A Tennessee Democrat pushed a state trooper and screamed in his face as tempers flared when lawmakers gathered to approve new Republican-backed congressional maps on Thursday.
Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson (D), known for his <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/there-is-nothing-off-the-table-tennessee-dem-says-anything-goes-in-fight-against-fascist-gop">tirades</a> against the state&#8217;s conservative majority and his <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fake-southern-preacher-videos-show-expelled-tennessee-lawmakers-oratorical-transformation">shapeshifting personality</a>, got into a confrontation with state troopers who were attempting to secure the state capitol as leftist protesters converged on the area. In a video captured by ABC&#8217;s Nashville affiliate WKRN, state troopers appeared to be attempting to detain a man when Pearson stepped in and shoved the trooper&#8217;s arm away.
&#8220;Move the f*ck back!&#8221; Pearson shouted as he stared down the law enforcement officer.
The state trooper backed away and held his arms in the air as Pearson continued to berate him and call him &#8220;boy.&#8221;
&#8220;What the f*ck is wrong with you?&#8221; Pearson screamed. &#8220;What the f*ck is wrong with you? You stupid motherf*cker!&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Warning: explicit language
Rep. Pearson came to the gallery as troopers appeared to arrest a demonstrator. There’s a heated exchange. <a href="https://t.co/Dq76zVrTtW">pic.twitter.com/Dq76zVrTtW</a>
— Tori Gessner (@ToriGessnerTV) <a href="https://twitter.com/ToriGessnerTV/status/2052404638410735643?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 7, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Pearson&#8217;s meltdown occurred just before Tennessee Republicans <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/brutal-blow-for-democrats-in-red-state-sparks-leftist-outrage?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Leif+Le+Mahieu&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=1&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=Brutal+Blow+For+Democrats+In+Red+State+Sparks+Leftist+Outrage" target="_blank" rel="noopener">voted</a> on Thursday to approve new congressional maps that will likely wipe out the Democrats&#8217; only U.S. House seat in the state. Republican Governor Bill Lee signed the bill into law shortly after the vote. The special session in Tennessee&#8217;s capital was quickly organized after the Supreme Court ruled that certain majority-black districts put in place by the Voting Rights Act amounted to unconstitutional racial gerrymandering.
During the special session, hundreds of protesters entered the state capitol and claimed that state Republicans were enacting &#8220;Jim Crow 2.0&#8221; and &#8220;Modern Apartheid.&#8221; Another video captured by WKRN showed leftist protesters refusing to leave the Capitol building after state troopers began clearing the gallery.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Some protestors are now refusing to leave and chanting in the gallery. <a href="https://t.co/uYtLGiltOq">pic.twitter.com/uYtLGiltOq</a>
— Tori Gessner (@ToriGessnerTV) <a href="https://twitter.com/ToriGessnerTV/status/2052401991725306142?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 7, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Rep. Steve Cohen, who currently serves the lone Democratic district in Tennessee that has been upended by the new map, <a href="https://x.com/RepCohen/status/2052481665080213523">accused</a> Republicans of &#8220;enforc[ing] a racial gerrymander of Memphis.&#8221;
&#8220;Trump knows he HAS TO rig the game to keep his majority in November. And the TN GOP was willing to go along with it. It’s shameful. Next stop is the courts,&#8221; Cohen added.
Republican state leaders celebrated the vote as the party will likely boast a 9-0 advantage in Tennessee&#8217;s Congressional delegation come November.
“It’s a great day for Tennessee! Thank you to President [Donald Trump] for leading the charge, Governor [Bill Lee], and to the legislators who worked quickly and diligently to make this possible,” Blackburn posted on X. “This is how we cement President Trump’s agenda and usher in America’s Golden Age here in Tennessee, and how we become America’s conservative leader.”
Leif Le Mahieu contributed to this report.

Justin Pearson

WATCH: Democrat Shoves State Trooper, Screams In His Face As Redistricting Protest Turns Ugly

Democrats

Redistricting

Tennessee

Barack Obama was a horrible president, a terrible radical, and the best liar in modern American history, bar none.
He promoted the most radical policies: racial polarization, socialization of the health care system, surrender abroad, abortion, and trans radicalism here at home.
Then he was defeated by Donald Trump. There would be no Donald Trump as president without the far-Left insanity of the Obama era.
We tend to think of Trump as the defeat of Barack Obama.
But what if the Obama era is just beginning again? What if Donald Trump defeating Obamaism was not “Return of the Jedi,”  but “A New Hope”? Sure, President Trump blew up the Obama Death Star in 2016. But what if Barack Obama is back, building a newer, larger, more powerful Death Star?
What if what comes next in the story is the Obama empire striking back?
Barack Obama and his boys are taking over the Democratic Party. They are radical. They are vicious. They are incredibly talented.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-ep-2421?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
And yes, they can win. That&#8217;s what comes next in this story if we don&#8217;t stop it.
Obama has been back in the headlines a lot recently. You&#8217;ll remember that he went and read books to children with New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. And then he sat down with Stephen Colbert on &#8220;The Late Show&#8221; on CBS.
Obama is wildly talented, so talented that every Democratic politician since the Obama era has lived in his shadow. He is charming and avuncular in his approach.
Even I, who think that Obama was the death of modern American politics, acknowledge how talented Barack Obama is.
People perceive Barack Obama as moderate because he is charming and because he is unthreatening to people in his affect.
But Barack Obama is, was, and continues to be a radical leftist. He said Mamdani is just a normal politician who wants to fight for affordable housing. That is not true. Zohran Mamdani is an open socialist who openly sympathizes with terror groups.
And Barack Obama is hugging him and saying he&#8217;s just a normal Democrat, because Zohran Mamdani and he are the same. Barack Obama is just more talented at hiding who he is and who he was.
Obama thought of himself simultaneously as from America and also from outside America. If you read his original memoir, &#8220;Dreams From My Father,&#8221; he talks about his identity conflict between being an American growing up in Hawaii and his father&#8217;s past in Kenya, his identity as a black man, but also as a person raised by white grandparents.
What this amounts to in the end is a third-world philosophy. He best summarizes this in &#8220;Dreams From My Father,&#8221; where, in the most revealing paragraph that Obama ever wrote, he declared:
<blockquote>I know I have seen the desperation and disorder of the powerless, how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago&#8217;s South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder, alternating as it does between a dull complacency and when the disorder spills out of its prescribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware, is inadequate to the task.</blockquote>
What he was saying was that the situation of every poor person on planet Earth, in America and outside America, lay at the foot of American capitalism and imperialism, that the desperation and disorder of the powerless should be laid at the feet of the powerful.
This has been the guiding philosophy of Barack Obama for his entire career: Somehow, America is guilty of all of these crimes. Obama has always been radical.
The reason I&#8217;m saying this is because he is reclaiming the leadership position of the Democratic Party. He is the glue that holds that party together. He is trying to build back his coalition. He looks at the period since he was president and sees a Hillary Clinton who did not demonstrate the capacity to hold this coalition together. He sees a Joe Biden who lucked into the presidency and a Kamala Harris who was wildly untalented, and says, “I can do this myself. I will put it back together, except more radical this time.” That’s because the Democratic Party has moved in the direction that Barack Obama set .
In 2008, he suggested that the reason people opposed his radicalism politically was that they were bitterly clinging to God and guns and all of the conservative things, but somehow Barack Obama has been retconned into some sort of moderate.
In 2008, he ran as a fake centrist, a racial unifier, but by 2012, he was running as a polarizing, race-centric candidate, a left-wing wrecking ball. He sued nuns to promote abortion. He forced public schools to allow boys to use girls&#8217; bathrooms. His IRS targeted political opposition. Barack Obama lied in 2008 about his position on same-sex marriage, and then bathed the White House in a rainbow flag. Barack Obama promoted racially polarizing lies in order to weave DEI into every area of American life. He revitalized the Iranian regime with billions of dollars in cash. He let Russia have its way; he let China expand its power base throughout the world. He “led from behind.”
And then, through the power of the mainstream media, that was forgotten because the media decided Barack Obama was a messianic figure and they would never criticize him.
The way you probably remember Barack Obama right now is that he was not that bad compared to Mamdani, Ilhan Omar, or AOC. The media are still pretending his administration was scandal-free. They cover for his failures. They explain away his lies. They pretend that he is some philosopher-king instead of the architect of the radical Left.
Obama is going to &#8220;Mamdani&#8221; the entire Democratic Party top-down. He oversaw the Democratic Party between 2008 and 2016, and now he&#8217;s taking control again.
I know it feels like the Democrats are in disarray with no leadership.
They are not.
Obama is and has been the single most radical active driver in his party. He did not go away. He&#8217;s not George W. Bush, who was president and then went away.
Obama has been active, and he&#8217;s going to get more active. He is a master at shifting ideological goalposts without being noticed, cloaking his radicalism in some form of moderation. The reason that Obama is particularly threatening is that one, he&#8217;s an excellent organizer, and two, he is the single most creative and convincing liar in modern American history.
He told Colbert, “I&#8217;m worried about the Republican Party, not just the Democratic Party. When I was president, people would ask me what change would you like to see in Washington? I&#8217;d say, I&#8217;d love a loyal opposition. I&#8217;d love a Republican Party that was conservative in some ways, that didn&#8217;t agree with me on a whole bunch of stuff, but believed in the rule of law and judicial independence and empirical evidence and science and wasn&#8217;t constantly tapping into our worst impulses. And there has been a Republican Party like that in the past, and I want to see that return, because I think you have to have two healthy parties.&#8221;
That’s a lie.
He wrecked that Republican Party. You know that kinder, gentler Republican Party, the one that was the loyal opposition, the one that ran Mitt Romney for president in 2012, the cleanest candidate in the history of American politics? Barack Obama wrecked that guy. His allies literally put out an ad in 2012 saying that Mitt Romney fired a man so that his wife would die of cancer.
Obama pretends to be moderate; that&#8217;s the whole game. But he is going to be as radical as humanly possible. He&#8217;s setting up the system.
Barack Obama has the capacity to frame the Trump era as an interregnum in American history, a short detour on the road to left-wing devastation.
On the Right, we tend to think of this story as ending with President Trump victorious over all of his enemies.
But what if the Democratic Party is preparing to come back into power, sweep back into power, and do all the most radical things, led by Barack Obama, who was always radical but was great at hiding it?
How can the radicals win? If they get some help from the New Left, as I spoke about on Wednesday&#8217;s show.
That&#8217;s all it takes.
The coalition that is forming is the Barack Obama coalition.
And it should frighten us.

