IT’S FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 2026

Normal Americans are gearing up to celebrate our country’s 250th birthday with friends and family. The bitter lunatics who despise this country are already rejoicing for, shall we say, different reasons.

Zohran Mamdani had a great week. All three of the terrorist-adjacent, anti-capitalist zealots he endorsed for Congress won their primaries against establishment-backed incumbents or their chosen successors. They won by reiterating the woke nonsense normal Democrats have spent the last several years trying to disavow, and assailing their opponents as fair-weather communists insufficiently devoted to Israel’s destruction.

Mamdani’s candidates—Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier—ran up huge margins among a demographic that has consistently fueled the rise of left-wing radicalism: underachieving college grads still living off their wealthy parents.

It’s the clearest sign yet that Democrats have entered their Tea Party era, and it couldn’t have happened to a more upstanding group of oblivious bureaucrats. The Democratic establishment, best known for bungling two out of the last three presidential elections, was understandably shaken by the New York primary results. Apparently, their core message—ORANGE MAN FASCIST!!!—has failed to resonate with their increasingly agitated base.

To be fair, it’s hard to match the youthful exuberance of left-wing prodigies such as Aber Kawas, the professional activist who won her state senate primary with Mamdani’s backing. “Um, and, so, like, in finding that, like, you know, the system of capitalism and racism, umm, and white supremacy, et cetera, and Islamophobia, have all been used, umm, you know, to, uh, colonize lands, right?” she mused eloquently during a 2017 panel discussion while attempting to explain why America deserved 9/11. If that doesn’t send a thrill up your leg…

It’s going to get uglier before it gets less ugly. On the bright side, America is an exceptional country with a long history of defeating communists and terrorists alike.

The results could benefit Republicans, who have been doing everything in their power to orchestrate a catastrophic defeat in the midterms. To paraphrase Barack Obama’s timeless assessment of Joe Biden, the man he chose as running mate, one should never underestimate the Democratic Party’s ability to f— things up.

To paraphrase Free Beacon founder Matthew Continetti, whose rhetorical gifts far exceed those of the 44th president, a race to the bottom is a race we can win.

Happy Birthday, USA!

MAMDANI’S MAD TEA PARTY: 4 THINGS WE LEARNED

1) Carpet-bomb the universities.

At the very least, we need a complete and total shutdown of career grad students running for public office until our country’s elected representatives can figure out what is going on.

Consider the “professional” backgrounds of the socialists Mamdani endorsed. Lander, an adjunct professor at Brooklyn Law School, has three university degrees, including two master’s degrees in anthropology and urban planning. Every job he’s ever had has been in government, academia, or the left-wing nonprofit sector, which is essentially a make-work program for career grad students.

Valdez studied painting and art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before moving to New York, getting a job at Columbia University, and getting elected to a leadership role in the local union representing Columbia support staff. Her policy views reflect her experience. For example, Valdez wants to abolish TSA PreCheck and nationalize the airline industry.

Avila Chevalier majored in Middle Eastern studies at Columbia University and is studying for a doctoral degree in sociology with a focus on immigration and criminal justice. Her views on those topics—in favor of abolishing borders, prisons, and police departments—are consistent with her resume. She’s a communist who hates America, sympathizes with terrorists, and supports the “total eradication of Western civilization.” She might not be a starter on day one, but the Squad will be thrilled to have her on the bench.

More than six decades later, William F. Buckley is still right.

2) Jack Schlossberg needs a job

America dodged a bullet as the Kennedy scion placed a distant third in the Democratic primary for New York’s 12th Congressional District. Schlossberg concluded his election night speech by leading supporters in a chant of “Let’s go, Jack,” a touching send-off from the candidate’s biggest fan. Days earlier, he told the Wall Street Journal his inevitable defeat would highlight the profound unfairness of our political system. “If I can’t do it, then nobody can,” he said.

Indeed, if a Kennedy heir with four trust funds, three Ivy League degrees, and zero (actual) work experience can’t get elected to Congress in 2026, the American Dream is dead for all of us. In the good old days, the Camelot mystique could get a bloated sex pest elected U.S. senator for life after letting a woman drown in his car. Schlossberg did his best to burnish the Kennedy brand with schizophrenic rants about guzzling “Jew blood” and “male jizz.” It didn’t work, apparently.

3) George Conway needs a life

Schlossberg’s poor showing looked almost respectable next to Conway’s. The Lincoln Project co-founder, #Resistance podcast darling, and morbid obesity survivor spent more than $6 million on his campaign, including $2 million of his own money. He got just 6,200 votes, so roughly $1,000 per vote. Conway finished fifth behind Nina Schwalbe, a public health expert who spent less than $500,000.

Scholars can debate whether so-called Trump Derangement Syndrome is a genuine psychological disorder. Conway’s behavior over the past decade is difficult to explain on any other grounds. He ran on impeaching Donald Trump (again), and posts Trump-related rants on social media at a rate most mental health professionals would describe as pathological. Conway has made nearly 177,000 posts on X (formerly Twitter) since joining the app in 2012. That’s more than 33 per day.

Losing an entire person’s bodyweight on Ozempic is great, but it doesn’t necessarily make you healthier. It’s not a substitute for logging off and touching grass.

4) Jews need not apply

Mamdani’s wife, pro-Hamas influencer Rama Duwaji, raised eyebrows by snubbing Brad Lander in an Instagram post urging New Yorkers to support Mamdani-backed candidates. Lander, who is Jewish, has said all the right things when it comes to Israel. He’s accused Benjamin Netanyahu of “genocide,” and called for ending U.S. military aid.

Nevertheless, despite the mayor’s endorsement, Duwaji and other members of Mamdani’s team have made clear that Lander isn’t one of them. In addition to being Jewish, Lander was one of several Democrats who condemned an “All Out for Palestine” rally that Valdez and Avila Chevalier attended in Times Square the day after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. Duwaji liked a series of posts from the rally extolling the “Palestinian resistance.”

In other words, the ascendant wing of the Democratic Party is totally fine with Jews so long as they publicly embrace terrorist groups dedicated to killing Jews. Best of luck to Josh Shapiro, J.B. Pritzker, Jon Ossoff, Rahm Emanuel, and other Jewish candidates considering a White House run in 2028.

READ MORE: Meet the Mini-Mamdanis: Budding Crop of Extreme Left-Wing, 9/11-Justifying, Israel-Hating Socialists Win Primary Nods for New York State Legislature Seats

OTHER MAD SH*T THAT HAPPENED

Democrat enjoys sport: Congressman Ro Khanna (D., Silicon Valley) is trying to position himself as a leader of the terrorist-adjacent, anti-capitalist wing of the Democratic Party. He has a law degree from Yale, obviously, and a nine-figure net worth he amassed after marrying the daughter of a successful business owner. Khanna is definitely not a normal dude who likes sports. He’s more of a Mitt Romney type who “enjoys sport.” Nevertheless, he tried to portray himself in the role of normal dude by posting a selfie at the Washington Nationals game—in the club section, wearing an expensive button-down, and looking like a hostage about to be executed. No one has ever looked more desperate for a wellness smoothie and a dog-eared Howard Zinn paperback.

The grooming scandal no one’s talking about: Are there any normal Democrats left? The people running the party these days do not belong in a functioning society. The Wall Street Journal published a profile of Dan Moraff, the left-wing activist who recruited—and allegedly vetted—Graham Platner to run for U.S. Senate in Maine because Democratic voters want candidates who are “real human beings.” Moraff has two Ivy League degrees and a beard, obviously, not to mention the most obnoxious voice in the history of recorded audio. The Journal reports that Moraff’s business partner and fiancée, Leanne Fan, has an engagement ring that “opens up to a tiny comb” she uses to brush the aforementioned beard. Would that we all could be so lucky in love.

PALATE CLEANSER

This delightful video captures Donald Trump at his most relatable: telling a nerd to shut up.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND

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Email: stiles@freebeacon.com

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IT’S FRIDAY, JUNE 19, 2026

We’re halfway through Pride Month and Donald Trump is really hitting his stride. In France this week for the G7 Summit, Trump cemented his hard-earned reputation as the gayest American president since Woodrow Wilson by extolling the beauty of man-on-man relations.

“He was in a hotel, and I met him,” Trump said of his first encounter with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. “We fell in love, deeply in love. … We didn’t know each other before that. We had great chemistry, and I stayed twice as long as I was supposed to.”

Asked about a pending trade deal with India, Trump detailed his masculine affection for the country’s prime minister, Narendra Modi. “So you look at this man,” he said. “He’s the most beautiful-looking man. He looks so nice, he’s like an angel. But actually … he’s as tough as they come. But he looks so good, so he gets you by surprise.”

On a related note, Trump appeared to have let himself be thoroughly charmed by the negotiators from Iran, the first country in recorded history to be (nominally) led by a (probably) gay amputee. Benny Johnson, a prominent male influencer, gushed with praise for Trump’s so-called peace deal with Iran.

“Donald Trump just delivered peace in our time,” Johnson wrote of the agreement, which the president signed in the Palace of Versailles. No, we’re not making this up. Apparently, under French law, it’s only a peace deal if it’s signed in the Versailles region. Otherwise it’s just a sparkling deescalation.

It remains to be seen whether Trump has actually achieved anything in terms of pacifying the Middle East. Nevertheless, his efforts to destigmatize male bonding on the global stage are a small but crucial step toward solving the loneliness epidemic we keep hearing about.

READ MORE: Did Iran Just Get the Better of Us?

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE DEMOCRATS

Gaycheck to paycheck: The Department of Justice is looking into a California program that strongly encourages—but for legal reasons does not mandate, even though it does—public utilities to funnel taxpayer dollars to “state-certified LGBT-owned businesses.” Applicants must be certified to get a crack at the $600 million worth of state contracts on offer.

Business owners can prove their gayness through a variety of means, according to a checklist from one of the firms that provides gay certification services. For example, you could get three of your friends to “vouch” for your “LGBT status” on company letterhead. Just be prepared to prove it; otherwise, you could be fined up to $5,000 and serve up to a year behind bars. Unlike most crimes in California, Democrats might actually enforce this one.

Mommy’s little senator: There’s a fierce competition brewing among Democratic candidates for the title of “Most Likely to Bring Their Mom to Washington.” Graham Platner’s mom is the primary customer of his vanity oyster farm. Jack Schlossberg’s mom is a Kennedy heiress who seems content to let her only son reach middle age without ever working a day in his life. And don’t sleep on James Talarico, the precious young man running for student body president U.S. Senate in Texas.

The Free Beacon reports that Talarico, 37, still shares a checking account with his mother, who is also a frequent donor to his campaigns. In 2021, he reported an in-kind contribution of nearly $1,500 after Mommy paid for his “moving expenses.” Talarico bought a $400,000 house the following year, but his campaign declined to say if anyone else pitched in. Makes you wonder what Talarico’s alleged girlfriend thinks about all this. Most women would consider it a red flag, but most men don’t have Talarico’s magnetic personality and rugged sex appeal.

Lunatics unleashed: Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are thriving in America’s big cities. DSA member Zohran Mamdani is mayor of New York. Another DSA member, Janeese Lewis George, is on track to become mayor of Washington, D.C. The socialist group endorsed Katie Wilson, mayor of Seattle, and its members enthusiastically supported Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson. Los Angeles could be next if Nithya Raman beats incumbent mayor Karen Bass in November.

This is great news for anyone who thinks America’s cities should continue their steady slide into dysfunction and insolvency.

Consider what happened in Pennsylvania this week. The state’s Democratic-controlled Supreme Court ruled that Larry Krasner, the Soros-backed district attorney of Philadelphia, has behaved so disgracefully—lying, withholding evidence, and so forth—in an effort to get convicted murderers released from prison that the state’s attorney general must step in to “enhance the reliability” of the justice system.

These people are a menace to society, and Democrats keep electing them.

DSA member Darializa Avila Chevalier, a Mamdani-backed candidate for Congress who has refused to condemn Hamas, reiterated her view this week that “all deportation is wrong.” Even illegal immigrants convicted of serious crime should not be deported, Chevalier argued, because it would be an unjust “double punishment” for the convicted criminal to be “ripped away from everything they know and love.”

Most frighteningly of all, Chevalier is a graduate of Columbia University, where she majored in Middle Eastern studies, and is studying for a doctoral degree in sociology with a focus on immigration and criminal justice. Having that résumé is almost as bad as being a Kennedy or sharing a checking account with your mom in your late 30s.

We must not, under any circumstances, let these people near the levers of power.

OTHER THINGS THAT HAPPENED

Obama centers himself: The Obama Presidential Center is now open to the public. The former president, who has amassed a net worth approaching $100 million since leaving office, threw himself a star-studded launch party in Chicago just days after complaining about America’s obsession with wealth and fame. Valerie Jarrett kicked off the ceremony by recognizing the Potawatomi Nations, the Council of Three Fires, and other “original inhabitants” of the land over which the brutalist shrine now looms. The Obama Foundation plowed ahead despite concerns from local community organizers, environmentalists, and subcontractors who still haven’t been paid, so they probably don’t have any plans to return the land. But now every American can buy a nifty “hope” hat ($35) or “empathy” trinket dish ($20) from the gift shop.

Hunter Biden cracks the big time: A member of the Biden family finally got a (sort of) real job. Hunter, the former crackhead and Ukrainian energy executive, will become an adviser to and executive director of Peak Path Health, the charitable arm of an “ultra-luxury” rehab center for “high-achieving” professionals in the Hollywood Hills. This could help the failed scion put a dent in the $17 million worth of legal bills he claims to owe and shore up his spotty résumé before he runs for president in 2028.

Jim Acosta scrapes the barrel: The former CNN host has repeatedly claimed he was silenced for telling the truth too courageously for mainstream television. This week Acosta had one of his regular chats with Rosie O’Donnell, who is beginning to look like Acosta’s twin sister. He nodded along as the aging actress rambled on about how Trump will soon be imprisoned for “the gross rape and torture of young girls and boys.” Scott Pelley, your future awaits.

IMPORTANT WORLD CUP UPDATE

Some have described Croatian model Ivana Knöll as the “sexiest fan” at the World Cup. After conducting an extensive analysis, we rate this claim “pants on fire.” Brazilian model Gabriela Moura, among others, is objectively sexier.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

PALATE CLEANSER

If you haven’t already, watch this adorable Japanese soccer fan crash a local newscast in Dallas.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND

X: @AndrewStilesUSA

Email: stiles@freebeacon.com

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Send them here.

IT’S FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 2026

God bless professional sports.

They are one of the last vestiges of a shared national culture that’s been slashed to pieces by the internet and smartphones. There is drama, suspense, heroes and villains, ecstasy and heartbreak. They are best enjoyed communally and encourage camaraderie by giving strangers something else to talk about besides the weather.

This week has featured some of the most entertaining athletic contests I have ever seen. Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals, Canes vs. Golden Knights. Game 4 of the NBA Finals, Knicks vs. Spurs. Mind-blowing comebacks. Epic chokes. Millions tuned in, alone on their couches.

We need to enjoy this while it lasts. By the time you read this, the World Cup will have already started and the U.S. team will be gearing up to eke out an exciting 0-0 draw against Paraguay.

Democrats have sought to burnish their support among working-class men by recruiting Graham Platner and James Talarico, among others.

One is a bearded scumbag with a Nazi tattoo and a vanity oyster farm. The other is a precocious fifth-grader running for student body president in Martha’s Vineyard. Have they considered trying to find some normal dudes who like sports? (No, soccer doesn’t count. Nice try, Zohran.)

Remember Tim Walz? Sorry, “Coach” Walz. It’s easy to forget how excited Democrats were to have a VP nominee who (allegedly) coached high school football. The limp-wristed waiving didn’t help, but Walz really dishonored himself playing Madden with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and praising her ability to “run a mean pick 6.”

Talarico is Tim Walz with the manliness dialed back a notch. No self-respecting sports fan would allow himself to be filmed discussing how “prophetic voices like Jesus have helped me reckon with my own whiteness, my own masculinity.”

Platner looks and sounds like someone who should like sports, but he’s also a left-wing crank who hates all things capitalism. His old Reddit posts suggest a preference for less conventional pastimes.

He recently filmed himself riding a bicycle, and was spotted at a minor league soccer game wearing one of those obnoxious scarves. If he starts posting about the World Cup, it could raise serious questions about his character.

Seriously, where do the Democrats find these people? And where do they find the people who found them?

The Wall Street Journal recently interviewed Daniel Moraff, a left-wing activist turned political consultant with degrees from Brown and Yale. He’s the guy who recruited Graham Platner after seeking out candidates “who are real human beings.”

Moraff doesn’t seem like much of a sports guy either. Just listen to him talk. It should not be legal to sound like this!

The combination is genuinely terrifying. Moraff the effete Bruce Banner, Platner the DSA Hulk in shredded Carhartts. The overcredentialed nerd and the loafing Hotchkiss washout who sells oysters to his mom—united by left-wing crankery. They could have spent their free time watching sports or playing them, but here we are.

Democrats of all people should remember that being good at sports is not a prerequisite to liking them. Barack Obama is a terrible athlete, but he liked sports and had no trouble winning elections—especially against Mitt Romney, a posh weirdo who “enjoyed sport.”

OK, let’s get on with it.

THIS F—ING GUY!

Graham Platner made history on Tuesday as the first former Hotchkiss attendee with a Nazi tattoo to win a major party’s U.S. Senate nomination while facing credible allegations of domestic abuse. He is also, presumably, the first U.S. Senate nominee who has fantasized about raping burglars and reminisced about masturbating in porta potties.

