidence in its own principles.

The full interview, on antisemitism and the West’s self-doubt, is here: [VIDEO]

Phillips argues that multiculturalism is commonly mistaken for simple courtesy toward difference. What the doctrine actually asserts, she says, is that no culture is morally or intellectually superior to any other. Once that claim is accepted, Western principles—democracy, one law for all, free expression, equality for women—cannot be defended as preferable. The result is not enrichment through food or custom but a society that has ruled its own standards out of bounds. That, in her telling, is how a culture stops being able to protect itself.

The arguments keep coming anyway. Diversity is our strength. In Minnesota, politicians describe the Somali community as part of the fabric. The same phrase gets applied to immigrants from other cultures in general. Those lines treat difference as automatic proof of strength. They leave little room to ask what the difference actually requires of the place that receives it.

A distinction sits underneath. Diversity can mean people of different racial, ethnic, religious, or linguistic backgrounds living in the same society. It does not automatically require that every background carry equal weight in public life. People can still be expected to unite around a common language, a common set of laws, and a common set of expectations about how public institutions work. Multiculturalism, as Phillips describes it, rejects that possibility. It treats the claim that one set of rules is better than another as illegitimate.

One practical version of the distinction is language. A household can speak whatever language it wants at the dinner table. At work, in a government office, or in any setting where the public has to transact, English remains the language. That arrangement preserves room for private difference without treating the public language as optional. Multiculturalism, on Phillips’s account, makes even that modest requirement harder to defend, because defending it requires saying that one culture’s public rules are preferable to another’s.

Many of us take living in the West for granted. That may help explain why so little has been done about immigration from third-world countries into societies that already have a public language, a legal system, and a set of expectations. There was a hope, often left unstated, that the blessings of the place would remake the people who arrived and that they would appreciate what they found. It has not worked that way often enough to keep treating the outcome as a given. Western societies have had a large influence on the world, and we have had it good here. That is not the same as assuming everyone who was not born in the West is glad to be among us, or that the place will remain what it has been if the people who built it stop acting like its rules are theirs.

One Civilization, Many Nations

The Age Is the Question

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 12:47:14 -0500

Bill O’Reilly had immigration attorney Rosanna Berardi on No Spin News to walk through the legal path for denaturalizing Ilhan Omar. The conversation stays on one narrow point: whether Omar was under 18 and unmarried when she derived citizenship through her father.

Watch that segment here: [VIDEO]

Berardi’s reading is straightforward. Derivative citizenship requires the child to be under 18 and unmarried at the moment the parent naturalizes. If Omar was already 18 or older when her father became a citizen in 2000, the derivative status never attached. Criminal charges for false statements would run into the statute of limitations. Civil denaturalization would not. It needs clear and convincing evidence, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

That is the argument the October 12 search was built to test. Agents took phones, a laptop, notebooks, and a passport. Family members, including a sister, have been subpoenaed. The warrant remains sealed.

The older claim that Omar married her brother is still part of the discussion. Sources have told reporters that DNA is being used to test it. An earlier private collection of discarded items produced a lab report claiming a sibling match; that effort came from a consultant later convicted on unrelated charges. No public result from the current investigation has been released, and Omar continues to say she has no knowledge of any relationship. The age question is the one Berardi treats as decisive for the denaturalization path.

The Brazil Extension

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 11:26:22 -0500

On Sunday, incumbent President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva turned a first-round deficit into a runoff win and became the first Brazilian elected president four times. Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, had finished ahead in early October. Three weeks later he was behind by roughly 4.4 million votes. The numbers themselves are not the part that stands out.

Ben Shapiro’s clip, “Brazil Is a Warning for American Elections,” treats the day as a practical lesson in what happens when the people who write the rules also play in the game. He walks through the first-round split, the runoff swing, and the intervention that arrived as the clocks hit five.