Barack Vader 3

Obama’s ‘Empire Strikes Back’? Why The Real Fight May Still Be Ahead

Barack Obama

Ben Shapiro

Opinion

Democrats’ refusal to release the party’s long-promised autopsy of the 2024 election defeat is quickly becoming a fresh fault line inside the party, one that now directly intersects with former Vice President Kamala Harris and the emerging 2028 presidential field.
Even as Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin continues to defend the decision to keep the 200-page report private, Harris is signaling behind closed doors that she has no objection to making the findings public, according to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2028-election/kamala-harris-dnc-release-autopsy-report-2024-campaign-rcna343453">NBC News</a>.
The divide comes as Harris appears to be laying the groundwork for another White House campaign following her 2024 loss to President Donald Trump. Harris has remained active on the national stage through speeches, donor outreach, and a nationwide tour promoting her memoir “107 Days,” while also privately consulting allies about a potential 2028 run.
But the unresolved fight over the party’s postmortem has become a growing source of frustration among Democratic strategists, donors, and activists still searching for answers after Democrats lost the White House and Republicans secured unified control of Washington in 2024.
Martin has <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5858141-democrats-demand-2024-election-autopsy/">argued</a> that releasing the full report would amount to “navel-gazing” and distract Democrats from the 2026 midterms and the next presidential cycle. In recent interviews, he insisted there was “no smoking gun” in the document and said the party has already begun implementing lessons learned internally.
Critics inside the party, however, argue that withholding the report has only fueled suspicion. “It raises more questions than it answers to conduct an autopsy and then not release it,” Democratic strategist Christy Setzer said. Others within the party have warned the secrecy risks deepening distrust among Democratic voters already frustrated with party leadership after 2024.
The debate also carries direct political implications for Harris, who continues leading many early Democratic primary polls despite lingering questions about her failed 2024 campaign. Some Democrats believe a full public accounting of the campaign’s decisions — including its messaging, spending, and handling of issues like Israel and Gaza — could complicate another Harris run.
Questions surrounding the Harris campaign’s massive spending operation have also lingered well into 2026. Democrats and donors have continued pressing for answers after Harris and the DNC burned through roughly $1.5 billion during the condensed 107-day campaign, only to lose every battleground state to Trump. 
Internal documents also reportedly showed serious outreach problems, including claims that despite hundreds of millions of voter contact attempts, only a small percentage resulted in actual conversations with voters.
Others including Bernie Sanders delegate Norman Solomon <a href="https://www.salon.com/2026/05/05/the-democratic-national-committee-is-boosting-kamala-harris-for-2028/">argue</a> that shielding the report creates the appearance that party leadership is protecting Harris ahead of a potentially crowded 2028 primary field that could include figures like California Governor Gavin Newsom, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ).
For now, Martin appears unlikely to reverse course entirely, though he has recently floated releasing limited “top-line” findings instead of the full report.
That compromise has satisfied few inside a Democratic Party still struggling to answer a question many members believe remains unresolved nearly two years later: what exactly went wrong in 2024?

Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris Is Already Beefing With Her Own Party Ahead Of 2028 Comeback Tour