Democrats are stuck with him now, so they’ll just keep supporting him no matter what until Election Day. Platner insists there is “nothing out there that’s actually concerning,” but at this point what do you expect him to say? Sure enough, the awkward allegations kept on coming.

An anonymous woman who appears to have dated Platner in 2021—when he was engaged to be married—sounded off on X about his “small d—,” “weird noises,” and the tattoo he definitely knew was a Nazi symbol. But that’s not all.

The woman, who described herself as being “on the left side of the political spectrum,” revealed that Platner never returned the pie dish she gave him. Once again, he is beginning to sound like a sketchy dude.

The Free Press reports that campaign staffers were forced to plot an intervention because the candidate kept “fighting with volunteers in his campaign’s Discord channel” using a pseudonym. Platner is 41 years old, but appears to have the emotional maturity of a middle school girl.

This is why we need candidates who actually work for a living, as opposed to shiftless losers who were born privileged but were “too mediocre or lazy to parlay that advantage into professional success,” Josh Barro writes on Substack.

Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) is already feuding with his prospective colleague, telling “Captain Dick Pic” to “close his mouth.” Fetterman explained the nickname by noting that Platner “hasn’t denied [sending dick pics], but he could clear it up and show it.”

There’s no telling what else we might learn or (God help us) see in the months ahead, but let’s not encourage him.

Good luck to all!

OTHER THINGS THAT HAPPENED

James Talarico is in damage-control mode after realizing he’s running for U.S. Senate in Texas. The Democratic candidate struggled to contain his disgust during a campaign photo-op with a plate of meat.

It was still more convincing than Talarico discussing his freshly minted opposition to sex change surgeries for minors, which he not long ago described as “life-saving health care” for “trans children.”

In Michigan, U.S. Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed rolled out a new line of defense when asked to explain his past support for “defund the police” and other woke nonsense. In an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, the Democratic candidate argued that his past statements were not relevant because he was working in academia at the time.

“Well, look, at that time I was a professor,” he said. “I was teaching at the edge of criminal justice and public health. At this point, I’m running for U.S. Senate.” He was teaching at Columbia, which makes sense. As far as resumes go, that’s arguably worse than pretending to farm oysters.

Lastly, the journalists are out of control. Leslie Stahl said learning that a handful of her 60 Minutes colleagues had been fired was “by far the worst experience” she’d ever been “involved in, or even witnessed.”

Even worse, apparently, than covering child trafficking in post-communist Romania, where Stahl spoke to a family trying to sell their 4-year-old son for a video camera. She’s also interviewed survivors of Josef Mengele’s twisted human experiments at Auschwitz.

Scott Pelley, who has been whining like an aggrieved toddler since getting fired for insubordination, compared the personnel changes at CBS to a “spouse being murdered.”

You might think he’s overreacting, but keep in mind that Pelley is a combat veteran who risks his life every day on the front lines in a war for the very soul of American democracy.

Bless their hearts, the poor things.

PALATE CLEANSER

Do yourself a favor and follow @FreddyLA7 and @shaunvlog_, a few of the many European soccer fans who have been documenting their travels around the U.S. ahead of the World Cup, and loving every minute of it.

Behold the European mind as it struggles to comprehend the land of the free in all its exceptional beauty.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND

X: @AndrewStilesUSA

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IT’S FRIDAY, JUNE 5, 2026

Does Donald Trump hate America? His decision to appoint Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence suggests the answer is yes—but not for the reasons the liberal media keep harping on. They don’t think he’s qualified for the job, which is hypocritical nonsense. They didn’t seem to mind when Jill Biden appointed herself acting president of the United States. When it comes to Pulte, I’m far more concerned about what’s on his résumé than what’s missing from it.

The Washington Post reports that Pulte “attended Northwestern University,” but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Pulte is a 2010 graduate of the Medill School of Journalism, widely regarded as a training ground for elite journalists. Notable alumni include former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan, MS NOW anchor Nicolle Wallace, and Omar Jimenez, the CNN correspondent best known for his reporting on the “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” in Kenosha, Wis.

As of this writing, Medill has yet to congratulate its esteemed alumnus on his promotion. It’s fairly obvious what’s going on here. The journalistic elite are staying quiet or actively denouncing Pulte’s appointment because they don’t want Trump to have second thoughts about putting one of their own in charge of our national intelligence. A journalism school grad, for crying out loud.

May God have mercy on our souls.

In Trump’s defense, he is probably distracted by all the planning for America’s 250th birthday celebration—not to mention his other responsibilities as president. That includes educating the public and encouraging them to view America’s greatness in the proper perspective. Mission accomplished!

That’s right, losers. Our pool could beat up your pool. So shut up.

In all seriousness, though, the new reflecting pool is going to look great, and Trump will get none of the credit he deserves from the miserable scolds who inhabit our nation’s capital. Since taking office, his administration has been cleaning up graffiti and restoring fountains that most D.C. residents didn’t even know existed because they’ve sat in disrepair for decades. A thankless job, but someone had to do it.

SHIRTLESS WONDER

Another week, another Graham Platner scandal. Forgive the redundancy.

Some were shocked to learn that the guy with a Nazi tattoo—who disparaged rape victims, masturbated in porta-potties, and bragged about doing cocaine on military leave—exchanged extramarital sexts with other women on Kik, a hookup app described as “paradise” for child predators. Platner’s profile, complete with a shirtless bathroom selfie that strategically concealed his Nazi ink, was still active when the reports emerged.

You almost feel bad for the Democrats who have to keep defending this guy. Many shrugged off the sexting allegations as another youthful indiscretion from the distant past. (He was in his late 30s; he’s now 41.) Platner met with Senate Democrats to calm their nerves and insisted there wouldn’t be any more scandals. At the very least, he assured them, any forthcoming allegations of sexual assault would not be “credible.”

That’s not particularly reassuring, nor is the fact that Platner rushed back to Maine to deal with what one reporter described as an impending revelation that was “worse than [the] Nazi tattoo.”

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more grimly amusing phrase ever written about a political candidate, but if anyone can clear that bar, Platner is just the scumbag to do it.

Just in: The New York Times reports that Platner told a former girlfriend that if he ever caught an intruder in his home, he would “rape them,” but not in a “sexual way, not in a gay way.” He said he would “rape them to show them that I’m dominant.” Normal locker room talk, from the sound of it.

THE WORST FAMILY

Could Joe Biden ever disgrace himself more thoroughly than he did on the CNN debate stage in 2024? It seems inconceivable, but Sleepy Joe’s surprise appearance at his wife’s book event this week suggests the best is yet to come.

“I have a question,” the former president rasped after he zombie-shuffled up to the stage where Dr. Jill Biden was being grilled by Whoopi Goldberg. “Who do you love most in the whole world?”

Goldberg attempted to move things along, but Biden just stood there wagging his finger. Eventually a crew member handed him a microphone so that Biden could announce that his own book is coming out in September—just in time for the midterm elections.

You love to see it. Democrats are begging the Bidens to shut up and go away forever, and the Bidens respond by making it all about themselves. Jill is out on tour like O.J. Simpson trying to find the real killer. Joe is gearing up to do the same.

Meanwhile, Hunter Biden is defending his family’s honor by posting crack-themed, profanity-laced #Resistance slop on X and charming liberal wine moms to the point where prediction markets put his odds of running for president at 15 percent.

Things have gotten so bad that even Andrew Bates, a.k.a. Biden’s Baghdad Bob, has grown weary of defending his former bosses. “We had a duty to win and we didn’t,” he told the New York Post. “I don’t see why that painful conversation for the party needed to be publicly reopened right now.”

Jill’s response was sassy and somewhat threatening. “I want to say to Andrew, call me up and say it to my face,” she taunted. If he weren’t such a shameless propagandist, one would almost feel sorry for Bates. This is the thanks he gets for years of loyal service? Few others have ever demonstrated such a zealous disregard for their personal dignity and future credibility as spokesmen.

In any event, Bates is wrong. Clearly this conversation is just getting started, and we need to keep having it for as long as it takes to achieve some genuine personal growth in these turbulent times.

Good luck to all!

VARIOUS & SUNDRY

The single greatest tragedy to befall the Western world: Journalists are so annoying. Normal people get fired all the time and move on with their lives. When a journalist gets fired, it’s a week-long national story with explosive implications for free speech and the future of American democracy.

That’s precisely what happened when CBS fired 60 Minutes correspondent Scott “Poison” Pelley for insubordination. Pelley couldn’t believe the network would treat him this way after he risked his life for them “in combat.” Journalists were aghast. They accused CBS of destroying the network’s reputation for “unbiased” reporting. On a completely unrelated note, a bunch of Democrats and liberal activists agreed with the aggrieved journalists.

Practically speaking, the real victims here are America’s seniors and nursing home residents, who might eventually start to wonder what happened to that other white guy whose deep, calming voice helped them fall asleep after watching football on Sundays.

As for Pelley, it seems inevitable that he will soon join the likes of Jim Acosta, Jennifer Rubin, and Joy Reid—paragons of bias-free reporting—on Substack.

Obama’s ugly-ass monument keeps getting uglier: The Obama Presidential Center opens to the public later this month. A reporter from the Guardian got a sneak peak. “Rising above the low-rise, low-income neighbourhood, the building has an ominous presence, its mostly windowless heft recalling a menacing sci-fi headquarters, with small chamfered openings suggesting portals from where drones might be launched, or lasers fired,” he writes, charitably.

There is also apparently a massive bronze statue of the Obamas memorializing their Inauguration Day walk down Pennsylvania Avenue in 2009. Like practically every single piece of art the Obamas have ever selected to commemorate their excellence, the statue is as unflattering as it is unsettling.

Never forget: This week marked six years since more than 1,200 “public health and disease experts” signed an open letter in support of the George Floyd “antiracism” riots at a time when bureaucrats across the country were still boarding up playgrounds and public parks to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19,” the experts preened.

It’s one of those things that sounds too crazy to be real, but it was. The people who lost their minds in 2020—a significant percentage of the population, sadly—cannot be trusted to hold positions of power ever again.

Sorry, James Talarico, I don’t care how hot your “girlfriend” is.

PALATER CLEANSER

While a handful of weirdos obsessed over politics, most Americans were still buzzing about the 2026 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Runway Show that took place in Miami over the weekend. It’s one of those rare events that combine nearly all the things people actually care about—sports, fashion, celebrities, etc.

Everything about the show was inclusive. Woke liberals got to see Lizzo, the morbidly obese rapper, perform in a swimsuit, whereas everyone else got to see a bunch of objectively attractive models walk the runway.

America at its finest.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND

X: @AndrewStilesUSA

Email: stiles@freebeacon.com

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Send them here.

IT’S FRIDAY, MAY 29, 2026

Donald Trump is building a massive octagon cage at the White House to host a UFC fight on his 80th birthday. Jamie Metzl, a self-described “futurist,” former Democratic adviser, and ultramarathon freak with degrees from Brown, Harvard, and Oxford, called this a “desecration” of our national dignity. Normal Americans responded with a simple message:

Shut up, nerd.

This is the people’s house we’re talking about. Teddy Roosevelt regularly hosted—and often took part in—boxing matches there. Andrew Jackson celebrated his first inauguration by inviting the common man to come hang, then had to evacuate himself to escape the drunken mayhem. Old Hickory threw another rager on his way out the door, serving up a 1,400-pound wheel of aged cheddar that was gone in two hours.

It’s safe to say that no one woke up the next morning to go on a 50-mile run in the desert.

America has a big birthday coming up as well, and Trump has big plans to celebrate. He wants to mint a new $250 bill with his face on it, which is technically illegal but feels right. In the coming weeks, Vanilla Ice and one half of Milli Vanilli, the late-1980s Franco-German pop duo best known for pretending to sing their own songs, will perform on the National Mall.

If that doesn’t sound terribly exciting, just know that whatever happens at the White House on July 4 will be a thousand times better than whatever Kamala Harris would have subjected us to—land acknowledgments conveyed through interpretive dance, Amanda Gorman’s insufferable poetry, Lin-Manuel Miranda and the original Hamilton cast rapping about Obamacare, and countless unforeseen horrors.

America’s birthday celebration deserves the relentless pomp that only Trump can provide. We don’t need another left-wing carnival to indulge the sordid appetites of anti-American losers.

That’s what the World Cup is for.

Words of wisdom: “Can’t stand soccer,” UFC president Dana White said in 2012. “I think that it’s the least talented sport on Earth. There’s a reason three-year-olds can play soccer, OK? You run around and kick a ball. … You’re playing a game where the net is this big, right? And the score is three to one? Are you sh—ing me right now?”

NURSE WRETCHED’S FAREWELL TOUR

Jill Biden, the former first lady and assisted caregiver to the president, has a memoir coming out next month. The publicity tour kicked off this week with a series of interviews and published excerpts. It’s safe to say the esteemed doctor maintains her abiding faith in the American public’s capacity to consume utter bullshit.

For example, Jill recalled how “frightened” she was watching her husband ramble on about beating Medicare on the CNN debate stage. “I had never, ever, seen Joe like that—before or since,” she told CBS News. “I don’t know what happened. I mean, when I, as I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.”

Is that so? In the book, which purports to “set the record straight,” Jill recalls her first interaction with Joe as he walked off the debate stage. He wanted to know if he had “really f—ed up,” and she agreed that he had. Granted, I don’t have the ex-first lady’s medical background, but that seems like a harsh way to speak to a loved one who might be having a stroke. Unless she’s lying, which she is.

Jill did not appear to be deathly worried about Joe’s health when she joined him after the debate and told supporters how proud she was that he “answered every question” and “knew all the facts.” She could have taken him to see a real doctor. Instead they made an appearance at a local Waffle House, where Jill looked on in terror as reporters asked Joe about his performance.

Elsewhere in the book, Jill describes being worried that Sleepy Joe had accidentally “drugged” himself with sleeping pills or cough syrup. That she presents this as a plausible scenario does little to dispel concerns that the president’s brain was not functioning and she knew all along.

In any event, you should definitely buy the book. The Bidens clearly need the money. Things have gotten so bad that Hunter is doing chummy interviews with Candace Owens. He recently joined X and started posting about his crappy art and alleged sobriety.

Do it for Dr. Jill, the lying quack whose all-consuming lust for power likely saved us from the indignities of a Kamala Harris presidency. Here’s to many more happy years of defending Joe Biden’s dignity on the national stage.

WHEN THEY GO LOW, WE GO BACK TO MIDDLE SCHOOL

Trump adviser Stephen Miller congratulated James Talarico for becoming the first “transgender” candidate to win the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Texas. Democrats were offended because Talarico is not openly transgender, he’s just a normal vegan-aligned straight dude who claims to have a girlfriend and once likened racism to a “virus” white people spread wherever they go.

Are they offended when Gavin Newsom suggests that Lindsey Graham uses kneepads to fellate Donald Trump? Of course not. That’s homo-empowering.

The official Democratic Party X account responded by telling Miller to “shut up you ugly f—.” It appears to have been written by a 30-year-old Barnard graduate named Paulina, who is kind of attractive but also statistically likely to have a mental illness given her age, gender, and political affiliation. Her colleagues made a cake to congratulate her for clapping back at “Temu Hitler.”

Look, we’re just going to have to get used to this sort of thing if the idea of Gen Z internment camps is off the table. These people have spent their entire adult lives staring into their phones. There’s no civility on the internet, and the internet is everything, especially to the weirdos who work in politics and “create” “content” for a living.

It’ll be just like the early days of the republic, when politicians routinely accused one another of being witchcraft-adjacent, Satan-worshiping plutocrats who supported the teaching of incest in school. The news will be just as reliable as it was back then thanks to AI and the fact that young people don’t know how to read—an endless stream of vulgar slop read aloud in a robotic voice, blaring from a phone speaker in a public place.

And America will endure, because it must. Internment camps would be easier, though.

VARIOUS & SUNDRY

This is the future liberals want: An ugly European-made electric car that everyone hates and that costs $640,000, or roughly eight times the price of a Ford F-150 Platinum. Ferrari unveiled its new Luce EV this week at a photo-op with Pope Leo XIV, further delighting liberals who will never admit that their climate-obsessed cult is a form of organized religion. ABC News reported, somewhat charitably, that the hideous, brand-crushing twee machine was “met with market skepticism.”

Socialists are cheap dates (because someone else is always paying): Zohran Mamdani fans took a victory lap after the left-wing New York City mayor unveiled his plan to spend $28 billion on 200,000 affordable housing units over the next decade. “Once again, the most effective democratic politician is a fucking socialist and that is not a coincidence,” squealed a professional poster of middling renown.

Sure, congrats on the successful press release. There are few things Democrats love more than a good press release posing as an accomplishment. In 2021, the Biden administration allocated $42 billion for a “broadband equity” program to bring internet access to rural and underserved areas. By the time Biden left office, the program had connected zero homes thanks to the Democratic Party’s relentless devotion to incompetently managed bureaucracy.

Let’s check back in 10 years and see how everything panned out, especially since the program will be partially funded by taxpayer money freed up thanks to another Mamdani victory for “effective” socialist governance—deferring payments to the city’s pension funds until after he leaves office.

Meanwhile, in Chicago: The Democratic brain is a marvel to behold. Mayor Brandon Johnson vowed to crack down on the violent youths running rampant in his city by taxing social media companies and holding them “accountable” for helping young people coordinate their antisocial meetups. In 2023, Johnson joined Democratic leaders across the country in their effort to crackdown on car theft by suing Kia and Hyundai for making cars that were too easy to steal. The press release was pretty impressive, to be fair.

PALATE CLEANSER

Please enjoy these images of soccer players pretending to injure themselves:

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IT’S FRIDAY, MAY 22, 2026

Let’s get straight to the point. No bullshit.

