Unfolding in real time: Donald Trump’s relentless attack on liberal norms, principles, the rule of law and election integrity. With each new step, Fox News repeats and reinforces Trump’s assertions and actions, and many people will discard their past principles and positions with breathtaking speed and not look back. The key question: despite some pushback is Trump succeeding? For those opposing Trump is it one step forward then three steps back?

The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol:

It’s sometimes painful, but surely important to see things as they really are. The last couple of weeks in American politics have been helpful in that respect. They’ve made it harder to miss seeing the stunning depth and breadth of the Trump administration’s illiberalism.

Actually, “illiberalism” is too mild. As Robert Kagan has explained, what we’re seeing is not so much illiberalism as anti-liberalism. It’s not that Trumpists don’t quite understand the case for liberalism, or that they’ve unwittingly deviated from liberal norms or principles. It’s a frontal assault on liberalism in the broad sense of the word—on democracy, on the rule of law, on civil and political liberties, on limited government, on pluralism, on honesty and decency. That assault has been purposeful. It now spreads across the entire Trump administration and permeates its ranks. For all of Trump’s erraticness and unpredictability, for all of his administration’s misfires and clownishness and zigs and zags, Trumpism has an animating spirit, and the Trump administration has a coherent project.

And:

As Orwell famously wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” The speech will claim to be based on new “intelligence” assembled by Bill Pulte, Trump’s current acting director of national intelligence. And it’s part of a series of claims Trump has been making of widespread rigging of elections in the United States—not just of the 2020 contest. All of this is, in turn, undergirds a broad-based effort by his administration to lay the groundwork for an attempt to subvert free and fair elections in 2026 and especially in 2028, and if necessary for not abiding by the results.

It was also yesterday that Trump reversed the announcement by his Department of Homeland Security that it would suspend most vehicle stops in light of the killings of innocent men by government agents within the last week. Trump was caught unaware by the decision, and immediately overturned it. “We CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” the president wrote. Trump cares more about maintaining the all-out assault on immigrants than even pretending to make obviously reasonable reforms. Meanwhile, an unprecedented number of individuals are not just being killed on the streets by ICE but are dying in ICE’s custody.

The more one looks at the mass deportation agenda and the fervor of its embrace by Trump and Trumpists, the more one is reminded of Umberto Eco’s observation in his great 1995 essay, “Ur-Fascism”:

Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism….

…And one can easily look beyond DOJ and ODNI and DHS for evidence of the assault on liberal norms and principles. From the weightiest matters, such as Trump’s renewed threat to commit possible war crimes by targeting civilian infrastructure in Iran, to the more symbolic ones, like the attempt to reshape the history told in our national parks and the Smithsonian, the assault on liberalism is a whole-of-government effort.

Dare one apply to that project Eco’s term, Ur-Fascism? It can sound extreme or overwrought. But read Eco’s essay. And look at the Trump administration, with its assortment of diligent apparatchiks, crazed fanatics, eager enablers, slimy opportunists, and, yes, performative clowns pushing more or less in the same direction. Look at the spirit of the political movement that impels it. This is in fact what many fascist and proto-fascist governments and movements have looked like. Trumpism looks and sounds and behaves like ur-fascism. It can be unpleasant to see things for what they are. But it’s important to do so.

ID 132344517 | Donald Trump ©
Ginettigino | Dreamstime.com

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There’s an old saying that if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

Lindsey Graham died scratching.

I’m not celebrating Graham’s passing – I’ll leave that to the lefty ghouls on social media – but nor will I whitewash his detestable sins just because he’s gone. The D.C. establishment is predictably busy conferring retroactive sainthood, which makes it all the more imperative that the sad and tragic truth be told.

Every aspiring fascist needs a simpering flunky. Donald Trump, with his uncanny ability to exploit human weakness, got his man.

Trump correctly intuited Graham would sacrifice everything – integrity, credibility, character, the semblance of a conscience – just to be in the room where it happened. Even if the room was overrun by a convicted felon who represented everything that Lindsey, once upon a time, claimed to loathe.

Ten long years ago, Lindsey was in relentlessly high dudgeon about the lowlife. He assailed Trump as “a nutjob,” as “a complete idiot,” as a “jackass,” as “crazy,” as “a race-baiting xenophobic bigot,” as “a demagogue of the highest order.” He said, “You know how to make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.”

He also denounced Trump as “a kook” who was “unfit for office.” And yet, one year later, after Trump’s first electoral win, Lindsey effectuated a gymnastic twist worthy of the Olympics: “What concerns me about the American press is this endless, endless attempt to label the guy some kind of kook not fit to be president.”

Graham’s pathetic subservience was endless – to the point where he trekked to Georgia at Trump’s command in December 2020 to baselessly contest Joe Biden’s statewide victory, pressuring state election officials (without success) to throw out some of the legal ballots. And despite his initial anger about the Jan. 6 desecration of the Capitol by MAGA goons, he predictably voted to acquit his alpha dog in the subsequent impeachment trial.

Look again at Lindsey’s string of scathing 2016 remarks, and the conclusion is inescapable: He knew perfectly well who and what Trump was, but he chose to play the toady and reverse-engineer his rhetoric. “Mr. President,” he said in 2024, “you’re not far behind God.”

You surely know for years Lindsey played “wingman” (his word) to John McCain, a heavy hitter and inveterate Trump foe. You may not know, however, that after Barack Obama ascended to the White House in 2008, Lindsey morphed into a groupie. He praised Obama as “a good role model” and “an American just as much as anyone else.” He took heat from right-wingers who called him “Obama Lite” and “Flimsy Graham.” Tommy Vietor, an Obama aide, later tweeted, “When Obama first took office, (Lindsey) lived in Rahm Emanuel’s office,” referring to Obama’s first chief of staff. “He has no core beliefs. He just drifts in the political wind.”

Obama, McCain, Trump…What’s the difference. Lindsey was remarkably nimble-footed. A Republican operative told me privately, “He started drifting toward Trump when McCain got sick.”

Lindsey saw nothing wrong with shifting his loyalty. He told a reporter in 2019 that his main motivation was “to try to be relevant.” And if that meant sucking up to the grifter who loved to trash McCain’s memory, hey, no problem because everything was grist for sacrifice at the relevance altar. Lindsey admitted to a reporter he didn’t like Trump’s trashing of McCain, “ but when we play golf, it’s fun.”

Fun for him, yes. Not fun for the Americans who’ve been hurt by his subservience to evil – starting with the millions of women who’ve now been denied autonomy over their own bodies, thanks in part to Lindsey’s vocal championing of Brett Kavanaugh, at Trump’s behest, for the U.S. Supreme Court. There are also millions of needy people who will lose Medicaid coverage and food assistance thanks to the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” that Lindsey, at Trump’s behest, steered through the Senate.

Lindsey chose to do all this, chose to serve his MAGA master – in defiance of sage advice that his erstwhile hero McCain co-authored in a book: “It is your character, and your character alone, that will make your life happy or unhappy. That is all that really passes for destiny. And you choose it. No one else can give it to you or deny it to you. No rival can steal it from you. And no friend can give it to you. Others can encourage you to make the right choices or discourage you. But you choose.”

So excuse me for failing to mourn the man. I’m tempted to joke that he died from an overdose of Trump’s shoe polish, and I suppose that’s in bad taste. But sucking up to the enemy within was infinitely worse.