2024 Election

California Democrats running for governor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/candidates-trade-brutal-blows-in-wild-california-governor-debate?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Drew+Berkemeyer&amp;category=News+and+Analysis&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=Candidates+Trade+Brutal+Blows+In+Wild+California+Governor+Debate">battled</a> Tuesday night over who would impose the most taxes and spend the most money as the state faces an affordability crisis and unprecedented budget deficit. 
In a televised CNN debate, Democrats — including former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former Rep. Katie Porter, businessman Tom Steyer, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa —pushed to break through a crowded field that still lacks a clear frontrunner.
Several Democratic candidates, led by billionaire Tom Steyer, endorsed taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal immigrants.
&#8220;It&#8217;s going to be a big job to get us to single payer, but the truth is, we don&#8217;t have a choice,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/CNNTheStoryIs/status/2051858333162672255?s=20">Steyer said</a>. &#8220;The truth of the matter is, immigrants built this state. Immigrants make this state run. The fact of the matter is, we had a broken immigration system, and now you want to victimize the people who are working here and making this state run.&#8221; 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/Elex_Michaelson?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Elex_Michaelson</a> asks candidates beginning w/ <a href="https://twitter.com/TomSteyer?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TomSteyer</a> &#8211;
In last year’s budget, Gov. Newsom &#8220;cut healthcare funding for undocumented immigrants to address a budget gap. As governor, would you restore that funding?&#8221;<a href="https://twitter.com/ChadBianco?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ChadBianco</a> , <a href="https://twitter.com/katieporterca?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@katieporterca</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/XavierBecerra?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@XavierBecerra</a> weigh in. <a href="https://t.co/LPdfZMD1a5">pic.twitter.com/LPdfZMD1a5</a>
— The Story Is (@CNNTheStoryIs) <a href="https://twitter.com/CNNTheStoryIs/status/2051858333162672255?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 6, 2026</a></blockquote>
Former Orange County Congresswoman Katie Porter backed him up. 
&#8220;We can&#8217;t afford to have people who are sick who are making the rest of us sick,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/RedWavePress/status/2052004314722296025?s=20">Porter said</a>. &#8220;When anyone doesn&#8217;t have care, the rest of us are at risk. When people don&#8217;t get vaccinations, when they don&#8217;t go to the doctor, they wind up in the emergency room, they cause longer lines for the rest of us, they make our healthcare system — they push it to the brink.&#8221; 
Amid a mass exodus out of California, Porter credited illegal immigrants for sustaining the state&#8217;s population. 
“They are one of the only ways our state has been growing in recent years,” <a href="https://x.com/theblaze/status/2052009806085468373?s=20">she said</a>. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/Elex_Michaelson?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Elex_Michaelson</a> asks candidates beginning w/ <a href="https://twitter.com/TomSteyer?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TomSteyer</a> &#8211;
In last year’s budget, Gov. Newsom &#8220;cut healthcare funding for undocumented immigrants to address a budget gap. As governor, would you restore that funding?&#8221;<a href="https://twitter.com/ChadBianco?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ChadBianco</a> , <a href="https://twitter.com/katieporterca?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@katieporterca</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/XavierBecerra?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@XavierBecerra</a> weigh in. <a href="https://t.co/LPdfZMD1a5">pic.twitter.com/LPdfZMD1a5</a>
— The Story Is (@CNNTheStoryIs) <a href="https://twitter.com/CNNTheStoryIs/status/2051858333162672255?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 6, 2026</a></blockquote>
Republican Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco fired back, saying illegal immigrants &#8220;shouldn&#8217;t be here.&#8221; 
&#8220;It&#8217;s ridiculous,&#8221; Bianco said. &#8220;When are we going to draw the line at any other crime? It&#8217;s illegal. They entered the country illegally. We&#8217;re not going to incentivize them to come here, to take more of the resources that regular Californians aren&#8217;t getting.&#8221;
&#8220;It makes absolutely no sense. And health care, no one is talking about, how about we try and make people healthy,&#8221; Bianco added. 
Under California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Golden State faces a <a href="https://www.kcra.com/article/california-18-billion-budget-shortfall-next-year-state-legislative-analyst/69486901">$18 billion budget deficit</a> for the 2026-2027 year, which is $5 billion more than state officials expected. 
<a href="https://x.com/CNNTheStoryIs/status/2051860536761926060?s=20">In a telling moment,</a> debate moderator Elex Michaelson asked all candidates to provide one word to describe Newsom&#8217;s job performance. 
Porter called him &#8220;bold.&#8221; Steyer hailed him as &#8220;progressive.&#8221; For Becerra, Newsom has been &#8220;game-changing.&#8221; 
Only two Democrats offered mild critiques — with Villaraigosa calling the likely presidential hopeful &#8220;performative&#8221; and Mahan describing his governorship as &#8220;incomplete.&#8221;
Both Republican candidates called Newsom a failure. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
“One word you would use to describe Governor Newsom’s performance as governor?” &#8211;<a href="https://twitter.com/Elex_Michaelson?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Elex_Michaelson</a>
“Performative” 
“Bold” 
“Progressive” 
“Failed” 
“Failure” 
“Game changing” 
“Incomplete”<a href="https://twitter.com/AVillaraigosa?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AVillaraigosa</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/katieporterca?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@katieporterca</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/TomSteyer?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TomSteyer</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/SteveHiltonx?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SteveHiltonx</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/ChadBianco?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ChadBianco</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/XavierBecerra?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@XavierBecerra</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/MattMahanSJ?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MattMahanSJ</a> <a href="https://t.co/98UBcQbMBW">pic.twitter.com/98UBcQbMBW</a>
— The Story Is (@CNNTheStoryIs) <a href="https://twitter.com/CNNTheStoryIs/status/2051860536761926060?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 6, 2026</a></blockquote>
&#8220;It&#8217;s not Donald Trump who&#8217;s given us gas prices $2 higher than the rest of the country. It&#8217;s Democrat policies, which Antonio and all the Democrats here support,&#8221; Republican Steve Hilton said. &#8220;Donald Trump is the president in all the other states of America, where the cost of living is way lower than in California.&#8221;
When asked about a controversial billionaire tax proposal — requiring Californians worth more than $1 billion to pay a one-time 5% tax on their assets — two Democratic candidates said it <a href="https://x.com/CNN/status/2051851776647737426?s=20">doesn’t go far enough</a>.
&#8220;This tax isn&#8217;t going to fundamentally change California&#8217;s economy in the way that young people and the working people of California need,&#8221; Porter said. &#8220;It&#8217;s a one-time tax. But we don&#8217;t have one-time revenue needs.&#8221; 
Steyer said he would vote for the wealth tax, which has qualified for November&#8217;s ballot, but he wants to tax the rich even more. 
&#8220;Billionaires like me should pay more taxes, and the big corporations should pay more taxes,&#8221; Steyer said. &#8220;But going forward, we do need to go further. This is a one-time tax, and it also doesn&#8217;t spread the money across the government; everything else does.&#8221; 
For Bianco, the back-and-forth represents what&#8217;s wrong with California. 
&#8220;So these Democrat policies of tax everybody to death and make them leave is how we started this program off to begin with. Everyone is leaving California, and it is because of their horrific policies,&#8221; Bianco said. 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
See how the candidates hoping to be the next governor of California responded to a question over a proposed billionaire tax.
Watch the California Governor Primary Debate live now on CNN and the CNN app: <a href="https://t.co/U59v8fS1nd">https://t.co/U59v8fS1nd</a> <a href="https://t.co/Ryv7s31DAF">pic.twitter.com/Ryv7s31DAF</a>
— CNN (@CNN) <a href="https://twitter.com/CNN/status/2051851776647737426?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 6, 2026</a></blockquote>
Under California’s “jungle primary” system, all candidates appear on the same ballot, and the top two vote-getters advance to the general election in November regardless of party.
California’s primary election is set for June 2, 2026.