America is deeply polarized, but we can all agree on one thing: Gen Z is out of control. We need a complete and total shutdown of their participation in society until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. In other words, we need a serious national dialogue about bringing back internment camps. Not the race-based kind that Democrats prefer. These would be inclusive, empathetic, educational.

It’s for their own good. Take away their dopamine boxes. Teach them how to read a book, how to socialize, how to flirt, and (if necessary) how to have sex without crying. Practice showing up on time. Learn what “out of pocket” means. Force them to cook their own meals, for crying out loud. Taylor Lorenz, the preeminent Gen Z intellectual (despite being at least 41 years old), offered a characteristically deranged defense of young people who spend way too much money on restaurants and delivery apps.

“This is [because] they do not have the time or capacity to create home cooked meals,” wrote Lorenz, who went viral in 2018 for complaining about the $22 avocado toast she ordered on a delivery app. Thanks to capitalism, she continued, young people are “forced to rely on these services.”

She makes it sound like being Gen Z is a form of disability that requires a state-sanctioned remedy—and we couldn’t agree more. That’s why the internment camps would have humane reeducation programs for morons who insist that DoorDash is a human right.

Think of all the lives we could save. In case you hadn’t noticed, Gen Z love to commit and defend acts of violence against their perceived enemies. Briahna Joy Gray, another 40-something Gen Z apologist, argued that delivery apps were involved in a conspiracy to prosecute Luigi Mangione, 28, for murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Relatedly, more than 40 percent of Gen Z voters view Mangione’s (alleged) actions as “somewhat acceptable.” That includes the credentialed “journalists” of the New York City press corps who showed up outside a Manhattan courthouse this week to report on the case remind Thompson’s children that they are “better off without him.”

Our British comrades recently approved a lifelong ban on buying cigarettes for everyone born after 2008. It’s a dumb idea, obviously, but the model is sound. We could start by rounding up everyone born after 1992. If you had a smartphone before you turned 18, get on the bus. This will include some younger Millennials, but no one is going to miss them either.

Shelby Campbell, for example. She’s a 32-year-old single mom and self-described “c—t” who constantly posts videos of herself “twerking” on social media. She is running for Congress in Michigan (as a Democrat, obviously). Straight to the camps. Same goes for Zohran Mamdani and his terrorist-supporting wife. Hasan Piker, Nick Fuentes, the guy who tried to shoot up the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Even Sydney Sweeney. Sorry, no exceptions.

Is it harsh? Maybe. One could even argue that the youngsters aren’t entirely to blame for their inability to function in society. They didn’t always ask to be coddled. In many cases, it was the so-called adults who engineered said coddling in the name of social justice. This week, for example, Harvard faculty finally did something sensible by voting to cap the number of A grades given to undergraduates at 20 percent. Last year the share was almost 70 percent, up from 30 percent in 2013.

Naturally, students hated the idea, citing concerns for their “mental health” and complaining that “student voices have not been centered.” They’re just doing what they’ve been taught to do in these situations, which is why everyone involved in higher education over the past several decades should also be sent to the camps to look upon the monsters they’ve created and despair.

EVEN FILTHY HIPPIES HATE TAXES

Several states held primary elections this week. Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.) lost his primary, which was kind of a good-news, bad-news situation for Tucker Carlson and the other antisemitic influencers backing his campaign. It was bad in the sense that they wanted him to stay in Congress to combat the global Jewish conspiracy, but good in the sense that his defeat proved them right about the meddling Jews.

One has to wonder if they’ll ever realize the futility of taking on a nefarious cabal of shape-shifters who can control the weather with the push of a button. Massie, who won’t be missed, will soon join Marjorie Taylor Greene on the neo-Nazi, pro-Hamas podcast circuit—and, soon enough, the ash heap of history.

One of the most amusing results came in Oregon, where 83 percent of voters rejected a ballot measure to raise the gasoline tax, double the payroll tax, and jack up car-related fees. Even residents of Portland, one of the country’s premier havens for dirtbag leftists, opposed the measure by a 74-26 percent margin.

This might seem obvious, but if you keep voting for Democrats, you should not be surprised or upset when they start raising your taxes. Few things are more predictable. They’ll use the money to pay for stuff that doesn’t work and then blame “lack of funding” to justify more tax hikes—and on and on.

These are the same voters who elected the Democratic governor and State Legislature that enacted the new taxes as a “temporary” measure in 2025. They only got a chance to vote it down because a Republican lawmaker collected enough signatures to force a referendum. Of course, most Democratic voters don’t oppose higher taxes in theory, they just want someone else to pay them.

Fun fact: In 2020, Oregon voters approved a ballot measure to decriminalize all drugs in the name of social justice. State lawmakers abandoned the plan four years later amid a spike in overdose deaths and public disorder. Who could have predicted?

GOOD RIDDANCE / GOOD REST

Stephen Colbert is officially off the air. By the time you read this, he’ll have hosted his final episode of The Late Show on CBS—a show that hasn’t been profitable (or funny) in years. Liberal elites and other sanctimonious cranks will mourn Colbert’s departure because, according to their educated worldview, all white men have a God-given right to earn $15 million to go on television and say things they agree with.

“He’s radiated gratitude,” CNN’s Brian Stelter said of Colbert during an appearance at the Workplace Innovation Summit, sponsored by Fortune magazine. “We need those kinds of role models.”

As is often the case when professional journalists opine, the word “we” is doing a lot of work there. To the extent that someone so irrelevant can be divisive, Colbert was a divisive figure. His purpose was not so much to entertain, but rather to soothe the fragile psyches of his target audience—a tiny sliver of the population that just so happens to correlate strongly with mental illness.

Whereas his late-night predecessors might have pandered to the vast majority of Americans who don’t follow politics obsessively and would rather not watch an Elizabeth Warren interview at midnight, Colbert didn’t even try. Whereas genuine comedians would consider all politicians deserving of ridicule, Colbert never wavered in his partisan hackery, even when our country was led by a bumbling zombie who “finally beat Medicare.”

Despite being “canceled” for having the “courage” to denounce half the country for electing an evil scumbag, Colbert has already lined up his next gig—cowriting a new film in the Lord of the Rings franchise.

Good riddance, dorkwad.

Barney Frank died this week at the age of 86. The former Democratic congressman was widely loathed by Republicans during his time in office (1981-2013), but he may soon be remembered as one of the last sane members of his party—just as Democrats have developed a “strange new respect” for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in recent years.

Frank spent his final days railing against the radical left-wing activists who have pressured Democrats to embrace “very drastic social reconstructions that go beyond the politically acceptable.” He said he was “troubled” by the party’s embrace of Graham Platner, the Nazi-adjacent furniture scion running for U.S. Senate in Maine. Good for him, but it doesn’t seem like Democrats are eager to take his advice.

He was also a commensurate slob. The only memorable passage of Elizabeth Warren’s long-forgotten 2016 memoir, A Fighting Chance, is the part where she describes meeting Frank for the first time at his apartment. “It was a small space; on one side of the living area there was a king-size mattress on the floor, complete with a tangle of unmade sheets and blankets,” she recalled.

Frank was also the subject of an early Twitter banger courtesy of Donald Trump, which in retrospect should have made his political rise feel slightly more inevitable than it did at the time. “Barney Frank looked disgusting—nipples protruding—in his blue shirt before Congress,” our current president wrote in 2011. “Very very disrespectful.”

Rest in peace, you gay bastard.

PALATE CLEANSER

Almost 15 years later, Trump remains—and always will be—one of the funniest politicians in American history. His son, Don Jr., is getting married this weekend, but Trump told reporters this week that he doesn’t think he’ll be able to attend. “You know, this is not good timing for me,” he said in the Oval Office. “I have a thing called Iran and other things.”

Trump did have some kind words for his son, whom he described as “a person who I’ve known for a long time.”

Crucial context: Don Jr. is marrying Bettina Anderson, a banking heiress, model, and socialite. She is almost 20 years younger—and considerably more attractive—than his ex-fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle. Most crucially, Anderson was never married to Gavin Newsom. Don Jr. won a Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year award in 2024 for not only upgrading his relationship but also for persuading his father to ship Guilfoyle out of the country by making her ambassador to Greece.

Well played, sir! We’re still proud of you, even if your father isn’t.

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IT’S FRIDAY, MAY 15, 2026

Donald Trump went to China this week to make some deals and got a hero’s welcome in Beijing. Trump was particularly impressed by the “beautiful” and “happy” children who came out to greet him before returning to their jobs at the iPhone factory and working double shifts to make up for the time they missed.

The ChiComs served Trump’s favorite dessert (ice cream) at the state banquet, where the People’s Liberation Army military band closed things out by playing one of his favorite gay anthems: “Y.M.C.A” by the Village People. Fortunately, this president is famously impervious to authoritarian pomp and flattery. He would never let it influence his decisions. Otherwise, one might have reason to worry.

Some context: Days earlier, a California mayor pleaded guilty to acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government.

Further context: Last week, a group of Trump supporters unveiled a commemorative statue of the president at his Doral golf club. It goes without saying that the 22-foot structure, dubbed “Don Colossus,” is covered in gold leaf, and Jim Acosta was reporting live from the scene within days.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE DEMOCRATS

In Texas, a demented sex therapist has a real shot at winning the Democratic nomination for Congress in the newly created 35th district comprising parts of San Antonio. Maureen Galindo advanced to a run-off after receiving nearly 30 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary despite barely running a campaign. A Washington Free Beacon review of her social media activity found a litany of antisemitic rants that were quite shocking—even by the standards of the modern Democratic Party.

In addition to complaining about the Jews who “own Hollywood” and “worship Satan,” Galindo suggested that—unlike most Democratic anti-Semites—she would never take money from George Soros, the left-wing Jewish billionaire. Asked for comment, Galindo told the Free Beacon that “billionaire Zionists and their puppet journalists are FAKE Jews who create antisemitism to harm and harvest off the real Jews.”

If the past 10 years of American politics are any indication, Galindo will win the primary and the general election to become the deciding vote in the Democrats’ narrow House majority after the midterms. In any event, this would be one of the dumbest possible outcomes, so why bet against it?

Now here’s a look at what Democrats have been up to in the places where they actually hold power:

California

Spencer Pratt, the insurgent Republican running for mayor of Los Angeles, has repeatedly described his incumbent opponent, Karen Bass, as “incompetent.” Bass responded this week by arguing Pratt doesn’t have the “background or knowledge” to ruin a city with sclerotic bureaucracy and streamlined corruption. Or, as she put it, he doesn’t understand “how our government works.”

On Monday, Bass demonstrated her formidable expertise by proposing a new plan to crack down on all the meth-addicted vagrants camping in the street. Did I say crack down? Sorry, what she actually proposed was using taxpayer dollars to give them taxpayer-funded dental care.

On a related note, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein moderated a forum with the leading Democrats running for governor in California. Klein posted a clip of San Jose mayor Matt Mahan explaining (somewhat apologetically) that large homeless encampments are bad and make normal voters feel like their politicians don’t care about public disorder.

No s—! Many of the people reacting to the clip appeared to conflate Mahan’s basic competence with staggering genius, but it’s California so it’s all relative. He is currently in fourth place among Democrats, according to a recent poll, several percentage points behind Katie Porter, the former congresswoman who threw boiling mashed potatoes on her ex-husband. The frontrunner, Xavier Becerra, is best known as Joe Biden’s “incompetent” health secretary who couldn’t be fired because of DEI. Sometimes voters get the leaders they deserve.

New York

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani released a fun video congratulating himself for solving the city’s $12 billion budget deficit. “After months of painstaking work, that deficit is now zero,” he proclaimed from the roof of City Hall. Based on the details, however, Mamdani’s celebration was akin to Hunter Biden congratulating himself for “solving” his legal challenges.

Roughy $8 billion, or two-thirds, of the “savings” came in the form of a bailout from the state government, including $2.3 million via delayed public pension contributions and $500 million “saved” by allowing the city to not comply with a 2022 state law mandating smaller class sizes in public schools.

You see, balancing the budget is easy if someone else pays for it, and you can magically exempt yourself from following the rules. Even a communist can do it!

Speaking of freeloading influencers, Jack Schlossberg’s congressional campaign is going exactly as expected. The New York Times reports that the Kennedy scion—charitably described as a “first-time candidate with little traditional work experience”—rarely shows up to campaign meetings and often disappears “for long stretches with little notice or explanation.” His staff is a mess, in part because he keeps firing people and neglecting to tell them.

Nearly all of the Democrats who vented to the Times did so anonymously out of “deference to Mr. Schlossberg’s famous family.” They’re presumably just as reluctant to antagonize Nancy Pelosi, who recently endorsed the trust-fund layabout, citing his “deep sense of duty.”

In other words, Schlossberg getting elected to Congress is another dumb thing that is probably going to happen this year.

VARIOUS & SUNDRY

Thanks, Obama: Across the pond, British prime minister Keir Starmer and the Labour Party were shellacked in local and regional elections earlier this month. Starmer took office in 2024 after getting leadership tips from former president Barack Obama. It’s not the first time that’s happened. In 2019, the owner of the Washington Wizards reached out to Obama for basketball advice. Since then, the team has accumulated the league’s worst record. During that same period, Obama managed to acquire the world’s ugliest building.

Dave Chappelle, uncanceled: Given the extreme liberal freakout over his transgender material, I was surprised to learn that Chappelle had recently appeared on IMO, the podcast Michelle Obama cohosts with her brother Craig Robinson. They praised Chappelle as “one of the greatest comedians this country has ever produced,” and the “most important artist of our generation.” What happened? When did Michelle Obama become a raging transphobe?

A quick Google search cleared things up. Chappelle did an interview with NPR last month and talked about how much he hated Republicans for “weaponizing” his transgender jokes. Mystery solved.

The world’s smallest violin: That’s the sound I heard after learning that an influencer called “Chud the Builder” was charged with attempted murder after shooting someone outside a courthouse in Tennessee. Chud, 28, is a self-described “free speech patriot” who is best known (as far as I can tell) for harassing strangers by shouting the n-word. It’s never the ones you suspect.

OK, Boomer, just die already: The New York Times published yet another series of letters from readers who think it’s perfectly normal to hate the idea of having children because of climate change and other political nonsense. Sue Kusch from Washington state praised her son and daughter-in-law for depriving her of grandchildren.

“Who would want to bring children into a world that is filled with terror, corruption, toxic pollution and horrendous politics?” she wrote. “A world where only certain lives matter. A world where the wealthiest support a far-right perspective of the world, and feel no obligation or concern for the other 90 percent.”

I’m afraid I have some bad news for Mrs. Kusch regarding the voting habits of the richest 10 percent. Still, she deserves credit for her absurdly histrionic conclusion: “After reading the headlines of yet another insane day in a MAGA country, my partner and I agreed: We are glad to be old and leaving this planet soon.”

Typical Boomer. Trash the place, rack up an enormous bill they’ll never pay, complain, then skip out with a smile on their face.

PALATE CLEANSER

Fancy private schools are the worst. The brats at NYU are throwing a tantrum because this year’s graduation speaker, author and NYU professor Jonathan Haidt, has criticized universities for coddling their students. Doing what comes naturally, the coddled youths proved him right. Student government leaders fired off a poorly written letter urging university leaders to pick someone else.

“In a world marked by sustained attacks on higher education and the global unraveling of diversity, equity, and inclusion, which has only deepened inequities,” they whined insufferably, “Professor Haidt is not the appropriate individual to address the Class of 2026.”

Meanwhile, the slightly less hysterical students at UNC—a superior state school—heard from country music star Eric Church, who gave an inspiring speech on the importance of family, faith, community, and authenticity that is worth watching in full when you have the chance.

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IT’S FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2026

First, the good news: If you forgot about Mother’s Day, it’s not too late to redeem yourself. Or maybe you didn’t forget about Mother’s Day, but you’re not panicking because your wife said she “didn’t want anything” this year. You moron, you incompetent fool. That is not what she meant. She was lying. Start panicking. What makes me so sure, may you ask? No, you may not.

Now, the bad news: Three cruise ship passengers have died after an outbreak of hantavirus, a rare and potentially deadly disease that doesn’t typically spread between humans—except for the Andes strain found in Argentina, where the cruise ship departed last month en route to the Canary Islands. Eight total cases have been identified thus far, as authorities scramble to track down passengers who have disembarked and returned home to Europe and the United States.

The “leading hypothesis,” according to the Associated Press, is that two of the victims, a Dutch couple, may have encountered infected rodent droppings while birdwatching in a landfill, the sick bastards. On the one hand, there’s probably nothing to worry about. On the other hand, the experts at the World Health Organization are monitoring the situation and have insisted there is nothing to worry about.

Time to panic?

BARACK TO REALITY (OPE, THERE’S MY LIBRARY)

Barack Obama is back in the spotlight promoting the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, which will finally open to the public next month. He sat down with Stephen Colbert, the former comedian, and spoke with the New Yorker about his vision for the Center and his role in helping the Democratic Party navigate the Trump era.

In case you haven’t seen it already, the Obama Center is an aesthetic abomination. Part alien spacecraft, part brutalist mausoleum, part Bond villain lair, the structure itself is so ugly it could only have been designed by a racist architect.

But that’s not what happened.

The actual architects, according to the New Yorker, did not envision a “hulking gray tower” when they started pitching the project. It was Obama who repeatedly “pushed them to go bigger,” complained that they weren’t being “bold enough,” and demanded they study the works of modernist sculptor Constantin Brâncuși.

