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Hello, America. I’m Erick Erickson. It is June 2nd, the day before my birthday.

These are “The Four Things You Need to Know” this afternoon. Before I begin this week, I’d like to highlight good nonprofits for you to support. Yesterday was Help the Persecuted. Today, the Filter Project, which in some African nations gives families filters that last decades. They teach them to clean them. They teach the family to draw water from them. They work with doctors to provide care against parasites and other waterborne illnesses. They share the gospel. You can find out more if you text donate to 33777 and choose to support the Filter Project, a great nonprofit.

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🥊 FIGHT: Scott Pelley accuses CBS News’ Bari Weiss of ‘murdering’ ‘60 Minutes’ - CNBC

💰 NEWS: Anthropic is moving towards an IPO. - Anthropic

➡️ TODAY: Platner heads to D.C. for senator meetings and fundraisers - Axios

🦒 WHAT: Inside America’s Most Dysfunctional Zoo - WSJ (free)

👀 STARTING HERE: The Trump losses keep piling up - Punchbowl

👂 The Show Notes is my blueprint for radio but is only for subscribers. You can subscribe and listen here.

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The Democratic Socialists of America has a class problem its own rhetoric is designed to obscure. Look at its rising stars—Zohran Mamdani, son of a Columbia professor and an acclaimed filmmaker, now a standard-bearer of New York’s left; the Ivy-credentialed activists staffing progressive nonprofits; the heirs and trust-fund organizers animating the movement’s intellectual core—and a pattern emerges the movement cannot honestly explain. The face of American socialism is increasingly young, college-credentialed, and conspicuously well-bred. This is not a coincidence. It is a structure.

The pattern is older than the DSA. Friedrich Engels co-authored the Communist Manifesto while running his father’s textile mill in Manchester. Marx married into Prussian nobility and lived on Engels’s industrial fortune. Lenin’s father held hereditary status under the tsarist table of ranks. Fidel Castro was the son of one of the largest landowners in Cuba’s Oriente province. The proletariat has rarely led its own revolutions; the bourgeoisie’s disaffected sons have. The pattern has held for nearly two centuries, and the reason is not accidental.

What socialism reliably produces, when imposed, is not equality but a closed caste. The Soviet nomenklatura had its sealed stores, hospitals, schools, and dachas. The Chinese Communist Party’s “princelings”—Xi Jinping among them—inherited political position as straightforwardly as any Habsburg. North Korea has produced three generations of Kims; the Castros gave Cuba six decades of dynastic rule. The empirical record is uncontested: every long-running communist regime has frozen its founding elite into a hereditary aristocracy. The system that promised to abolish class only ever abolished the class mobility that threatens its rulers.

This is the trade socialism actually offers the well-born. A free market is the most ruthlessly meritocratic mechanism humans have devised. Joseph Schumpeter called it “creative destruction”—the relentless process by which yesterday’s titans are unseated by tomorrow’s strivers, the immigrant entrepreneur eclipsing the inherited fortune, the garage startup gutting the incumbent. Capitalism does not care who your father was. It will take your standing and hand it to a kid from Queens with a better idea. For someone who suspects, quietly, that he is exactly the unearned aristocrat capitalism is engineered to dethrone, this is not liberation. It is a mortal threat.

Socialism offers the escape. Replace the market’s verdict with the committee’s verdict, and suddenly the credentials, connections, and cultural fluencies the elite child accumulated since prep school become decisive. The Harvard PhD is not displaced by an HVAC contractor in a system that allocates by ideological vocabulary and bureaucratic capture. The nonprofit, the agency, the university, the foundation—these are the institutions the inherited elite already dominates, and precisely the institutions a socialist order empowers.

But empowerment requires a mandate, and here the inherited radical faces a problem of legitimacy. He cannot rule in the name of his own privilege. So he must manufacture a constituency and then position himself at its head. This is the function of the modern grievance apparatus: the well-born organizer survives by persuading others that they are victims of an irredeemable society—and that he, the credentialed interpreter of their suffering, is the one qualified to lead them out of it. His status depends entirely on the permanence of their victimhood. A grievance that is resolved liquidates his position; a striver who climbs out on his own refutes the entire premise. The activist is therefore structurally invested in keeping his underclass aggrieved, dependent, and convinced that the ladder is rigged—because the moment they believe they can climb it themselves, they no longer need him.

