Allies of Republican Michigan Senate nominee Mike Rogers are urging AIPAC not to launch an advertising campaign on his behalf, reportedly fearing the group&#8217;s involvement could hurt him in November.
Rogers met with AIPAC chairman Michael Tuchin in Los Angeles last week, and the organization shelved a completed advertisement attacking Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed the following day, Axios <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/08/22/mike-rogers-aipac-michigan-senate">reported</a>.
The disagreement reportedly centers not on whether AIPAC should help Rogers, a firm supporter of Israel, but on how visibly it should do so. Rogers&#8217; allies suggested that AIPAC donors instead contribute to a pro-Rogers super PAC or a joint fundraising operation established by the campaign and national Republicans. They also proposed bringing AIPAC political strategists into the broader effort.
AIPAC officials, however, wanted to play a public role in defeating El-Sayed and argued that the Democrat would link Rogers to the organization regardless, according to Axios. Direct talks between the two sides have since stalled, leaving Republican donors with ties to both camps attempting to mend the relationship.
The group and its affiliates <a href="https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/elections/2026/takeaways-from-tuesdays-elections-el-sayed-pulls-off-narrow-victory-over-democratic-establishment/">spent more than $30 million</a> during Michigan&#8217;s Democratic primary in an unsuccessful effort to stop El-Sayed, a socialist and vocal critic of Israel. Much of that spending aided Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), whom El-Sayed narrowly defeated on August 4.
El-Sayed made AIPAC&#8217;s involvement a central theme of his campaign, presenting the group&#8217;s enormous spending as evidence that wealthy interests were attempting to buy the nomination. Shortly before winning the primary, he taunted the organization: &#8220;AIPAC, if you&#8217;re listening, come back and burn it again.&#8221;
El-Sayed&#8217;s record extends well beyond ordinary criticism of Israeli policy. The devout Muslim has called Israel a &#8220;rogue state,&#8221; accused it of genocide and apartheid, and declined to affirm its right to exist as a Jewish state. In a 2022 speech to a Council on American-Islamic Relations chapter, he <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/abdul-el-sayed-dedicated-his-life-to-sharia-law">compared</a> an effort to prohibit Sharia law in Oklahoma courts to the Trail of Tears, the Tulsa race massacre, and the Oklahoma City bombing, arguing that each grew from the same forces of white supremacy. El-Sayed has also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/el-sayed-shrugs-off-hasan-pikers-9-11-comments">campaigned alongside</a> communist streamer Hasan Piker, who has said America &#8220;deserved 9/11&#8221; and defended Hamas and Hezbollah.
After his victory, AIPAC vowed to continue working against El-Sayed and what it called his &#8220;radical anti-Israel agenda,&#8221; but Michigan presents a particularly delicate landscape for such a campaign. The state has one of America&#8217;s largest Arab-American populations, while an August 13 Fox News survey <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-senate-battle-looms-michigan">found</a> that 55% of Michigan voters oppose further U.S. aid to Israel
The contest is expected to be among the country&#8217;s most consequential Senate races. Rogers, a former congressman who narrowly lost Michigan&#8217;s other Senate race in 2024, is attempting to flip the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.
Despite the reported friction, Rogers publicly welcomed assistance from Israel&#8217;s supporters.
&#8220;I welcome any and all support from the pro-Israel community,&#8221; he told Axios, adding that he was proud to have them involved.

Michigan Senate Candidate Mike Rogers Holds Election Night Event

Mike Rogers Allies Urge AIPAC To Stay Out Of Michigan Senate Race

Abdul El-Sayed

American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)