Copyright 2026 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com

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In December 2022, I was frantically trying to figure out how to incorporate Chat GPT into my undergraduate technical communication class for engineering students while my more normal friends were blithely unaware of the transformation on the horizon.

A little over two years later, President Donald Trump would announce the Stargate project, a $500 billion public-private AI infrastructure initiative. Its first data center*, with its own power generation, would be built in rural Texas.

Flash forward to July 2026. More than a half million Nashville citizens are objecting to a proposed data center adjacent to the Nashville Zoo. In Utah, Republicans rejected the re-election campaign of state Senate President J. Stuart Adams over his fast-tracking permission for a 40,000-acre hyperscale data center; they also rejected two county commissioners. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has reversed his joy at the state being the “epicenter” of AI infrastructure with the first Stargate project; now he wants to regulate data center growth.

What happened?

AI happened. As of May 20, 2026, the U.S. had 4,286 data centers; there were 11,400 active data centers worldwide. But these data centers are, in the main, “small” — about 100,000 square feet. Hyperscale data centers – the ones citizens are objecting to – can easily exceed 1,000,000 square feet. The reason for the size? Unimaginable growth in AI.

AI demand for computers and electricity is growing at a compounding rate that strains existing infrastructure. According to Energy Policy, “AI electricity demand [is] increasing by 25–35% annually.”

To grasp the scale of investment driving that demand: since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, Microsoft, Meta and Google alone have made a $600 billion capital investment, much of it on data centers. Adjusted for inflation, that exceeds the entire cost of the U.S. interstate highway system, according to The Atlantic. “These are the largest single points of consumption of electricity in history,” Jesse Jenkins, a climate modeler at Princeton, told The Atlantic.

As an example of the mind-numbing size of these hyperscale data centers, let’s look more closely at Utah, where Canadian entrepreneur Kevin O’Leary proposed building a data center on 40,000 acres in a rural part of the state (population of 65,000). How big is that? “roughly the size of two Manhattans or about 2,000 Walmart Supercenters.”

Known as the Stratos Project, its energy requirement (they would build a power plant) is “more than double the energy the entire state of Utah uses in a year.”

In early May, Box Elder County commissioners approved the project after escaping an unhappy, local crowd and voting in a back room. There was no environmental impact statement. The facility would obtain water by “re-direct[ing] an existing agricultural water right for industrial use.” That water rights application drew almost 4,000 comments asking for it to be rejected.

A statewide protest led the Governor, via executive order in May, to immediately set a “higher bar for data center development in Utah.” Last month, Stratos announced it would cut the project in half, and it is still moving forward.

Unfortunately, permissive permitting and state competition for business investment have already combined to increase the price of electricity for existing consumers.

The Union of Concerned Scientists found that in 2024, $4.3 billion in electrical utility costs associated with data centers were passed on to consumers in Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. This is not new power generation. This is how much it cost to simply connect new data centers to the existing power grid.

Local fights are proliferating just as fast as project applications. For example in March, a proposed data center in Appomattox County, Virginia, sparked local opposition. Avio, a Connecticut tech company, wants to build “Project Hercules,” a 452-acre, $3 billion center. Dominion Energy would be tasked with delivering 250 megawatts of electricity and the infrastructure to support it. One megawatt of energy can power 200-670 homes on average.

In northeastern Pennsylvania, Archbald Borough (population 7,000) is “facing the most data center campus proposals of any municipality” in the Commonwealth. The project consists of six data center campuses on acreage that is “slightly smaller than Manhattan” or equivalent to 51 Walmart Supercenters. According to the Washington Post, “most of the seven-person Archbald Borough Council has resigned” due to local pushback, which emphasized power, water and nature (clearcutting trees).

How much power do they use?

By 2028, data centers could consume up to 12% of total electricity in the United States, up from 4.4% in 2023… the equivalent of adding eight New York City’s [sic] to the country.

Hyperscale data centers may generate their own power. Just ask the folks in Mississippi about the high-pitched noise and air pollution associated with massive methane gas turbines sending electricity to Colossus AI data centers in Memphis, which supports Elon Musk properties. The Southern Environmental Law Center has sued the Mississippi plant for Clean Air Act violations. Citizens have also joined together in a class action lawsuit against Elon Musk’s xAI and SpaceX.

Then there’s the demand on the water supply and resultant increases in water bills. In fact, voters polled recently ranked water issues and electric bills as a tie in their list of concerns about hyperscale data centers. Sticking with Colossus AI, The Atlantic reports that according to public records, “the address for Colossus used more than 11 million gallons in September alone, as much as 150 homes use in an entire year.”

Most data centers use water-based, evaporative cooling systems, drawing their supply from local municipalities; in other words, they use potable water. Unlike typical municipal water use, which is recycled through wastewater treatment plants back into the local ecosystem, evaporated water is simply gone — lost to the water cycle entirely.

According to a University of Georgia report, “Larger data centers can each use up to 5 million gallons per day, or about 1.8 billion gallons annually, a usage equivalent to a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people.” Thus citizens reasonably worry about water-use restrictions, “especially during a drought.”

Some large data centers tap into the groundwater with their own wells or through a municipal well. Increased pumping can lower the aquifer groundwater levels, requiring retrofitting of most or all wells in the region. This is particularly worrisome in rural areas where homes have wells and septic systems, not municipal water and sewer, and farms have well-based irrigation systems.

Others pull their water from rivers, lakes or reservoirs, either directly or via municipal sources. These sources, too, are subject to drought restrictions and can yield stress on the aquatic ecosystem. Some farms irrigate their crops using surface water, generating yet another conflict when the resource is stressed.

A rapid approval process can also fail to account for the full impact on state budgets. For example, Georgia is expected to lose $2.5 billion in fiscal 2026 due to data center tax breaks. There are 32 states with tax incentives on a silver platter that could find themselves in a similar shortfall. These tax breaks come despite the paucity of long-term jobs: approximately 150 per data center on average although a large complex like Archbald (six data centers) might employ as many as 900 people.

Taken together, these factors have produced a deeply skeptical public.

There are multiple externalities associated with large data centers. The breadth of these concerns has produced some strange bedfellows. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Gov. Ron DeSantis are allies in the fight against uncontrolled data center growth. Sen. Sanders has introduced a bill, along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), to impose a national moratorium on data center permitting. Gov. DeSantis signed a bill protecting Florida consumers from shouldering the burden of increased electrical bills associated with hyperscale data centers.

One externality that deserves attention is their reliance on fossil fuels as the foundation of their energy generation. In Louisiana, there are plans for three natural gas plants that would be “among the largest in this hemisphere” when complete. The client? Meta.

The International Energy Agency estimates that “data-center emissions could more than double by 2030—becoming one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gases in the world.”

It’s not just the scale of the data centers that has escalated. It’s the number of applications. And the opposition. “Data center opponents have blocked or delayed projects worth nearly $130 billion in 2026,” according to NBC News. That represents 75 projects blocked in the first quarter; that’s as many as were blocked in calendar 2025. Most have not generated national news reports.

Rural America is the new frontier for data center development. According to the Pew Research Center, “87% of existing data centers are in urban areas, but 67% of planned data centers are in rural ones.”

What we are seeing appears to be more than a flash in the pan of opposition.

There are opposition groups in 49 states, twice as many as last year. One message could be: don’t try to build this behind our backs, given the historic lack of transparency.

Turning back to Utah as an example of persistence, residents in rural Box Elder County are appealing a ruling that they cannot put a resolution on the November ballot opposing the Stratos Project.