This is the buried logic behind the doctrine that the bourgeoisie are the villains. The middle class is denounced not because it oppresses the worker but because it is the living refutation of the whole arrangement. The shopkeeper, the contractor, the engineer who built his own firm, the immigrant family that ran a bodega into a chain—these are the people creative destruction elevates, the people who prove that grievance is not destiny. They expose the inherited elite as unearned and the manufactured victimhood as a racket.

It is why the same movement has rallied behind Graham Platner in Maine, the progressive favorite to challenge Susan Collins, endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Platner campaigns as a “working-class Mainer,” an oysterman and harbormaster in salt-stained authenticity—and the costume is doing heavy lifting. The reality beneath it is precisely the inherited gentility the thesis predicts. His grandfather, Warren Platner, was a celebrated modernist architect who designed the dining room of Windows on the World atop the World Trade Center and interiors for the Ford Foundation building, and who built an expansive family estate in Connecticut he said was inspired by a chateau in the Loire Valley. His father, Bronson Platner, is a Dartmouth-educated attorney and former assistant district attorney who has contributed roughly $60,000 to Democratic candidates and causes. And Platner himself attended the elite Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, which costs more than $75,000 a year, before leaving and finishing at a public high school in Bangor (wait for the reason why, which is coming). This is not the biography of a man the market forgot. It is the biography of a man insulated from it.

The insulation is literal. The “working-class” oysterman did not buy his way into his home through grit; he financed it with a $200,000 loan from his attorney father in 2017, covering essentially the entire purchase price of a four-bedroom house near the water—a fact obscured for so long that the New Yorker was forced to correct a profile that had falsely credited the purchase to a Veterans Affairs low-interest mortgage. Platner himself had said he couldn’t have made the purchase without “the support of the VA.” Meanwhile he reports receiving roughly $4,800 a month in VA disability benefits and builds his identity around the dignity of the disabled, working veteran. The point is not to begrudge a veteran his benefits; it is to observe the architecture. Here is a man whose grandfather designed monuments, whose father bankrolled his house, who passed through one of the most expensive prep schools in America—now presenting himself as a victim of the very system that has cushioned him at every turn, and asking the working people of Maine to make him their tribune precisely on that claim. The blue-collar branding is not a description. It is mandate-manufacturing performed in real time.

Today’s wealthy young radicals need not consciously script any of this. The instinct suffices. They intuit that capitalism’s verdict on their merit would be unkind—and that their authority rests on keeping others convinced they cannot rise without them. Socialism is the insurance policy: dressed as equality, sold as liberation, and structured, always, to keep the right families on top.

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Hello, America. I’m Erick Erickson. It is June 1st. These are “The Four Things You Need to Know” this afternoon.

Up first, it’s my birthday week, officially on Wednesday. And every week at this time, I highlight nonprofits that are worth considering. And today, consider helping Help the Persecuted. It’s a nonprofit that helps Muslims who convert to Christianity in the Middle East and other Christians who are persecuted around the world. It provides safe houses for them, escape from countries if they’re being hunted for death, provides them job skills and meaningful relationships to share the gospel. You can text the word DONATE to 33777 and help the persecuted. Help those people who are being persecuted in the Middle East.

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🔥 PREPARE YOURSELVES: On Saturday, October 10, 2026, I’ll do another Not Safe For Radio Show. Last year, tickets sold out in 48 hours. Paid subscribers to this email will get first access to tickets before everyone else. Ticket sales will start before Father's Day. The event will be at the Cobb Energy Center in Atlanta, Georgia, near the Braves stadium. Put it on your calendar now and I’ll make your Father's Day gift giving easy.

🚨 BREAKING: Iran calls off negotiations with US, vows to ‘completely’ block Strait of Hormuz - CNBC

💣 NEWS: U.S. intercepted Iranian missiles targeting American forces in Kuwait, Central Command says - CNBC

➡️ NOTABLE: Whey Protein Is Running Out as Food Companies Put It in Everything - Bloomberg (free)

‼️QUICK HIT: Mamdani spin doctor accused of threatening Graham Platner’s ex-staffer before she blew whistle on sexting scandal - NY Post

💰 BUFFETT: Berkshire Hathaway buys homebuilder Taylor Morrison for $8.5 billion - Yahoo

👂 The Show Notes is my blueprint for radio but is only for subscribers. You can subscribe and listen here.

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Now, let’s get down to business.

I want to start with this — the United States will be two-hundred fifty years old this July 4th. The concert farce, with all the has-been artists walking away, has turned into some sort of presidential pep rally.

Like it or not, Democrats are Americans too. People who do not support the President who are citizens are Americans too. And I think it would be a travesty to turn July 4, 2026, into a partisan pep rally for President Trump and his ambitions.