Michigan

Michigan Primary

Mike Rogers

Fighter jets intercepted two civilian planes that strayed into restricted airspace over Bedminster, New Jersey, on Sunday while President Donald Trump was wrapping up a weekend stay at his golf club there.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said in a statement posted to X that its F-16s had responded to &#8220;multiple general aviation aircraft&#8221; violating temporary flight restrictions over the area. &#8220;All aircraft were safely escorted out of the area by NORAD aircraft,&#8221; the command said, urging pilots to &#8220;check your Notice to Airmen (NOTAMS) and FAA Temporary Flight Restrictions.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
NORAD F-16s intercepted multiple general aviation aircraft today that violated temporary flight restrictions over Bedminster, NJ.
All aircraft were safely escorted out of the area by NORAD aircraft.
Pilots: check your Notice to Airmen (NOTAMS) and FAA Temporary Flight… <a href="https://t.co/yac5sDTp1j">https://t.co/yac5sDTp1j</a>
— North American Aerospace Defense Command (@NORADCommand) <a href="https://x.com/NORADCommand/status/2086513190935154824?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 9, 2026</a></blockquote>
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First Air Force, which oversees NORAD&#8217;s continental air operations, put a firmer number on the incident, <a href="https://x.com/1stAF/status/2086508676588724453">saying</a> fighters &#8220;intercepted two aircraft violating restricted airspace over Bedminster, NJ.&#8221;
&#8220;Remember: Check NOTAMs before EVERY flight!&#8221; the command added.
<a href="https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/2086525429293223978">Video</a> circulating online appeared to capture one of the intercepts, showing an F-16 closing in on a small propeller plane outside Bedminster.
Trump arrived at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster on Friday evening and was scheduled to return to Washington on Sunday. The club hosted the LIV Golf New York tournament this week, and the president attended Sunday&#8217;s final round.
Sunday&#8217;s incursions came despite ample warning. NORAD <a href="https://www.dvidshub.net/news/571806/multiple-temporary-flight-restriction-areas-announced-over-new-jersey-weekend">announced before the weekend</a> that it would enforce multiple VIP flight restrictions established by the FAA over New Jersey, cautioning that its aircraft would &#8220;take the necessary action to gain compliance — a scenario we encourage all pilots to avoid.&#8221; The command also noted that Army ground-based defense equipment could be operating in the region as part of its layered defense posture.
Airspace violations have become a recurring problem during Trump&#8217;s visits to his properties. Just three weeks ago, <a href="https://www.dvidshub.net/news/570279/norad-intercepts-multiple-aircraft-violating-temporary-flight-restrictions-northeast-region">more than 10 aircraft</a> entered restricted airspace over Bedminster and East Rutherford in a single day, with NORAD dispensing flares during two of the three intercepts.
Officials have not identified Sunday&#8217;s aircraft or those aboard, and there is no indication the violations were anything more than pilot error.

LIV Golf New York – Day Four

F-16s Scramble After Planes Breach No-Fly Zone Over Trump’s Golf Club

airplanes

Donald Trump

LIV Golf

New Jersey

NORAD

President Donald Trump on Saturday named White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf as his next White House Counsel, elevating one of the lawyers behind his Supreme Court immunity victory to the West Wing&#8217;s top legal job.
Scharf will replace David Warrington effective September 1, Trump announced on Truth Social, saying Warrington — a Marine veteran who served as general counsel for Trump&#8217;s 2024 campaign — did a &#8220;truly outstanding job&#8221; and is headed to the private sector.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<a href="https://t.co/eM484FFJNv">pic.twitter.com/eM484FFJNv</a>
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/2086566025286332841?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 9, 2026</a></blockquote>
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The promotion caps a rapid rise for Scharf and puts a lawyer with a demonstrated willingness to tell the president &#8220;no&#8221; in charge of the office that vets the administration&#8217;s legal strategy. In a confidential April 2025 memo to Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/06/15/us/politics/trump-miller-habeas-corpus.html">revealed</a> in June by The New York Times, Scharf argued against a proposal championed by Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to suspend habeas corpus to speed deportations, writing that the denial of habeas rights &#8220;was a key grievance underlying the American Revolution&#8221; and that courts have almost uniformly held only Congress can suspend the writ. A second memo cautioned against invoking the Insurrection Act in response to immigration protests. The administration ultimately did neither.
That counsel evidently cost Scharf nothing with the president. &#8220;I know Will well!&#8221; Trump wrote Saturday, crediting him with representing him &#8220;in numerous cases, including at the Supreme Court, during the Biden Administration&#8217;s corrupt and illegal campaign of Weaponization.&#8221; Scharf joined Trump&#8217;s legal team in October 2023 and worked on his gag order appeals, civil fraud appeal, and the presidential immunity case that produced Trump v. United States.
As staff secretary, Scharf controlled the flow of documents and decisions to the Oval Office and was among the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/06/politics/trump-proximity-to-power-white-house-dg">few aides with walk-in privileges</a> — a fixture at the Resolute Desk during executive order signings. A former federal prosecutor who clerked for two federal appeals court judges, he also helped run the Kavanaugh and Barrett confirmation efforts before joining the campaign.
&#8220;Will is Tough, Strong, and Smart!&#8221; Trump wrote.