Then there’s Gov. Abbott of Texas this month:

“Any AI data [center] even thinking about coming here, they got to bring their own money, bring their own power, reuse their own water, and do it in a way that reduces the cost of electricity for residents across our state,” Abbott said. “We must prohibit them from building AI data centers in rural Texas neighborhoods, and we must eliminate the tax break they are getting.”

An opposition movement that began in zoning board meetings and online petitions has become something more durable: a bipartisan political force reshaping elections, state budgets and the AI regulatory landscape. The federal government is all in, just like Silicon Valley. The rest of the country is not and has drawn a line to protect everyone’s backyards.

There’s one more salient question that seems ignored by media, D.C. and Silicon Valley. What if the computational infrastructure is almost obsolete?

For example, in 2026 alone, companies have committed $650 billion to classical AI computing; that is, data centers built on the same computational architecture that has dominated since the 1950s. Meanwhile, peer-reviewed research published in Science suggests classical computing architecture may face fundamental limits. IBM, which quietly announced a $10 billion quantum computing investment in June, has said as much itself.

The critical, yet unasked, question is whether the data centers being rushed through zoning boards today will become stranded assets before they are paid off. Citizens fighting for their water supply, their electric bills and their rural landscapes may be winning battles over infrastructure that the tech industry itself may abandon all too soon.

And if history is any guide, communities left holding abandoned infrastructure will bear the cost of cleanup long after the industry has moved on.

*What is a data center? It is a large facility that uses a lot of computer servers to store, process and distribute digital information. Data centers support most of modern life in the U.S.: cloud computing (Google Drive and Microsoft Office); streaming (Netflix and YouTube); AI (ChatGPT and Claude); social media (Facebook and Bluesky); ecommerce (Amazon and eBay); as well as using your smartphone (texts), online banking (transfer funds), health care services (e-check-in) and your favorite e-greeting card service (Blue Mountain and Hallmark).

This first appeared at Substack.

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By Bruce S. Ticker

The Graham Platner implosion should prove to the Jewish community that it can prevail over these arrogant “progressives” who are stomping all over us to build a political empire.

We need to vigorously stand up to the anti-Israel mob before they achieve significant power in America. The effort could be relatively easy because they lack substance, or the “true grit” that is credited to John Wayne’s character in the movie True Grit.

Graham Platner’s world collapsed at 6:30 Monday night once CNN host Jake Tapper heard Platner’s former girlfriend, Jenny Racicot, accuse the Maine U.S. Senate candidate of raping her five years his current run to oust five-term Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins. He was overwhelmingly nominated in the Democratic primary last month to challenge Collins. He swiftly denied Racicot’s accusation on Monday night.
Within an hour of Tapper’s interview, Democratic leaders clamored for Platner to drop out of the race so the state party can replace him on the ballot with someone who is not neck-deep in scandal. Wednesday night, Platner announced that he will remove his name from the ballot by Monday, and state Democrats are required to name a replacement by July 27.

Platner and likeminded Democratic candidates are empty suits who have galvanized voters desperate for better government. They trot out a series of social reforms that they will seek to enact if elected and pay for it by ending military aid to Israel. Many of their followers believe that all Jews must be blamed for the actions of the Israeli government, so harming Jews is a blow against Israel.

They fault Democrats in Congress for neglecting to stand up against President Trump. How can they? Incumbent Democrats are in the minority in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives and therefore have sorely limited power. What have four-term anti-Israel congresswomen like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar accomplished?

If Democrats retake the majority in the House and/or the Senate, are progressives going to take all the credit if Congress does anything positive? If President Trump blocks their efforts, will they accept the blame?

And why are they mixing Israel with these proposals for social change? American Jews can be a useful ally for making social reforms a reality, but candidates like Platner are alienating many Jews with his approach to criticizing Israel.

What is wrong with criticizing Israel? Nothing. The problem is their way of doing it.

They limit their criticism to Israel and ignore the acts of other parties in the Middle East. It was at best rare for anti-Israel candidates to demand that Hamas release the Israeli hostages they kidnapped from southern Israel in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. No criticism of Iran, which transported weapons to Hamas. Silence over Egypt’s refusal to admit most Gazans into its country. Nor of Turkey, another enabler of terrorists in Gaza. What are Jews supposed to think?

They also distort the issues when they attack Israel by lying or leaving out relevant details. One critic accused Israel of expelling 80 percent of the Arab refugees during the 1948 war. It was probably the other way around. They conveniently fail to mention that the Arabs invaded Israel and many Arabs left to allow them space to exterminate the Jews.

Let’s not forget – well, how can we? – “Free Palestine” and “Globalize the intifada,” the most common slogans they chant at demonstrations. We recognize those lines as code for destroying Israel, but these people do not clarify what they mean. Free Palestine for what? What is Palestine? Can they define intifada? Does “globalize” mean spreading the war worldwide?

Until now, Americans and citizens of most other countries have failed to challenge them. Few legal systems prosecute them for mid-level crimes, which can lead to severe crimes that they do get prosecuted for. Democrats largely treat them with kid gloves, presumably in hopes that they will vote for the party’s candidates, particularly in presidential elections.

The Jewish community’s silence has been conspicuous. Some of Israel’s critics may well believe that Jews in America and elsewhere are part of a vast conspiracy in league with the Israeli government.

My sense is that diaspora Jews were quiet because of fear and confusion. The present environment of antisemitic harassment has clearly petrified many Jews and they are not sure what to do about it.

The confusion derives from Israeli actions in Gaza that critics call war crimes. I do not understand what the Israeli government is trying to do, and I don’t see how anyone outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his closest advisors can understand it.

Obviously, progressive candidates who won their primaries in Democratic districts are headed for Congress in January, which makes one wonder how we can fight them.

In the lead-up to the November election, their Republican rivals are likely to harshly attack them. Trump has already called them communists, though that does not appear to be true.

These progressives may well be safely ensconced in Congress next year, but we cannot let them relax. The Jewish community can pressure them whenever an important issue arises.

House members will need to run for re-election in two years, and they will be forced to defend their records.

They appear awfully frightful on the surface, but my bet is that most of them cannot justify their work in Congress. We will only find out if we confront them.

Bruce S. Ticker is a Philadelphia-based columnist. This article is republished from San Diego Jewish World which, along with The Moderate Voice, is a member of the San Diego Online News Association.

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The headline: “President of Somaliland visits Israel” isn’t top of the media’s listicles but it is an important piece of the bigger picture.

Back up, let me explain: what we think of as “Somalia” is actually two countries, divided like North and South Korea, oddly mimicking that split dynamic where one country is an utter disaster (North Korea/Somalia) and the other is a prospering, democratic ally of the west (South Korea, Somaliland). That’s a good way of framing it and it is an object lesson in “systems matter”, democracy matters.

Except… in the Horn of Africa’s case the Somaliland good guys are barely recognized by the international community, unlike South Korea.

Non recognition is disastrous, a huge tax. It impacts every aspect of a country’s fortunes: the UN, corporate insurance, trading, contract rights, flight patterns, currency, passports and ease of travel and yet even without broad recognition Somaliland is democratic and has somehow flourished for thirty years.

“Somaliland” was a British colony, “Somalia” an Italian one until the independence of both in 1960. Somaliland was immediately monstered, bombed and colonized by Somalia for three decades.

In 1991 Somaliland gained control over its frontiers after having the stuffing beaten out of them, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dead and a ruined, bombed capital city. The Issak Genocide by the Somali forces bombing their Somaliland neighbors is, unfortunately, rarely remembered as a major crime of last century.