I am very grateful we will not, because of his presidential victory, be subjected to lectures on the role transvestite lesbians played in the American Revolution between ritual self flagellation over slavery. But it will be a missed opportunity if we do not celebrate the greatness of America this year — reminding Americans and the world of our unique and good place in history. America is not Trump and Trump is not America. If this celebration of our nation’s 250 years becomes all about Trump, it will have failed. This is a moment for national unity that transcends partisanship.

Next, I am enjoying watching Democrats circle their wagons around their favorite Nazi. Having lost the popular vote to Donald Trump, Democrats have spent a great deal of time explaining to themselves and everyone else that they are the virtuous and righteous party. You are either a Democrat, or a racist, homophobic bigot intent on imposing authoritarianism in America.

With candidates like Ken Paxton in Texas, Democrats have assured themselves of their righteousness. But they planted their flag with Graham Platner in Maine. I am pretty well convinced that the PR campaign for Platner involved throwing money in a lot of directions. Given how the Pod Saves America bros and others have doubled down on Platner, despite all the revelations, I do have to wonder exactly who all was targeted with money.

The latest is the sexting scandal wherein Platner texted sexually explicit messages to a half-dozen to a dozen women. The original report was about a dozen women and the campaign says it was only about a half-dozen. From there came revelations that Platner has been on a social site called Kik, which is a favorite site of predators. And, bubbling to the surface are allegations that Platner might have left school for alarming reasons — those are being whispered about right now

Notice how Platner positioned his phone to cover up his Nazi tattoo, by the way.

And the Democrats are standing with him.

After years of blaming Trump for everything and attacking anyone and everyone who stood with Trump because of his character flaws, behaviors, indiscretions, and sins, Democrats have decided their ride or die is the Nazi turned Communist running against the most centrist member of the Senate who voted to convict Donald Trump in his impeachment trial.

After the latest revelations about Platner, female members of the press corps decided to defend him. Chief among them was Lois Romano, who wrote for both the Washington Post and Politico and is the mother of CNN’s Kristin Holmes. She blamed a Platner staffer for the leak and insisted the young woman who reported Platner’s behavior should be driven from politics.

Then there was Jill Filipovic. Just behold:

And the Democratic Socialists are blaming the Jews:

Notice none of these people are blaming Graham Platner — three years into his marriage, begging his wife to defend him after serially cheating on her.

The man has a Nazi tattoo. He said soldiers in combat deserved to die. He blamed Susan Collins for sending him to war, despite volunteering repeatedly, even going back with Blackwater. He bragged about killing people. He fantasized about rape and said rape victims deserved some blame. He bragged about taking leave to have sex with prostitutes in Southeast Asia. And he claimed he can’t get in a porta-potty without masturbating and fantasizing.

Soon we’ll get the even worse allegations against him and what he did to women beyond fantasy.

Just remember that the Democrats have stuck with him. Eventually, the PodBros, Bulwark, and the rest will abandon Graham Platner. Once they’re done blaming the Jews, the victims, the women around Platner, the Republicans, and others — they’ll abandon him. What’s coming will force them to abandon him.

And when they finally flee, remember they were comfortable with him through all of these things — things that all point to where the next accusations will be.

Lastly, we have reached a point where the Democrats open themselves up to a particular attack. They are the party of abandoned and shifted responsibility. The Nazi tattoo was a youthful indiscretion. The leaks are the fault of the disloyal former staff. The sexting was the women’s fault. It’s like the Mayor of Chicago blaming social media companies for young men fighting or Kia for their cars being stolen. Democrats are incapable of placing blame with the right person and Republicans need to understand there is an attack path there to the midterms.

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Welcome! The New York Fed says that more Americans are skipping meals because food is too expensive.

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🎧 IMPORTANT: Make sure you check out my new podcast, Four Things To Know This Afternoon.

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Hello, America. It’s Erick Erickson. It is Friday, May 29th. I hope you guys are prepared for a great weekend, and these are “The Four Things You Need to Know” before you get there.

First, welcome again to all the new subscribers. They kept telling me to welcome you guys, and I kept forgetting, so now I’m doing it a second time. But you should share this because it helps us grow. And also, if you’re just stumbling upon this and you haven’t subscribed, you should subscribe and keep up with us.

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📺 MUST WATCH: James Talarico calls women "neighbors with a uterus." - X & X

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🔥 HAPPENING NOW: Trump is meeting with his national security team in the Situation Room to make a final decision on a short-term deal with Iran. - X

👂 The Show Notes is my blueprint for radio but is only for subscribers. You can subscribe and listen here.