Trump Tries To Curb Birthright Citizenship Anew After Court Loss

Lawyer Behind Trump’s Immunity Win Named White House Counsel

Immunity

Supreme Court

White House

Former NBA first-round pick Royce White said Friday he intends to enter the 2027 WNBA draft, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/outkick-sports/former-nba-player-royce-white-declaring-next-wnba-draft-enes-kanter-announcement">telling</a> OutKick he now identifies as a woman &#8220;for purposes of basketball&#8221; and would take the league to court if no team signs him.
White, 35, made the announcement hours after fellow ex-NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/former-nba-player-declares-for-wnba-draft">declared himself a 2027 prospect</a>, saying he had reviewed the league&#8217;s self-identification framework and met its requirements. White had teed up his own version days earlier, writing on X on Tuesday that he now identifies as &#8220;a sometimes identifying transgender woman&#8221; and would pursue a WNBA career.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
As I stated a few days ago, I am declaring for the 2027 WNBA Draft.
I identify as a sometimes identifying transgender woman! My wig is in the mail. <a href="https://t.co/lPVsmcMOVD">pic.twitter.com/lPVsmcMOVD</a>
— Royce White 🇺🇸 (@Highway_30) <a href="https://x.com/Highway_30/status/2085869040132555203?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 7, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The 6-foot-8, roughly 260-pound forward — the Houston Rockets&#8217; 16th overall pick in 2012 — predicted that he would be &#8220;unstoppable,&#8221; and said players would &#8220;have nightmares&#8221; guarding him, and confirmed he would use the women&#8217;s locker room if rostered. If he goes undrafted, he told OutKick, &#8220;I have to file a discrimination lawsuit, right?&#8221;
White framed the stunt as a challenge to the league to define its own rules. The WNBA&#8217;s 2026 collective bargaining agreement states that only women are eligible to play, but the <a href="https://www.wnbpa.com/_files/ugd/8121a3_675911316ca142178932adc1e56519ac.pdf">409-page document</a> does not define the term or address transgender eligibility, and the league has not said how it would evaluate either man&#8217;s declaration. The issue has been a major controversy in the WNBA in recent weeks after Indiana Fever guard <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-sophie-cunningham-became-the-wnbas-biggest-target">Sophie Cunningham</a> spoke up in defense of protecting women&#8217;s sports.
The players&#8217; union <a href="https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/sports/enes-kanter-freedom-wnba-draft/">responded</a> Friday without answering the eligibility question, saying it embraces &#8220;justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion&#8221; and would not be used as &#8220;political pawns.&#8221;
White, who lost to Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) as the GOP nominee in 2024, appears on the ballot in Minnesota&#8217;s August 11 Republican Senate primary. He said his preferred landing spot would be the hometown Minnesota Lynx, whose head coach, Cheryl Reeve, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/sports/sparks/story/2026-08-02/lynx-coach-wears-shirt-supporting-trans-kids-joining-protests">recently wore</a> a &#8220;trans kids belong&#8221; shirt during a game.

Untitled design

Another Former NBA Player Says He’s Entering WNBA Draft, Threatens Discrimination Suit

