The Left’s Incomplete Night

This Politico piece captured the night while the Michigan U.S. Senate race was still too close to call and progressives were realizing they hadn’t delivered the blowout many expected.

Yesterday’s Michigan primaries

Progressive Abdul El-Sayed narrowly beat moderate Rep. Haley Stevens in the Democratic Senate primary. The race was far closer than late polls predicted.

In Michigan’s 7th District, Sunrise Movement co-founder William Lawrence won the Democratic House primary after two moderates split the vote.

In the 13th District, democratic socialist Donavan McKinney narrowly unseated incumbent Rep. Shri Thanedar.

Cori Bush’s comeback bid

Former “Squad” member and democratic socialist Cori Bush tried to reclaim the St. Louis-area House seat she lost in 2024. She faced the same opponent who beat her then, incumbent Rep. Wesley Bell.

Bush ran again as a sharp critic of U.S. support for Israel and as a progressive standard-bearer. The race drew heavy outside spending, much of it from pro-Israel groups backing Bell. She lost decisively, roughly 59% to 37%.

It was one of the clearer setbacks for the progressive left on a night that otherwise produced mixed results for that faction.

h/t Newsalert

Vince Dao’s take

Vince Dao covers the same results and frames El-Sayed’s thin win and Bush’s loss as a reality check for DSA-backed candidates. He argues the night exposed their vulnerabilities outside deep-blue urban strongholds: [VIDEO]

Further thoughts

The conventional wisdom right now is that the energy is with these so-called Democrat Socialist candidates around the country. But El-Sayed’s win was no landslide. The margin was thin, and the expected progressive wave never fully materialized.

I need to look more closely at the numbers in other places where DSA-backed candidates succeeded. Michigan may lean blue in presidential years at times, but it remains a true battleground—Trump carried it narrowly in both 2016 and 2024. That makes El-Sayed’s path to the Senate far from automatic against Republican Mike Rogers this November.

The Side of the Story They Buried — Tou Thao, Minneapolis Police Officer

 Former Minneapolis police officer Tou Thao gave a long-form interview on the Yada Yada Gold podcast and spoke with unusual directness about four things that still get little sustained attention: the plea deal he rejected, what he was doing and thinking on May 25, 2020, the reality of federal prison, and the incentives that reward those who adopt the preferred narrative.

Minneapolis Police Officer Tou Thao in 2020 via ABCNews

Ben Shapiro Breaks Down Voting Rights Under the Constitution

Ben Shapiro released a sharp video today that cuts straight to a point I raised two months ago: What The Constitution REALLY Says About Voting Rights.

The core argument is simple and historically solid. The original Constitution does not create a broad federal right to vote. Article I, Section 2 ties House voter qualifications to whatever the states set for their own most numerous legislative body. Article I, Section 4 leaves the “Times, Places and Manner” of elections primarily to the states. Article II leaves the method of appointing presidential electors to state legislatures. The Framers built a republic with deliberate filters against pure majoritarianism. Federalist 10’s warning about faction was not decorative.

The later amendments changed the landscape only in specific, negative ways:

• 15th Amendment: no denial on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude
• 19th: no denial on account of sex
• 24th: no poll tax in federal elections
• 26th: no denial to citizens 18 and older

These are anti-discrimination rules. They do not transfer ordinary qualification authority (photo ID, registration rules, citizenship verification, ballot chain-of-custody standards) from the states to Washington. Neutral, evenly applied requirements are not discrimination against a protected class.

Spain’s Ceuta Border Collapse: Trump Calls It an “Invasion”

Yesterday and today, Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta was hit by one of the largest single migrant surges in recent European memory.

Thousands of people (Spanish Interior Ministry figures later put the total who crossed or attempted to cross since Thursday morning around 50,000) poured in from Morocco. Many swam around the border fence. Reception centers for unaccompanied minors hit 2,400% of capacity. Local authorities declared a humanitarian and social emergency. At least nine people died in the water. Spain deployed military units to back up the Civil Guard. Morocco cooperated on rapid returns, and tens of thousands were already turned back by Friday.

President Trump addressed it during a cabinet meeting at Camp David. Here are the key lines:

• “I saw Spain yesterday, and I watched the catastrophe that took place. It looks like an invasion of a country… hundreds of thousands of people.”
• “That same thing’s going to happen to us if the Republicans don’t get elected, except worse. Much bigger… our country will be invaded at levels that made Spain look small time.”
• “They’re coming in by the tens of thousands. They’re just invading the country… weak law, bad management, but very liberal law… That will look good compared to what’s going to happen to the United States.”

Fauci Takes the Fifth 111 Times

The below meme says it better than most commentary. A guy offers basic health advice and gets told he’s not a doctor. Then comes the punchline: “Your doctor invoked the 5th 111 times.” 

Chris Cavallini IG

Yesterday’s Senate Homeland Security hearing with Dr. Anthony Fauci was less a fact-finding session and more performance art. Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment over and over—refusing to answer even basic questions. At one point Rand Paul asked what day of the week it was. Fauci still took the Fifth.

Ben Shapiro on the Democratic Civil War Getting Ugly

 Ben Shapiro’s latest episode zeroes in on the mess inside the Democratic Party right now. The title is direct: “The Democratic Civil War Is Getting Ugly.” It lands at a moment when the party’s internal fractures are no longer subtle.

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

The core of the piece is straightforward. The Democratic National Committee is broke—roughly $2 million in debt while the RNC sits on well over $100 million. Party leaders have resorted to asking vendors not to send bills until after the midterms. Ken Martin, the DNC chair, reportedly threw his phone at a junior aide’s desk in frustration. Donors with money are routing it around the party apparatus to candidates and outside groups. The institutional center is hollowed out.