In an impressive middle finger, the Somalilanders propped up a Somali Russian MiG jet they shot down while it was bombing them on a plinth in their capital Hargeisa in a total “boss move”.

After three decades of de facto independence in recent years Somaliland has established diplomatic relations with Taiwan and earlier this year with Israel. They’re playing footsie with their huge Ethiopian neighbor and they’re “in tight” with the Emirates, a nation increasingly shaping that part of the world. And hopefully, imminent American recognition will cascade into other countries rising Somaliland up to deal on equal terms with the rest of the civilized world.

There are two sides to our global reality now: like the Cold War good guys and bad guys.

There’s Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Somalia and Hamas/”Palestine”, in what historian Sir Nial Ferguson calls the “axis of ill will” versus the forces of democracy whose trade, gentle commerce and classical liberal enlightenment values enhance human flourishing. On that side lie the United States, NATO, Israel, and the “first island chain” in East Asia like Taiwan. This is the collective “West” which Somaliland has joined to the anger of their Third World failed state enemies.

In the shadow of Israel and Somaliland establishing full diplomatic relations, Somaliland’s President Abdulrahman Abdullahi had this recent flashy official state visit to Israel.

This new alliance is deeply inspiring because despite being different races, speaking different languages, and crucially Somaliland being Muslim, reasonable people on both sides could come together and, outraging and shocking many, form a real friendship.

Further, in making friends with Israel Somaliland has really irritated the Arab League, the entire Islamosphere and the UN. For a poor, Islamic country to conduct such a wild maneuver as an alliance with the Zionists is a big bet, a sincere vote for civilization which will pay dividends.

It’s worth noting also that, rare for Africa, Somaliland is not a vassal or tributary state of the People’s Republic of China.

Somaliland is poor but stable. They seem to make a lot of pretty edgy but profitable decisions. Consider their currency: a challenge because no international banking organizations recognize the country so their cash is counted in brick sized, rubber band tied stacks. Not good, so the Somalianders skipped ahead to a smart, internet based fintech solution. It is now a fintech center of Africa.

Further, realizing the value of port infrastructure, they enticed the UAE – a preeminent regional player – to build a port in Berbera and a cement factory, both of which are doing well.

Coincidentally all this is at the “Bab al Mandeb,” the Red Sea entrance where the hooligan Houthis of Yemen have been increasing the cost of your Amazon purchases and interrupting freedom of navigation for several years by doing classic Houthi stunts like blowing up other peoples’ ships. For Allah, you see.

Like Singapore, Somaliland is leveraging its position at one of the chokepoints of world trade. Nearby Djibouti has done this but Djibouti is an unreliable ally, a closed almost parody level kleptocracy. Obviously Red Sea commerce is even more important given all the celebrations and excitement in the Persian Gulf these days with the Iranians.

Meanwhile failed state Somalia desperately appeals, on dubious grounds, to the Third World, their new overlords Turkey and the Saudis from “Villa Mogadishu” – the only land they really govern around the capital, or presidential compound sometimes.

The rest of Somalia is two breakaway states Puntland and Jubaland with the rest being a Mad Max post apocalyptic hot chaos of starving people and wild jihadis, home of Islamic terrorist “Al Shabab.” (“The kids” – no kidding). Quietly US forces routinely hammer Islamic terrorists in the mountains.

Though, on balance, Somalia recently signed an alliance with Myanmar, an equally dysfunctional failed dystopic ruin on the other side of the Indian Ocean. Embarrassing.

If you look at Somaliland v Somalia, think North and South Korea. Somaliland (the good one) is desperate for American and thus wider international recognition. Their new friendship with Israel is not just profitable in itself (medicine, water issues which bedevil hot, dry Somaliland) but even if it doesn’t move the needle to wider recognition it is a plus.

If it does and Somaliland’s independence is recognized more widely with international finance, diaspora investment and even things you never think of like ICAO (world airline association), there’s no reason why Somaliland can’t be the richest country in Africa a decade hence.

They have the democracy, property rights and sound judgement necessary to let humans flourish and prosper. The people there have, by ballot, rejected crazy and impoverishing “Third Worldism”, the Russian menace, socialism and political Islamism. And that is …. alright.

joepyrek, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

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It wasn’t a surprise, but it was a bombshell.

On July 6, 2026, Politico published the detailed account of a Maine woman who said she had been sexually assaulted by Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner almost five years ago. Platner called the allegation “categorically untrue,” then said he was “taking the time to reflect on the best path forward.”

Platner had gained the fervent support of progressives in Maine and outside. But he had been dogged by accusations of, variously, racist, misogynist and dishonest behavior – he claimed not to have known the meaning of an SS tattoo on his chest. But his supporters remained behind him.

Soon after the assault allegations appeared, the Platner campaign was in trouble. His early political champion, Sen. Bernie Sanders, took a day to echo what party officials and once-supportive social media stars had almost immediately demanded: that Platner drop out of the campaign. By the evening of July 8, Platner had suspended his campaign.

Politics and legal affairs editor Naomi Schalit spoke with political scientist Nicholas Jacobs, who has followed the campaign and talked with Platner directly in 2025.

An NPR host yesterday opened an interview with a Maine reporter by observing, “A lot going on in your little state.” Maine has two senators, just like other states. Why is this such a high-profile race?

I thought when I moved to Maine in 2019 from Virginia, I was going to the quiet countryside. Politics has been anything but since then. Maine was destined to be in the national spotlight this year because Republican Sen. Susan Collins is up for reelection, running for her sixth consecutive term in office. Every time she is up for reelection, she is viewed as a vulnerable incumbent, if not the most vulnerable incumbent, in the Republican Party. So we were destined to get lots of outside money and outside attention before the whole Platner story even began.

In the past, candidates generally emerged from a pipeline – electoral experience, vetting by the party. They did not emerge out of candidate recruitment by outsiders or party critics. But nationally we’re seeing that kind of insurgent recruitment, including with Platner. Is this a new kind of politics?

Political scientists have been thinking about that question for quite a long time. As far back as the early 1970s they started thinking about how changes to the structure of these party organizations, in particular the rules governing the nomination process, began to produce a different type of candidate. Those changes sat side by side with different types of technologies that I think also increased the likelihood of a candidate-centered campaign.

Now, you could say we’re living in an anti-establishment era, which might mean that voters on the right and the left are more disposed or more likely to favor candidates who are running against the establishment.

As unusual as Graham Platner is, this style of politics is increasingly more common. In 2010, scholars were becoming attuned to something known as the “invisible primary.” That’s where a lot of endorsements among party elites and interest group activists, well before voters had any say in the primary process, meant these insiders had come to some sort of consensus on who the candidate should be.

There’s a flip side of that, which is mirrored in Donald Trump in 2016 and in some of these progressive insurgencies of the past couple of years. Would-be candidates themselves and activist organizations are able to put forward potential contenders for nomination outside of that traditional system where you work your way up through legislative office. That’s clearly what happened with Platner.

In 2025, individuals associated with the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign – now sort of the Bernie Sanders machine – came up to Maine looking for candidates. They found a guy who did an ad against some Norwegian salmon commercial fisheries, realized he was cut straight from central casting, and that’s how we got Graham Platner.

Is there a connection between Platner’s populism and why his deeply engaged supporters weren’t able to look past his obvious problems?