Tom Steyer Campaigns For President In South Carolina

California Democrats Fight Over Who Will Tax The Most

California

Debate

Election

Taxes

When it comes to the American Left, I sometimes play something I call the “opposite game.” The rules are straightforward: Whatever a far-Left politician or pundit declares bad is almost good, and vice versa. There are times that the game proves too simplistic, but not as often as you’d think. My favorite current example comes from Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, who declared that last week’s Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais “is nothing less than a massive and devastating blow, not only to our democracy, but particularly to people of color in the South.&#8221;
The Senator has it, of course, exactly backward. Callais is indeed a massive and devastating blow, but it was delivered against the very structures that have marginalized and disempowered black Americans. Callais, as I understand it, restores the nearly forgotten commitment to not just equal opportunity under the law, but equal treatment as well. The future for Americans of all races and ethnic backgrounds is brighter as a result.
That’s quite a claim about a 6-3 high court decision that invalidated legislative districts specifically crafted based on race. Leaving aside the opposite game, Democrats like Senator Warnock are right to be worried that certain safe House seats (traditionally gerrymandered to ensure black majorities) will now be up for grabs in the upcoming midterms. To entrenched incumbents who take black voters for granted, Callais is terrifying. For everyone else — including those black voters — the consequences are much more promising.
Under the race-based districting regime, reliably conservative Southern states would carve out one or two &#8220;black majority&#8221; districts. Black voters got concentrated into those districts. The remaining majority-white districts then had very few black constituents. Politicians in those white districts had no incentive to address black concerns. Meanwhile, black voters found themselves in a political ghetto. They had one or two elected representatives, but no real power.
When you segregate a group of people into an enclave, rigid ideological conformity takes hold. Peer pressure, coercion, shame, and shunning enforce that conformity. Inside a racially gerrymandered district, one party dominates. Power is often passed down within families or social networks — a few benefit at the expense of the many.
In my book “The Political Vise,” I explain how progressive institutions extract power by creating permanent dependency. They build and maintain what I call grievance coalitions. These function in perpetuity because grievances (as we have all seen from social media) can be manufactured and sustained. Over time, those grievances become the glue binding people to a political party. Resentment is a feeling, not an economic state. No matter how prosperous you become, you can be made to believe your skin color has held you back.
The perversion is that race-based districts were sold as protecting black voting power. They accomplished the opposite. They isolated black voters politically, allowed white-majority districts to ignore black concerns, and created exactly the political dependency (sustained by grievance) that the Left relies upon.
Callais changes the incentives. In apportioned districts without racial gerrymandering, black Americans will often be a minority. That’s a simple demographic reality. But as a minority, they can swing an election. Politicians in fairly designed districts will need to address black voters&#8217; concerns. A candidate who ignores those concerns will risk losing their seat.
The diversity across multiple heterogeneous districts also weakens social control. A black voter in a majority-white district may face less peer pressure to vote Democrat. In heavily Republican Southern districts, the outcome of competitive primary races among multiple conservative candidates may hinge on an appeal to black voters. In ruby red states where racial gerrymandering was entrenched, Callais will expand (rather than diminish) black influence. Thomas Sowell, the hugely influential black economic historian, has long implored his fellow African Americans to leave what he calls the “Democrat plantation.” Callais presents an opportunity for millions to do just that.
We&#8217;ve already seen monolithic Democrat voting among black Americans declining under Donald Trump. In 2020, Trump received 8% of the black vote according to AP VoteCast. In 2024, he received 15% according to Pew Research — nearly doubling his support. More dramatically, exit polls showed Trump winning 20% of the black vote overall and 24% among black men specifically. CNN polling analyst Harry Enten <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/cnn-harry-enten-finds-trump-181533399.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADD6J2XpmxoeSmtVEFjOKoH18vfQx9S6DNBejCxYPFwiyndUl_jZfBbg8YcXOHit9zlYD9Evy3YghQu17f6YPVD_jTi8kHjcOii88uYZTU0hYY8FXb-dzBOR6qV352ZzFxzjQrIwS5ApKAkXIT-4Lgw4SlpRpK61CP7_OUuhzjVe">reports</a> that in 2026, Trump&#8217;s approval rating among black voters stands at 16% — up from 12% during his first term. These numbers may seem small, but Enten describes them as “generational gains.” When districts are no longer gerrymandered to produce Democratic black grievance candidates, that trend will accelerate.
The Democratic Party has pursued power through racial division since its inception. Democrats defended slavery before the Civil War, imposed Jim Crow after it, and fought integration for a century. When Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, he reportedly told an aide, &#8220;I&#8217;ll have those n*****s voting Democratic for 200 years.&#8221; The strategy shifted from physical segregation to political segregation, from controlling black Americans through law to controlling them through dependency.
Race-based Congressional districts served that strategy, functioning as political enclaves where black voters were told their only path to power ran through Democrat politicians fighting for government programs. Republicans, safe in majority-white districts, had no incentive to compete for black votes. Black voters remained captured, dependent, and reliably Democrat.
The Progressive Political Vise depends on racial division. It requires black Americans to believe their interests are fundamentally opposed to white Americans&#8217; interests. When black and white voters share the same representative, attend the same town halls, and voice the same concerns about schools and taxes and public safety, that narrative collapses.
For 60 years, the Left has maintained political segregation through grievance, dependency, and racial gerrymandering. Callais upends a regime, and it breaks a cherished lever of the Progressive Vise. Last week’s Supreme Court decision is indeed “a massive and devastating blow” to those who have run that regime. For everyone else — especially black Americans — Callais marks the start of a new and long-overdue era of opportunity.
***
John Tillman is a political strategist, CEO of the Hall of Giants, and author of The Political Vise (March 2026). He writes at his Substack, The Political Vice.

Supreme Court Weighs Ending Raced-Based Voting Districts As Election Looms

SCOTUS Sends Race Based Democrat Gerrymanders Haywire

black vote

DW Opinion

gerrymandering

SCOTUS

California’s already volatile race for governor took on a sharper edge Tuesday night, as a crowded field of candidates turned a nationally televised debate into a sustained exchange of attacks, cross-talk, and ideological contrasts that underscored just how unsettled the contest remains weeks before the June 2 primary.
With seven candidates on stage and no clear frontrunner, the debate quickly took on the feel of a pivotal moment in the race, less about introducing platforms than defining — and swinging at — opponents. Moderators pressed candidates on affordability, energy, immigration, and healthcare, but answers often gave way to direct clashes, particularly between Republicans and Democrats and within the Democratic field itself.
Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco framed the night around a broader indictment of Democratic governance, arguing that years of one-party control has driven up costs and worsened quality of life. The Democrats; former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, former Rep. Katie Porter, businessman Tom Steyer, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, largely countered by tying Republican critiques to President Donald Trump and defending the state’s policy direction, though not without visible fractures among themselves.
The most consistent throughline of the evening was the cost of living, particularly gas prices, which hovered above $6 per gallon statewide. Hilton argued that regulatory policy and environmental mandates were artificially inflating costs, at one point accusing Steyer of supporting policies that burden working Californians to benefit “rich friends” invested in climate initiatives. Steyer fired back, calling Hilton an “apologist for fossil fuels” and arguing that global markets, not state policy, drive fuel costs.
That exchange set the tone for much of the night: blunt, personal, and often spilling beyond the moderators’ control.
At another point, Becerra claimed that Trump is responsible for raising the cost of living in California, singling out the war in Iran and rising gas prices. Villaraigosa shot back, reminding Becerra that Californians have dealt with the highest gas prices in the country &#8220;for a very long time.&#8221; 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Xavier Becerra gets OWNED by his own party:
BECERRA: “Let’s focus on who’s raising the cost of living in California…that’s Donald Trump.”
VILLARAIGOSA: “That’s not true, we’ve had the highest gas prices over $2 than the rest of the nation for a very long time…” <a href="https://t.co/dM7khLVi4J">pic.twitter.com/dM7khLVi4J</a>
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) <a href="https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/2051841155453612241?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 6, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Healthcare proved similarly divisive, especially around the question of a single-payer system. Porter pushed Becerra to give a direct answer on whether he supported such a system, while Villaraigosa and Mahan cast doubt on its feasibility, citing cost concerns. Steyer, by contrast, argued the system’s current strain leaves little alternative. Republicans used the moment to frame the debate itself — as Hilton put it — as a choice between “going Left or going farther Left.”
Porter and Steyer also said they want the state to provide free healthcare to illegal immigrants. Hilton shot back at that argument, saying, &#8220;The actual way we deal with healthcare in this state is to at least stop spending twenty billion dollars a year on healthcare for illegal immigrants who shouldn&#8217;t even be in the country in the first place.&#8221;
Immigration and law enforcement added another layer of intensity. Bianco positioned himself as uniquely familiar with the effects of California’s sanctuary policies, while Villaraigosa dismissed his claims outright, calling him a “bully” and referencing past affiliations that Bianco defended. The exchange highlighted not only partisan divides, but the willingness of candidates to escalate rhetoric in a crowded field competing for attention.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Candidates vying to be the next California governor clashed over a question on immigration enforcement.
Watch the California Governor Primary Debate live NOW on CNN and the CNN app: <a href="https://t.co/U9JEkCJj1E">https://t.co/U9JEkCJj1E</a> <a href="https://t.co/01Cb2f3Rob">pic.twitter.com/01Cb2f3Rob</a>
— CNN (@CNN) <a href="https://twitter.com/CNN/status/2051847247197798903?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 6, 2026</a></blockquote>
Within the crowded Democratic ranks, friction was difficult to ignore. Becerra and Mahan sparred over healthcare records, while Becerra and Steyer traded accusations tied to campaign funding and past business dealings. Porter, at one point attempting to police the tone, criticized the “bickering” on stage, only to be drawn back into the ongoing war of interruptions and rebuttals.
The presence of Trump loomed over the debate with Democrats repeatedly casting him as a central threat to California, while Republicans argued that fixation on Trump was a way to deflect from state-level failures. When asked how they would work with him, the divide sharpened further, with some candidates emphasizing resistance and others calling for pragmatic engagement.
Beneath the exchanges, a more structural reality remained clear: the race is still wide open. Polling has shown no dominant candidate, and Tuesday’s debate did little to consolidate the field. Instead, it reinforced the sense of fragmentation — ideologically, stylistically, and strategically — as candidates search for a path into the top two spots that will advance to the general election.
At times, the debate approached disorder, though moderators kept it from devolving into the kind of chaos seen in earlier debates in the race. Still, frequent interruptions, overlapping answers, and pointed one-liners gave the event a combative rhythm that reflected the melodrama of California politics.
With mail voting already underway and the primary less than a month away, Tuesday’s debate served less as a clarifying moment than a snapshot of a race still in flux. For now, the only clear takeaway is the absence of clarity itself.