Minnesota Lynx

Transgender

transgender athlete

WNBA

Jorge Messi, father of Argentine soccer legend Lionel Messi, died Friday night in Rosario, Argentina, at the age of 68, the Messi family <a href="https://www.reuters.com/sports/soccer/father-soccer-star-lionel-messi-dies-68-argentina-2026-08-08/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">confirmed</a> to Reuters.
The elder Messi died at a medical clinic in his hometown following a lengthy illness, spending his final months moving between the facility and his home beside his wife Celia and children Rodrigo, Matías, and María Sol. Jorge Messi served for years as his son’s agent and closest advisor, guiding his rise through Barcelona’s famed La Masia academy to a <a href="https://ballondor.com/players/lionel-messi-3399?utm_source=chatgpt.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">record eight Ballon d’Or </a><a href="https://ballondor.com/players/lionel-messi-3399?utm_source=chatgpt.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">awards</a>.
“Newell’s Old Boys mourn with profound pain and sorrow the passing of Jorge Messi,” the Rosario club, where Lionel played youth soccer, said in a statement Saturday. “Jorge was the support and the person who, together with his wife, Celia, strengthened the career of the greatest player of all time with vision, rigor and affection.”
Before becoming his son’s agent, Jorge Messi worked at a steel mill in Argentina. In 2000, he took 13-year-old Lionel to Barcelona for a trial and helped secure his place in the club’s youth system, a commitment famously sketched out on a napkin. He continued managing Lionel’s career and business affairs as his son later joined Paris Saint-Germain and Inter Miami.
His declining health became public during this summer’s World Cup, where Lionel Messi captained Argentina to the final before falling 1-0 to Spain. After scoring a hat trick in the opening match against Algeria, a tearful Messi <a href="https://apnews.com/article/lionel-messi-argentina-world-cup-d6103e936c511ddcd7b134b407782f19?utm_source=chatgpt.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told reporters</a> his emotions “[weren’t] related to soccer,” citing “tough days.” The family later confirmed Jorge was under medical care.
Jorge did not travel to the tournament in North America, but the father and son spent time together in Rosario afterward before Lionel rejoined Inter Miami, where the 39-year-old returned to action last week.
Jorge Messi is survived by his wife and four children. A cause of death was not immediately disclosed.