Donald Trump, as a populist candidate, has been able to let scandal after scandal just roll off his shoulders. The left was very critical of Trump supporters forgiving him, to the extent that even Trump himself famously says he can stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue, shoot someone and people will still support him.

There’s an equivalency with Platner, and some of it has to do with a populist style of politics. Platner and Trump really excel, as all populists do, in defining who they’re against, at identifying the enemy, whether it’s immigrants, the deep state, the swamp, the oligarchy or the establishment.

Both Platner and Trump have viewed the national media as an enemy. Every scandal, every attack, every criticism that’s levied at the leader of a populist movement seems to vindicate their idea that there’s some larger force out there trying to take them down. The sexting scandal that broke about a month ago, it was the Platner campaign itself that said this was a hit job, a smear from The New York Times.

There is a sizable mass of individuals in the state, including some elected Democrats, who view this latest set of allegations of sexual assault that Politico reported as a fabricated hit job from the Democratic establishment.

If the critics are the enemy, then Maine’s Democratic Party has a serious problem in terms of who gets to be the next candidate.

Not every Democrat in Maine is ride or die with Platner, nor were they when he did a very impressive job in getting the most votes ever in the Democratic primary last month, after Gov. Janet Mills had suspended her campaign.

The Mills campaign really never mobilized. By early spring here in Maine, when Mills tried to fight back, she ran one set of ads calling out some post that Platner had written diminishing sexual assault, particularly in the military. The left in the state attacked her pretty strongly, saying, “You’re going to weaken our candidate. This isn’t right.”

The fact that a lot of the women who were featured in the ad were Democratic Party stalwarts kind of played into this idea that it was the establishment taking on the insurgency. Several months later, it seems they might have had a point.

Are there lessons from what happened with Platner?

The simple, shallow lesson is this was just bad campaign strategy.

People came in and recruited Platner and just didn’t do enough opposition research. So the next time that they come in and pull somebody out of central casting, they just would want to hire better lawyers to dig up dirt on their own candidate.

But what’s problematic about this is something else.

I sat down with Platner in October 2025. I asked him, “Well, why are you wearing the Scarlet D – for Democrat – around your neck? Why would you do that?

And he said, “The only reason I’m doing it is to get access to Act Blue, so I can raise money.” Act Blue is the Democratic Party’s main fundraising platform.

Editor’s note: The Conversation has reached out to the Platner campaign for a comment and will update this story if it receives one.

So you have this individual who doesn’t want to be a Democrat. He’s openly said he’s not going to vote for the Democratic leadership. He’s an acolyte of Bernie Sanders, who also doesn’t want to call himself a Democrat. What are such individuals able to do? They’re able to take over the Democratic Party.

This is the same type of problem that we saw in 2016: An individual who never really wanted to be a Republican, who was a Democrat for much of his life, bursts out on the scene and ends up taking over the Republican Party.

So the deeper, longer-term problem is the hollowness of America’s organized political party life. I get that there are very few defenders of our two-party system, but our politics, our political system, our Constitution only work with two healthy, robust political parties.

When they can be hijacked by outsiders, parties are not able to do the work of selecting candidates, of building consensus, of doing the work of democratic persuasion. You might say it becomes an entirely different political game altogether.

This story has been updated to reflect Platner’s withdrawal from the Senate race.

Nicholas Jacobs, Goldfarb Family Distinguished Chair in American Government, Colby College; Institute for Humane Studies

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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by Jessica Corbett
Common Dreams

US Senate candidate Graham Platner on Monday denied allegations of sexual assault, but the Maine Democrat also said his campaign is considering the “best path forward” in the wake of Politico’s reporting.

Jenny Racicot told The New York Times in an article published last month that Platner’s behavior was “reckless” and “unsettling” during their on-and-off relationship in 2019-21, and she cut off contact after he arrived at her Maine home drunk, despite her telling him not to come over. Politico reported Monday that the 41-year-old had told the newspaper off the record that he assaulted her.

Racicot told Politico that Platner came into her home uninvited that night and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said that she was conflicted about publicly accusing him in part because she agrees with the candidate politically, but decided to speak out after much of the reaction to the Times focused on another ex with ties to the Republican Party. The outlet reviewed documents, including emails with her therapist, and spoke with sources Racicot had previously told about her experience.

In a two-minute video shared on social media Monday, Platner called Racicot’s allegations “troubling, serious, and false,” and said that “any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.” He also said that, “mindful of the political reality” that the reporting will inflict, “we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward.”

Platner decisively won his primary last month, after his opponent, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, suspended her campaign in late April. The oyster farmer and combat veteran is a political newcomer who has championed progressive policies and called out the ultrarich, as well as the politicians who serve them—including longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins, whom he’s running to unseat in November.

While Platner has traveled Maine, speaking and rallying with working-class voters, he’s also faced a series of controversies, including concerns over his offensive posts on Reddit, and the skull and crossbones tattoo he got with fellow Marines in Croatia, which he claimed he did not know closely resembled a Nazi symbol and got covered up during the campaign.

There was also the allegation from the GOP-affiliated ex interviewed by the Times, Lyndsey Fifield, that Platner was physically aggressive during their relationship, which he denied, and reporting that Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, told a senior campaign staffer that he had exchanged sexual messages with other women during their marriage, which Gertner responded to with a video.

In a statement to Politico on Monday, Platner’s campaign pointed to previous controversies, saying:

These allegations are very serious and Graham vigorously denies them. They are also coached and coordinated by out-of-state establishment operatives. For a year, opponents of this campaign have thrown everything they can at Graham—calling him a Nazi, a war criminal, and a communist. None of it has been true, and this is no different. It is not a coincidence that this story comes a week before the ballot deadline, just as the previous false allegations came a week before the primary. Graham began this campaign to fight for a Maine where everyone is treated with dignity and where Mainers are put first, and no amount of desperate smears will stop this movement from seeing that vision through.

Following Politico’s reporting, Platner has lost some key support. At least two members of Congress who backed him—Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.)—withdrew their endorsements, and the Maine Democratic Party’s chair, vice chair, and executive director issued a joint statement urging him to withdraw as the party nominee.

TMV UPDATE:

The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg:

According to Maine law, Platner has to drop out by next Monday for Democrats to replace him on the November ballot. The sooner this mess ends, the better.

The Platner campaign represented an electoral insurgency against the Democratic Party; now, there are going to be furious recriminations against those who launched it. There is plenty of blame to go around.

Most at fault, of course, is Platner himself. He allegedly victimized Racicot, and then his campaign victimized her again, putting her into a situation where she felt she had to go public. He betrayed his supporters by plunging into a campaign while knowing he had a closet full of skeletons and drawing people who believed in him into a doomed enterprise.

Maine Democrats were willing to overlook Platner’s Totenkopf tattoo, his terrible Reddit posts and his sexting with other women while he was married because they felt so invigorated by him and the movement he was creating. They went out on a limb for him, and he had every reason to know it was going to be sawed off.

Also liable for this disaster are the progressive operatives who recruited Platner and were so infatuated with his identity — a gruff, handsome oysterman with social democratic politics — that they failed to do their due diligence. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Platner’s top strategist, Dan Moraff, didn’t want to spring for a thorough background check, which can take weeks and cost around $20,000. “Moraff asked for an expedited, cheaper review to be done within days,” The Journal said.

Moraff, who travels the country trying to recruit left-wing, working-class candidates, reportedly learned about some of Platner’s troubling Reddit posts but decided to charge forward anyway. “Part of our thesis here is that people do not want their candidates grown in vats,” he told The Journal.