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You’re damn right I will make sure Republicans understand that one of their candidates for office in this case Mike Collins in Georgia, who we still have the opportunity to stop from getting the party’s nomination, knowingly hired a sociopath with a criminal record who is alleged to have used yours and my tax dollars to subsidize his girlfriend and then referred to a rape victim’s husband as the “sloppy seconds” of the alleged rapist.

AND THEN, after firing the guy, the candidate hired Matt Gaetz’s Chief of Staff, who was in a white nationalist group chat trying to get a Holocaust denier out of prison.

My job is not to carry water for the GOP. Personnel is policy. You knowingly hire awful people, you should be held accountable. I don’t give a damn what letter is next to your name on the ballot.

Your mileage may vary.

And I’ll continue to point out how bad the Democrats are too, for example, continuing to highlight all the batcrap crazy things James Talarico says, that Platner is a Nazi turned Communist, etc. etc. etc.

But nope, not giving the GOP a pass as antisemitism grows and the political culture descends into the toilet. We can and should do better. And you can cancel your own damn subscription if you don’t like it.

Phillips was Mike Collins’s chief of staff. Phillips caused an ethics investigation for Mike Collins because Phillips paid a girlfriend your taxpayer dollars as a salary and she allegedly did no work. And Mike Collins approved it.

Collins says he “parted ways” with Brandon Phillips, but all he did was move Phillips to his senate campaign.

While running Mike Collins’s Senate campaign, Brandon Phillips has also been running Greg Dolezal’s Lt. Governor campaign. From Dolezal’s Twitter account, someone presumed to either be Phillips or under his command, mocked David Clark, a state legislator who is a Green Beret. Clark has a speech impediment, which Dolezal’s social media feed mocked.

Greg Dolezal had to apologize.

From Mike Collins’s social media feed, Brandon Phillips oversaw the tweet heard round the nation — referring to the husband of one of Matt Lauer’s alleged victims as “Matt Lauer’s sloppy seconds.” The wife, in question, attempted suicide after publicly alleging Matt Lauer had raped her.

Collins, again, “parted ways” with Brandon Phillips, but did not part ways with the social media consultant who then posted a gif of a train trying to ram through a tunnel and directed it at the victim’s husband.

Just so you understand who Mike Collins chose as his chief of staff turned campaign manager, Brandon Phillips “pleaded guilty to criminal trespassing charges in 2008 after he admitted he destroyed a laptop and slashed another person's tires in Bibb County. He was sentenced under first offender status to three years on probation and ordered to pay $1,500 in restitution.”

“Erickson,” you say, “that was 2008. Are you serious?”

In November 2008, police were called to his Atlanta home after pulling a gun on a woman. When police arrived, he told them he pointed to gun at the caller after hearing someone bang on his front door. He said he then went to get his gun out of his car and pointed it at the caller because he thought she was banding on his door.

A few weeks later, he was arrested and charged with simple assault and battery. The charges in that case were dead docketed, a legal term where the charges are essentially put on hold, after Phillips went through pre-trial counseling.

“But Erickson, again, that is 2008,” you insist.

In 2022, Phillips was arrested for cruelty to animals after kicking a woman’s dog and injuring the animal. Subsequently, in 2023 and thereafter, he allegedly used taxpayer dollars to fund a salary for a girlfriend who actually did no work for taxpayers. Phillips also allegedly misused Collins' Members' Representational Allowance (MRA) funds.

Some of the unnamed witnesses reportedly told OCC Board members that they were concerned about cooperating due to possible retaliation.

The witnesses’ concerns ranged from being worried about professional repercussions to fear of possible retaliation from Phillips.

Multiple witnesses told the OCC that their fear of Phillips stemmed from, in part, “their awareness of public reporting of past violent criminal behavior by Mr. Phillips,” the report said. The OCC referenced a Politico article reporting an incident where Phillips was accused of kicking a dog.

(Source)

Despite all of that, Collins kept Phillips close to him until a week ago.

And now, to make it more interesting, it turns out Mike Collins’s current chief of staff, who was Matt Gaetz’s chief of staff, is on a white supremacist group chat trying to get a holocaust denier out of prison. The replacement for Brandon Phillips is named Kip Talley and he has literally been in a group chat with neo-Nazi wannabe Nick Fuentes, collaborating on getting a holocaust denier out of prison.

Oh, and Mike Collins has also fabricated a bunch of endorsements on his website.

Personnel is policy.