Watch Shapiro's clip here: [VIDEO]

Supreme Federal Court Justice Cristiano Zanin ordered polling stations still open to stay open until 7 p.m. Zanin spent years as Lula’s defense lawyer in the Lava Jato cases. He helped overturn the convictions that had kept Lula off the ballot. Lula later appointed him to the court. On election day the Workers’ Party petitioned the court over bus shortages and transportation problems, mainly in places that have long favored the party. Flávio’s side had asked for time as well, citing rain in other states. Zanin’s order applied nationwide to stations that had not already closed. Many had. Brazilian outlets later counted roughly 34,000 votes cast after the original deadline—small next to the final margin, and not the point Shapiro is making.

The clip’s argument is not that the count was fabricated. It is that the procedure itself looked biased: a late change, ordered by a justice with a direct professional history with one of the candidates, applied after large parts of the country had already shut down. Shapiro sets the stolen-election question aside and still calls the arrangement terrifying. He ties it to the American argument that the side which controls the institutions will rewrite the rules once it has the chance.

The internal records of the Brazilian buses and the precise regional breakdown of the late votes are not in view here. What stands out is the pattern the video keeps returning to. A man who once represented the candidate in court, who helped restore his eligibility, and who sits on the highest court, is the one who extended the day. The margin was large. The institutional relationship was not hidden. Whether that relationship changed the outcome is a separate question from whether the process looked like one side’s former lawyer still holding the pen.

The Unions Run This Place

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 11:39:46 -0500

The clip that stopped me was not the tax plan. It was the line about the unions.

Dave Rubin had Steve Hilton on today. Hilton is the Republican nominee for California governor, running against Xavier Becerra. Hilton is the former Fox host and, before that, the man who helped shape David Cameron’s early years in Downing Street. He has lived in California since 2012.

Watch the interview here: [VIDEO]

Hilton said he tried to put a housing initiative on the ballot. He needed roughly ten million dollars and never raised it. When he asked a Democratic legislator for support, the answer he got was that the unions run the place. That, Hilton says, is the moment he decided to run for governor instead of trying to work around the legislature.

He then ran through the rest of the list. First $150,000 of income free of state tax. Three-dollar gas. Seventy-three-dollar vehicle registration. Fire the ideologues on the state education board. Cooperate with federal immigration authorities on criminal cases despite the sanctuary statute. Make the election “too big to rig” by matching Democratic ballot-harvesting with Republican turnout.

Homelessness gets its own stretch, around the thirteen-minute mark. Hilton calls it a scandal after twenty years and tens of billions spent. He describes the streets as misery, garbage, filth, the smell of urine and feces, a complete feeling of deterioration. Then he draws the comparison that sticks: you do not see this in Florida. You do not see it this bad even in other states run by Democrats. You do not see it this way in New York. He says he will end mass homelessness by the end of his first year in office, as proof that government can still function.

Around the 21-minute mark they turn to the odds. I have written before that many on the right do not think Hilton can win this. Hilton does not claim otherwise. He notes the roughly two-to-one Democratic registration advantage and the usual 60/40 vote split in the state. Institutional polls—Public Policy Institute of California, Berkeley, Emerson—have the race inside six or seven points now, down from earlier 20- to 25-point leads. He mentions ballot-initiative polling that looks tighter, and lifelong Democrats who have told him privately they are switching. He calls it a slim chance, the kind that requires higher-than-usual Republican turnout, and says it is still worth fighting. Right after that he talks about his alliance with Spencer Pratt, whose team has been working on the campaign’s social media and “Just Try It” ads.

None of that is new if you have followed the race. What is new, at least to me, is hearing a candidate say the quiet admission is what pushed him into the race rather than the other way around. Whether the numbers he cites, or the homelessness comparison he draws, change anything in a state that has been under one-party Democratic control for sixteen years is a separate question. The admission itself is on the record now.

The Glass Wall

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 01:31:48 -0500

The only piece of the Root interview I had seen was the short one where El-Sayed tries to explain that Mike Rogers is an NPC.