He’s correct about the appetite for unconventional candidates, but that is no excuse for such willful sloppiness. Before blithely assuming that voters would forgive a candidate’s flaws, he had a responsibility to try to find out what those flaws were.

The whole mess is also sparking criticism of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer:

This fiasco might seem to vindicate the establishment that Platner railed against, but Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, who wanted to stop Platner, is also partly culpable here. Schumer badly misread the Democratic electorate and tried to clear the field for his preferred candidate, Maine’s 78-year-old governor, Janet Mills, leaving a vacuum that Platner filled.

…One person who tried to alert Democrats was Platner’s former political director, Genevieve McDonald. She quit when the first Platner scandals emerged and has been increasingly outspoken against him. Progressive operatives made her seem like a vindictive person eager to curry favor with Maine’s political establishment. In retrospect, she looks much more like someone who took a profound professional risk to do the right thing. I can’t be the only one who regrets not taking her more seriously.

If there’s a lesson here, it might be about the importance of listening hard to the people telling you what you don’t want to hear. Many Democrats, disgusted by their party’s failure to contain Donald Trump, want representatives as furious as they are, and they no longer trust their leaders to tell them who is electable. That opens space up for outsider candidates who wouldn’t have had a chance a few years ago. It also makes it easier for unfit characters to escape proper vetting.

Is Maine’s Republican Center Susan Collins now smiling, or worrying about who the Democrats will choose next?

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For more than sixty years, the Kennedy name was political gold. It conjured youth, glamour, idealism, sacrifice, and possibility. It was Camelot.

Today, the spell appears broken.

A recent headline summed up the mood: “JFK’s grandson just lost. Good riddance to Camelot.” Whether that’s too harsh is open to debate, but there’s no question the once strong Kennedy mystique isn’t what it once was.

It’s hard to communicate to young people the feeling of that era. What made the legend?

There was John F. Kennedy, war hero, senator and the first Greatest Generation member to be elected president, not to mention the youngest. He looked like someone out of central casting, was brilliant, tough and the first real TV savvy presidential star. His televised press conferences became events known for his sharp wit and great chemistry with the press.

His beautiful wife, Jacqueline, wowed the world with her grace, love of the arts, restoration of the White House and her now-destroyed Rose Garden. She further solidified her image when she conducted first televised tour of the White House on CBS and NBC on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 1962.

The Kennedy era felt like a time of elegance, generational change and the celebration of community service and caring. In his Bostonian accent, Kennedy often talked about the need for “vigah,” — vigor — in order to promote a sense of youthful energy and physical fitness.

And then came the tragedy in Dallas. The mythology about Camelot grew after the assassinations of JFK and his brother, Robert F. Kennedy.

The political dynasty’s image began eroding. It didn’t happen overnight. It happened in stages.

Ted Kennedy remained a major force in the senate and become one of the country’s most influential legislators. Yet the Chappaquiddick incident effectively ended any realistic chance he’d become president.

Joe Kennedy III, once viewed as perhaps the family’s next political star, lost a senate primary in 2020 — a stunning outcome for someone carrying the Kennedy name and an indication the family name was not what it used to be. Other Kennedys sought office but also found that being a Kennedy didn’t mean an extra advantage.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. proved he is no Robert Kennedy. He has a long history of vaccine skepticism and repeatedly clashes with mainstream medical and scientific organizations. He embraces controversial public health positions and conspiracy theories. Other Kennedys have publicly distanced themselves from his political and health policy positions. Some even denounced him.

Most recently, Jack Schlossberg, Caroline Kennedy’s son and the only grandson of former President John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy Onassis, came in third in the Democratic primary for a House seat in New York’s 12th Congressional District, winning roughly 11% of the vote in a crowded race.

Schlossberg appeared intelligent, earnest and personable, but he also cultivated an often bizarre, meme-driven social media that struck some observers as more influencer than future statesman. His shirtless videos and unconventional online posts seem indicative of how some Kennedy heirs often seem far removed from the carefully-crafted dignity once associated with Camelot.

The Kennedy story isn’t unique. Political dynasties rarely last forever. The Bush family once seemed destined to dominate Republican politics. The Roosevelt name once carried enormous weight. Entertainment dynasties — from the Barrymores to other famous Hollywood families — have often seen later generations struggle to match the accomplishments of their predecessors.

Once upon a time, being a Kennedy was almost a political credential in itself. Today it’s just another famous name. The Kennedy story has always been a paradox: extraordinary public service, extraordinary personal tragedy, extraordinary privilege and extraordinary scandal. These contradictions helped build the legend, and eventually helped diminish it.

Americans will always remember the stirring speeches, the optimism, the call to public service, and the promise of a new generation. But history eventually asks every dynasty the same question: What have you done for me lately?

Camelot isn’t dead. But Camelot is a lot less.

Copyright 2026 Joe Gandelman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

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Josh Bland, University of Cambridge

After four weeks of dazzling action on the pitch, it may be an off-field scandal that comes to define this summer’s World Cup. Fifa’s decision to allow America’s star striker, Folarin Balogun, to play in a last-16 match against Belgium, despite having been sent off in the previous game against Bosnia and Herzegovina, is in clear breach of the association’s own rules. The move has been greeted with outrage pretty much across the board.

Extraordinarily, Fifa, international football’s governing body, has not only so far declined to give any detailed reasoning for its decision to suspend what would be a standard one game ban following Balogun red card. The reversal appears to result from direct pressure from the White House. Media reports suggest that Donald Trump made three calls to Fifa, starting from Wednesday, to ensure that the red card was overturned. The White House has said that the call was made to understand why Balogun was sent off and the reason for the suspension.

Whether Balogun deserved to be sent off is debatable. It’s also of secondary importance when compared to the the potential reverberations of this seismic intervention from Fifa.

Naturally, the decision has been met with anger and bewilderment from the wider footballing community outside the US, not least by the Belgians, who must now prepare to face the US men’s national soccer team’s (USMNT) most dangerous player with 24 hours notice. The Belgian FA’s statement promising to explore “all potential options” in the name of “[safeguarding] the legitimate rights of all participating teams and to protect the fundamental principles of fair play in our sport”, suggests that they have no intention of taking this lying down.

Uefa, the governing body for football in Europe, has released a statement expressing “our disbelief at such an unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable decision”.

The statement said that the one-match suspension rule following a red card is “not a discretionary option”. “It is a principle embedded in regulations, which cannot be made subject to exceptions, let alone in the middle of a tournament where several other players have been in the same situation and regularly served their suspension.”

Zooming out from the immediate fallout, this episode feels like a microcosm for the health of global football more broadly. In simple terms, this appears to be a case where an apparently settled disciplinary decision has been reversed due to political lobbying. In that context, the White House’s alleged intervention has prompted familiar and uncomfortable questions about the disciplinary authority of Fifa, bringing ever more attention to the opacity of the organisation’s processes.

Scrutiny must particularly fall on Gianni Infantino. Keen observers will be aware of the Fifa chairman’s form when it comes to sucking up to the Maga regime. Despite maintaining an official stance of political neutrality, the build up to this World Cup has been defined by images of Infantino pandering to Donald Trump’s ego, by parading in Maga hats and awarding him concocted peace prizes.

But this latest act may finally prove a bridge too far. Infantino now appears to be actively undermining the sporting integrity of the very game he leads to keep in with the US president.