c-cagovernor-2

Candidates Trade Brutal Blows In Wild California Governor Debate

Donald Trump

Economy

Healthcare

Immigration

Republicans

A new campaign video from former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter jokes about her record of profanely berating staff members, with the California gubernatorial hopeful saying it made her more relatable to the public.
Porter said she referenced the moment in her campaign video because it showed Californians that she was someone who took “responsibility” for her former actions and could laugh at herself. Last year, a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/08/katie-porter-tears-into-staffer-new-video-00598942">video resurfaced</a> showing Porter in 2021 yelling at a staff member to “get out of my f***ing shot” when making a video message for the Biden administration. 
Porter’s new ad, which features her support for abolishing ICE and calls to “Dump Trump,” concludes with her asking supporters lined up behind her to “please get out of my shot.” 
“I think it&#8217;s important to show Californians who I really am. I&#8217;m someone who&#8217;s not like most politicians,” Porter said in an interview with Nexstar Media Group. “I push a shopping cart, fill a minivan. You see that in the ad, but you&#8217;ll also see somebody who&#8217;s taken responsibility again and again in this race, and is also able to laugh at herself and show that she&#8217;s grown. And I think that is a mark of leadership, and I want to show people that.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨NEW: Democratic candidate for CA governor Katie Porter releasing a new campaign ad referencing the viral video of her yelling at a staffer.
Here’s part of our exclusive conversation about why she decided to do this ⬇️ <a href="https://t.co/Ito7sLd7Cv">pic.twitter.com/Ito7sLd7Cv</a>
— Nikki Laurenzo (@NikkiLaurenzo) <a href="https://twitter.com/NikkiLaurenzo/status/2051446509963731042?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 4, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Porter added that she thought referencing the vulgar moment showed humor and was a good way to “laugh at yourself” and acknowledged that the staff video was not her “best moment.” 
“Most politicians, let&#8217;s face it, they don&#8217;t push a shopping cart. They also can&#8217;t laugh at themselves,” she said. “The real Katie Porter is the one who has been on the campaign trail for the last year, who has made apologies, and has shown that she can do better.” 
Porter also claimed she performed well during a tough interview with CBS reporter Julie Watts, even though she <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/california-dem-flips-walks-out-on-reporter-for-asking-basic-questions">faced criticism</a> for complaining about the number of follow-up questions she was asked. 
California&#8217;s governor’s race features a crowded Democrat field that has led some to be concerned they could be locked out of the general election because of the state’s jungle primary system.
Recent <a href="https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/nation/california/2026/05/04/steve-hilton-and-xavier-becerra-tied-in-california-governor-race-poll/89933256007/">polling shows</a> former Fox News host Steve Hilton and former President Joe Biden’s Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra leading with 18%. In third place is Republican Sheriff Chad Bianco with 14%. Next, is billionaire Tom Steyer with 12%, and Porter comes in fifth with 8%. 
President Donald Trump has endorsed Hilton, which some strategists have said jeopardizes the chance of a Democratic lockout.

US-POLITICS-VOTE-CALIFORNIA-GOVERNOR-DEBATE

Democrat Spins Her Profane Rant Against Staffer Into Campaign Ad

Katie Porter

Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger would not rule out supporting multiple new taxes, including on gym memberships, streaming services, and dry cleaning. 
The Democrat, who won comfortably last November on a message focused on affordability, said the tax bills proposed in the state legislature are worth considering to add to state revenue streams.
&#8220;I think there are worthy conversations to be had about what revenue generation looks like in the future as our economy changes in so many ways,&#8221; Spanberger <a href="https://x.com/TylerEnglander/status/2049477220591169727">told a local ABC affiliate</a>.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
A lot has been made of taxes proposed by Democrats that never passed the General Assembly, including a bill to tax streaming services and more.
Republicans, including President Trump, have attacked Governor Abigail Spanberger over that bill and others.
Spanberger has pushed… <a href="https://t.co/KBWUnIy66W">pic.twitter.com/KBWUnIy66W</a>
— Tyler Englander (@TylerEnglander) <a href="https://twitter.com/TylerEnglander/status/2049477220591169727?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 29, 2026</a></blockquote>
Earlier this year, Virginia Democrats <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20261/HB978">introduced bills</a> to expand state sales tax coverage to various services, including gym memberships, storage facility use, pet care, counseling, vehicle and home repair, <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20261/HB900">digital subscriptions</a>, and more.
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Gym membership</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Storage facility use</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Dog walking</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Dog grooming</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Counseling</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Vehicle repair</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Home repair</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Dry cleaning</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Cosmetic services</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Software application services</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Computer-related services</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Website hosting and design</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Data storage, and</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Digital subscription services</li>
</ul>
Democratic lawmakers have also introduced bills that would tax <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20261/HB919">gun</a> and <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20261/SB763">ammunition sales</a>, along with <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/bill-details/20261/HB1179">levies on delivery drivers</a> for services like DoorDash and Uber Eats.
The bills never came up for a vote and have since stalled in the state&#8217;s General Assembly, according to the governor&#8217;s office. Spanberger, however, appeared to sympathize with the intention of the proposed taxes.
&#8220;But I also want to recognize that many of the patrons who brought forth different ideas about how to bring out revenue that&#8217;s necessary, I think every idea, as long as it’s reasonable and makes some amount of sense, should be entertained and should be discussed,&#8221; Spanberger said.
&#8220;The one on streaming services, you know, you used to buy a DVD, there&#8217;d be a sales tax. Streaming is different. And so I recognize that there&#8217;s value in having these conversations,&#8221; she added.
The liberal governor’s willingness to consider new revenue sources comes amid pressure from the White House.
“I can’t believe what this new Governor, Spanberger, has done to the Commonwealth — So sad!” <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116386141086849907">President Trump wrote in a Truth Social post</a> last month. “This went from a thriving and powerful place, one envied by all, to a Commonwealth run by a person who has no concept of Low Taxes and Economic Strength.”
Spanberger’s office forcefully pushed back, insisting that none of the proposed taxes have been enacted and criticizing what it described as “the volume of misinformation — spread across social media and repeated in press coverage.”
&#8220;The array of taxes that the President asserts move forward in Virginia is sort of ludicrous,&#8221; Spanberger said in the interview. &#8220;But whether I would ever sign a bill is wholly dependent on, I think, as evidence from my recent actions, is wholly predicated on what is actually in the bill, and how it is outlined.&#8221;