He says the term, then has to define it. Non-playing character. Someone who just goes along with the program. The clip is brief. The explanation takes longer than the insult. That was the only part I had watched.

The rest of the interview is longer. In it he talks about Black voters in Detroit.

He tells Ashley Allison that too many Black Detroiters have had bad experiences with “somebody who looks like me.” Then he describes the glass wall: the party store, the gas station, the distance that is already set before he speaks.

Here's a short clip of the exchange here: [VIDEO]

In the primary he carried the state. He did not carry Detroit. He was outspent. He says the money was aimed at the connection. The connection still needed work.

Current polls put Black support for him in the mid-to-high 60s. Democratic Senate preference in the same surveys sits closer to the low 80s. The gap is the softness. Soft enough that a Republican opening a field office in Detroit is worth noting. Soft enough that he is still explaining the wall in October.

He lists three things Black voters can hold him to: maternal mortality, capital in Black neighborhoods, school funding that still follows old lines. Those are concrete. The glass wall is the part that does not fit on the list.

Rogers is not going to win Detroit. He needs the margin of people who stay home, or the margin of people who decide the name and the face still matter. El-Sayed is the one who named the wall. He is also the one who has to decide whether talking about it in a D.C. interview moves anyone on the other side of it.

Here's the full interview: [VIDEO]

Stratton v. Tracy: It Went as Expected

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:03:36 -0500

They met once. It went the way I expected.

Watch the full forum here: [VIDEO]

Brandis Friedman moderated the only joint appearance of the general election. One hour from the WTTW studios. Early voting was already underway. This was the last scheduled chance for voters to see Juliana Stratton and Don Tracy answer the same questions in the same room.

Tracy called Stratton a socialist who wants to fund unaffordable programs. Stratton tied Tracy to Trump and blamed the Iran war plus tariffs for higher costs on rent, gas, groceries, and healthcare.

On immigration she called ICE Trump’s private police force and said she would abolish the agency. Tracy called the Chicago raids ugly and chaotic but blamed sanctuary policies and the refusal of state and local officials to cooperate.

She wants the federal minimum wage at $25 an hour. He called that a death sentence for small businesses. She pointed to the Illinois raise to $15 under Pritzker as proof it works.

She said she would not vote to fund the war in Iran. He said it was worth it if it stopped Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

She pushed Medicare for All so no one has to choose between a doctor and rent. He called it a $30–50 trillion government takeover of a system that already works.

He defended cuts to SNAP: there is dignity in work. He would welcome a Trump endorsement if offered.

The race is the first open Illinois Senate seat in decades. Stratton is the lieutenant governor. Tracy is a Springfield attorney and the former state party chair. Polling has shown a double-digit lead for the Democrat. The last Republican to win a U.S. Senate race in Illinois was Mark Kirk in 2010.

I will add more once I sit with it.

The Deterrence Message

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 13:04:10 -0500

I keep noticing when the stated goal of an investigation is not only the case itself but the calculation the next person is supposed to make before taking the job.

On Monday mornings PBD Podcast the panel discussed this cut of Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin speaking at the University of Chicago on October 13. It was a live recording of Vox’s America, Actually podcast with Astead Herndon.

Watch the PBD Podcast clip here: [VIDEO]

She was asked how Congress reasserts itself as a check if Democrats regain the majority. She talked about signature cases, not just the president but the people who enabled him. The people around him do not have the same immunity he does.

Then she said she wants young people coming out of school to ask whether working for the Trump administration is buying themselves a ton of problems they do not want, and to avoid participating. She wants that deterrence message sent.

The clip spread. Trump called her a lowlife who is ruining her state. She later said the point was accountability for corruption and lawbreaking, not targeting people for their politics, and that the outrage was manufactured. The full exchange is on the Vox podcast.

The full exchange is on the Vox podcast: Elissa Slotkin says it’s time for new faces | America, Actually

What I keep turning over is the part she named out loud: the deterrence. Not only the case, but the signal meant for the graduate still deciding whether to take the job.