FBL-MLS-USA-MIAMI-NEW YORK

Father Of Soccer Legend Lionel Messi Dead At 68

Argentina

Lionel Messi

Men's soccer

Soccer

World Cup

“Look.” I elbowed James, a Hill comms guy I’d just met in line. “It’s Taylor Lorenz, the founder of, uh, User Magazine.”
“Good lord,” he said.
At 7:57 she scurried up the sidewalk, chin down and shoulders turned in, wearing a surgical mask that was slightly too big — it stretched from the bridge of the nose to the chin, obscuring everything but her wide-set eyes. Two crowd-control lanes had been set up out front, and all us proles were squeezed into one of them. The other was empty, presumably reserved for big celebrities like Lorenz.
“Hey, Taylor!” I said, loud enough that she had to acknowledge it.
“Heeeyyy.” She didn’t quite stop. “What’s going on, guys?”
The “guys” in question were James, me, and a cluster of boomer couples who paused their conversation long enough to look at her, register nothing, and resume it. I considered asking some obnoxious question about her age (Lorenz is famously secretive about the exact birth year) and decided against it. I was worried she’d denounce me as a troll, at which point I’d be frog-marched off the premises of this third and most extravagant New Media Party, promoted by Substack as the founding event of a new American press.
What had been advertised, in the run-up to the night, was a celebrity gathering. Looksmaxxing icon Clavicular was supposed to attend and didn’t. Quentin Tarantino was supposed to attend and didn’t. Gavin Newsom was supposed to attend and didn’t. What did attend was a couple hundred people who write newsletters for a living, a handful of former CNN anchors, a Miami Herald reporter who covers Jeffrey Epstein, and David “Fluoride Stare” Pakman. By any measure, this was a less impressive room than the one I’d been promised. It was also, almost certainly, a more honest one. Every previous new intellectual class — the New York Intellectuals arguing about Trotsky in a City College cafeteria in 1937, the soixante-huitards throwing cobblestones at French police in 1968 — has looked, at the moment of its emergence, like a cheap imitation of the elite it was about to replace. If the Renwick was any indication, the next American intelligentsia was going to look like Jim Acosta threatening to fight Michael Tracey on the floor of a federal museum. Which is, I came to suspect, a more accurate sample of the future than anything happening at the Hilton.
I went through the metal detectors at 8 p.m. sharp. A red-carpeted staircase climbed two stories under a vaulted ceiling, and through the arch at the top of it, I could just barely hear a party. The Grand Salon at this hour held maybe fifty people, all sober, all standing in the unsettled clusters peculiar to early arrivals. I needed a drink immediately. The bartender, an African migrant whose grasp of English was tenuous, took my order for a double tequila soda and reached for a bottle of Tito’s. I corrected him.
“Ahahaha! Sounds just the same, eh?” he said.
“Uh, yeah. I guess so,” I said, and chuckled politely.
He set down the Tito&#8217;s, surveyed his station, and reached for a bottle of Absolut. I corrected him a second time. He started over. He worked at a pace that, by the third round, I came to understand was less a function of skill than of an entire continent’s relationship to time, and possibly to the postcolonial project as a whole.
By the time the drink was in my hand, the room behind me had quadrupled. It operated on a geometry I recognized from every other D.C. event I’d been to — cliques of three and four, each one a closed circuit that opened occasionally to admit someone, then sealed shut behind them. The conversations all had the same posture: people facing each other but looking past each other, scanning for the next conversation while performing the present one. I didn’t know who any of them were yet, but I knew what they were. They were people, by and large, who had figured out that you could leave a real publication, take your Twitter following with you, and charge five dollars a month for what you used to give away for free. Some of them were making more money than they’d ever made. Most were only pretending to.
The first person I spoke to was David Pakman. I found James, the comms guy from outside, deep in conversation with him near the bar, and inserted myself. The subject was Virginia congressional redistricting, on which Pakman had strong views. He was small and quick and never quite still — he held forth on the redistricting question while alighting on James’s words for a beat at a time, then shifting to whatever conversation was happening around him, the way a lemur tracks movement. When he had exhausted the redistricting subject, I mentioned I was writing a piece for The Daily Wire.
“Oh. How is the Daily Wire lately?” he said. There was an accusation in the cadence, like he’d recently read something disqualifying about the place and assumed I had too.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t work there. I’m a freelancer.”
“OK. Well. I’m going to go mingle.”
Then he was gone. I didn’t see him for the rest of the night.
Michael Tracey was easy to find. He was the loudest person in his vicinity, and his vicinity contained two young men in suits who, in the course of about thirty seconds of eavesdropping, identified themselves as Oxford PPE graduates working somewhere or other. I had only ever seen Tracey in his X profile picture, the sort of stylized cartoon avatar a man commissions of himself on Fiverr when he wants to be perceived as a serious thinker — bearded, bespectacled, knuckles to chin. In person he was sweaty, faintly purple, and topped with the kind of hair a bald man might acquire by rubbing glue on his scalp and rolling around on a barber shop floor. He was already belligerent when I joined the conversation. The subject was Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald reporter who has spent the better part of a decade documenting the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein.
“She’s a c*nt,” Tracey said, “and I don’t use that word lightly.”
I said that, on the contrary, I considered her a beautiful angel and one of the most important journalists of our time. The British guys found this funnier than Tracey did. Tracey did not look at me; he continued his train of thought as though I hadn’t spoken, which was probably the most impressive thing he did all night.