Young slim woman in sportswear doing plank exercise on mat in modern studio

Why Hitting The Gym Could Soon Cost You More Under Dem Governor

abigail spanberger

Virginia

Funding for the Department of Homeland Security resumed after a 75-day shutdown — but Democrats are already threatening to cut funding again in September if their demands are not met.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), a ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Democrats would “absolutely” shut down DHS again if Republicans do not agree to proposed reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — such as banning law enforcement officers from wearing masks and requiring judicial warrants for immigration-related arrests.
“In America, police shouldn’t wear masks while walking the streets,” Thompson said, ignoring the dramatic uptick in threats and violent assaults against immigration enforcement officers and their families. “They need identification, they need cameras, and they need judicial warrants.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
NEW: Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) says Democrats “absolutely” may shut down DHS again in September if the ICE/CBP reforms they demanded aren’t included in the next DHS approps bill. Dems failed to get any reforms with this shutdown &amp; GOP plans to go around them to fund ICE/CBP. <a href="https://t.co/FOjRZcXOvf">https://t.co/FOjRZcXOvf</a>
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) <a href="https://twitter.com/BillMelugin_/status/2050575956427891178?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 2, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The House of Representatives ended the record-setting shutdown on Thursday after passing a bill funding most of the DHS — including the Transportation Security Administration and the Secret Service — through the end of September. ICE and Customs and Border Patrol were left out of the measure. Republicans are relying on a reconciliation bill — which would let the Senate bypass the 60-vote procedural threshold and thus the Democrats’ demands — to move ahead with funding for ICE and CBP.
The shutdown began in February after Democrats refused to approve DHS funding unless Republicans agreed to include sweeping federal immigration enforcement reforms. Travelers <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/travelers-spent-nine-hours-in-tsa-line-as-major-hub-becomes-dhs-shutdown-flashpoint?author=Cameron+Arcand&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Travelers+Spent+Nine+Hours+In+TSA+Line+As+Major+Hub+Becomes+DHS+Shutdown+Flashpoint">spent</a> hours in TSA security lines at major airports, and the Coast Guard <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-lights-go-out-coast-guard-faces-shutoffs-financial-crisis-as-dhs-shutdown-hits-day-75">faced</a> utility shutoffs at military installations.
Despite the hardships shouldered by everyday Americans during such shutdowns, Thompson was clear that Democrats are willing to trigger another shutdown if they do not get what they want.
CNN&#8217;s Victor Blackwell pressed Thompson on his answer, asking whether Democrats were willing to force government employees to go without pay again.
“When you say ‘absolutely,’ that suggests that there could be another shutdown, and there could be another lapse in pay for those TSA workers, the Coast Guard, if Democrats withhold those votes at the end of September,” Blackwell said.
“Absolutely. Victor, look, we have to stand for democracy. If we have to fight for it, there has to be sacrifice,&#8221; Thompson added, apparently unconcerned with the fact that it would be average American families making the &#8220;sacrifice&#8221; he was so quick to offer.