Anyone who has gone through campaign management school with Morton Blackwell knows personnel is policy. Scott Faulkner, who headed Ronald Reagan’s personnel office, came up with the saying, and Morton Blackwell of the Leadership Institute began teaching it to conservatives as conservative dogma. As a Leadership Institute grad, I learned never to hire people who did not share the vision, character, and principles of the candidate.

Mike Collins, should Georgia voters choose him to challenge Jon Ossoff, is not going to win the general election because Mike Collins’s policy is to hire white nationalist adjacent staff and insane lose canons who people are legitimately scared of. The horror stories from people about Brandon Phillips continue to pile up. One person tells me he legitimately fears for his family because of the guy, and Mike Collins never did anything about the guy, despite knowing Phillips is trouble.

That lack of discipline will bleed over into the campaign trail.

It is why I could not bring myself to support Collins and why I urge Greg Dolezal to part ways with Phillips. Personnel is policy, and Dolezal’s consultant is really bad news.

Mike Collins kept an unstable bag of bad news on staff until he absolutely could not, and he will be toast in the general election. The ads write themselves — Collins traded a sociopath for a white national adjacent former Matt Gaetz Chief of Staff who tried to get a holocaust denier out of jail and is running against a Jewish man.

Good luck.

But that is also why the Democrats will not win the Senate. Personnel is policy on their side, too.

Graham Platner, the Nazi turned Communist, in Maine, has hired a bunch of mercenaries not personally invested in him and a bunch of far-left progressives who see everything in terms of warfare. In Maine, most voters pride themselves on independence, and they will reject a Communist and his communist staff who believe you’re either a communist or the enemy.

In Michigan, the Democrats are turning to Abdul El-Sayed, a man who lied about treating patients as a doctor and who is pro-terrorism and anti-America. While Michigan has a muslim population, the majority of its voters do not hate America. El-Sayed not only hates the United States but also loves terrorists. So does his staff.

In Texas, Republicans may have problems with Paxton, but James Talarico is not just a pro-trans nut; he’s also a progressive freak show whose campaign is staffed by far-left pronoun-oriented nuts who speak woke in ways Texans find offensive — “Latinx,” anyone?

Republicans are going to lose North Carolina.

Republicans, even if they go with Derek Dooley in Georgia, may lose Georgia.

But Republicans will hold Maine against a communist.

They’ll hold Ohio against a has-been running again.

They’ll hold Texas against the it/zer candidate with the invisible girlfriend.

They might even pick up Michigan to offset North Carolina.

And the GOP will hold Nebraska. The Democrat, running as an independent, is Dan Osbourne, who lost to Deb Fischer in 2024 by seven points, despite polls having the race tied. Nebraska is not going to reject the multiple times elected to statewide office Pete Ricketts for a serial candidate who has never actually won.

That’s the map.

Georgia can improve its chances of the GOP winning by going with Dooley over Collins. The GOP shot itself in the foot in North Carolina. It might win Michigan.

The Republicans have a six seat margin in the United States Senate. There are not enough seats in play for the Democrats. The GOP has some clunker candidates, but the Democrats have even more.

The Senate is a distraction, ironically, that could take money away from winnable House races for the Democrats.

Personnel is policy, and out of touch candidates have hired even more out of touch staff who are just going to alienate voters, and, for Democrats, that is a recipe for general election disaster in terms of winning the Senate.

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Hello America, I’m Erick Erickson. It is May 28th and these are “The Four Things You Need to Know” this afternoon.

Up first, there’s real conflicting reports over the Iran deal. We may have a 60-day kick-the-can approach that Iran has agreed to, except Israeli media says that the Ayatollah of Iran has actually told the negotiators for Iran not to take the deal, and there may be disagreements inside Iran over the deal. We’re also waiting to see if the president of the United States would take the deal.

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🙄 STUNNING: Chicago Mayor Johnson says he will fight teen takeovers by "holding social media platforms accountable." - X

💥 NEWS: California to impose 100% tax on Trump’s January 6 ‘slush fund,’ governor says - Reuters

‼️ NOTABLE: Factions inside the Trump administration wrestle over how to handle AI - Politico

👂 The Show Notes is my blueprint for radio but is only for subscribers. You can subscribe and listen here.

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The tweet went viral with accusations that I was urging people to stop voting. Actually, I also said that were I in Maine, I’d vote for the pro-abortion centrist, Susan Collins, to stop the Nazi turned Communist, Graham Platner. Were I in Texas, I would vote for the serial adulterer, corrupt crook, Ken Paxton, over the trans weirdo heretic, James Talarico. But I understand, in Texas, committed Christians might decide a pox on both houses.