Into that vacuum steps the Democratic Socialists of America and their orbit. Shapiro treats this as more than ordinary factional fighting. The DSA is not simply pushing the party left; it is advancing a different theory of what the country should become. Moderates like Pete Buttigieg urge the party to talk about what it is for rather than attack the radicals. Rahm Emanuel warns that the Bernie-wing nominees saddle Democrats in swing districts with positions that make general elections harder. Bernie Sanders fires back that the establishment is defending a status quo voters have already rejected.

The clearest proxy fight right now is the Michigan Senate primary. Gretchen Whitmer has endorsed Congresswoman Haley Stevens against Abdul El-Sayed. Stevens is already well to the left by national standards, yet she is treated as insufficiently pure—especially on Israel. El-Sayed carries the progressive energy, the DSA-adjacent endorsements, and a record that includes positions Shapiro flags as far outside the mainstream. Polls and prediction markets are telling different stories. The outcome will signal how far the party is willing to go in safe or lean-Democratic territory.

This is the same dynamic the blog has been tracking for weeks: the DSA’s willingness to treat American institutions as obstacles rather than inheritance, the reluctance of institutional Democrats to draw hard lines, and the practical consequences when the loudest energy in a party sits well outside the median voter. Parties that cannot resolve their internal arguments about first principles tend to lose the ability to govern or even to campaign effectively.

Shapiro’s framing is that the civil war is real and that the radicals are currently better organized and more motivated. Whether the institutional side can still impose discipline in places that matter for the 2026 map remains an open question. The Michigan primary is one early test. There will be others.

Competing Ideas, Forgotten History

 At the time I was in eighth grade the Soviet Union had already fallen. The main communist nation, often called the Evil Empire, had collapsed. At the time it seemed reasonable to assume its successor state, Russia, would eventually become a democratic country much like the United States. We know that transition was never simple. Russia today is a different animal from the Soviet Union—more authoritarian state capitalism than classical Marxism-Leninism—but the original system’s failure remains instructive.

Right now, if you follow commentators on the right—Ben Shapiro, Glenn Beck, and others—they are talking about the energy on the radical left, mainly those who call themselves Democratic Socialists.

Britain Is Finished: Peter Hitchens on Triggernometry

 There’s a new Triggernometry interview with Peter Hitchens that dropped over the weekend. The title is blunt: “We Live in the Age of Delusions.” He spends a good portion of it diagnosing Britain’s condition with the kind of clarity most politicians still refuse to touch.

Check out the Triggernometry episode with Peter Hitchens here: [VIDEO]

A 2021 History Lesson That Still Exposes the Gaza Propaganda

 There’s a Ben Shapiro video from June 2021 that walks through the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from biblical times forward. It’s well over five years old now. The title is blunt: “Here’s THE TRUTH About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (A Comprehensive History).” It covers Jewish historical connection to the land, the Roman renaming of the area, the absence of a prior independent Palestinian state, the repeated Arab rejections of partition and peace offers, and the pattern of wars and terrorism aimed at Israel’s elimination rather than coexistence.

Watch it here: [VIDEO]

The video predates the current Gaza operation by more than two years. That operation began after the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre— the worst single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. What followed has stretched nearly three years: intense fighting, hostage crises, ceasefires that partially held or frayed, territorial control shifts inside Gaza, and a humanitarian disaster that Hamas has long used as both shield and propaganda tool. As of mid-2026 the situation remains fluid under the framework of later diplomatic efforts, with Israeli forces still holding substantial portions of the Strip and low-level violence continuing.

Trump: Ten Years After the Nomination

Ten years ago on July 21, 2016, Donald Trump stood on the stage in Cleveland and officially accepted the Republican nomination for President of the United States.

TEN YEARS AGO TODAY: Donald J. Trump officially accepts the Republican nomination for President of the United States.

The rest is history. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/naiiOQSAMJ

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) July 22, 2026

The rest, as the White House Rapid Response account put it this week, is history.

Loonville: When Progressive Governance Loses the Plot on Justice

Bill O’Reilly’s Talking Points Memo on the July 21 No Spin News episode zeroed in on Minnesota and called it what he sees: Loonville. The claim is straightforward. Rough progressives now control roughly fifteen states. In those places, ideology has crowded out ordinary standards of accountability, crime, and common sense. Minnesota, once a more measured place, has become one of the clearest examples.

Watch July 21, 2026 No Spin News here: [VIDEO]

O’Reilly focuses first on Governor Tim Walz. He describes Walz as a far-left progressive ideologue. The concrete case is Tou Lue Vang, a Hmong man from Laos convicted in 2006 of first-degree criminal sexual conduct. He repeatedly sexually abused a girl beginning when she was ten. He received probation rather than prison. In June 2026 the Minnesota Board of Pardons—Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and the state Supreme Court chief justice—voted to erase the conviction. The board cited a letter of forgiveness from the victim and immigration concerns. The pardon removed the legal basis for his pending deportation.

Why Democrat Women Are Angry — Naomi Wolf on Pod Force One

Dr. Naomi Wolf rose in the early 1990s as a third-wave feminist voice with The Beauty Myth, the bestseller that argued commercial beauty standards worked as a quiet counterattack on women’s gains. Yale-educated, a Rhodes Scholar, and later an Oxford doctorate, she advised Bill Clinton’s re-election team and Al Gore’s campaign on how to reach female voters. For a time she was the progressive establishment’s preferred translator of women’s concerns.

That version of Wolf is largely gone. On Miranda Devine’s Pod Force One, the New York Post’s political interview podcast, she sat down for a long conversation under the blunt title “Why Democrat Women Are So Angry.”

Watch Naomi Wolf on Pod Force One here: [VIDEO]