The works of Constantin Brâncuși:

Everything about the Obama Center is remarkably on brand. The exorbitant price tag: $850 million. The plodding pace: More than a decade from start to finish, thanks in no small part to stringent DEI quotas and the numerous delays tied to environmental reviews and discrimination lawsuits. The location: A poor neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago where Obama cut his teeth as a community organizer, where local activists have repeatedly complained that residents will soon be priced out due to inevitable gentrification.

The Obama Center gift shop is already open, offering a selection of items that faithfully capture the Obama vibe. Hats and trinkets adorned with single-word slogans such as “hope,” “empathy,” and “courage.” Kits for children to build their own wind turbines. A $400 pearl necklace from an AAPI- and woman-owned jewelry brand inspired by Michelle Obama’s “whimsical elegance.” A clay lapel pin depicting the center’s towering obelisk designed by an Indian-born architect specializing in “sustainability and social equity.” A $40 dog hoodie so your canine companion can “represent the mission of shared progress.” Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals is available for purchase—for nearly double its price on Amazon.

Obama will continue to dabble in politics, though his real passion is partying with celebrities and vacationing with billionaires. He is busy enough trying to finish the second volume of his post-White House memoir. Fittingly, Obama is the first president since Dwight D. Eisenhower to require multiple volumes. (The first was 768 pages.) He is also managing an extensive real estate portfolio that includes a 6,400-square-foot Georgian-style mansion in Chicago, an 8,200-square-foot mansion in Washington, D.C., a 6,800-square-foot waterfront estate on Martha’s Vineyard, and a three-acre beachfront compound in Hawaii.

So far this year, Obama has publicly endorsed the gerrymandering efforts led by Democratic governors in California and Virginia—a jarring departure for the “skinny kid with a funny name” who launched his career at the 2004 Democratic convention by scolding those who “slice and dice our country into red states and blue states.” He recently praised Zohran Mamdani, the anti-capitalist mayor of New York City, as an “extraordinary talent” who gives him hope for the future of the Democratic Party.

Talk about a kiss of death. Unfortunately for Mamdani, few people have demonstrated worse political instincts over the previous decade than Obama. He shunted Joe Biden aside to anoint Hillary Clinton in 2016, then fell in love with Beto O’Rourke in 2020. He was also a fan of Kamala Harris, though his efforts on the campaign weren’t enough to propel her to victory in 2024. It didn’t help that Obama’s most notable sound bite was scolding black men for being sexist.

Congrats on the vanity complex!

Related: Someone made an Obama musical that is playing in our nation’s capital. Catch my review of 44: The Musical in the next edition of the Weekend Beacon.

THE QUIET PART, OUT LOUD

Last fall, the mainstream media had a field day “fact-checking” Republicans for suggesting Democrats wanted to give free health care to illegal immigrants. NPR, the Associated Press, CNN, the New York Times, and others scolded the GOP for lying. It wasn’t long before prominent Democrats started publicly endorsing free health care for illegal immigrants.

“Trump often lies about Democrats giving healthcare to undocumented immigrants,” Times columnist Ezra Klein wrote in a social media post promoting his interview with Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.), in which the 2028 hopeful openly defended his policy of giving free health care to illegal immigrants.

Katie Porter, the rage-prone former congresswoman running to succeed Newsom as governor, enthusiastically embraced this policy during this week’s primary debate. Free health care for illegal immigrants was a good thing, she argued, because it would incentivize more illegal immigrants to come. “They’re one of the only ways that our state has been growing in recent years,” she admitted. Porter isn’t wrong, but it’s shocking to hear a Democrat say that out loud as her party steadily runs out of ideas to fix the messes they’ve caused in deep blue states.

Related: Spencer Pratt, the former reality star running for mayor of Los Angeles as a Republican, made a splash in his own debate against Karen Bass, the incumbent Democrat, and Nithya Raman, a socialist city council member. Pratt is almost certainly going to lose by a huge margin, but he’s getting a lot of attention on social media for speaking like a human being who is genuinely angry about the sorry state of his city. At one point during the debate, Pratt offered to take Raman on a tour of one of LA’s various meth encampments but feared she would get “stabbed in the neck,” which is probably true.

VARIOUS & SUNDRY

Self-immolation: Democrats in California and beyond insisted that the Palisades fire, which killed 12 and destroyed thousands of homes (including Spencer Pratt’s) in January 2025, was caused by “climate change.” In fact, the fire was caused by a left-wing lunatic who hated rich people and was obsessed with Luigi Mangione. In other words, a typical LA voter.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics: More than a dozen police officers in Washington, D.C., were placed on leave this week amidst an internal investigation into the department’s alleged manipulation of crime data. This is the same data that Democrats and journalists passionately cited in August 2025 when Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to D.C. to crack down on crime. It was totally unnecessary, they argued, just look at these statistics.

He fights, but so can you: Almost 40 percent of Republicans said Donald Trump would beat them in a physical fight, compared to just 19 percent of the general population, according to a recent YouGov poll. Have some self-respect, Republicans. The man is almost 80 years old. Aim for the shins!

PALATE CLEANSER

Congratulations to actress Megan Fox, who will celebrate her 40th birthday on May 16. She doesn’t look a day over 37!

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IT’S FRIDAY, MAY 1, 2026

Someone tried to kill the president again. It happened almost a week ago, so the media have already moved on. Journalists and other Democrats quickly pivoted to attacking the Supreme Court for doing Jim Crow 6.0 (or whatever we’re up to now). The New York Times described this week’s ruling, which scaled back a portion of the Voting Rights Act, as a flashpoint in the ongoing debate over whether America is less racist or just as (if not more) racist than it was in 1965.

Gotta hear both sides, I guess.

At the risk of dredging up old news, the (most recent) assassination attempt at the Washington Hilton—where members of the media had gathered to congratulate themselves at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner—was aggressively on-brand across the board.

The shooter was another deranged nerd who’d been radicalized by mainstream journalists, normie Democrats, and anti-Trump Republicans. Donald Trump survived (again) and used the occasion to promote his massive ballroom. The Secret Service acted with great courage in the moment but somehow failed to stop a military-age male with a bag full of guns from checking in the night before the president’s arrival.

Katie Porter, the former Democratic congresswoman running for governor of California, sent out a fundraising email with the subject line “Fuck Trump,” less than 24 hours after the shooter was apprehended. Around the same time, former president Barack Obama issued a statement insisting that “we don’t yet have the details” about the shooter’s motive—many hours after said details were made public.

Journalists responded by calling for gun control and making it all about themselves. Former MSNBC host Chuck Todd announced that he would no longer attend events where Trump is present. He accused Trump of inciting violence against himself and being insufficiently concerned for the personal safety of Chuck Todd.

When in doubt, shut the f— up: UnitedHealthcare, the company whose CEO was gunned down 16 months ago, fired an employee who posted a TikTok video of herself in her car musing about the assassination attempt on Trump . “My first reaction … was ‘It was probably fake,’” the woman said. “And the second was ‘Aww, they missed?’” Oh, no. She lost her job for being an idiot? That’s so sad.

Fun fact: According to a recent poll, almost 50 percent of Democratic voters said it was “definitely true” or “probably true” that the July 2024 assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pa., was “orchestrated by his supporters to increase sympathy for him.”

Bottom line: As bad as things seem at the moment, the national discourse is healthier than it otherwise would be because the alleged shooter, Cole Tomas Allen, is objectively ugly.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE DEMOCRATS

The Democratic Party is in top form. They’ve spent the last few weeks debating the pros and cons of embracing Hasan Piker, the left-wing streamer who loves Mao Zedong and political violence almost as much as he hates America.

Then along comes Cole Tomas Allen, the failed Trump assassin who spent the last few weeks dismissing Piker as a “dumb” fanatic while retweeting the likes of New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie and Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.).

Democrats and their media allies have spent years telling people like Allen, who supported Kamala Harris in 2024, that Trump is an existential threat to democracy, humanity, life as we know it, everything we hold dear, peace on Earth, the environment, racial justice, gender equality, the continued employment of late night television hosts—fill in the blank.

Are they surprised that someone took them seriously? Will they be surprised again in 2028, when primary voters flock to the candidate who promises to nullify presidential pardons to facilitate mass arrests for “Nuremberg 2.0”?

In the meantime, here’s a look at how Democrats across the country are demonstrating competent leadership in the face of adversity.

California

This week we learned that California approved a $1 billion plan to reroute its high-speed rail project to avoid disturbing visitors to the Cesar Chavez National Monument near Bakersfield.

On the bright side, $1 billion dollars is less than 1 percent of the projected total cost, which has ballooned from $33 billion in 2008 to a staggering $231 billion—or roughly the entire GDP of Ukraine.

Officials are debating whether to scrap the plan after Chavez became the latest Democratic icon to be outed as a prolific sex pest, but if you think that’s going to save California taxpayers any money, I’ve got a train to sell you.

Maine

The Democratic establishment has given up trying to stop Graham Platner from winning the U.S. Senate nomination.

Platner, the Carhartt communist who accidentally got a Nazi tattoo and keeps having to apologize for mingling with anti-Semites, and his fawning supporters rejoiced this week when his establishment-backed competitor, Gov. Janet Mills, suspended her campaign. Not that she had any chance, but still. Platner will face Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine) in the general election.

While Hasan Piker, among others, has praised Platner for being “pro-Hamas” in 2014—before it was cool—not all Democrats are on board. The always quotable Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) had this to say: “If Maine wants an asshole with a Nazi tattoo on his chest, they get him.”

That might be what they want. The Maine Wire posted a video this week of Matt Dunlap, the Democratic state auditor running for Congress, politely fielding a Boomer white lady’s question about how to stop health insurance companies from being evil given “a lack of Luigi Mangiones.”

Michigan

U.S. Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow, a New Jersey native and former California resident, is under fire for disparaging Michigan and other parts of “Middle America” in old, since-deleted social media posts. She complained, for example, that Trump’s election in 2016 made her “miss California even more.”

McMorrow is the perfect Democratic candidate. She’s a former toy designer who hated Trump so much she ran for State Senate. She went viral in 2022 for angrily denouncing Republicans as a “straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom.” That same year, she defeated the incumbent chairman of the Michigan Legislative Black Caucus (and Michigan native) in the Democratic primary after their districts were merged.

The state’s U.S. Senate primary offers a near-perfect snapshot of the Democratic Party in 2026. It is essentially a three-way tie between incumbent congresswoman Haley Stevens (a low-energy generic Democrat backed by the establishment), McMorrow (a slightly younger and higher-energy generic Democrat backed by different parts of the establishment), and Abdul El-Sayed (a lacrosse-playing, terror-sympathizing leftist backed by Bernie Sanders and Hasan Piker). Good luck to all!

Minnesota

Minneapolis residents consistently vote for Democrats who view crime as a legitimate expression of social grievance and law enforcement as a gateway drug to fascism. Now some of them are demanding more police presence and patrols—a dangerous expression of white supremacy—after nearly 30 cars in a single neighborhood were burglarized overnight.

Bless their hearts. If these people read the New York Times, they would understand that a bit of “microlooting” is nothing to get worked up about.

New York

Just four months after socialist Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor of New York City, he is already asking the state government for a bailout to solve the city’s “budget crisis.” Things are so bad that Mamdani was forced to thank a hedge fund billionaire, Ken Griffin, for his contributions to the city. Just days earlier, the mayor bragged about “taxing the rich” and explicitly targeted Griffin—who fled Chicago for Miami in 2022 due to Democratic dysfunction—in a video filmed in front of the billionaire’s Manhattan penthouse.

Washington

Seattle mayor Katie Wilson, a 43-year-old professional activist who relied on her parents’ financial support for decades, laughed off concerns that rich people will flee to escape punitive taxation. “The claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are, like, super-overblown,” she said this week. “And if, you know, the ones that leave, like, bye!”

At this rate, no amount of redistricting shenanigans is going to help Democrats overcome the inevitable reapportionment wave. They might try to cancel the 2030 census, but it won’t stop people from moving to states that actually want them.

VARIOUS & SUNDRY

Finally, a cool Harvard grad: Lorna Hajdini, a 37-year-old girl boss at JPMorgan, is being sued by a former male subordinate who claims she repeatedly exposed her “cannons” and threatened to derail his career if he didn’t “f— [her] brains out.” Hajdini completed an executive education program at Harvard, a university that has graduated some of history’s greatest monsters. We’re really going to have to hear both sides. UPDATE: We just saw a picture of the “victim,” and, yeah, we’re pretty sure it’s all fake. Cool story, though.

Batman for microlooters: Say what you will about Americans these days, but we haven’t all given up on trying to enforce the rules. A Taco Bell employee in Florida (obviously) fired a gun at three women who were attempting to fill up their complimentary water cups with soda. Because that is also “against the rules,” the employee was arrested and charged. Is D’Mari Jy’Quan Patterson a Mangione-esque figure for law-and-order advocates? Not exactly, but if forced to choose, it’s a no-brainer.

PALATE CLEANSER

Reality TV boyfriend Spencer Pratt is running for mayor of Los Angeles as a Republican. He will surely lose, but this campaign ad is good enough to give normal Americans some hope that their fellow citizens might eventually revolt against the Democratic misrule that has ruined so many of our fine cities.

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IT’S FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 2026

Tomorrow is the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Some journalists plan to attend wearing “pocket handkerchiefs or lapel pins” bearing the text of the First Amendment, like a bunch of formally attired dorks. A group of other journalists—i.e., the ones who weren’t invited—signed a petition urging their fellow freedom fighters to “forcefully demonstrate” their opposition to President Donald Trump, who is actually coming this year. They suggested something even lamer than a pocket square—a “standing toast to the First Amendment” followed by some sort of pledge of allegiance to the “critical cornerstone of our democracy.” Among the illustrious signatories? Dan Rather. So consider it unverified.

MAO WORSHIP AT THE NEW YORK TIMES

The New York Times as an organization stopped attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner back in 2007. They complained that the so-called Nerd Prom had become too “celebrity-focused” and undermined their noble efforts to uphold democracy. This week, while their fellow journalists were condemning the futility of First Amendment pocket squares, the Times was doing meaningful journalism filming a roundtable discussion about which socially frowned-upon activities—petty theft, looting, murder, etc.—were actually good.

Times culture editor Nadja Spiegelman sat down with Jia Tolentino, a staff writer at the New Yorker (via Jezebel), and Hasan Piker, the radical beefcake influencer who loves communism almost as much as he loves terrorism. For several weeks now, Democrats have been debating whether or not to embrace Piker, whose radical anti-American worldview is gaining traction among the party’s voters. It’s why some Democratic candidates regard him as a “celebrity” worth inviting on the campaign trail, even though roughly 80 percent of Americans don’t know (or don’t care) who he is.

The debate continued this week after Piker, who spruced up for the Times by swapping his Mao Zedong power suit for a Ralph Lauren button-down, recited Marxist talking points while defending all sorts of criminal behavior. “I think it’s cool,” he said when asked to explain why he would steal from the Louvre. “We’ve got to get back to cool crimes like that: bank robberies, stealing priceless artifacts, things of that nature.” Piker went on to justify the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the grounds that Thompson was guilty of “social murder” and “structural violence.” A week earlier, Piker told the Pod Save America bros he would “vote for Hamas over Israel every single time.”

Some Democrats have condemned Piker’s nonsense, but all the momentum is on the anti-anti-Piker side. Even Ezra Klein, the esteemed Times columnist and thought leader, has defended the beefcake influencer on the grounds that he might be able to help Democrats win elections. It’s never a good sign when normie liberal cranks such as Neera Tanden and Jill Filipovic represent the voice of reason. But here we are, and just a few months before the 2028 Democratic primary gets up and running. Good luck to all!

Deep thought: This wouldn’t be happening if Piker weren’t somewhat good-looking, or extremely handsome by Washington, D.C.’s notoriously low standards of attractiveness. (See: The White House Correspondents’ Dinner.)

Read more: Hasan Piker Geeks Out After Receiving Mao Zedong's Infamous 'Little Red Book'

ACTUALLY, CRIME IS BAD (AND EASY TO STOP)

In addition to defending crime in the pages of the Times, Piker also praised New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani for pursuing “free buses” and “government-owned storefronts.” (For what it’s worth, Piker said it’s not OK to steal from a taxpayer-funded store because the workers are unionized.) Earlier this week, the Atlantic published an article about what happened when San Francisco’s public transit system (BART) found a “neat trick” for discouraging hoodlums: They stopped making it “free” for anyone who didn’t feel like paying. Over the past year—since installing six-foot-tall reinforced gates that can’t be easily hopped—BART has seen a $10 million increase in revenue, a 41 percent drop in crime, and a 95 percent reduction in hours spent cleaning up vandalism and human excrement.

Atlantic CEO Nick Thompson said these stats were “kind of remarkable.” Except they aren’t. Washington, D.C., has seen similar results after cracking down on fare evaders. What’s remarkable is that Democratic-run cities have taken so long to come to their senses. Sometimes addicts need to hit rock bottom before admitting they have a problem and seeking help. The idea that enforcing basic rules will inevitably lead to less undesirable behavior might seem obvious to most people, but it’s a bonafide revelation to liberal elites and their activist allies who have long argued that enforcing the rules was a form of structural oppression against marginalized communities and have endorsed policies that coddle miscreants at the expensive of everyone else who just wants to get to work on time without getting pissed on.

Flashback: On the subject of fearless journalism and public disorder, it’s worth remembering that the Times opinion editor was forced to resign in 2020 after publishing an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) arguing that basic rules—against rioting, looting, and general mayhem—should be enforced.

VARIOUS & SUNDRY

Gerrymandering is good again: Virginia voters narrowly approved a ballot measure to “restore fairness in the upcoming elections.” What it will actually do—pending approval by the state supreme court—is create a bunch of wonky new congressional districts that give Democrats a 10-1 seat advantage by letting elite professionals in the D.C. suburbs dictate how the state’s rural population is represented in Congress—just as Thomas Jefferson intended.