Paxton serially cheated on his wife. He took a pretrial deal to avoid a public criminal prosecution. His own staff turned him in to the authorities for corruption. Despite a pre-trial deal that included $300,000 in restitution and community service, Paxton insists he has done nothing wrong.

Texas voters, who grew up with J. R. Ewing on television, will probably elect Paxton. They already re-elected him statewide as Texas Attorney General. When contrasted with an actual heretic “seminarian,” many Christians will hold their nose and vote for the crook. In Louisiana, in 1991, Governor Edwin Edwards faced off against KKK Leader David Duke. The entire Republican leadership of the nation, including President George H. W. Bush, condemned Duke. Edwards’s campaign circulated a bumper sticker that read, “Vote for the Crook: It’s Important.” Ken Paxton could run with the same bumper sticker.

Talarico is a bridge too far for actual Christians. He announced that “God is non-binary,” doubled down on the remark and defended it to Jake Tapper on CNN, and now claims he did not mean it since it has become an issue. He has claimed there are “six sexes,” not just two, and discussed how he loves trans kids. He also wants an open border. Talarico even attends a church with books in the church library to teach kids about gay sex. “Among the books in the church library is ‘This Book Is Gay,’ which lays out the ‘ins and outs of gay sex’ for kids”

In Maine, the Democrats have Platner, a man who has an actual Nazi SS Totenkopf tattoo on his chest, which he admitted to knowingly getting before proclaiming he had no idea it was the symbol of the Nazis who guarded the concentration camps. He now says he is a Communist who believes American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan got what they deserved.

In Michigan, the Democratic front runner for the Senate is Abdul El-Sayed, a man who claimed to be a physician, but has never actually treated patients. He also has defended Islamic terrorists and wondered about Israel’s right to exist. In New Jersey, the Democratic front runner for New Jersey’s 12th congressional district is Adam Hamawy, who was a friend to and interpreter for Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the terrorist who plotted the first World Trade Center attack. After the sheikh went to prison, Hamawy volunteered for an Al Qaeda linked group in Bosnia. Democrats now want him in Congress.

One cannot blame Christians for deciding to vote for Republicans who do not hate their country. To Ken Paxton, women may be expendable and ethics malleable, but he treasures the American flag. James Talarico views the flag as “complicated” and uses words like “cisgendered” while advancing major heresies.

Nonetheless, at some point, Christians will stop voting. One cannot keep asking Christians to choose morally corrupt alternatives to insane Democrats if the country does not improve morally. It is not a coincidence that many of the most vocal people insisting Christians have a moral obligation to vote for corrupt Republicans are also the self-identified Christians who rarely darken the door of a local church.

As the nation’s spiritual health collapses and the GOP keeps nominating hedonists, criminals, and their own antisemites, Christians will stop saying “I’m not vote for a pastor” and just simply stop voting. A slow slouch to Gomorrah with the GOP is no great alternative to a fast slide to Sodom with Democrats. If God is in control and all things work for those called according to His purpose, the body of Christ will decide God’s got this and opt out of the grossness of both parties’ worldliness and corruption. I am not urging this. I am noting it will happen.

The Center for Baptist Leadership Is At It Again

As I said above, “Were I in Texas, I would vote for the serial adulterer, corrupt crook, Ken Paxton, over the trans weirdo heretic, James Talarico,” because, in part, “Talarico is a bridge too far for actual Christians.”

I think a Christian can vote for Paxton over Talarico without serving as an apologist for Paxton and all his pretty blatant sins and corruption. If, however, you represent the “Center for Baptist Leadership,” which is not a center (just a website), not really that Baptist, nor composed of any leadership in the Southern Baptist Convention, you must be an apologist to power.

Here’s one of the Center for Baptist Leadership voices:

Paxton’s moral failings were not private, and he did not work through them. His own staff reported him to the authorities for corruption. Paxton was not acquitted. He took a pretrial deal to avoid a public criminal trial.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has agreed to pay nearly $300,000 in restitution, take legal ethics classes and complete 100 hours of community service as part of a deal to avoid a jury trial in his securities fraud case.

After serially cheating on his wife, he got a very public divorce and promptly moved into a multi-million dollar house with his mistress.

Ironically, the Center for Baptist Leadership is behaving just like James Talarico, with a very perverted view of repentance and sin because of tribal political loyalties to Paxton. Moral corruption always leaves its defenders becoming like those they despise.