Stratton v. Tracy: Side by Side, Finally

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 01:23:03 -0500

I almost missed this. Saw it on Capitol Fax this evening. The main thing is that the candidates for Dick Durbin’s open U.S. Senate seat are set to debate on Tuesday.

Tonight, October 20, 2026, at 8 p.m. on WTTW, Chicago Tonight anchor Brandis Friedman moderates the only joint appearance of the general election between Democrat Juliana Stratton and Republican Don Tracy. It runs one hour from the WTTW studios on the North Side, with a studio audience. The forum airs live on WTTW and streams on the PBS app, wttw.com, Facebook, and YouTube. Rebroadcasts follow later in the week.

Credit: WTTW

Early voting in Illinois started September 24. This is the last scheduled chance for voters to see the two major-party nominees for Dick Durbin’s open seat answer the same questions in the same room. Tracy accepted invitations from multiple outlets and groups earlier in the cycle. Stratton’s campaign accepted this one.

I wrote about the race in September. Cook looks settled. The collars are the question. The post is here: Illinois Looks Settled.

American Center Party candidate Whitfield Harrington is on the ballot but was not invited. WTTW’s published standards require a candidate to show at least 15 percent in a post-primary public poll (plus other criteria) to appear.

The race is the first open Illinois Senate seat in decades. Stratton is the lieutenant governor and the Democratic nominee after a competitive primary. Tracy is a Springfield attorney and the former state party chair. Polling has shown a double-digit lead for the Democrat. The last Republican to win a U.S. Senate race in Illinois was Mark Kirk in 2010. The forum is the public record of what they chose to say when the clock ran out.

Watch on WTTW at 8 p.m. or stream it from their site. When it’s uploaded to YouTube it will be shared here, and like I did with the governor’s forum, offer my own take once I watch it.

Europe Burned Over the Weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 12:42:23 -0500

I haven't watched it yet. Ben Shapiro on the France and Italy riots that blew up over the weekend after a month of school protests: the crowds aren't there for better schools or lower prices. He says they are there to break the cities.

Watch Shapiro's recent podcast here: VIDEO

I put this on because the title was sitting there. The school protests that fed the weekend’s riots started about a month ago—teachers striking and students blockading a lycée in Créteil over teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms, and run-down buildings. It spread, with repeated marches and closures through early October. The large-scale violence (Limoges town hall torched, shops looted, thousands arrested) broke out Saturday when those actions joined a planned cost-of-living day with unions and former Yellow Vests.

The same weekend the violence crossed into Italy. Cost-of-living marches in northern cities—Milan, Turin, Bologna, Bergamo—drew thousands and then frayed at the edges. In Milan the trouble centered on Piazza Duomo and the Galleria: masked groups threw stones and fireworks at police, looted shops, set bins alight, and forced officers back with tear gas and water cannons before a second night of the same. Hundreds were detained across the two days, most of them young, many of them minors. Meloni said demonstrating is a right and setting cities ablaze is not; she called an emergency meeting for Monday and told the opposition any hesitation in condemning it would look like justification. The Italian numbers were smaller than France’s, but the pictures were of the same kind of night.

Ben Shapiro is talking about the riots that have been running through French and Italian cities—Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Limoges, Milan, Turin. Historic buildings torched, stores looted, cars burned, police and firefighters attacked, Palestinian flags and keffiyehs everywhere. The official framing is students and unions out for better schools, more classrooms, and relief from the cost of living. Shapiro says look at the composition of the crowds, who is cheering them, and the numbers on who has arrived in those countries over the last forty years. He treats it as a red-green alliance—communists, radical Muslims, and third-worldists—united in hatred of the West and trying to wreck the place rather than negotiate a policy. He points to the already-high welfare spending (France at 31 percent of GDP), the demographic shifts, the preference among younger French Muslims for Sharia over French law, Mélenchon’s encouragement, and the old Sartre introduction to Fanon about killing a European. The American warning is that importing the third world without assimilation turns the place into the third world. I haven’t sat through the whole episode, so this is just the shape of the argument.