Substack had advertised the party as “an ideologically diverse mix.” This was technically accurate but beside the point. What Tracey and Pakman and the several hundred others sipping cutely named cocktails — one was called “The Hot Take” — had in common was not a politics or a sensibility but an enemy. Every person in the room had built an audience on the conviction that the institutions producing the news a mile and a half north, at the Hilton, where the actual White House Correspondents’ Dinner was getting underway, were no longer fit to do so. The two routes were both in the room. Acosta had been pushed out of CNN. Tracey had been on the outside, throwing rocks at it for 15 years. And now they were both under the forty-foot ceiling of the Grand Salon, drinking all night from the same open bar.
A little after 8:30 the music stopped. A man I didn’t recognize was standing at the DJ booth, behind a Marlboro-styled Substack logo, asking for everyone’s attention. There had been an incident, he said. The Renwick was closing its doors as a precaution, which meant that nobody inside would be permitted to leave. Since we were all already here, he added, we were going to keep the party going, and somebody would let us know when it was safe to step out. He thanked us for our patience and the DJ resumed.
He wasn’t telling most of the room anything new. For some minutes before he spoke, the news had been spreading unevenly through the salon. A handful of people had drifted into the side galleries — past the butter cow in its refrigerated case, past a stack of jars called Mount Zeitler — and were pacing on phone calls, faces troubled. For others, the announcement was the first they’d heard of it. Nobody left, because nobody could. The complaint I heard most often in the hour that followed was not about the shooting itself but about Tarantino and Newsom: multiple people informed me, with apparent disappointment, that it was why they hadn’t made it to Substack that night.
While we drank, the Hilton was being evacuated. A man named Cole Allen had charged the security checkpoint outside the ballroom with a 12-gauge shotgun, a .38, and a manifesto he had emailed to his family ten minutes before. The president was being lifted from the dais. The speaker of the House, the vice president, the secretary of state, and the directors of the FBI and HHS were all escorted out in a hurry. The press corps — the people most of the room at the Renwick had built their careers denouncing — were diving under their tables in evening dress.
The Renwick stayed locked for another 90 minutes. None of us could leave. Neither, it turned out, could Julie K. Brown. What happened next, I missed. I had drifted into the side galleries, or to the bathroom, or to whoever I’d been introduced to in line for the bar. Tracey, who at 8:45 had merely been calling Brown a c*nt, had by 9:30 graduated to the physical phase of his plan. Allegedly, he cornered her, started screaming, and blocked her when she tried to walk away.
What I learned the next morning, in pieces, on Twitter, was that several men intervened. Acosta was among them. So was security. Acosta, by his own account and Brown’s confirmation, stood between them and helped escort her away. At which point Acosta turned to Tracey and yelled, “LET’S STEP OUTSIDE.” Tracey accepted, replying, “OK JIM LET’S GO.” Security pulled Tracey out before either of them could leave.
In any case, they couldn’t have gone anywhere. The Renwick was still sealed. But the gesture had been made, and Tracey, escorted out and free of the lockdown that constrained the rest of us, took it with him. He walked east, arriving sometime after midnight at the Hampton Inn on 6th Street, where he’d been told Acosta was staying. He lurked on the sidewalk. At 1:01 a.m., he posted to X that he still had no idea what had happened with Trump that night. Six minutes later he posted a photograph of the entrance with the caption: Jim, I’m literally waiting for you right now, you piece of shit. Acosta did not come downstairs.
The image of a middle-aged man standing alone outside a Hampton Inn at 1 a.m., posting threats at another middle-aged man on a website neither of them owned, was a degraded image. But it was an old one. Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal — members in good standing of the New York literary establishment that produced both of them — had spent the 1970s trying to kill each other at parties. Mailer headbutted Vidal in the green room of The Dick Cavett Show in 1971. He threw a drink at him at a Lally Weymouth party in 1977. Mary McCarthy went on television in 1980 to call Lillian Hellman a liar; Hellman sued her for libel; the suit was still unresolved when Hellman died. None of these men or women were friends. Several of them loathed each other, for legitimate reasons.
Mailer’s grievance with Vidal was that Vidal had compared his writing in print to the work of Charles Manson. McCarthy’s grievance with Hellman was that Hellman had spent decades lying in her memoirs about her Stalinism. They were serious ideological feuds — about American masculinity, about the responsibility of the intellectual to political truth, about what could and could not be said about the Soviet Union — that found, in time, a personal form.
The class that fought through these feuds eventually replaced the older liberal establishment it had grown up wanting to displace. It produced Trilling, Bellow, Sontag, and Hardwick. It also produced Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, and most of the intellectual scaffolding for the neoconservative project, including a great deal of what came later in the way of American foreign policy. Sometimes it honored its inheritance — but it often squandered it, too. The record is mixed in a way that should give anyone watching the next emergence pause.
What I’d watched for three hours at the Renwick was, I believe, an emergent class of the same model. The substrate was different — Substack rather than the little magazines. The disputes were smaller, pettier. The people were obviously less impressive and more embarrassing. But the resentments were structured the same way. They will probably win, in the sense that previous classes of this type have won. Whether what they produce will be worth what they replace is a question I’m in no position to answer, and neither, on the evidence I’d collected over three hours of standing in the room, were they.
***
Thomas English

The Circus Barbershop. 1890 Engraving of a Busy Circus Dressing Room and Barbershop

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Thomas English

Mike Rogers Allies Urge AIPAC To Stay Out Of Michigan Senate Race

F-16s Scramble After Planes Breach No-Fly Zone Over Trump’s Golf Club

Lawyer Behind Trump’s Immunity Win Named White House Counsel

Another Former NBA Player Says He’s Entering WNBA Draft, Threatens Discrimination Suit

Father Of Soccer Legend Lionel Messi Dead At 68

That Night At The Renwick