It is actually possible to say that you have problems with Paxton’s character, but Talarico is a heretical bridge too far. It is possible to say that. You do not have to excuse Paxton to, in a binary choice, vote for him over a heretic trans weirdo open borders progressive.

Well, you don’t. But apparently, the Center for Baptist Leadership does have to, which tells you how corrupting the need to coddle power is.

Baptists and all Christians should be wary of support for a man who says God is non-binary when He descended to earth as a man and the second person of the Trinity referred to the first person of the Trinity as “Father.”

Baptists and all Christians should be wary of support for an institution that excuses corruption and character deficiencies because of earthly political loyalties. The things of the world hate the things of God, and a Christian is to seek first the Kingdom of God, not earthly political power.

👀 MUST READ: SpaceX IPO: Why the $2 Trillion Valuation Doesn’t Add Up - Prof G Media

🔥 POWERFUL: How Ben Sasse Raised Me - The Free Press

‼️ NOTABLE: Joe Scarborough Nukes DNC Chair Ken Martin as ‘Just Horrible at His Job’: ‘What’s Wrong With Him?’ - Mediaite

🚨 NEWS: Biden sues justice department to block release of Hur interview audio - The Guardian

👂 The Show Notes is my blueprint for radio but is only for subscribers. You can subscribe and listen here.

Last Night

Four-term Sen. John Cornyn suffered a historic primary runoff defeat last night, losing by nearly 30 points to the ethically challenged Ken Paxton.

Cornyn, who came just a few votes short of becoming Senate majority leader, carried only two of Texas’ 254 counties after President Trump issued a late endorsement of Paxton.

The scale of the swing is staggering. In the first round of the primary on March 3, Cornyn received 42% of the vote while Paxton received 41%. Last night, Paxton turned that narrow first-round deficit into a landslide.

Elsewhere in Texas, my longtime friend Chip Roy lost the attorney general runoff to Mayes Middleton by roughly 10 points.

There will be plenty of discussion about candidate quality on the right, and there should be. But Republicans should also keep their eyes open to what is happening on the other side. Across the country, Democrats continue nominating candidates who can only fairly be described as radical.

• New Jersey: Adam Hamawy has a longtime relationship with the terrorist mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and volunteered with an Al-Qaida-tied group in Bosnia. He is currently the leading Democratic congressional candidate in New Jersey's 12th district. - JI

• Michigan: Abdul El-Sayed lied about being a doctor, mourned the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and said he “struggles with questions of whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state.” He currently leads the field to be the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan. - X, X, Politico

• Maine: Graham Platner is a self-described communist with a Nazi tattoo, who said that a Purple Heart recipient was a "dumb motherf---er didn't deserve to live." He is currently the leading Democratic Senate nominee in Maine. - Fox News

• Texas: James Talarico is the Democratic Senate nominee who will face Ken Paxton in November. The clips speak for themselves:

The southern border should be like our front porch.

The American flag is a complicated symbol.

God is non-binary.

Talarico doubles down on God is non-binary.

God asked Mary’s permission.

Illegal aliens are the most patriotic.

No free and fair elections.

Why did Talarico miss so many votes?

Talarico loves trans kids.

Kill the children.

First non-meat campaign.

Jesus helped me reckon with my own whiteness.

Cisgender men.

How can you call yourself a Christian and use greenhouse gases?

There are SIX gender.

BLOOMBERG: Americans Are About to Pay Even More at the Grocery Store

As Americans confront a surge in prices at the pump, another inflation wave is headed for the grocery store.

A combination of factors including bad weather, tariffs and a dwindling cattle herd are already pushing up grocery prices at an above-average pace. In April, they rose by the most in nearly four years, and economists say the impact of the Iran war and a potential El Niño weather pattern will only add to pressures into 2027.

The hit to US household finances from higher grocery bills is set to intensify just ahead of the November midterm elections, amplifying affordability as a defining issue. And to a greater extent than the surge in gas prices, the slower-moving food shock will be difficult to reverse quickly because the size of autumn harvests is determined by planting decisions made in the spring.

Full story at Bloomberg (paywall).

What Could Go Wrong??

FT: Donald Trump’s Board of Peace fund is empty

The official fund for Donald Trump’s Board of Peace is empty and the organisation is stuck in a legal and political limbo that has held up projects to rebuild Gaza.

The US president described the board, which solicited $1bn “lifetime membership” fees from world leaders, as one of the “most consequential” international organisations created. Member states pledged $7bn for the board’s Gaza “relief package”, and Trump promised a further $10bn in US funding.