Another old Democrat dies: Rep. David Scott (D., Ga.) became the fourth Democratic congressman to die in office since 2025. He was three years younger than Joe Biden. First elected to public office in 1975, Scott was described by one veteran Capitol Hill reporter as a “shameless” icon of corruption.

Worst coast scenario: Here’s how bad things are going for Democrats in the California gubernatorial primary. Last week, the party’s frontrunner, Eric Swalwell, dropped out to contend with rape allegations. This week, Our Revolution, an anti-billionaire group founded by Bernie Sanders, endorsed Tom Steyer, the billionaire activist who has spent almost $500 million running for office since 2020. That’s pretty embarrassing for Xavier Becerra and Katie Porter, the top Democrats running against Steyer. Becerra, who served as health secretary under Biden, was so bad at his job that liberals started to question their faith in DEI. (Karine Jean-Pierre finished the job.) Porter, a former congresswoman, is best known for abusing her staff and for dumping a pot of scalding hot potatoes on her ex-husband’s head.

Boobs are gonna boob: A 22-year-old Indian man named “Sam” was trying to pay his way through medical school, so he created an AI-generated influencer babe who raked in cash by posting pro-MAGA content on Instagram. He said he tried creating a left-wing version that never took off because Democrats “don’t engage as much” and aren’t “super dumb” like Republicans. That may be so, but if Sam ever wants to dream a little bigger and earn enough to buy his own medical school, he could try creating a generic white liberal running for U.S. Senate in a Republican state (see: Amy McGrath or Beto O’Rourke) or an entire crew of schlubby ex-Republican operatives launching an edgy anti-Trump super PAC (See: The Lincoln Project).

PALATE CLEANSER

Take a stroll down memory lane with some photos from the glory days of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

2015

2014

2013

2012

2008

2003

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CHARLOTTE—Kamala Harris is technically still on tour promoting 107 Days, her critically panned campaign memoir that came out almost seven months ago. Copies of the book adorn the stage at Ovens Auditorium, but no one wants to hear her rehash petty grievances from a lost election in what feels like the distant past. Maybe that explains the empty seats.

A lot has happened since early February, when Harris was originally scheduled to appear in Charlotte before canceling due to winter storms. There’s war in Iran and chaos in California—specifically the governor’s race Harris almost joined. Now she’s being urged to reconsider—filing deadlines notwithstanding—after the Democratic frontrunner, Eric Swalwell, quit the race and resigned from Congress amid allegations of sexual assault.

Harris doesn’t want to talk about that either, or say anything that might seem newsworthy. If she wanted to answer probing questions on the spot, she would have chosen a different moderator. Harris was joined on stage Wednesday by Brooklyn Decker, a former swimsuit model who publicly supported Harris’s campaign. She doesn’t even bother to ask if Harris is thinking about running for president again. That might ruin the vibe.

This is a therapy session, not a promotional event. Harris is just cashing checks, and doing her best to fill the hour. Decker serves up a series of softballs inviting her to denounce Donald Trump. Harris holds forth in her signature style—panicked college student midway through an oral report on a book she hasn’t read, stalling for time.

Whereas her potential 2028 rival Gavin Newsom might say something like, “Orange man poop,” Harris can’t help but ramble semi-coherently, even when Decker invites her to sound off on Trump’s ongoing feud with the pope. “Part of what we have always believed, we know that individuals are flawed—they’re all flawed—but we have a right to expect that an individual who is such a leader, at such a level would assume a responsibility—flawed though they may be, imperfect, though we all are, that they would assume some responsibility for moral leadership,” she explains, sort of.

If Harris has a coherent thought about the war in Iran, she declines to share it when prompted. She defaults to word salads and stale talking points, evoking memories of the campaign. “You look at what is happening with this administration on the issue of foreign affairs, and by extension, because anything that relates to our foreign affairs, at some point, directly or maybe a bit indirectly, relates to our national security,” Harris says. “I served as vice president of the United States. During that time, I met over 150 world leaders—presidents, prime ministers, chancellors, and kings.”

In a sign that Harris is not seriously considering another White House run, she declines to denounce (or even mention) the State of Israel. She’ll never survive a Democratic primary with that kind of attitude. Decker wonders if Trump started bombing Iran to distract from the Epstein files. Harris, not interested in taking the bait, says she doesn’t know. What she does know is that Trump “creates distractions to distract from the fact that he is incompetent and corrupt.” The crowd erupts in ecstasy. Now the healing can begin.

Harris is feeling good about the coming midterms, but not so good about all the “cheating” Republicans are doing to rig the results. People ask her all the time what gives her hope, and the answer is young people. That reminds her of freshman orientation, when volunteers handed out goodie bags with toothpaste and deodorant, among other things. “And the reason is because the companies know, let’s get them right now, because they’ll be committed to that product for the rest of their lives,” Harris cackles maniacally. “And I actually am. I won’t tell you the brand.” So begins a meandering diatribe about the alleged Republican plot to stop college students from voting, which is exactly like Jim Crow.

The former vice president boldly suggests, in her most sincere impression of a new age healer, that our politics would improve if we could all just get along. “We cannot give up on each other,” she says in response to a question about whether “truth is dead.” In soothing tones, she implores the audience to combat misinformation by educating their ignorant Republican friends in the fashion of a mother comforting a crying toddler.

Harris envisions a “project of civic renewal” that involves getting “back to a priority that we collectively are invested in and engaged in around building back up a sense of community and connection,” whatever that means. She remains the undisputed queen of using the most amount of words to say so little. We are almost out of time.

Decker reads a question from the audience. Jayla is a 24-year-old aspiring leader seeking advice for people like her “who are still learning to believe their own voice matters.” Harris leans forward in her therapist’s chair. She tells Jayla to stand up. To the surprise of at least one audience member, Jayla is a real person. The crowd goes wild, and Harris dispenses the pablum.

“Remember that, what you just heard, OK?” she tells the aspiring young leader. “You’ve got to remember that when you’re in any room and you have something to say, something to share, based on who you are, what you care about, your experiences. And you might feel like you’re the only one in the room who has those experiences, or those thoughts, or looks like you. I want you to hear that applause that you just heard.”

And that’s our time for today. The event concludes precisely 59 minutes after Harris walked on stage.

READ MORE: On the Couch With Kamala Harris

IT’S FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 2026

Congrats on paying your taxes this week. The relevant authorities will surely put the money to good use. New York City residents, for example, will help fund the construction of a communist supermarket in Manhattan, aka The People’s Boondoggle. If all goes to plan, which it won’t, the store will be up and running by 2029. It will cost just $30 million to build, $20 million a year to operate, and will only marginally increase the existing budget deficit of $5.4 billion. For the same amount of money, Mamdani could bankroll a million free memberships to Costco, which is located a few blocks away and has already achieved the mayor’s stated goal of creating jobs and selling food at a discount.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE DEMOCRATS

Former Virginia lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax (D.) reportedly murdered his wife before killing himself in their home on Thursday. Once considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, Fairfax served alongside former governor Ralph “Coonman” Northam, who was briefly disgraced in 2019 after he admitted to wearing blackface and appearing in a racist yearbook photo. Democrats condemned Northam and urged him to step aside until Fairfax, who would have succeeded Northam, was credibly accused of sexual assault. Neither of them resigned, and Democrats just acted as if it never happened. In 2025, Northam joined the transition team advising Jay Jones, the newly elected attorney general of Virginia best known for fantasizing about murdering his political opponents and their children.

On the subject of credibly accused sex pests, Eric Swalwell resigned from Congress and dropped out of the California governor’s race amid allegations of sexual assault and other scummy behavior involving interns, young staffers, and unsolicited photos (or in-person displays) of his congressional member. We’re not even half-way through the year, and two of the most obnoxious members of Congress (Swalwell and Marjorie Taylor Greene) are gone. That’s not nothing.

The lurid accusations came as a surprise to no one—except Swalwell’s closest friends, who couldn’t believe the horrible things they were just hearing about for the first time. No one was more shocked than Sen. Ruben Gallego (D., Ariz.), Swalwell’s friend, former roommate, and shirtless camel buddy. Gallego, who served his nine-month pregnant wife with divorce papers and promptly started dating a 25-year-old lobbyist, would never knowingly associate with someone who treats women so poorly.

COUNTERPOINT: JOURNALISTS AREN’T THE REAL HEROES

Swalwell’s downfall was a “real testament to the power of investigative reporting,” according to CNN’s Brian Stelter, aka Humpty Dumpty. At the risk of disagreeing with such a reliably insightful media insider: No, it was not. Swalwell’s victims deserve credit for speaking out and going on the record, but this was part of a coordinated campaign by Democratic operatives to knock Swalwell out of the governor’s race. It was not the result of dogged journalists speaking truth to power.

According to Democratic strategist Michael Trujillo, at least one reporter at Politico was looking into the Swalwell rumors during his brief presidential run in 2019. Swalwell dropped out in July, just two days before the reporter was scheduled to interview him. “The energy disappeared to potentially take him out,” the strategist wrote. “He slithered back to his safe house seat.” The former staffer who accused Swalwell of raping her said she was assaulted in September 2019 and again in 2024. So much for the power of investigative journalism.

A cynical observer might point out that the Swalwell allegations emerged at a time when Democrats were at risk of losing the gubernatorial primary in California on June 2. The top two candidates, regardless of party, will advance to the general election. The crowded Democratic field meant that two Republicans running could place first and second. Swalwell’s timely exit gives Democrats some time to get their act together by coalescing around Tom Steyer, the environmentalist billionaire who wants to throw ICE agents in prison. (The alternatives are even worse.)

Other alleged acts of courageous journalism involving Democrats have followed a similar pattern. The “open secret” about Harvey Weinstein was “revealed” in October 2017—after Hillary Clinton lost. After the Hollywood rapist raised millions of dollars for her campaign. A local news reporter in Miami started looking into Clinton buddy Jeffrey Epstein around the same time because Trump’s labor secretary appointee, Alex Acosta, worked on the pedophile’s infamous plea deal in 2007. Journalists congratulated themselves again for their belated reporting on Joe Biden’s non-functioning brain, which suddenly appeared in 2024 after his disastrous debate performance made clear he could not win. They still get really offended if you suggest they were part of the cover-up. Bless their hearts.

Addendum: A real testament to the power of investigative reporting would be finding out what the f— is going on with 10 American scientists who mysteriously died or went missing since 2023. They all worked on sensitive defense or space-related projects. Even the best-case scenario doesn’t seem all that reassuring. Probably worth looking into.

THIS IS NORMAL (FOR A KENNEDY)

A number of Trump administration officials were in the news this week for the usual assortment of reasons. A forthcoming book about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. revealed that the health secretary once castrated a dead raccoon on the side of a highway. He intended to “study them later.” Of all the possible reasons to cut the penis off an animal corpse, there are probably worse ones. Kennedy said the incident got him thinking about “how weird some of my family members have turned out to be,” which is less ironic than it sounds. It bears repeating that in the context of the Kennedy clan—that inexplicably beloved menagerie of Nantucket douche bros, bloated sex pests, and goon-faced Habsburgian freaks—RFK Jr. is boringly average.

In other administration news, senior FEMA official Gregg Phillips has been “directed to stop posting about teleporting.” Asked about Phillips’s history of describing his personal experience with teleportation, levitation, and other supernatural phenomena, President Donald Trump said it “sounds a little strange” but promised to look into it. “I don’t know anything about teleporting,” the leader of the free world told CNN. “But I’ll find out about it right now.”

In moments like these we are reminded to be thankful for the steady leadership of normal Americans such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent—the fabulously wealthy and delightfully bitchy gay finance bro who lives in a giant pink house and is constantly threatening to beat up his rivals. He’s arguably one of the “best people” Trump has ever hired. Bessent, as you may recall, started and ended a war of words with Gavin Newsom in Davos by describing the California governor as “Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken.”

VARIOUS & SUNDRY

Remember the war with Iran? Peace talks are faltering, the United States is blockading the Strait of Hormuz, and the S&P 500 hit a record high this week, erasing its losses since the conflict began in late February. In other investment-related news, Allbirds—a shoe company that recently sold for $39 million after being valued at $4 billion—announced this week it would “pivot its business to AI compute infrastructure.” The company’s stock surged by 400%. On the one hand, a noted financial expert called this a sign that the AI frenzy has “gone too far.” On the other hand, it was Jim Cramer. Strong buy?

Big rack energy: Admiral Brad Cooper (left) is the CENTCOM commander who is leading the U.S. military effort in Iran. Check out the (medal) rack on him. On the right is Joe Biden’s former CENTCOM commander, General Kenneth McKenzie, who oversaw the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal after urging Biden not to do it.

Not dead yet: Sleepy Joe was back on the speaking circuit this week, and I’m not ashamed to say I miss the old Irish bastard. “Dnyininay [sic] got married in skinned ass [sic] after my first year in law school,” Biden said at the Syracuse University College of Law, where the former president famously claimed to have graduated in the “top half” of his class despite finishing 76th out of 85 students. Biden then called a black man up on stage because he looked like Barack Obama. At least that’s what it sounded like. The exact quote was: “Ayy, he, dunnis low kit [sic] Barack?”

Meanwhile, in Congress: Swalwell’s resignation will eventually lessen the putrid stench on Capitol Hill, but not yet. Votes were canceled Wednesday after a toilet exploded in the men’s restroom outside the House chamber, causing foul liquid to leak into the hallway and down through the ceiling below. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of folks. We hope Jamaal Bowman has a solid alibi.

PALATE CLEANSER (SFW)

Flight operations aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea.

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IT’S FRIDAY, APRIL 10, 2026

What a week. The U.S. military celebrated the Easter holiday by pulling off one of the most audacious rescue missions in modern history by extracting two missing airmen whose plane was shot down over Iran. The second crewman was rescued after evading capture for almost 48 hours. Special forces pulled him out—on Easter Sunday—after landing at an improvised airstrip roughly an hour’s drive from Esfahan, the country’s third-largest city and a key hub for the Iranian nuclear program. U-S-A!

If that doesn’t make you proud to be an American heading into our 250th birthday party, nothing will. Naturally, some left-wing journalists were basically rooting for a “prisoner of war” scenario. Their hopes were dashed when the good guys prevailed. On the network formerly known as MSNBC, Lawrence O’Donnell complained that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s pledge to “leave no man behind” was insufficiently inclusive because it “could have been a woman they were trying to rescue.”

All told, you couldn’t script it any better. In a just world, the daring rescue would be promptly scripted for the big screen. Hollywood has a chance to make a film most Americans will actually want to see if the liberal elites in charge can dial back their Trump derangement for two seconds. In other words, don’t count on it.

Speaking of Trump, the president was in peak form at the White House Easter Egg Roll, where he celebrated the successful rescue operation with the Easter Bunny at his side glaring menacingly into the camera. Imagine the faces of the surviving regime officials in Iran, watching that in their underground bunkers while navigating what is surely a deeply unpleasant bathroom situation.

It was arguably the most haunting projection of American power ever recorded, and it came on the heels of several Easter-related displays of American impotence. On more than one occasion during his (nominal) presidency, Joe Biden had to be flagged down and returned to his wife’s care by a (far less menacing) Easter Bunny in a purple dress. We’ll never forget Biden’s inspiring message from what was (mercifully) his last year in office: “Say hello to oyster bunnies!”

Sleepy Joe was clearly on Trump’s mind as he mingled with children at the coloring table on the White House lawn. “I could sign autographs for you guys, and then tonight, you could sell them for $25,000 on eBay,” he told the tikes. “You know, Biden would use the autopen. He’d have an autopen, probably. You know, Joe Biden. He didn’t sign. He was incapable of signing his name, so they’d follow him around with this big machine. You know what it was called? An autopen!”

Peak form, indeed.

Alas, Trump’s impeccable aura seemed to fade days later when he announced a ceasefire deal with Iran hours after threatening to wipe out their “whole civilization.” It was arguably the most high-stakes embodiment of the drunk frat guy outside the bar telling his friends to “hold me back.” With negotiations set to kick off this weekend, no one agrees on what this deal will involve, or on whether or not the ceasefire has already been violated. All will be revealed on next week’s installment of The Apprentice: Persian Gulf. New episodes typically air a few hours before financial markets open on Monday morning.

We’ll see if Donny finds a way to wriggle out of this one. In the meantime, liberal journalists and so-called comedians who blasted Trump for his “threats to commit war crimes” are now mocking him for being too much of a “chicken” to follow through.

Bless their pious little hearts. People grieve in different ways, but all the sanctimonious outrage in the world could not put the Ayatollah together again—may he rest in pieces.

MAMDANI’S MINI-ME IN MICHIGAN

Abdul El-Sayed is vying to be the Zohran Mamdani of the 2026 midterms. The Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan checks all the boxes: disdain for Israel, sympathy for terrorism, and support for socialist policies that don’t work. Like Mamdani, he is a Muslim who is somewhat average-looking by the impoverished standards of Washington, D.C. He played club lacrosse at the University of Michigan, which speaks to the depraved nature of his character.

There’s just one small problem—literally. El-Sayed is almost certainly too short to serve in federal office. No one is ever going to take him seriously. The Israelis will laugh in his face, and while El-Sayed’s terrorist allies might initially enjoy watching him repeat their talking points on the Senate floor, they’ll definitely cringe when they see the size of the box required to get his head above the lectern.