When Shapiro says the riots are meant to break the cities, he is not claiming the official organizers handed out maps for arson. He is saying the violence is not a side effect of a negotiation over teacher shortages or fuel prices. The targets—town halls that survived wars, tourist offices, stores, police—are the ordinary furniture of the place, and the people doing the breaking are not, in his reading, the parents who want more classrooms. He treats the Palestinian flags, the keffiyehs, the communist cheers, and the demographic numbers as evidence that a portion of the crowd has already decided the existing city is the enemy, not a project to improve. The “break the cities” line is his way of saying the destruction is the point for that portion, not a tactic to win a budget fight.

The Wheelchair She Named

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 15:00:00 -0500

New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill was on MSDNC (or whatever the network calls itself after decoupling from NBC News) talking about the planned military firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan. She said this:

"The thing that just keeps breaking my heart: imagine the 20-year-old, maybe the 18-year-old that stepped up to serve, that gets orders and says, you’re going to go shoot this guy who’s in a wheelchair."

Michael Steele nodded. Steele is a Republican, and a never-Trumper, though that is secondary. The stare looked intense. I wanted to believe he had already checked out by the time she finished.

NJ Gov. Mikie Sherrill on the execution of Nidal Hasan: "The thing that just keeps breaking my heart: imagine the 20-year-old, maybe the 18-year-old that stepped up to serve, that gets orders and says, you’re going to go shoot this guy who’s in a wheelchair." https://t.co/6WdVnDjvTt
— Ezydu (@ezradulis) October 17, 2026

Hasan is the Army psychiatrist who walked into the readiness processing center at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009, shouted “Allahu akbar,” and opened fire. Thirteen people were killed. More than thirty were wounded. He has been paralyzed from the waist down since the police shot him to stop the attack. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 2013. The appellate process finished. President Trump approved the sentence this month. The Army set December 3 at Fort Hood. There was discussion of livestreaming his execution; that part was walked back.

One of the thirteen was Private Francheska Velez, 21, from Chicago. She had just returned from Iraq. She was pregnant. Witnesses heard her crying “My baby! My baby!” as she was shot. The unborn child died with her.

h/t Newsalert

Sherrill is a Navy veteran. In her written statement she said Hasan killed thirteen innocent soldiers and deserves to be brought to justice. The public spectacle, she argued, runs against the values she took an oath to protect. What she said keeps her up at night is the detail of soldiers to the firing squad—the psychological burden, the blanks some rifles traditionally carried, the young person who feels bound to follow the order.

On the air she narrowed it further. The thing that keeps breaking her heart is the image of the 20-year-old, or the 18-year-old, who stepped up to serve and then gets told to shoot the man in the wheelchair.

That is the sentence she chose to say out loud.

Earlier: The Sentence Is the Sentence

Blue States Need the Dream

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 11:30:00 -0500

You may have seen my two recent posts on the Illinois gubernatorial race. One asked whether the only televised forum between Governor Pritzker and Darren Bailey would move anyone who hasn’t already voted. The other was about what a solid opposition actually looks like in a state that has grown used to one-party rule. My point in covering it is simple: Illinois needs an opposition party that can win. As PBD has said about candidates running for president, the opposition still has to sell the dream.

California is another state in the same position. Steve Hilton finished second in the top-two primary and is the Republican nominee against Xavier Becerra. He has spent months making the case that the state can be more affordable and better governed. Polls still show him trailing by a wide margin. The election is unlikely to go his way.

Now we arrive at New York. Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul is running for another term against Republican Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman. If I am reading people like Bill O’Reilly correctly, Blakeman has a realistic shot at knocking off the incumbent.

