“Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s Senate Democratic primary Tuesday over Congresswoman Haley Stevens. El-Sayed had a 1% win in a race that featured a third candidate, Mallory McMorrow, who had dropped out but who nevertheless polled around 4% of the total vote. Mike Rogers is the GOP nominee in the fall against El-Sayed. In 2024, Rogers — a very respected, former seven-term Congressman from Michigan who served as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee — tallied 2,693,680 votes, or 48.30% of the total electorate in the state in a Senate race he lost to Elissa Slotkin. Republicans need only turn out the same electorate as voted in 2024 and Rogers will win the 2026 race. That sort of turnout is usually, however, a big lift in a non-presidential year, because statewide elections are not as exciting to the average American as presidential contests.” (08/06/26)
“Remember that time a few years back when the government completely reshaped day-to-day life and restricted our basic rights to protect us from a disease that wasn’t that dangerous? Remember how our leaders forced us to comply with a suite of safety protocols that seemed mostly symbolic at best and a test of compliance at worst? Well, it’s happening again but not in the way you’d expect. No, this time the threat is not some plague of medieval proportions. It’s not a new strain of super-Covid. It’s not Ebola or Disease-X. It’s not monkeypox or hantavirus. It’s not even explosive diarrhea from dirty lettuce. No, this time the threat is social media and the open internet.” (08/06/26)
“A former high school baseball player, with a successful businessman as a father and, a promising young man with a ‘bright future’ ahead of him avoided prison for the rape, strangulation, and violent assault of two teenage girls. He was facing up to 78 years in prison, and was instead granted a youthful offender status. Where he must attend community service and counselling. Butler pleaded ‘no contest’ to the charges. And the district attorney claimed that Butler had suffered more than his victims by being subjected to the process of trial and harm to his credibility as a young man. … Butler’s case is not isolated. As many feminists and rights activists have continued to push to the fore front, young men from wealthy and connected families can get away with rape.” (08/06/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Rachel Chiu
“Hawaiian residents are challenging ancestry-based housing restrictions in federal court. A pair of lawsuits filed in June and July takes aim at the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, a state agency that reserves long-term homestead leases to individuals who meet the state’s ‘blood quantum’ requirement. To be eligible for a homestead lease—long-term, affordable leases for residential, agricultural, and pastoral purposes—an applicant must prove that he or she has 50% Native Hawaiian ancestry. In any other context, this type of requirement would be instantly illegal. No ordinary government agency or housing authority can deny your application or evict you because of your ancestry. Yet, these controversial rules are very common for determining benefits for indigenous populations, and continue to give the state inordinate power to withhold opportunities and take property from citizens according to overtly discriminatory justifications.” (08/06/26)
“Apparently: ‘Palantir paid just £2m corporation tax in UK in 2024 despite lucrative public sector contracts.’ That someone tries to measure how useful the producer of something is by their tax payments – rather than the value of their output – is deeply weird in itself. … Palantir pays its staff well, partly in shares. That’s it, that’s the one weird trick. They pay the staff well. British political discourse is so perverted that this is seen as a problem.” (08/06/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Andrew M Leonard
“Those who have served have experienced first hand what it’s like to fight in conflicts without clearly defined political goals or adequate tools of statecraft.” (08/06/26)
“Abdul El-Sayed has done it in Michigan. Though the race was much closer than polling predicted, El-Sayed, a progressive epidemiologist and former state public-health official, has defeated Rep. Haley Stevens by about one percentage point. He had to fend off a veritable ocean of money from outside corporate groups and AIPAC, which together spent some $70 million trying to stop him, making it the most expensive Democratic Senate primary in American history. Though El-Sayed is not a Democratic Socialists of America member, Donavan McKinney is, and he narrowly won the primary to represent Michigan’s 13th House District, which covers Detroit and some of its suburbs; he will be a lock to win the general election. There will almost certainly be seven DSA members in the next Congress: McKinney, incumbents Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, and primary winners Chris Rabb, Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Melat Kiros.” (08/06/26)
“Enforcing the Constitution can be broken down into six almost completely-ignored steps from the Revolution. Backed, of course, by the ultimate check on power: the duty of self-preservation. Before getting to those steps, we need to ground this information in some difficult truth. Most people want a magic button that reads, ‘press Here to enforce the Constitution.’ Or some magic words on paper that will get the government to stop doing what the government was never authorized to do in the first place. But that is pure fantasy. Thomas Jefferson gave us the reality check. Going from the largest government in history to a real land of the free is not going to be quick or easy.” (08/06/26)
“I’m beginning to think something is wrong with my memory. It’s strange, the feeling. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s not like I have amnesia or anything. I remember who I am, I think. And I remember things that happened in the past, but I don’t think I remember them the way they happened. The history of the Covid years, for example. My memory of that period is all messed up. I hadn’t realized how messed up until I saw the news about the Fauci hearing, where Fauci refused to answer questions about his role as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.” (08/06/26)