A question of trust

Ultimately, this story boils down to a question of trust and sporting integrity, two themes that sit at the heart of my own research into football support as a form of living heritage. Unlike monuments or historic buildings, living heritage survives because communities continually transmit specific values and experiences across generations.

The World Cup is one of the clearest examples of this phenomenon. Its cultural significance does not arise solely from unforgettable matches, moments and performances. Rather, it emerges from the rituals and shared experiences that surround the tournament: supporters travelling across continents, families gathering to watch matches together, stories passed between generations. And, most importantly, the collective belief that the competition not only represents the ultimate prize of international football – but a fundamentally fair one.

That belief in fairness is particularly vital here. The World Cup matters because billions of people accept that victories and defeats are earned within a legitimate competitive framework. They celebrate triumphs because they broadly trust the competition. They accept disappointment because they trust the rules. Those shared assumptions underpin the tournament as a form of living cultural heritage.

When Fifa so flagrantly departs from established procedures and appears to willingly submit to political influence, that foundation is fundamentally damaged.

Once supporters begin to question not simply the outcome of individual refereeing decisions, but the legitimacy of the system itself, it corrodes the implicit trust and uncomplicated beauty of the game itself. Once lost, those things are exceptionally difficult to rebuild.

That is why governance can never be dismissed as a dry administrative concern. Transparent procedures, accountable institutions and genuine independence are the pillars upon which the legitimacy of the World Cup and football at large rests.

Football’s greatest tournament derives its power from the belief that every nation competes according to the same rules. If Fifa is prepared to abandon that principle in the face of political pressure it risks sacrificing something far more valuable than its own credibility. It risks undermining the very trust that has made the World Cup the most important sporting event on Earth.

Folarin Balogun’s availability against Belgium may make headlines for a day or two. The far bigger story is that Fifa has invited the world to wonder whether the rules of the World Cup are still applied equally at all.

Josh Bland, ESRC-DTP PhD Researcher, University of Cambridge

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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I hope everyone had a great 4th of July. I know @realDonaldTrump and family did.

250 years ago we declared independence from a king who ran the colonies as a family business. In just 18 months the Trumps have made King George look like an amateur.

A $620 million Pentagon loan, the largest in the program’s history, to a company Don Jr.’s firm bought into three months before.

An Air Force drone contract to a startup the princelings took public through a golf course company they own a piece of.

The Army’s largest drone motor order ever, to a company where Don Jr. sits on the board and holds millions in stock.

A $24 million Pentagon robotics contract to the company that employs Eric as Chief Strategy Advisor.

A stake in the largest undeveloped tungsten deposit on earth, in Kazakhstan, backed by $1.6 billion in US government support.

Jared’s fund seeded with $2 billion from the Saudi crown prince, now $6.2 billion, 99% of it foreign money from Gulf governments. Over $110 million in fees collected from the Saudis alone. He negotiates American foreign policy with the governments that pay him.

$2.3 billion from crypto ventures their father regulates. More than a million people bought in and lost $2.3 billion. The money didn’t grow. It simply moved from the subjects pockets to the crown’s coffers.

And the next one is already drafted. A proposed ATF rule that will allow guns to be shipped straight to your front door. The government’s own estimate is 3.3 million home gun deliveries a year. Don Jr. sits on the board of the online gun megastore built to cash in. He holds 300,000 shares.

And that’s only the fraction they’ve allowed us to see. Not one subpoena served. Not one search executed. Why hide anything when you own the investigators?

Me? They searched a laptop for six years. Federal prosecutors. Grand juries. Subpoena power. Congressional hearings. They found nothing. I made about $200k a year selling paintings when my Dad was President, and they made my paintings part of an impeachment inquiry.

For six years they’ve asked Where’s Hunter? What about the laptop?

Wrong questions. The right one is 250 years old. Does America belong to a family?

They’ve given their answer. Long live the King.

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by Elwood Watson
Darializa Avila Chevalier, Ph.D. candidate and political novice, ran against and defeated Adriano Espaillat, a five-term member of Congress and leader of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Espaillat had developed a political operation known as the “squadriano” in New York’s 13th District, which includes Washington Heights, Harlem, and parts of the Bronx. The majority of these communities are reliably progressive but not necessarily known for their radical politics. But Chevalier was powered by an endorsement from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and bested Espaillat by about 2,000 votes.

Voters have realized the solution to handling Trump is not to continually pledge homage to the institutions and leaders whose failure resulted in his two presidential victories. Over the past decade, the left has created an ideologically dedicated voter base and a robust infrastructure through Democratic Socialists of America chapters that have been victorious in elections and established a strong competitive bench outside the more traditional Democratic base.

The bohemian-inspired districts were heavily composed of voters who were psychologically radicalized by Bernie Sanders and his “rage against the machine” campaigns. Because of such efforts, socialist candidates can now win in cities such as New York with Zohran Mamdani, Washington, D.C. with Janeese Lewis George, or Los Angeles with Marissa Roy. Strategic, long-term organizing has accelerated the left beyond its young, primarily White voter base, with the opportunity to secure victories across sizable majority Black and Latino constituencies that previous left-wing efforts could not achieve.

The sudden left surge is also based on a return to mass politics. For most of the 20th century, politics was based around crucial entities — unions, local parties, civic organizations — a real, civil society anyone could join and participate in that offered community and consensus decision-making. These entities have been dismantled in recent years, supplanted by atomized politics ruled by cabals of elected officials who do the bidding of plutocrats with no genuine roots among the masses.

The past two months should awaken the Democratic Party and its leadership to the high, infectious energy emanating from its left wing. Democrats have made it clear that they want fighters and the sort of old school politics that was invested in the collective struggles of the masses, not decided by a few elites in smoke infested rooms. Democratic centrist voters are still an important constituency to keep pacified, but the party’s leadership is deeply at odds and out of touch with its base. A strong, radical leftist wave is powering across the nation.

The current electorate in both political parties is furious, and now it’s the conservative right that hates the business-as-usual approach to politics. Much of the Democratic establishment has proved itself dreadfully inept. Previous anti-ICE positions were viewed as fringe and irrational. However, when Trump eventually transformed the agency into something reminiscent of his own private army, a plurality of voters wanted to scrap it. The real and major question is what lessons those representing the left have learned from the past several years that have been less than politically fruitful.

There’s now a democratic socialist mayor in Seattle, and a democratic socialist recently won the primary to become mayor of Washington, D.C. In northern New England, Maine candidate Graham Platner, who, like Avila Chevalier, has a less than pristine social media history, soundly defeated the state’s governor, Janet Mills, for the Senate nomination. Additionally, voters in Maine’s rural Second District, which Trump won by nine points, chose progressive Matt Dunlap to run for the House seat of outgoing centrist Democrat, Jared Golden. Such results are not merely coincidental.

A transformation in urban politics itself lies beneath this generational change. The shift to the left has been notable in urban centers. Over the last decade, the left has created a strong, solid ideological base in urban areas that are increasingly the governing or opposition faction in most major cities. A millennial generation that is now aging into a majority. The radicals of a decade ago are now becoming parents themselves and members of school boards and PTAs.

Many Democratic voters are in no mood for acquiescence. As they see it, a tepid party structure has repeatedly failed them, and they have decided to divorce them politically. Voters are hungry for bold, visionary leadership.

As several pundits have proclaimed, the Democratic version of the Tea Party has arrived with unalloyed implications for the midterms and the 2028 presidential election. Zorhan Mandami noted at a rally at Brooklyn’s Kings Theater what people are asking when the race for 2028 begins. “It starts now,” he said.