But four months after its establishment, the board’s financial fund set up by the World Bank has received no money from donors, according to four people familiar with the matter. “Zero dollars have been deposited,” one said.

Full story in the Financial Times (paywall).

Tweets that caught my eye:

Trending news:

• Pickleball craze peters out - Axios

• CNN quietly planning major change involving ‘NewsNight’ host Abby Phillip: report - NY Post

• The JP Morgan ‘Sex Slave’ Court Case is Off to the Most Insane Start Imaginable - Barstool

• AI’s education explosion leaves teachers in the dark - Axios

• Five of seven people trapped in Laos cave found alive by rescuers - CNN

• Travis Kelce buys stake in MLB’s Cleveland Guardians - NBC

• Exclusive - Senior Ukrainian commander sees imminent ‘turning point’ in war - Reuters

• Europe Is Starting to Think Putin Will Expand the War Beyond Ukraine - WSJ (paywall)

Market snapshot:

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The market analysts and so-called economists panicking over President Donald Trump’s tariffs must be at least somewhat relieved that he’s agreed to pause the ones he wants to impose on Mexico. But they shouldn’t have been worried in the first place, because their fears are misplaced. Trump understands the harsh reality of the situation: other nations have exploited the U.S. for decades, and it’s long past time America fought back. In fact, Trump’s actions will benefit Americans greatly.

Shortly thereafter, the Heritage Foundation, long an opponent of tariffs, memory-holed all its long history of opposing tariffs.

Antoni continued, “We finally have a president who recognizes these realities and who is implementing a carrot-and-stick approach to reshuffle the international paradigm in America’s favor. Trump is simultaneously making it more expensive to produce abroad and hire foreigners, while making it less expensive to produce domestically and hire Americans.”

Here is Dr. Antoni today:

With gas prices so high, the last thing Americans need is more expensive vehicles.

But that’s what’s coming because of our nation’s byzantine tariff structure — one that, without quick reform, ironically will drive manufacturing overseas.

This was, if you read any of the economists who opposed tariffs, going to be the case. Tariffs reduce wage growth, increase prices, and slow reinvestment in companies, among other things. Additionally, every time a tariff regime is implemented, its components get lobbied, bureaucratized, and convoluted. It happens every time.

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🚨 BREAKING: A federal court just blocked Alabama’s new congressional map.

‼️ MUST READ: The US budget math is looking dangerous - Stanford

‼️ RELATED: The bond market is telling us the free lunch is over - Axios

🗳️ RUNOFF DAY: John Conryn vs Ken Paxton in Texas. - CBS

🔥 OUTRAGE: Macon planners drop window case against 95-year-old after finding their own approval from 2002 - Macon Meldody

➡️ NEWS: Rubio aide promoted to top White House national security post - Axios

👂 The Show Notes is my blueprint for radio but is only for subscribers. You can subscribe and listen here.

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No matter. Iran repudiated everything and, by Monday night, the United States was bombing Iranian boats putting mines in the Persian Gulf — the mines Iran had promised it would get out of the Persian Gulf, though increasingly Americans believe Iran had not actually started laying mines until this weekend.

I’ve got nothing.

Every day the President drags this out is a day Iran rearms and better prepares to take on the United States. The President claims Iran will reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Iran says it has no intention and, should it do so, would do so with a toll.

At the point, the only way to deal with Iran is to go back to war with Iran. The President seems to prefer a bad deal with Iran than more war. We actually went into the ceasefire with the upper hand and, frankly, every day Iran’s hand as gotten stronger.

This is disappointing and will, more likely than not, end with an emboldened Iran and a world that is less safe from Iran.

More Americans died in the Civil War than all other American wars combined until, in the Obama Administration in the twenty-first century, the death toll of all others combined surpassed the Civl War.

May these United States remain united, though some wish for a great divorce. We have seen the cost and should not want it revisited.

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A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim,
As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless,
As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital tent,
Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended lying,
Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket,
Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.

Curious I halt and silent stand,
Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest the first just lift the blanket;
Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray’d hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes?
Who are you my dear comrade?

Then to the second I step—and who are you my child and darling?
Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming?

Then to the third—a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of beautiful yellow-white ivory;
Young man I think I know you—I think this face is the face of the Christ himself,
Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.

— Walt Whitman, A Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim

Battle Hymn of the Republic

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I have read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

His day is marching on.

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:

“As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal”;

Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,

Since God is marching on.

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat;

Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet!

Our God is marching on.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free1,

While God is marching on.

(Chorus)

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Our God is marching on.