Rep. Bennie Thompson

Democrat ‘Absolutely’ Willing to Trigger Another Shutdown If Demands Aren’t Met

Bennie Thompson

Federal Government

Government Shutdown

Politics

Political and sports commentator Clay Travis recently <a href="https://x.com/ClayTravis/status/2044421978765906124">suggested</a> that Michigan Republicans should cross over and vote for Abdul El-Sayed in the Democratic Senate primary. His reasoning: El-Sayed is a far-left radical who can&#8217;t win in November, and his securing the nomination would help Republican Mike Rogers win the all-important seat.
This is seriously bad advice — not just because it’s tactically risky, but because it asks Republicans to do something they should be unwilling to do: lend their votes, even instrumentally, to a candidate who represents a newly imported and genuinely dangerous ideological project.
Primary meddling is a stupid game that typically produces stupid prizes. Anticipating that some conservatives might start floating this ill-advised idea, I <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/michigan-voters-dont-let-radicals-fool-you-into-thinking-theyre-normal">wrote</a> about it recently for this site.
Democrats were <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clinton-2016-donald-trump-214428/">eager</a> to see Donald Trump win the 2016 Republican presidential primary, convinced he would be a gift to Hillary Clinton in November. That failed calculation reshaped American politics. Closer to home, primary meddling has occasionally “worked” in narrow tactical terms, elevating weaker nominees who go on to lose. But those cases are the exception that seduces people into ignoring the far more dangerous reality: sometimes the candidate you boost actually wins.
But the bigger issue here is that the Michigan Senate race is not just another contest between interchangeable Democrats. It is a referendum on what kind of Democratic Party emerges in one of the country’s most crucial swing states. Republicans ignore that meaningful difference between the candidates at their peril.
Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who began this race as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/polls/michigan-us-senate-election-polls-2026.html">polling</a> frontrunner but now lags in <a href="https://kalshi.com/markets/kxsenatemid/mid/kxsenatemid-26">prediction markets</a> as a distant third, is a conventional Democrat with a frequently (and somewhat <a href="https://x.com/Jesse_Leg/status/2049807103385063728">unfairly</a>) mocked Midwestern twang. She ran as a moderate and has governed as something less than that — hardly a surprise in modern politics. As the election of Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger illustrates, Democrats who campaign toward the center often govern further to the Left once in power, pursuing policies they never fully advertised on the trail.
That <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/spanberger-faces-bait-and-switch-backlash-final-hours-before-redistricting-referendum?intcmp=xpal_politics">bait-and-switch</a> dynamic is real. Republicans are right to be frustrated by it. But frustration is not an excuse for abandoning basic judgment.
Because whatever one thinks of Stevens’s voting record on taxes, regulation, or abortion, she does not represent a fundamental threat to the American political order. She operates within it. She is recognizably part of the long-standing Democratic coalition that, for all its many faults, accepts the basic premises of American life: liberal democracy, civil society, and the legitimacy of the United States as a nation. The same can be said of the third major candidate in the race: progressive state legislator, MS NOW fixture, and <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/29/politics/kfile-mallory-mcmorrow-deleted-tweets">Middle America-critic</a> Mallory McMorrow.
Abdul El-Sayed, on the other hand, represents something different: <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/mamdani-and-the-lefts-alliance-with-radical-islam-new-york-mayor-658b68ad">Islamoleftism</a>. This is the uneasy fusion of the radical political Left with the ideology of political Islam — not a religion, but a political radicalization that has found in the far-left Democratic coalition a vehicle for its ambitions. It is what happened to Jeremy Corbyn&#8217;s Labor Party in the United Kingdom, where radical Muslims became culture carriers inside a major political party, importing eliminationist antisemitism into the mainstream of left-wing politics until the rot became undeniable and the party paid a historic price.
Michigan is that <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jesse-arm-on-michigan-democrats-islamism-problem/id921756215?i=1000763352131">story</a> in its American infancy. Dearborn — which one Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/welcome-to-dearborn-americas-jihad-capital-pro-hamas-michigan-counterterrorism-a99dba38?st=K8oSiw&amp;reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink">essay</a> called “America&#8217;s jihad capital” — has developed an Islamist political infrastructure whose leaders curry favor from ambitious Democrats. El-Sayed has obliged them. A leaked <a href="https://freebeacon.com/democrats/there-are-a-lot-of-people-in-dearborn-who-are-sad-democratic-senate-hopeful-abdul-el-sayed-said-he-needed-to-stay-silent-on-khamenei-killing-because-many-of-michigans-muslim-voters/">recording</a> of him speaking with campaign staff revealed he didn&#8217;t want to say anything about the U.S.-Israeli elimination of Ayatollah Khamenei earlier this year because, he explained, too many people in Dearborn would be sad about the death of the theocratic butcher who led the world&#8217;s top state sponsor of terrorism.
El-Sayed has appeared at Islamist conferences with speakers who praised Hamas terrorism, addressed groups that have been designated as terrorist organizations, raised money from antisemitic PAC leaders, and <a href="https://freebeacon.com/democrats/michigan-senate-candidate-abdul-el-sayed-compared-an-oklahoma-ban-on-sharia-law-to-the-trail-of-tears/">fought</a> efforts to keep Islamic law out of American government. His response in the days following a Hezbollah-inspired terrorist attack that attempted to murder 140 children by driving an explosive-laden truck into the preschool at Temple Israel — the largest Reform synagogue in my hometown of West Bloomfield — was to post a smiling photo appealing to fans of Hasan Piker, announce joint campaign appearances with him, and minimize and rationalize the near-massacre by declaring: “Hurt people hurt people.”
Piker, for the uninitiated, is a self-described Marxist who has called Jews &#8220;inbred,&#8221; declared America deserved 9/11, and recently used a filmed New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/22/opinion/shoplifting-political-protest-microlooting-whole-foods.html">roundtable</a> to explain his moral framework for the various scenarios in which carjacking, shoplifting, and murder are excusable. His approval is increasingly a litmus test for Democratic office-seekers.
The broader picture in Michigan confirms this isn&#8217;t just about one candidate. At the state’s Democratic Party convention earlier this month, organized labor — long the kingmaker of Michigan Democratic politics — was <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/michigan-democrats-labor-unions">routed</a> by the coalition El-Sayed represents. The attorney general candidate who held every major union endorsement, including the United Auto Workers and the Michigan Education Association, lost to an opponent with a single local endorsement. Jordan Acker, the Jewish incumbent University of Michigan Democratic regent whose home and car were repeatedly vandalized with antisemitic graffiti by fanatical-left Palestine obsessives, was denied renomination and replaced by a Dearborn attorney who has praised Hezbollah and the Iranian terror regime. Twenty-four union locals and a former Michigan AFL-CIO president have already defected to endorse an independent candidate running for governor rather than follow where the party is heading.
My Manhattan Institute colleague Charles Lehman recently <a href="https://www.commentary.org/articles/charles-fain-lehman/anti-americanism-vs-patriotism/">wrote</a> about the growing disease of anti-Americanism and the expanding patriotism gap between our two parties. In 2001, Democrats and Republicans were a mere three points apart in their pride in being American. Today, the gap is vastly larger — 92% of Republicans call themselves very or extremely proud; among Democrats, that number is just 36%.
The Democratic Party once feared being seen as unpatriotic, but it now rewards politicians for the viciousness of their America-criticism and punishes those who hesitate to go along. El-Sayed is the natural endpoint of that trajectory. Stevens and McMorrow are much less of an accelerant on this front.
Republicans should want to win this race. But as the state party has rightly <a href="https://x.com/MIGOP/status/2044456040696000701?s=20">pointed</a> out, they should not get too cute when thinking about how. Not all Democrats are fungible, and it matters which faction prevails inside their party. A conventional liberal can be defeated and replaced; a radical movement, once legitimized, reshapes the party around it and the country that has to contend with it.
Boosting El-Sayed isn&#8217;t a clever tactic. It&#8217;s a bet that anti-Americanism stays contained once you help elevate it. That’s a bad, risky bet.
Better to defeat Democrats by making the affirmative case for why Republicans deserve to govern. Don’t evade countering the arguments made by bad Democrats by instead attempting to elevate worse ones.
***
Jesse Arm is vice president of External Affairs at Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.  His affiliation is presented for identification only; all views expressed are his own and not those of his employer.

Michigan Democratic Nominating Convention

With Abdul El-Sayed On The Ballot, Michigan Democrats Are At A Crossroads

Abdul El-Sayed

Michigan Primary

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s present role – serving as the Lee to Graham Platner’s Grant at the conclusion of the Democratic Party’s civil war – is a sad, but richly deserved fate.
And make no mistake, by endorsing Platner’s campaign for the Senate, Schumer has indeed surrendered his longtime political vessel to the socialist third-worldists who have spent the last decade staging a slow-rolling, yet largely uncontested takeover of it. Schumer had recruited Janet Mills, the relatively popular governor of Maine, to run against incumbent Republican Susan Collins. “We think that Janet Mills is the best candidate to retire Susan Collins,” declared Schumer at a press conference last fall.
Nobody cared. By February, Platner had left Mills in his polling dust by a nearly 40-point margin. And while Schumer remained insistent that the more moderate Mills would prevail, he proved reluctant to close the financial gap between their campaigns.
Mills suspended her campaign on Thursday. Schumer and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairwoman Kirsten Gillibrand wasted no time in throwing their weight behind Platner, who urged Americans last November to call their senators, “and tell them that Chuck Schumer can no longer be leader.”
“Democrats are dedicated to fighting back against the chaos of the Trump administration by defeating the Republicans who enable his harmful agenda and that includes Susan Collins,” declared the New York lawmakers in a joint statement. “Senator Collins has never been more vulnerable and we will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee Graham Platner to defeat her.”
“Our North Star is winning a Democratic Senate majority,” they explained.
Regardless of who that majority is composed of, evidently.
Until a few months ago, Platner roamed the Pine Tree State with an SS Totenkopf stamped across his chest. In February, he retweeted Holocaust math enthusiast and “Jewish lobby” obsessive Stew Peters. Platner pleaded ignorance in both cases.
That explanation went from implausible to insulting after it was revealed that a month earlier, he had told another antisemitic conspiracy theorist (this one has blamed Israel for the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Charlie Kirk) that he was a “longtime fan.” Take it from he without “any patriotism” in his heart for the United States, 9/11 cheerleader Hasan Piker: “He [Platner] was pro-Hamas, okay? He was giving Hamas credit in 2014. Okay, what more do you f*cking want?”
Democratic primary voters no longer make any bones about what it is they want: revanchist, pugilistic anti-Westernism in its angriest, most resentful form – the kind that blinds its adherents so completely as to delude them into identifying America and its greatest ally as the loci of evil in the world.
And they’re willing to make any and every unsavory compromise necessary to get it. It’s public knowledge that when Platner isn’t nodding along to lunatic grifters’ latest thoughts about the Jews, he’s taking to Reddit to advise women worried about sexual assault to “take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f*cked up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to?”
The former is just more than enough to make up for the latter.
Schumer himself stands to be a victim of his party’s leftward drift, then backward. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who opposes any military aid – including for defensive systems like Iron Dome – to Israel, would be an overwhelming favorite against Schumer in the Empire State should she choose to challenge him rather than mount a presidential campaign in 2028. One survey from last spring suggested that the far-Left congresswoman would begin a primary battle between them with a 21-point lead.
Schumer had better hope she has her heart set on the White House, because liberal New Yorkers have their hearts set on the woman who has accused her own country of enabling genocide for standing by the Israelis after the events of October 7, 2023.
It would be quite the way to go out for a self-styled shomer or “guardian” of the Jewish people.
Of course, Schumer himself bears plenty of blame for his plight. For years he watched as his peers radicalized. And instead of yelling, “Stop!”, he moved with them. Of course immigration enforcement is unjust; of course a border wall is racist; of course Maduro and Khamenei are Donald Trump’s victims; of course the Supreme Court is corrupt if it rules against Democrats’ interests – and what is a woman, anyway? The leftist appetite is such that there is no final destination, no righteous endpoint or irrefutable truths to be preserved. There is only capital-P Progress, an ever-shifting goalpost propelled by ego and self-righteousness, not principle or actual righteousness.
Schumer not only allowed such lies to take root, but he also parrotted them out of self-interest and ostracized those with the courage to be voices of reason. Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, a liberal who has been villainized by the far-Left over his support for Israel and 2000s-Democrat era views on border security, burst out laughing on Wednesday after being asked about his relationship with other members of his caucus.
“I’m not necessarily the popular guy,” he conceded.
All this time, it never occurred to Schumer that he was feeding a monster sure to swallow him eventually. Perhaps his humiliation in Maine has, at long last, clued him in.
Now, he has no choice but to wave the white flag and profess to welcome his new, bat-guano crazy overlords.
It’s Graham Platner’s party; and despite his efforts at appeasement, Chuck Schumer isn’t even on the guest list.
***
Isaac Schorr is a staff writer at Mediaite and a 2023–2024 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow at the Fund for American Studies.