These were among the findings of a Washington Free Beacon analysis of the brutal “height mogging” El-Sayed endured while campaigning alongside Hasan Piker, the terrorist-adjacent China apologist who is listed at 6’4”, according to a glowing profile in the New York Times. Our analysis concluded that Piker is actually two to eight inches shorter than advertised, which raised alarming questions about the accuracy of El-Sayed’s listed height of 5’9”—the same as Mamdani.

El-Sayed promoted the Free Beacon analysis in an attempt to diffuse the bombshell with self-deprecation. Crisis PR firms will often recommend this strategy, but El-Sayed doubled down by insisting—without evidence—that he is 5’9” “in shoes.” Sure. On stilts, maybe. The American people will see right through the candidate’s lies—and right over his little head. There’s a reason we haven’t had a sub-six-foot president since Jimmy Carter. He nearly destroyed the country. Supporting terrorism is bad. Being short is worse. That’s just the way it is.

THE NEW YORK TIMES, LADIES AND GENTLEMAN

The New York Times is enjoying an impressive hot streak. The paper’s output of late reads like a gonzo parody of the insular delusions of liberal elites. The Times clearly knows its audience, and appears to share its readers’ lack of self-awareness. Here are just a few examples:

• Published an article about why declining birthrates were a “good thing,” then highlighted several letters from readers who enthusiastically agreed. One gentleman from Montreal argued that having fewer kids—or none at all—was the “responsible choice” amid the twin crises of “climate change” and “rapacious capitalism.”

• Lamented the downfall of a “quiet restaurant worker” who rammed his truck into a Jewish preschool in Michigan after the would-be terrorist “lost family members” in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon. The Times eventually confirmed that one of those “family members” was a member of Hezbollah.

• Issued a correction after referring to NATO as the “North American Treaty Organization,” prompting many to recall the 2016 Times profile in which former Obama guru Ben Rhodes bragged about manipulating journalists who “literally know nothing.”

• Interviewed university graduates who fled abroad to avoid paying their student loans, including a 37-year-old who borrowed $65,000 to get a master’s degree in historic preservation before moving to Prague and defaulting because the $60-per-month repayment plan was too “psychologically burdensome.”

• Purported to uncover a new trend involving single, childless women who are throwing themselves lavish, wedding-themed blowouts to celebrate turning 40. “Instead of waiting for a partner to justify a celebration, women are using the moment as a declaration of empowerment and self-love,” the Times explained.

Last month, the Times’ chief film critic—a five-time Pulitzer finalist with a Ph.D. in cinema studies—gave a thumbs down review to Project Hail Mary, one of the most successful and universally beloved films in recent memory. It was a “bummer,” the expert wrote—not because the film was too sad, but because it wasn’t despairing enough about the “human-generated environmental catastrophe we’re facing.”

That review pairs nicely with a book review the Times published this week extolling the virtues of a Polish novel about a sect of pagan tree huggers—to put it mildly— who aim to “topple the patriarchy” by indulging in horticultural debauchery of the penetrative variety. The reviewer praises the novel’s literary translator for devising “an astonishing array of ways to describe a vagina,” and commends the author for crafting a worthwhile “parable” on “the necessity of radicalism.”

Take your pick.

PALATE CLEANSER

The WNBA season starts next month, and the vast majority of Americans are eager to tune in. The NCAA women’s championship game was not the best advertisement for women’s basketball, as the top-ranked team in the country, UCLA, blew out the second-ranked team, South Carolina, by a final score of 79-51. The Gamecocks went 2-15 from three-point range and 18-62 from the field, which isn’t very good or entertaining to watch.

That’s why so many people are excited about the return of Caitlin Clark, who missed a chunk of the 2025 season with a groin injury. She’ll try to lead the Indiana Fever to its first WNBA title since 2012 alongside Sophie Cunningham, who is also expected to return this season after recovering from a torn MCL. A recent report from Sports Illustrated suggests Cunningham is looking pretty healthy.

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IT’S GOOD FRIDAY, APRIL 3, 2026

We open in Florida, where NASA launched three astronauts (and one Canadian interloper) into space to reiterate America’s rightful claim to the moon. The 10-day trip around the lunar body—the first of its kind since the Nixon administration—will set the stage for a return to the moon’s surface in 2028 and, ultimately, a permanent base. Most people agree that this was awesome. As one enthusiastic Florida kid told CNN: “We’re going back to the f—ing moon!” Meanwhile, a handful of insufferable scolds whined about colonialism and warned that an American moon base could “violate international law”—to which any reasonable person might respond with a combination of “shut the f— up” and “drill, baby, drill.”

Bottom line: The moon is ours; get over it. Don’t be insufferable; be Florida kid.

Crucial context: Remember Kamala Harris? Before losing the 2024 election, she served as vice president of the United States and chair of the National Space Council. Her tenure there went almost as well as her efforts to solve the immigration crisis. She hired a bunch of child actors to listen to her cackle about the vastness of the universe, but the actual space program suffered a series of delays and mishaps on the VP’s watch. Despite her numerous failures, Harris can take pride in her one true accomplishment: Convincing the intelligence community to investigate its use of “gender-biased language.”

Harris would have thrived in the Obama administration, when the head of NASA said the president’s “foremost” goal for the agency was to “reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.” For example, one can easily imagine her yucking it up at a photo-op with Ahmed “Clock Boy” Mohamed.

For those too young or brain-damaged to remember, Ahmed was the Muslim teenager who got in trouble for bringing a “homemade clock” to school that looked like a bomb. Barack Obama promptly invited him to the White House for “Astronomy Night.” Ahmed made an appearance, but not before jetting off to Sudan to meet with President Omar al-Bashir, aka “The Butcher of Darfur.” Ahmed and his family fled to Qatar less than a week after meeting Obama, and filed several lawsuits seeking millions of dollars for emotional distress, all of which were dismissed.

Ah, those were days.

AFFLICTING THE AFFLICTED

Everyone knows by now that Democrats are pro-crime. They have been for years. It’s only recently that they’ve become radicalized in opposition to crime victims. This week, anti-victim advocates in Providence, R.I., succeeded in forcing the removal of a mural dedicated to Iryna Zarutska, the Ukrainian refugee in North Carolina who was randomly stabbed to death in August 2025. The city’s Democratic mayor called it “divisive,” while another local Democrat said the mural did not reflect the city’s “values,” and argued that removing it was the only way to ensure “every community member ... feels safe.”

Because the mural was part of a nationwide campaign partially funded by Elon Musk, most Democrats instinctively opposed it. They angrily disputed the notion that Iryna’s murder—at the hands of a career criminal who should have been in jail—was a tragedy worth mourning. Few, if any, stood and applauded when Donald Trump recognized Iryna’s parents at his State of the Union address and promised to “ensure justice” for their daughter. A similar mural of Iryna was vandalized in Chicago.

In Providence, aggrieved Democrats directed their outrage at the owners of the Dark Lady, a gay nightclub that agreed to host Iryna’s mural on their property. The owners fought back initially, insisting they were Democrats who opposed Donald Trump, and slammed the “deeply disturbing” criticism of what was supposed to be a “genuine act of kindness and remembrance.” The mural’s artist spoke out as well, urging critics to “put aside all of the political vitriol” and consider the fact that Iryna “was a human being with a mother and father, who are still with us and still grieving.”

Alas, the insufferable scolding worked. The club owners issued a groveling apology and reiterated their commitment to “fostering unity, safety, and care for all members of our community.” So there you have it. In certain quarters of the country, artwork memorializing a murdered refugee is officially a threat to public safety, and opposing Trump means refusing to acknowledge the innocent victims he has ever mentioned by name.

Meanwhile, in Fairfax County, Va., just beyond the nation’s capital, an illegal immigrant that local news outlets insist on calling a “Virginia dad” was arrested for killing his three-month-old daughter. One day earlier, a “38-year-old man” (also an illegal immigrant) was arrested for stabbing a man to death. The accused criminals will presumably be jailed alongside Abdul Jalloh, an illegal immigrant with more than 30 prior arrests who fatally stabbed a woman at a bus stop in February. Fortunately, no one has proposed putting up any murals of the victims, otherwise residents might start to feel unsafe.

VARIOUS & SUNDRY

Sympathy for the terrorist (sympathizers): Abdul El-Sayed, a Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Michigan, told campaign staffers last month that he didn’t want to discuss the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (may he rest in pieces) because a lot of his supporters were “sad” about the Iranian despot’s demise. According to audio obtained by the Free Beacon, El-Sayed said that if pushed to take a position, he would pivot to blaming Israel and calling Donald Trump a “pedophile.” Indeed, being mindful not to alienate pro-terrorism voters is just part of being an ambitious Democrat these days. El-Sayed will soon campaign alongside Hasan Piker, the left-wing influencer who said “America deserved 9/11.”

Lemon Party: After celebrating Ramadan with terrorist sympathizers last month, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani was heckled at a “hip” Passover event once described as “half postmodern religious ritual and half cabaret.” Among the featured guests were Don Lemon, the former CNN host, and Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, aka Hadassah Gold, who was the subject of the 2024 documentary Sabbath Queen, which followed the rabbi’s “epic journey” as a “drag-queen rebel” who “challenge[s] patriarchy and supremacy.”

Related: Don Lemon thinks he could be president of the United States, but suggested he would have a hard time running as an “independent,” so he would “probably have to become a Democrat.” Would he make a good president? Of course not. Would he have a decent shot at winning the Democratic nomination? Without question. Have you seen the field?

Social media is poison: Being online is bad for your brain. People who spend more than five hours a day on social media are less likely to agree that democracy is “the best form of government,” according to a recent Gallup survey. Taylor Lorenz, the once-respected journalist, spends an average of 17 hours a day online, which might explain her support for terrorism and the “joy” she felt when UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down by “national hero” Luigi Mangione.

Inspiring Times: It took long enough, but we’re glad the New York Times has finally embraced the Stiles Section’s avant-garde approach to graphic design. The execution was terrible, and so was the accompanying article about all the “architects” who “say” and “warn” that Donald Trump’s ballroom expansion was poorly designed, which quotes a single architect who happens to serve on the preservation group suing to stop the ballroom’s construction. But it’s the thought that counts.

PALATE CLEANSER

Social media isn’t all bad. This week X introduced a new AI-enabled feature that automatically translates posts written in other languages. The result was an explosion of interactions between American and Japanese users who bonded over the mutual affinity for grilling meat, among other things. We just celebrated the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so it’s great to see our two cultures coming together like this to exchange ideas and learn new things.

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IT’S FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 2026

In case you don’t think America is great, watch this video from MLB opening day at Oracle Park in San Francisco. The national anthem, a preposterously cool “smoke flag,” fireworks, and a flyover in one of America’s most liberal cities. We’re doing OK.

If you’re still not convinced, ask yourself the following question: Is there any other country on Earth where a quadruple amputee could inspire the masses by overcoming adversity to become a professional cornhole athlete and then be credibly accused of shooting a passenger in the car he was driving? Hell no. Oscar Pistorius is a chump compared with this guy.

And if you’re still on the fence, just think of all the money that Nancy Pelosi and others are making by betting on the war in Iran. If that doesn’t make you proud to be an American on the eve of our 250th birthday celebration, I don’t know what will.

TRAUMA IS THE NEW BLACK

Abdul El-Sayed, the far-left, terrorist-adjacent Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Michigan, recently boasted about doing “time” after getting arrested for blocking traffic at a protest in 2018. “I put my body on the line and took an arrest,” the candidate said last month. “And I didn’t take the politician’s arrest, where they, like, turn around and drop you off. No, I took the whole arrest. Did my time.”

Except he didn’t. According to police records, El-Sayed was taken by van to a detention center in Detroit, where he was issued a citation for disorderly conduct and released. He paid a $200 fine and the charges were dropped. The harrowing tale has been a central component of El-Sayed’s campaign pitch. In January, his former lawyer appeared in a campaign video praising El-Sayed for valiantly refusing her offer to get him a “better deal than the other protesters” because “solidarity … means everything to him.” He’s basically Nelson Mandela.

Democrats are bringing back the hardship Olympics in 2026 and beyond. Candidates across the country are asking their own lawyers how to get arrested on camera without suffering real consequences. Because many of the obvious White House hopefuls are white dudes, they’ve started to “lean into their childhood traumas,” per Axios. For Gavin Newsom, it’s dyslexia and a rich absent father who funded his entire career. For Josh Shapiro, it’s what he describes as, “at points, an unhappy childhood home.” For J.B. Pritzker, it’s becoming a billionaire orphan at 17 and combating fatphobia.

Pete Buttigieg is (allegedly) gay, but that’s not even considered a hardship these days. Neither is being a relentless nerd. If anything, waiting until your mid-30s to come out is kind of weird. Unfortunately, like every other kid who sat in the front of the class and raised their hand every single time the teacher asked a question, Buttigieg is temperamentally incapable of getting arrested for any reason, so he’ll just have to come up with a better story. Maybe he could suddenly remember the time he worked at McDonald’s over the summer? Eh. No one would believe that, either.

El-Sayed, the formerly incarcerated candidate, had a comfortable upbringing in a wealthy Detroit suburb. He still has a significant hardship advantage compared with the white women running against him. One of them, Mallory McMorrow, has discussed the trauma she endured after “becoming famous overnight” thanks to a viral anti-Republican rant. Meanwhile, El-Sayed booked two campaign appearances next month with Hasan Piker, the far-left, terrorist-adjacent influencer who recently returned from a slum safari in Cuba along with Ilhan Omar’s daughter and other anti-American activists. They painted murals, took farming lessons, and ranted about capitalism (and Israel, for some reason).

Because the hardship Olympics are a race to the bottom that favors the unhinged, Taylor Lorenz won gold in the poverty tourism event without even setting foot in Cuba. Rather than celebrate the junket junkies for promoting communism, the once-respected journalist scolded them for not wearing face masks in the middle of a pandemic. “Disease is a tool of genocide,” she lectured. “Pop a mask on. Disabled and immunocompromised people do it every day. Be [for real]!”

Bless her heart. The heart of a champion.

OLYMPIC-LEVEL INCOMPETENCE

Another week of stories about Democrats absolutely disgracing themselves as a party. Yes, Trump is unpopular, and Democrats are going to do well in the midterms. Bully for them, but Congress doesn’t actually do much governing—ask anyone who’s been to an airport lately. In the deep-blue states where Democrats are actually in charge and can basically do whatever they want, the results are beyond farcical.

California

• The University of Southern California abruptly canceled a gubernatorial debate following complaints about the lack of diversity among the candidates invited to participate. The non-white Democrats weren’t polling well enough to meet the threshold, and unless some of them drop out, there’s a real chance that the two Republican candidates will advance to a run-off after the open primary election in June. This leaves Democrats with an impossible choice: Ask the minority candidates to drop out and be accused of endorsing white supremacy, or accidentally elect a GOP governor. Good luck to all!

• The San Francisco public transit system, BART, is a dumpster fire of mismanagement and corruption that requires $400 million in annual subsidies to operate. Officials are threatening to shut down stations and cut back on service unless voters approve new tax hikes in November.

• Democrats in Los Angeles are getting ready to raise property taxes to address the backlog of streetlights in need of repair due to rampant copper wire theft.

• NASA announced plans to spend $20 billion over seven years to build a working base on the moon. Meanwhile, in California, the government expects to spend $37 billion to complete a high-speed rail line from Merced (pop. 90,000) to Bakersfield (pop. 419,000) that might—but almost certainly won’t—be operable by 2032, nearly a quarter-century after the project was approved.

• In a shocking display of tragically belated semi-competence, San Francisco school officials voted to let eighth-graders take algebra again, nearly a decade after scrapping the course in the name of “equity.” The goal was to give minority students more time to master basic math skills before moving on to algebra in high school. Instead, math scores fell across all demographics. The final vote—on reversing the blatantly unsuccessful policy—was 4-3.

Illinois

• Sheridan Gorman, an 18-year-old freshman at Loyola University, was shot and killed last week by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela in an act that some suspect was part of a gang initiation ritual. The suspected killer was caught entering the country and released by the Biden administration in 2023. A month later, he was arrested for shoplifting in Chicago—a sanctuary city that refuses to cooperate with ICE—and then released.

• Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson called Gorman’s murder a “terrible tragedy” and offered condolences to the victim’s family. He said this—I am not making this up—at an unveiling ceremony for the city’s new “Abolish ICE” snow plow. Chicago residents chose the name as part of a contest. Johnson promised to “double down” on his efforts to protect illegal immigrants from deportation. Gorman’s family accused the mayor of downplaying of the “preventable” killing.

• I promise I’m not making this up either. The Loyola student newspaper apologized for calling the alleged killer an “illegal immigrant,” saying it did not align with their values. The student journalists also apologized for using the word “immigrant” in the original headline, which now refers to the suspect as a “man.” The text has been updated to describe him as a “Rogers Park resident.”

• Still not making this up. Chicago Democrats voted to raise their hotel taxes in an effort to attract tourists. The new tax will fund a $50 million marketing campaign to combat the “negative narratives that surround our city,” Johnson said. Chicago will soon boast the highest hotel taxes in the country.

• Sure, raising taxes might inspire some people to visit Chicago. It might also help to actually do something about “negative narratives,” which aren’t really narratives if they’re true. From the Chicago Tribune this week: “Year’s first ‘teen takeover’ in downtown Chicago sees eight arrests, more curfew discussion.” Or, as the Daily Mail put it: “Nightmarish moment HUNDREDS of lawless teens overrun downtown Chicago on a quiet weeknight, amid reports of stores being looted and innocent pedestrians being maced.” Good luck to all!

THE MOST ANNOYING MAN ON EARTH

What follows is a (mercifully abbreviated) transcript of a recent conversation I had with my three-year-old toddler:

TODDLER: Who’s that?

ME: That’s the man who’s going to fix our internet.

TODDLER: The man?