Here are some highlights via NY Post: [VIDEO]

The exchanges are mostly about utility bills, sanctuary policies, spending on migrants, and Hochul’s attempts to tie Blakeman to President Trump. Blakeman’s side of the argument is that she has been governor for five years and the results are hers. Hochul’s side is that the alternative is Trump-style leadership.

I have not watched the full debate yet. The New York Post’s panel of experts split on who won it. Michael Goodwin wrote that Blakeman came prepared and put her on defense. Most public polls still show Hochul ahead by single digits to the low teens. She also has a large cash advantage.

Whether Blakeman can close the gap is the question the next three weeks will answer. The larger point is the same one I keep coming back to with Illinois and California. In states that have been blue for a long time, the opposition does not only need a record of problems to point at. It still has to sell something better.

Hochul has never struck me as particularly popular. She became governor in 2021 when Andrew Cuomo resigned. She then won a full term in 2022 against Lee Zeldin by roughly six points—the closest race for NY Governor in decades.

The Playbook Has Not Changed

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 00:18:58 -0500

I keep seeing the same sequence described in different places. Universities first. Then the unions. Then their own outlets. Then the cities. The people who notice it early get called alarmists. By the time the pattern is obvious, the people who called it a pattern are already being told they imagined the order.

Matt Walsh put the Russian version of that sequence on YouTube this week. The episode is from his Real History series and is now free at the link: [VIDEO]

Walsh’s chapters run from academia in the 1890s, through the crises the Bolsheviks refused to let pass unused, the rise of left-wing violence, the seizure itself, the incompetent opposition that let it happen, an apathetic population, and then America today.

How did the Bolsheviks take power?

They did not win an election. In the fall of 1917 they organized through the Petrograd Soviet’s Military Revolutionary Committee, seized the telegraph, the railway stations, the banks, the bridges, and the post offices, then arrested the remaining ministers of the Provisional Government inside the Winter Palace. The operation in Petrograd was nearly bloodless. Lenin had returned from exile with German help; Trotsky handled the military side. They announced the transfer of power to the soviets and immediately formed their own Council of People’s Commissars. When the Constituent Assembly elections later showed them with roughly a quarter of the vote, they dissolved the assembly. The slogan was “All power to the Soviets.” The result was power to the Bolsheviks. That sequence is not in serious dispute.

From whom did they take power?

Not directly from the Tsar. Nicholas II had already abdicated in March after the February Revolution. Power had passed to a Provisional Government—first under Prince Lvov, then under Alexander Kerensky—that shared an uneasy dual authority with the Petrograd Soviet. The Bolsheviks took it from that Provisional Government. Kerensky’s forces were too thin and too late; he fled.

How did they fare in power?

They held it. The Civil War followed. The Cheka and the Red Terror began almost immediately. War Communism, grain requisitions, and the resulting famine killed millions. The Romanovs were executed in 1918. The regime lasted until 1991. The later body count does not change the fact that the opening moves met little organized resistance.

Comparisons to 2020

Walsh’s final chapter treats 2020 as the clearest recent American exhibit of the same sequence. Academia as the long incubator. A crisis that was not allowed to remain limited. A visible rise in political violence that large institutions declined to name or contain. An opposition that looked decisive on paper and hesitant in practice. A population that, in many places, treated the disorder as either justified or not their problem.

That reading is solid on the institutional order and the reluctance to confront actors already inside the institutions. It is open to attack where it treats the resemblance as continuity of project. There was no armed seizure of the capital, no dissolution of an elected assembly, no Cheka, and no transfer of sovereign power to a single party. Courts continued to operate. An election was held. Private property and competitive parties remained. The weakest stretch is the leap from “this is how they took Petrograd” to “this is what is happening now.” The first half can be checked against the record of October–November 1917. The second half depends on the viewer accepting that resemblance of tactics equals continuity of outcome. Once that acceptance is withheld, the video becomes a strong account of one revolution and a thinner brief about the present.