Maine Democrat Graham Platner Is Winning Voters All ‘Pissed At The Same Thing’

Bye-Bye Chuck; The Democrats Are Graham Platner’s Radical Party Now

Chuck Schumer

graham platner

Leftists

One of the leading Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate in Michigan is playing defense after a CNN report revealed that she purged thousands of tweets, including posts in which she disparaged Middle America after President Donald Trump&#8217;s 2016 election victory.
McMorrow, who currently serves in the Michigan Senate, deleted around 6,000 social media posts, including tweets in which she said she missed living in California and fantasized about the coasts breaking off from Middle America. The New York Post was the first to <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/04/04/us-news/senate-dem-candidate-mallory-mcmorrow-defended-coastal-elites-dreamed-of-national-divorce-from-middle-america/">report</a> on some of McMorrow&#8217;s ramblings last year.
Two days after Trump shocked Democrats and defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democrat urged her followers to read a thread posted by journalist Patrick Thornton, who wrote, “All of this talk about coastal elites needing to understand more of America has it backwards.”
“It is much of white working class America that needs to reach outside its comfort zone and meet people not like them,” Thornton wrote at the time. “Many rural Americans have isolated themselves from the rest of the country. They live in very unrepresentative areas.” McMorrow said the thread “rings 100%.”
A month later, McMorrow fantasized about coastal states divorcing Middle America.
“I had a dream that the U.S. amicably broke off into The Ring (coasts + Can + Mex + parts Mich/Tex) and Middle America. Oh and The Ring nominated Obama as Prime Minister and everyone was given $1,000 and six months to pick a side,&#8221; she posted.
The Daily Wire reached out to McMorrow&#8217;s campaign, requesting comment.
The CNN <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/29/politics/kfile-mallory-mcmorrow-deleted-tweets">report</a> also raises questions about McMorrow&#8217;s claim that she moved to Michigan from California in 2014, as social media posts suggest she was still living in Los Angeles and voting in California elections as late as 2016. In her autobiography, McMorrow wrote that she “relocated permanently” to Michigan in 2014.
In January 2017 — the month that Trump was sworn in for his first term — a social media user posted, &#8220;California should have its own diplomats [to] make sure we don’t get nuked because of morons from the other side of the country.&#8221; McMorrow responded to the post, writing, “There are days like these that make me miss California even more.”
Just a few months later, McMorrow launched her state Senate bid and said, &#8220;Choosing to put roots down right here in Michigan is the best decision I’ve ever made.&#8221;
In another tweet, McMorrow quipped that she was &#8220;pushing for [a] future where we don’t own cars,&#8221; adding, &#8220;Cars are dead.&#8221; McMorrow is now running to represent the largest car-manufacturing state in the country. A spokeswoman for McMorrow told CNN that &#8220;Mallory started her career as a car designer and doesn’t want to ban cars. She’s been repeatedly endorsed by auto unions.&#8221;
McMorrow&#8217;s communications director, Hannah Lindow, said that her state Senate campaign team deleted her tweets prior to 2020, arguing that it&#8217;s &#8220;pretty standard for candidates.&#8221; Lindow also defended the posts, saying they &#8220;are normal tweets by a normal person.&#8221;
McMorrow was blasted by her Democrat opponents following the CNN report. Democratic Senate candidate and current Rep. Haley Stevens shared the report on McMorrow&#8217;s past comments, <a href="https://x.com/HaleyforMI/status/2049523901655376317">writing</a>, &#8220;So what actually ticks me off? Someone who wants that job—representing Michiganders—talking crap about us and our state.&#8221;
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, another Michigan Democratic Senate candidate, <a href="https://x.com/AbdulElSayed/status/2049535379775115678">wrote</a> on Wednesday, &#8220;Born in Michigan, hallelujah. Raised in Michigan, hallelujah. Believe cars should exist, hallelujah.&#8221;
The Democratic Senate <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-senate-race-democrats-have-controlled-for-decades-now-its-wide-open">primary</a> in Michigan remains a close contest, with McMorrow, Stevens, and El-Sayed running neck-and-neck, according to the latest <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/polls/michigan-us-senate-election-polls-2026.html">polls</a>. Each of the top three Democratic candidates in the race has faced controversies since launching their Senate campaigns.
In December, a video posted by Townhall <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dem-senate-hopeful-says-shed-throw-beer-at-conservative-justices-lacks-self-control">showed</a> McMorrow suggesting that she would throw beer in the faces of conservative Supreme Court justices if she saw them in public.
El-Sayed has also faced scrutiny during the heated 2026 campaign after he deleted numerous social media posts, including some in which he called to &#8220;defund the police&#8221; and referred to police as &#8220;standing armies.&#8221; El-Sayed has also campaigned with Marxist streamer Hasan Piker, who once said that &#8220;America deserved 9/11.&#8221;
Stevens, meanwhile, was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/house-dem-files-articles-of-impeachment-against-rfk-jr-and-even-her-own-party-is-trashing-her">rebuked</a> by Democratic leadership after she filed articles of impeachment against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a move some of her Democratic colleagues viewed as a political stunt.
The winner of the Democratic primary, which will be held on August 4, will likely face Republican Mike Rogers, who has all but secured the GOP nomination. Michigan has not elected a Republican senator since 1994.

Mallory McMorrow

Top Dem Candidate Scrubs Social Media After Trashing Rural Americans

2026 Midterms

Michigan

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