ME: Yes.

TODDLER: What he’s doing?

ME: He’s fixing the internet.

TODDLER: He fix the internet?

ME: Yes.

TODDLER: Why he’s fixing it?

ME: Because it’s broken.

TODDLER: Why it’s broken?

ME: I don’t know, it stopped working.

TODDLER: The man he’s fixing it?

ME: Yes.

TODDLER: Why he’s a man?

ME: He just is.

TODDLER: Why?

This is my personal trauma. It’s why I got so triggered watching Tucker Carlson’s theatrically obnoxious response to a question about whether Israel has a “right to exist” during his recent interview with the Economist. Here is a (mercifully abbreviated) transcript:

ECONOMIST: Should [Israel] continue to exist?

TUCKER: … So my question to you would be, what does that mean?

ECONOMIST: Why don’t you answer my question? It’s a very simple question.

TUCKER: I don’t know what your question is. Are you asking does it have a right to exist or do I want it to exist? Do I seek its destruction?

…

ECONOMIST: So you’re in no sense a Zionist?

TUCKER: I don’t even know what that means. Why don’t you define the term and then I’ll tell you whether I am?

ECONOMIST: I just defined it.

TUCKER: What’s a Zionist?

…

ECONOMIST: [Does] the political state of Israel [have] the right to continue existing?

TUCKER: The right? Where does that right come from? What do you mean? These are, like, I’m not being a lawyer about it, I just want to know what you’re asking me.

ECONOMIST: You’re refusing to answer the question.

TUCKER: Because I don’t know what you’re asking me.

OK, buddy. Just go to your playroom and build a house for your ayatollah doll.

VARIOUS & SUNDRY

Meanwhile, in the U.K.: Three years after marrying, Meg Avon and her husband, the West Country waterway officially designated as the River Avon, are still keeping the romance flowing in the bedroom, er, riverbed.

Plumbing new depths: If Tucker Carlson is the world’s most annoying person, Jimmy Kimmel is a close second. The late-night host recently joked—if you can call it that—that we have “a plumber protecting us from terrorism now.” He was referring to Markwayne Mullin, the trailblazing Native American (not the fake Liz Warren kind) who was just confirmed as DHS secretary. At 20 years old, Mullin dropped out of college to run his family’s plumbing business when his father got sick. He was good at it; the business succeeded and grew.

So, no, unlike the foreign policy geniuses who ran the Obama and Biden administrations, he doesn’t have an Ivy League degree in terrorist negotiation—or any bachelor’s degree. The smug condescension from Kimmel and other pampered elites is nauseating, especially because there are few things that would improve the quality of our elected leaders more than forcing them to work as plumbers for a year.

What the f— is this? Yes, the river thing is weird, but Planned Parenthood just posted this on their Instagram account, and I have a lot of questions, but also very little interest in learning more.

PALATE CLEANSER

Enjoy this video of Rob Hopkins, a trans-identifying attorney with a background in “Feminist Studies and Chicano/a Studies,” reaping the consequences of they/them’s profoundly obnoxious behavior in an Oklahoma courtroom. You won’t regret watching the whole thing.

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IT’S FRIDAY, MARCH 20, 2026.

March Madness is finally here—a special time when the vast majority of Americans, who don’t agree on much these days, can come together for the singular purpose of hating Duke.

In case you hadn’t noticed, Donald Trump is having an incredible run. Neocon Don is off the leash and serving up peak-era Trump quotes like it’s 2016. He rattled off a hall-of-fame response in the Oval Office on Thursday after a Japanese reporter asked him why he didn’t give U.S. allies a heads-up before bombing Iran.

“We didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise,” Trump said while sitting next to the Japanese prime minister. “Who knows better about surprise than Japan? OK? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?”

There are three types of voters in this country: 1) people who like Trump and think he’s funny, 2) people who don’t like Trump but haven’t lost their ability to laugh when he says something amazing, and 3) miserable scolds.

WITH OPPONENTS LIKE THESE

Speaking of miserable scolds, Democrats are probably going to do well in the midterms. They should have no trouble winning back the House because their most loyal voters—wealthy white professionals with multiple degrees and a social media addiction—have been champing at the bit since Nov. 6, 2024. That’s just how it goes when your party loses the White House. Republicans aren’t nearly as fired up.

After losing to Trump a second time, Democrats briefly attempted to engage in some much-needed self-reflection, but those days are long gone. They’re back to their old ways; freak flags flying at full mast. When they do win back the House in November, they’ll be so pleased with themselves. Convinced that their insanity was justified all along, the 2028 primary will be a can’t-miss carnival of ideological excess. They might even bring back “Latinx” and invite a Hamas delegation to speak at the convention. I wish I was kidding.

To get a sense of how unconcerned Democrats are with winning back the normal American voters they lost in 2024, consider the following examples from the past week alone:

New York

• The Washington Free Beacon found more examples of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife and campaign adviser, Rama Duwaji, glorifying terrorism on social media. She was in her early 20s and late teens at the time, which her adoring fans regard as a compelling defense—because who among us didn’t experiment with bloodlust in college? Now in her late 20s, Duwaji has discovered more sophisticated ways to express her fondness for terrorists.

• In 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul told New Yorkers who supported her Republican opponent to “jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong.” More than a few took her advice. This week, as Mamdani was proposing new tax hikes, Hochul begged them to come back—specifically the rich ones. “I need people who are high net worth to support the generous social programs we have in our state,” she complained. “Our tax base has been eroded.”

• In related news, a $3.5 million public restroom project in Upper Manhattan—pitched as a quick and affordable alternative to conventional construction methods—is no closer to being built four years after winning approval from the city.

• A 21-year-old “part-time model” was released pending trial on a misdemeanor charge after punching a man who later died after collapsing on a subway platform. In addition to wooing people back with higher taxes, New York Democrats could try highlighting their equitable approach to criminal justice.

California

• Governor Gavin Newsom is taking heat for a wildlife overpass that has taken nearly four years to complete at a total cost of $114 million. It’s only a failure if you assume the goal was to build an overpass for wildlife to cross the freeway, as opposed to funneling millions in taxpayer dollars to environmental nonprofits that boast about “hiring Indigenous team members to help steward the plants that will vegetate the bridge.”

• California lawmakers acted swiftly to rename Cesar Chavez Day, an official state holiday since 2001, to “Farmworkers Day” after the late union leader was exposed as a serial sex pest. The New York Times “uncovered extensive evidence to support” the accusations of several women who said Chavez groomed them as children before molesting them as teenagers. Chavez joins a long list of once-revered Democratic icons to have their reputations sullied by credible accusations of sexual misconduct.

• The two GOP candidates for California governor are polling higher than their Democratic rivals in a crowded field. Per the state’s primary rules, the top two candidates (regardless of party) will proceed to a runoff. It probably won’t happen, but it’s hilarious to think that California could accidentally put a Republican in charge if all the Democratic mediocrities running refuse to drop out. The state’s voters are still a long way from embracing the wisdom of GOP candidate Chad Bianco’s campaign slogan: “Because I don’t want to move.”

Illinois

• Barack Obama is soliciting donations for his new presidential center—an aesthetic monstrosity that cost almost $1 billion. Valerie Jarrett’s $740,000 salary isn’t going to pay for itself. The first 1,000 Founding Members who fork over the recommended donation ($528 annually) will get a personalized thank-you card and access to an “exclusive playlist” curated by the man himself. Act now!

• Identity politics is weird. The Congressional Black Caucus is mad at Governor J.B. Pritzker for helping his lieutenant governor, a black woman, win a congressional primary over a different black woman the caucus was backing.

• Kat Abughazaleh, the 26-year-old narcoleptic, lost her congressional primary despite endorsements from Reps. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.). The winner, Evanston mayor Daniel Biss, prevailed after weathering one of the lamest #MeToo scandals in history. Bluesky libs were outraged after a woman revealed that she made out with Biss and briefly dated him more than two decades ago when she was 20 and he was her 28-year-old assistant professor at the University of Chicago. Correction: former assistant professor. That's it. That's the scandal.

Maine

• U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner said he was done apologizing for his Nazi tattoo, but he still regrets attacking rape victims on social media. In fairness, he was only 28 years old. The since-deleted posts were recently featured in an opponent’s campaign ad. Nevertheless, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) persisted in endorsing Platner this week, calling him the only Democrat with the “grit to go against the grain.” In sum: The insurgent “everyman” with several Nazi-related scandals and a history of denouncing his own voters as dumb racists was endorsed by the nagging Harvard professor who lied for years about being Native American. If that doesn’t epitomize the state of today’s Democratic Party, I don’t know what does.

Minnesota

• Democrats in the Minnesota House of Representatives unanimously opposed a bill that would require local authorities to notify ICE when illegal immigrants are arrested for violent crimes. Apart from releasing those criminals back into society over and over again until someone gets hurt or dies, what’s the worst that could happen?

Virginia

• A 41-year-old mother was stabbed to death at a bus stop last month in Fairfax. The perpetrator was an illegal immigrant with a history of violent behavior and more than 30 prior arrests. Local police practically begged the Democratic chief prosecutor’s office not to release him again—to no avail. Last week, an illegal immigrant student at Fairfax High School was charged with multiple counts of assault—but not sexual assault—after allegedly groping a dozen of his female classmates. ICE has issued a detainer request in order to deport him, but local law enforcement is refusing to cooperate.

Texas

• Democrats keep insisting James Talarico is a normal guy with a real shot at winning the U.S. Senate race. Evidence to the contrary keeps piling up. This week it was a video of Talarico speaking to supporters in 2022 while wearing a face mask. “To fight climate change, it is now existential that we try to reduce our meat consumption,” he told residents of America’s top beef-producing state. “I am proud to say that our campaign has officially become a non-meat campaign.” At this point, it wouldn’t be surprising if Talarico was on tape saying the Bible commands us to abstain from football, beer, and Ford F-150s.

VARIOUS & SUNDRY

Supremely progressive: Iran may have become the first country in history to be led by a gay amputee. The U.S. intelligence community has reportedly assessed that Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the dearly departed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is “probably gay.” The revelation comes amid reports that “one or two” of the younger Khamenei’s legs were amputated after he was severely injured last month in the U.S.-Israeli airstrike that killed his father. We can only hope he’s still alive, otherwise the International Criminal Court might try to prosecute it as a hate crime.

America has come a long way, but still has a long way to go when it comes to inclusive representation at the highest level. The closest we’ve ever come to a gay amputee president is Barack Obama, a suspected Muslim who fantasized about “making love to men” and was shockingly bad at sports despite having both of his legs.

Money for nothing: Being part of the woke cult sounds pretty nice. Sure, you’re miserable all the time, but if you complain long and hard enough about “equity” and “social justice,” there’s a chance you’ll get what you want, no matter how insane it is. The WNBA, a non-profitable subsidiary of the NBA, finally caved to the demands of its activist players and agreed to raise the league’s minimum salary from $66,000 to $300,000. The players had initially asked for a minimum salary of more than $530,000 as part of a proposal the league estimated would incur annual losses of $100 million. That’s more than double the $40 million in reported losses for 2024. Congrats to all!

Say what you want about the WNBA, but the league’s commitment to diversity is no joke. Last year’s draft, for example, saw an unprecedented number of attractive white women join the ranks of soon-to-be overpaid professionals. Representation matters!

PALATE CLEANSER

Bryana Holly, wife of actor Nicholas Hoult, spoke her truth on social media after some people allegedly made disparaging “comments” about the way her “chest” looked in the dress she wore to an Oscars after-party. Holly was instantly lauded for standing up to the alleged “body shamers,” who were allegedly “outraged” that her dress was struggling to contain her formidable mounds. Who are these people? They can’t be real, can they? In any event, Holly deserves credit for drawing attention to this important matter.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND

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IT’S FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 2026.

This week marked the sixth anniversary of Tom Hanks testing positive for COVID-19. What happened next wasn’t entirely his fault, but he’s far from blameless. It’s March, and my three-year-old son is still requesting the “Hot Chocolate” song from The Polar Express—a vaudevillian pastiche of weapons-grade nasality “sung” by Hanks himself. I’ll forgive him eventually.

SPEAKING TRUTH TO NO ONE

Journalists are heroes, obviously. They risk their lives every day defending democracy on the front lines. They’ve earned the right to be respected and admired, but they still goof up from time to time. Mistakes happen, even in a prestigious industry dedicated to exposing “the truth” and fact-checking Republicans. Typos go unnoticed, dates get mixed up, children get defamed. Rioters setting fire to a city can be misidentified as “peaceful” protesters. Occasionally, an entire news network will make a series of false statements about a recent terror attack. In the heat of the moment, they might accidentally sympathize with the (alleged) terrorists—happens all the time to the best of us.

This is CNN.

The once-reputable network committed a handful of whoopsies while attempting to report on the failed bomb attack in New York City over the weekend. First they published a story describing the terror suspects, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, as frolicsome teens enjoying enjoying the effects of global warming before getting carried away and—in a moment of youthful exuberance—lofting some artisanal explosives into a crowd of anti-Muslim protesters. They did this while shouting “Allahu Akbar” and pledged allegiance to ISIS under questioning.

CNN revised the story, which was written by a Los Angeles-based correspondent (they/them) who attended Columbia Journalism School and majored in gender studies at the University of California, Berkeley. It failed to “reflect the gravity of the incident,” the network said, and violated their “editorial standards.” CNN media reporter and unofficial spokesman Brian Stelter praised his employers for “quickly” correcting the otherwise “solid” story, then returned to complaining about the conservative reporters asking questions at the Pentagon briefing.

Many were shocked to learn that CNN had standards and that those standards were at odds with the media’s longstanding tradition of valorizing (alleged) terrorists from marginalized communities who try to blow up people they don’t like. In fairness, it seemed as though no one at CNN knew whom the terror suspects were trying to blow up—probably because they were getting their news from CNN. The initial version(s) of the story about the whimsical scallywags said they’d been arrested for “throwing homemade bombs during an anti-Muslim protest outside of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s home,” appearing to suggest the bomb-makers were participants in the protest and were targeting the Muslim mayor.

Hours later, CNN primetime host Abby Phillip referred to the “attempted terror attack against New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani,” while introducing a segment on Republicans who hate Muslims. Liberal commentator Ana Navarro, a guest on the show, also referenced the “attempt against Mayor Mamdani.” Phillip apologized the next day for her “inaccurate” wording and set the record straight by explaining that the mayor was not “specifically targeted” in the attack—whatever the hell that means.

Phillip didn’t write the line she mindlessly read off the teleprompter. It’s entirely plausible that whoever did (he/she/they/it) genuinely believed that Islamophobes had racistly attacked the Muslim mayor. Some liberals are still convinced that Charlie Kirk was shot by a Trump supporter (or Israeli assassin). Journalists are supposed to know better, but they are unusually susceptible to flubbing the facts on a story that threatens their worldview.

The offending prompter scribe probably heard Mamdani and his fellow Democrats rush to condemn the “vile displays of Islamophobia” from the protesters who had bombs thrown at them. They must not have seen the video of the (alleged) terrorist screaming “Allahu Akbar” as he chucked a flaming device over the head of a left-wing influencer with a bullhorn babbling about the benefits of mass immigration.

It was a scene straight out of your MAGA uncle’s fever dream—like the time a Muslim illegal immigrant in a sanctuary city firebombed a Holocaust survivor in front of a courthouse flying the trans-inclusive pride flag. CNN’s in-house “extremism” reporter would’ve covered it, but he was attending a UFO conference in the desert.

Hours after Phillip apologized, CNN senior reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere described Mamdani as a “target of political violence.” Many observers were left wondering what the f— was going on and whether it might be best to shut the whole thing down until we could figure that out. Dovere deleted the post and became the second CNN journalist (so far) to publicly apologize for spreading misinformation. Whoopsie!

Final thoughts: Bless their hearts. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer network, and just as Paramount is set to acquire CNN. The new owners will almost certainly clean house before folding it into CBS News. When that happens, feel free to ignore the shrieking about how American democracy will surely perish without CNN’s fearless truth-tellers manning the barricades.

What they’re saying: “They should give Bari Weiss access to napalm,” Dan Foster mused.

In the company of fiends: There is a certain logic to thinking the “ISIS-inspired” terrorists could have been targeting Mamdani, who is more of a Hamas guy. ISIS is a Salafi-jihadist group that views Hamas as a bunch of apostate hooligans who are insufficiently devoted to the global caliphate. This would assume the NYC suspects were hardened ideologues rather than dimwitted incels or Tucker Carlson fans—excuse the redundancy.

In any event, Mamdani has been celebrating Ramadan with Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia activist who said “we couldn’t avoid” slaughtering Jews on October 7, as well as Abdullah Akl, a Harvard grad who has publicly encouraged Hamas to “strike Tel Aviv.” He’s also been hanging out with his wife, Rama Duwaji, who liked a bunch of Instagram posts celebrating the October 7 attack—redefining “slay queen” for the next generation of Democratic leaders.

VARIOUS & SUNDRY

Chairman of the board: The Iranian regime anointed a new supreme leader this week. Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (may he rest in pieces), has never looked better. Congrats!

Silence is violence: Bluesky, the social media app exclusively for mentally ill liberals who are still obsessed with DEI nonsense like it’s 2020, is getting a new leader. CEO Jay Graber, a 35-year-old half-Asian woman, is stepping down and will be replaced by Toni Schneider, a venture capitalist white guy. What could go wrong? Good luck to all!