If recent mayoral and state elections are any indication, at least for the moment, the mayor is right on target in his assessment.

Copyright 2026 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.

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It’s been a long and winding road for E. Jean Carroll, the magazine writer (now 82 years old) who publicly revealed Donald Trump, during his previous life as a real estate hustler, banged her head against a wall and forcibly penetrated her vagina with his fingers in a department store dressing room.

But now, after braving Trump’s rhetorical attacks for the past seven years, she has officially vanquished her abuser. For that she (and we) can thank the U.S. Supreme Court. The Republican-dominant Supreme Court. I kid you not.

Back in 2023, a jury concluded after a two-week civil court trial Trump had sexually abused and defamed Carroll, and it ordered Trump to pay her $5 million in damages. Trump tried to overturn those verdicts in the U.S. Court of Appeals. He lost. He then asked his Republican Supremes to bail him out. In a written appeal he argued – are you ready? – that “this mistreatment of a President cannot be allowed to stand.” But he lost again.

The Supreme Court refused to touch the case and didn’t even bother to explain why. In street parlance, they basically scraped Trump off their shoes.

Even though most Americans already know Trump is a detestable pig, the Supreme Court’s nod to Carroll is a very big deal. The civil court judge’s finding – that Trump, under New York law, is an adjudicated rapist – will stand forevermore in the annals of history. Finally, miracle of miracles, a female abuse victim has beaten Trump via the rule of law.

This is a rare feel-good moment for those of us trying to weather these dark times. Back when Carroll went public on a June Friday in 2019, few of us could’ve imagined this outcome. Her charges were mostly ignored. They didn’t make the front page of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, or the Chicago Tribune. And she got at most a passing mention on the Sunday talk shows.

I tracked those non-responses at the time. She was overlooked for obvious reasons. During Trump’s first term, many Americans – or, more precisely, many in the media – were already so benumbed, so fatigued by the daily evidence of his amorality, that even Carroll’s most sickening accusation (“he opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area…It turns into a colossal struggle”) was treated as “old” news – a synonym for non-news.

Carroll’s allegations, featured in a new book (and confirmed by two Carroll friends who were told of the incident at the time), warranted immediate major coverage when placed in their proper context – namely the roll call of Trump accusers, including: Jill Harth, Kristin Anderson, Lisa Boyne, Temple Taggart, Mariah Billado, Cathy Heller, Karina Virginia, Natasha Stoynoff, Rachel Crooks, Mindy McGillivray, Jennifer Murphy, Jessica Drake, Ninni Laaksonen, Summer Zervos, Cassandra Searles, Alva Johnson, Juliet Huddy, and Jessica Leeds.

(That list doesn’t include the beauty pageant women who said that he liked to barge into their dressing rooms.)

Trump painted all his accusers as liars During the 2016 campaign, he threatened to retaliate by suing them, but never did. He claimed some were paid to smear him, but never tried to prove it. What he boasted on the Access Hollywood tape about doing to women is precisely what Carroll accused him of doing.

When Carroll first surfaced in 2019, the mainstream media was so benumbed it barely reported Trump’s new pertinent lie. He responded to Carroll’s accusation with this beaut: “I’ve never met this person in my life…I have no idea who this woman is.” Which was highly amusing, because the damning article, posted on the New York magazine website, included a photo that showed Trump at a party…talking with E. Jean Carroll. (He now claims that this photo “does not count!”)

Seven years later, and the Supreme Court basically said that Trump has to pay Carroll $5 million. (Trump also lost a second trial, where a different jury said he’d defamed her and awarded her $83 million; that verdict is still on appeal.) On social media he said “this Injustice cannot be allowed to stand!” – but that was just his usual impotent blather. The civil court has been holding his $5 million in a deposit account, awaiting the final judgment that’s now been rendered. She’ll get his money, but money isn’t really the point. The justice she has received is priceless. If nothing else, she deserves props for sheer persistence.

It’s a cause for celebration that her case didn’t vanish into the void. It exposed Trump as a liar in our courts of law. It laid bare the hypocrisy of the evangelical leaders and MAGA cultists who once championed “character” and “morality.” And I’d argue what happened to Carroll, at the hands of her adjudicated rapist, is likely the proverbial tip of the iceberg, given the ongoing coverup of the Epstein files.

The complete record of the lawless lowlife’s perverse predilections has yet to be revealed. We need a full accounting, lest this benighted nation forfeit another slice of its soul.

Copyright 2026 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com

The post It’s official, forevermore: Trump sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll. appeared first on The Moderate Voice.

Donald Trump brags about donating his $400,000 annual salary and lies that he’s the only president who’s ever done so. For the record, Hoover and JFK both donated their salaries, and Donald Trump hasn’t donated his entire salary. But even if he did donate his entire salary, it pales in comparison to what he’s making from profiting off the Oval Office. Donald Trump is donating less than 2% of his income.

A 927-page disclosure, covering 2025 and filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, shows Trump made $2.2 billion. Just in case it needs to be noted for you, $2.2 billion is more than $400,000. If you do not believe he is profiting from the Oval Office, in 2024, the year before he returned to it, Trump’s income was $622 million.

When asked by reporters about profiting while in the Oval Office as he was about to board the brand-new Air Force One on its inaugural flight to the Teddy Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota, Trump said, “You know why I’m profiting? Because the stock market’s going up, everybody’s profiting.” Referring to himself in third person, he added, “Thank you, President Trump. So, we’re all profiting.”

Except he is not just profiting from the stock market; he reported more than $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency-related income in his latest annual financial disclosure released Tuesday, with digital assets emerging as the largest source of his personal earnings during his second term.

Trump said he doesn’t “get involved” in his personal finances, but just as he was making that comment, Eric and Don Jr, who oversee most of his finances, were standing just a few feet away waiting to board the plane with him.

While Trump claims his presidency and policies are making money for other people, most of the investors who followed his lead on crypto have reported huge losses.

Everyone with a checkbook understands how to get what they want from Donald Trump, and that is to pay him. When he owned a hotel in Washington, the place was constantly booked during his presidency. As soon as he left office in 2021, the vacancy sign turned on. Memberships in his tacky golf resorts increase, as well as the fees, while he’s president. After he leaves office, they drop off. Since re-entering office in January 2025, Trump has made huge business deals with foreign governments, most notably the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

Trump is also taking bribes from media powerhouses, such as Disney, CBS, Meta, and Elon Musk’s X, and has even sold presidential pardons. Speaking of Qatar, that nation bribed Trump with what is now the brand-new Air Force One, which Trump took for its first flight as Air Force One on Wednesday.

According to reports, Qatar was trying to sell the plane, but there were no takers, so giving it to Donald Trump was an investment, as Qatar secured a $1.2 trillion investment and trade agreement with the US after making this “donation.” And they didn’t offer to give it to Trump until Donald Trump asked for it. He didn’t just accept a bribe; he solicited it.

This jet’s service as Air Force One is temporary, as the Air Force is waiting on two brand-new jumbo jets that will serve as Air Force One. When Trump’s term is over, he is taking this jet, which is worth $3.2 billion, with him. To retrofit and add security features to this Boeing 747 gifted by Qatar, the Air Force spent around $400 million. So we spent $400 million on this plane that Donald Trump is going to keep. By the way, all this is illegal. All gifts given to a president are supposed to remain with the country, not be taken with him when he leaves office.

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Visit Clay Jones website and email him at clayjonz@gmail.com.

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