Rage, rage against the feeding of the troops: Journalists and other professional liberals lashed out after a watchdog report found that War Secretary Pete Hegseth spent a total of $24 million on lobster, steak, and crab legs in September of last year. Veterans and others who know anything about the military quickly pointed out that the Pentagon regularly buys nice food for troops deployed abroad—it’s a longstanding tradition. Nevertheless, the anti-Trump fanatics—who don’t know anything about the military and don’t care being wrong—kept piling on.

“No wonder Hegseth always looks miserable,” Seth Meyers chirped. “He’s 24/7 meat constipated.” CNN may soon have to air another apology after network contributor Paul Begala made a fool of himself. “Lobster tails?” he ranted, moronically. “While our troops are eating MREs?” Begala worked in the Clinton White House. Degenerate liar? Or just hopelessly incompetent and out of touch? Ladies and gentlemen, the Democrats.

Running for life: Congressman Jim Clyburn (D., S.C.) announced he was running for reelection this week. He’ll turn 86 in July, which is how old Joe Biden would have been after serving a second term as president. Clyburn isn’t even the oldest member of Congress; he barely cracks the top five. Senator Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) is 92 and hasn’t ruled out another run in 2028. The betting markets have clearly forgotten that Joe Biden is still eligible to run again. Get those Kalshi wagers locked in now!

Honeymoon’s over: On a stroll through Manhattan, former president Bill Clinton (allegedly) tried to push his nominal wife, Hillary Rodham, into traffic and make it look like an accident. It didn’t work. You’ll never beat the master at her own game.

American greatness update: Yep, still great.

NFL free agency update: Jake Browning, the former backup quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals, signed a one-year deal with the Tampa Buccaneers, which means his fiancée Stephanie Niles will get to spend more time at the beach.

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IT’S FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2026.

DELUSIONS OF NORMALCY

Democratic elites are patting themselves on the back after state representative James Talarico (D.) defeated Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D.) in the Texas Senate primary. The sassy black woman was “unelectable,” whereas Talarico is the new and improved Beto O’Rourke who will finally “turn Texas blue.” He’s normal, they insist, a tad suspiciously—just a typical 36-year-old confirmed bachelor with a master’s degree from Harvard and nothing to hide. He can relate to Trump voters.

Um, good luck with that. If Talarico is Democrats’ idea of a normal candidate who can transcend the party’s hard-earned reputation for clownish extremism, they are hopeless. First of all, just look at him. Talarico has the appearance, demeanor, and cloying charm of a sixth-grade class president giving an oral report for extra credit about picking up litter at the local park. This is Texas, for crying out loud. Football season starts in August. At some point, someone is going to throw a pigskin at him, and we’ll see how normal that plays out.

Even if he goes the Pete Buttigieg route and grows a relatable beard, it wouldn’t help. Talarico has a long history of expressing views most Americans would find insane, and invoking his Christian faith to assert the moral imperative of those views. Coastal liberals eat that shit up. Talarico will raise $100 million for the general election, but it seems unlikely that Texas voters will be receptive to being told they are bad Christians for opposing the following:

• Prisons should be abolished because “prison is violence.”

• White people spread the “virus of racism” wherever they go, and must take “dramatic actions to contain the spread.”

• Abortion clinics belong in federal courthouses and national parks because God loves abortion.

• Male athletes should participate in women’s sports because “some things are more important than perfectly fair competition.”

• There are “six” biological sexes according to “modern science.”

• It’s totally normal and not weird at all to refer to women as “our neighbors with uteruses,” and Latinos as the “Latinx community.”

This is just a sample of the crazy things Talarico said during the “peak woke” period of 2020-2021 after the death of George Floyd. Kamala Harris faced the same problem in 2024, and Democrats still haven’t come up with a better excuse than “it was a long time ago” and “everyone else was doing it.” Not everyone was doing it! Even most Democrats didn’t brag about being the first to “add pronouns” to their official business cards in 2021. Talarico went all in. Even the most benign explanation—he got caught up in the excitement of dismantling white supremacy and said all those things to impress the popular liberals—reflects poorly on his judgment and character to a degree that should be disqualifying.

Conclusion: The word “normal” doesn’t mean what Democrats think it means.

Addendum: It’s possible that Talarico has had a genuine change of heart. If he truly believed his own nonsense about the racism virus, he would have dropped out the minute Crockett entered the race. Black women are the “backbone” of the Democratic Party, representation matters, and so on. Nevertheless, he persisted, and now another black woman must endure the literal violence of unemployment, and millions of little black girls across this great country will grow up lacking the confidence to follow their dreams because a white man will always stand in their way.

What they’re saying: “A lot of black women who work in the Democratic Party, vote for Democrats, organize for Democrats, have always had a sense of this,” Tayhlor Coleman, a Texas-based political strategist and social media influencer, told Politico after the primary. “It’s a lot more apparent now: A lot of people in the Democratic Party want our labor, they do not want our leadership.”

What they’re also saying: “I hope the biggest lesson people take away from the Talarico-Crockett race is that the tactic of just baselessly accusing anyone who disagrees with you of being a bigot over and over and over in hopes you’ll cow everyone into submission is in its death throes,” wrote Armand Domalewski, a pro-Harris Democratic influencer. He was referring to Crockett and the “online army of cry bullies” that accused Talarico of diminishing black excellence.

You hate to see it—like watching your parents fight in a flaming dumpster.

Good luck to all!

BREAKING TRAD

Talarico is hardly the only ambitious Democrat struggling to be normal and approaching the challenge with the rigor and charm of a grad student explaining the thesis revisions he’s thinking about making. There’s the aforementioned Pete Buttigieg, another awkward nerd whom Democrats regard as a model for appealing to Republicans. He grew a beard to dampen the “running for student body president” vibe, but you just know he ran a focus group beforehand.

The Atlantic published a remarkable piece this week on Buttigieg’s attempt to “establish his normal-guy credentials” before inevitably running for president in 2028. At his new home in Michigan, Buttigieg is “doubling down on family”—his words—and immersing himself in the ordinary. Like all former candidates eager to lay low, he invited a reporter to follow his every move. He drops the kids off at camp, eats Cornish pastries, and patronizes mom-and-pop establishments. He has also “resurrected his Norwegian, a language he learned for fun,” and was tickled to discover that Brillebjørn the bear, the protagonist in the Norwegian children’s books he’s been reading his twins, has two moms.

A particularly amusing passage recounts the moment when the Atlantic reporter, in the course of documenting Buttigieg’s sojourn in the land of normal men, accidentally stumbled upon a normal man whose total disdain for politics (and bothersome journalists) is the epitome of American greatness:

Traverse City is remote from Washington politics. At a local bar, I asked an employee to name the city’s most famous resident, and he struggled to name anyone. “Madonna’s brother used to be a homeless guy here,” he said. I told him that a former secretary of transportation had moved to town six months ago, and instead of continuing the conversation he found urgent barkeeping tasks to attend to.

The ensuing paragraph describes the “never-ending succession of wholesomeness” at chez Buttigieg, and ends with a cringing display of dorkwad pedantry. “Papa got a axe for Christmas,” four-year-old Gus tells the journalist. “Technically,” Pete chimed in, “it is a splitting maul.”

Bless his heart.

In the run up to the 2020 Democratic primary, Barack Obama tried to talk his elderly vice president out of running. “You don’t have to do this, Joe, you really don’t,” he said in a calm, soothing voice. Someone needs to pull Pete aside and tell him the same thing—just to be on the record—before Buttigieg makes the wise and honorable decision to do what Biden did and tell the haters to go f— themselves.

Bottom line: Run, Pete, run!

FREAK ACCIDENTS

Graham Platner, like Tim Walz, is more idiot than nerd. They represent a different type of “normal” Democrat—the Carhartt communist. If Democrats want to win back the working-class white vote, Platner is their guy. Never mind that a recent poll found that he is far more popular with the trust-fund class. He has a beard and dresses like a slob! Of course he doesn’t hate Jews! What are you talking about? Sure, he rants about Israel all the time, and has been known to accidentally get a Nazi tattoo from time to time, or accidentally promote anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists and appears on their podcasts as a “longtime fan.” It could happen—and keep happening—to anybody.

Admit nothing, deny goose-stepping: The Washington Free Beacon got an exclusive look inside Platner’s crisis PR handbook. The campaign made a “defense guidance” packet instructing volunteers on how to respond to the candidate’s myriad Nazi-adjacent scandals. For example, if anyone asks about the time he wore the Nazi uniform to a child’s birthday, just tell them “the theme was Indiana Jones.” Plus, he was only 34 years old when it happened. Cut the guy some slack.

Everyman vibes: Jack Schlossberg, the Kennedy scion running for Congress as an “outsider,” reported no earned income in 2025 but holds as much as $32 million across a variety of trust funds and real estate portfolios, according to financial records. He continued to list himself as “political correspondent” for Vogue magazine despite not working there last year. Schlossberg is definitely not normal. Nancy Pelosi endorsed him anyway. She could teach him a thing or two about maximizing portfolio returns through well-timed trades.

REST IN PIECES

Iranians rejoiced after learning Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei perished in a U.S.-Israeli airstrike. Normal Americans were also pleased, but progressive activists and anti-Semites were inconsolable. Videos emerged of white liberals lecturing Iranians about oppression and telling them to “go back” to where they came from. The Washington Post found an Iranian at Howard University who opposed the bombing, but declined to mention that she was the founding member of an “Armed Queers” organization dedicated to “trans liberation,” and therefore need not be taken seriously.

Please keep Ben Rhodes in your thoughts and prayers.

Read the obituary: Rest in Pieces: Ali Khamenei, Demure Progressive Stalwart and ‘Black Lives Matter’ Ally Who Inspired Democrats and Academics, Bombed to Death at 86

Flashback: What I Saw in Iran

Final thoughts: God bless the women of Iran.

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James Talarico pulled off what is sure to be a controversial upset on Tuesday, defeating Jasmine Crockett in the Texas Democratic Senate primary. It was a contest marred by bitter infighting. Talarico faced credible accusations of racism, but still prevailed thanks to a billionaire-funded, establishment-approved, and media-facilitated push to brand Crockett as “unelectable.” Many considered that code for black and proud.

Journalists and other Democratic elites fawned over Talarico, a state lawmaker with the looks and demeanor of a fifth-grade boy giving an oral report for extra credit. They adored his “aw shucks, why can’t we all just get along?” routine. In glowing profile after glowing profile, they marveled at his Christianity-themed rhetoric. (He once declared that “God is non-binary” while arguing that men should be allowed to compete in women’s sports.) Former president Barack Obama called him a “terrific, talented young man.” He was Beto O’Rourke 2.0—a new and improved version of the liberal darling who could “finally turn Texas blue” by appealing to normal Americans.

Meanwhile, a billionaire-funded super PAC linked to Talarico—who repeatedly assailed the influence of billionaire-funded super PACs—relentlessly attacked Crockett on the airwaves. The Lone Star Rising PAC, started by a longtime friend of Talarico just days before the candidate launched his Senate campaign, spent millions on negative ads against Crockett over the past few weeks. LinkedIn founder and Jeffrey Epstein pal Reid Hoffman was among the billionaires who bankrolled the super PAC, along with hedge fund titans Stephen Mandel and Mark Heising. The group also received millions via the same “dark money” networks Talarico had promised to ban via “anti-corruption” legislation.

Crockett’s late entry into the race threatened Talarico’s path to the nomination. The congresswoman had already established herself as a different kind of media darling—more politics-adjacent influencer than serious politician. The anti-Trump resistance couldn’t get enough of her sassy clapbacks and “Imma smack a bitch” mentality. She was good at raising money and going viral. But Democratic elites didn’t like her style, and insisted that Texas could turn blue in November—just not with Crockett on the ballot.

The billionaires, journalists, and party bigwigs did everything they could to sabotage Crockett in the closing stretch. Stephen Colbert, the former comedian, ginned up a phony scandal by falsely accusing Donald Trump and CBS News of shutting down his interview with Talarico. In reality, the network had simply advised Colbert that airing the interview could trigger federal rules mandating “equal time” for rival candidates—meaning Crockett. The ensuing outrage allowed Talarico to play the victim. He got tons of free exposure, and parlayed the “controversy” into a $2.5 million fundraising haul. In the final days before the election, journalists and other professional Democrats whined incessantly about how Crockett was mean to a reporter from the Atlantic.

The general election will give the billionaire-funded Democratic establishment a chance to prove it was all worth it to crush a black woman’s dreams. The party has a long history of backing white candidates over black rivals in U.S. Senate primaries, but those candidates rarely go on to win. Talarico will face the winner of a GOP runoff election in May between Texas attorney general Ken Paxton and the incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, as neither candidate secured the majority needed to win the nomination outright.

Here are the winners and losers from Tuesday night’s result in Texas:

Winner: White mediocrity, racism

Talarico, a mediocre white man, refused to apologize after committing racism against former Rep. Colin Allred (D., Texas). Furthermore, as Democrats have long established, it is racist to criticize a black woman or run against her in an election. Crockett was endorsed by Cardi B, Method Man, Kelly Rowland, and Kamala Harris. Talarico was endorsed by High School Democrats of America.

Loser: Kamala Harris

The former vice president defied the Democratic establishment by endorsing Crockett in the final week before Election Day. It was a risky bet that didn’t pan out, but that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t run again in 2028.

Winners: Billionaires, the Democratic elite

Teaming up to take down Crockett must have been almost as satisfying as knee-capping Bernie Sanders in 2020 and rigging the election for Joe Biden. Talarico owes it all to them. They own him now.

Losers: The media

Journalists keep insisting they are neutral arbiters who don’t take sides. They didn’t just take sides in this race; they fell in love. It’s so embarrassing. But it won’t be the last time.

READ MORE: Mess in Texas: Billionaire-Backed Talarico Shrugs Off Racism Scandal To Steal Senate Nod from Jasmine Crockett

Ali Khamenei, the “Black Lives Matter” advocate and long-serving supreme leader of Iran, was a guiding light to Democratic lawmakers, Ivy League professors, and other progressive ideologues who endorsed his intellectual appraisal of America’s evil and the treachery of Jews.

In darkness they must now persist.

The ayatollah died like a dog Saturday when his “secure” compound in central Tehran was caved in by several dozen of the biggest, most beautiful bombs ever made. Khamenei’s body, so austere and worldly, torn to shreds. His mangled face adorned with one of history’s most distinguished beards. His agile mind—inquisitive and playful—literally blown amidst the ashes of scholarly texts and quirky beach reads. A name crossed off the top of Uncle Sam’s list. The emphatic ring of Mother Freedom’s bell. It must have felt as if the whole wide world was raining down. Because it was.

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social. He was 86.

The Iranian people cheered a tyrant’s demise and hoped for what could be. You could tell their joy was real and not the Kamala Harris kind. The ayatollah’s left-wing comrades sobbed like sloppy seventh graders. They shook their fists at mushroom clouds and wept for what had been. The revolution. The hostages. The oil nonsense. Decades of degenerate behavior and the targeting of American soldiers. The homespun hipster in his button-down shirt (also killed). The slow death of the Iranian economy, which even the Obama nuclear shake-down couldn’t stop.

They had to hand it to the supreme leader. Fans commended him for dying honorably—on his own terms, mid-resistance, cowering in a bunker, surrounded by his closest friends and military commanders. They touted his progressive bona fides—he understood that decolonization was more than vibes and essays. In May 2020, he penned an eloquent clapbackagainst white supremacy after the death of George Floyd. He never took Trump’s calls or laughed at a misogynistic joke, which in some ways made him even more of a winner than the USA men’s hockey team. He inspired a generation of Ivy League losers to hate Jews even more than they hate themselves.

Khamenei’s death was a crippling blow to America’s elite institutions, many of which had presumably shortlisted the supreme leader in their search for a commencement speaker. It was basically the last remaining option to forestall a shrieking walkout. Now what? The students and faculty who supported Iran’s proxy, Hamas, and its “anti-colonial insurgency,” are naturally devastated. Their terrorist allies have been crushed. They must endure the moral indignity of mourning a tyrant who murdered thousands and repressed millions. It remains to be seen which campus chapters of Feminist Fatties for Palestine will issue statements denouncing Iranian women for burning their hijabs. One can only marvel at the magnitude of self-absorption required to exist this way.

The terrorists’ allies in Congress were too distraught to pretend anymore. “This is who they are,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) huffed in response to the airstrikes that took out Khamenei. She was referring to the United States of America. Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D.) apologized—to all the Iranians dancing with delight in New York City. He was channeling former president Barack Obama, who never stopped hoping he would get the chance to bow submissively before His Eminence. On the bright side, Khamenei’s downfall could open up a lucrative new market for Michelle Obama’s fashion memoir.

The garment rending in the media was also a sight to behold. It’s been several years since the Washington Post was deservedly mocked for lamenting the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the “austere religious scholar” who pioneered the rise of ISIS. Many assumed they would be too embarrassed to do that again. Evidently not. The Post‘s obituary described Khamenei as an “avuncular figure” with a “bushy white beard and easy smile” who enjoyed classic Westerns and Les Misérables. Mehdi Hasan melted down in public. He was not alone.

Ben Rhodes, the former Obama aide who recently implored Iranians to “negotiate” with their oppressors, may never recover. He took Khamenei’s side in 2009 when the regime was shooting protesters in the streets, and bragged of manipulating halfwit journalists to rally support for the nuclear deal he crafted. Rhodes’s public comments in response to the supreme leader’s death reflected a profound anguish at the thought of not being invited to the funeral.

It is often said a man’s enemies reveal the content of his character. As far as Khamenei is concerned, the pathetic zeal of his admirers will supply the final judgment.

Rest in pieces, thug.

READ MORE: Ali Khamenei, Demure Progressive Stalwart and ‘Black Lives Matter’ Ally Who Inspired Democrats and Academics, Bombed to Death at 86