Jamie Ager Announces for Congress in CD11

 

Photo Cory Vaillancourt

Reading this morning in the Smoky Mountain News about Jamie Ager, who announced he's running in the 11th Congressional District Democratic primary next March, setting up what may be a big battle for the nomination with Moe Davis, who ran for the seat in 2020 and is running again, about whom I've spilled a good deal of digital ink and to whom I've contributed campaign donations in the past. Moe Davis comes on hot where Jamie Ager is cooler. Ager told Cory Vaillancourt that he's more of a "happy warrior." So this will be a primary about political style as well as personal roots. Jamie Ager comes from Democratic Party nobility in Buncombe County; Moe Davis earned his spurs as a no-nonsense and morally upright member of the Air Force Judge Advocate General (JAG) corps, prosecuting terrorists at Guantanamo (while bravely opposing higher-ups over water-boarding). Davis is a relative newcomer to the 11th District (though he's a native of Shelby). His abrasiveness in 2020 ruffled a few feathers among establishment Democrats.

Jamie Ager is the grandson of Jamie Clarke (James McClure Clarke), famous for trading the 11th CD seat back and forth with Republican Bill Hendon in the 1980s. Both Ager's father John and brother Eric either served in the past (John) or is now serving (Eric) in the NC House. In other words, Jamie Ager comes from a family steeped in politics who seem to know how to do it.

Grandfather Clarke started the Hickory Nut Gap Farm, which specialized in dairy and apples. Jamie his grandson and now candidate for office runs the operation and has drawn praise for his "regenerative agriculture." He's 47. He earned a degree in environmental studies and sustainable agriculture from Warren Wilson College. The farm now encompasses some 250 acres of both family and leased land. Ager raises beef cattle, chickens, turkeys, and pigs — "all pasture-raised and hormone-free, using rotational grazing to promote soil health and carbon sequestration." The operation requires another 25 hired employees.

Ager is politically progressive but also practical-minded, as we say in the country. “My family’s legacy is kind of built around being environmentalists, which I 100% am," Jamie told Vaillancourt, "but I remember as a kid seeing some of this regulatory stuff come through, and when it hits the ground, it’s often kind of slightly ridiculous,” he said. Regulations are important for changing behavior, but they have to make sense to be effective (not to mention being accepted by the public as worth the hassle).

He believes entrepreneurship is the key to creating a resilient agricultural system and wants to see federal policy shift from incentivizing the cheapest food possible to rewarding sustainable, soil-friendly practices. He’s also concerned about the loss of farmland in North Carolina — the state was recently ranked second in the nation for farmland loss, behind Texas — and supports conservation easements and smarter development to preserve agricultural land for future generations.

Ager has sharp assessments of the incumbent congressman, fast-food-king Chuck Edwards, especially disaffection for Edwards' performance following Hurricane Helene. Two months after Helene, then-Gov. Roy Cooper and a delegation traveled to the White House with a $25 billion request toward an estimated $60 billion in damage. Rep. Edwards, who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, said he authored the relief bill that ultimately passed, but out of more than $100 billion in the bill, North Carolina has gotten scant and may get no more than $9 billion. “That’s frustrating, yeah, the fact that Chuck Edwards said we’re going to get all this money, and [he] actually sits in roles that can help facilitate getting that money, and then not actually being clear about what’s going on -- that’s a leadership problem,” Ager said.

While in Congress, Edwards has gone along with Republican budgeting and program-gutting, which has allowed maintenance to suffer in national parks like the Great Smoky Mountains. “It’s sort of this classic Republican move to defund things and then point out that they’re not operating well and to me, that’s just baloney,” Ager said. Congressman Edwards' cure is to start charging visitors to park. And when DOGE shut down the Social Security office in Edwards' district in Franklin, the congressman did nothing to protest the closure. 

When asked what's the matter with the Democratic Party, especially in a mainly rural district with a R+5 rating, Ager said, “There’s a level of condescension that comes out of urban areas for rural people,” he said. “That pisses me off.”

NOTE

There are at least two other declared Democratic candidates in CD11's congressional primary, but neither appears to have much of a base for competing credibly with Moe Davis or Jamie Ager.

“A Lot of Us in This Caucus Want To Fu**ing Fight,”

 

Dems are sleepwalking into fascism while pretending bipartisanship is still real.

--Sen. Cory Booker (paraphrase by Brian Allen)

Booker was yelling at two shocked fellow Democratic senators yesterday for being "complicit" in Trump's never-ending power grabs. "The Democratic Party needs a wake-up call." Preach it, Bro.

Booker was blocking the passage of several bipartisan bills that would fund police programs (including mental health resources for police officers), and in the process he was laying bare the dilemma for out-of-power Democrats in the Age of Trump: Should they cooperate with Republicans where they can, or do they fight everything (including stuff like money for mental health monitoring for traumatized cops). Should they actually shut down government by refusing to participate in "deals"? Fueling Booker's anger, Trump has been “weaponizing” public safety grants by canceling them in many Democratic-leaning states like New Jersey. 

Nevada Dem Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto was trying to pass seven bills by unanimous consent. Booker objected to five, which would have directed resources to law enforcement agencies. “Why would we do something today that’s playing into the president’s politics and is going to hurt the officers in states like mine?” Booker asked, not yet yelling. 

Sen. Amy Klobuchar came to the defense of Sen. Masto in a pursed-lip tsking of Booker's failure to raise objections when these bills were being marked up in committee. According to AP's Mary Clare Jalonick, that's when the yelling started. “The Democratic party needs a wake up call!” Booker shouted, walking away from his desk and out into the aisle. “I see law firms bending the knee to this president, not caring about the larger principles,” he said, along with “universities that should be bastions of free speech.” (You can watch the rest of his timely tirade here.) “This is the problem with Democrats in America right now,” Booker bellowed. “Is we’re willing to be complicit with Donald Trump!”

The arguments point to the tensions below the surface of the Democratic caucus as they head into important moments — both this week, as Republicans push to quickly confirm dozens of Trump administration nominees before the August recess, and this fall when Congress will have to pass bipartisan spending bills to avoid a government shutdown.

Democratic Complicity? Check Out the Veto Overrides in Raleigh

I find myself focused on what Booker was saying about "complicity" and the weakness of just going along shortly after reading "Anderson Alerts" about the few House Democrats in Raleigh who helped Republicans override eight of Gov. Stein's dozen vetoes yesterday. Booker's point applies: When the side in power takes over the mechanisms of control, including the courts and the administration of elections, and often aim their spite at minorities, then the side out of power has to decide whether they will be complicit in that whole project destroying democracy in the state of North Carolina. That's the larger principle Booker refers to, and it is, as the kids say these days, existential.

Winning Is Not Weak

 

Republicans think poorly of Democratic elected officials because they disagree with them; Democrats think poorly of Democratic elected officials because they think they’re ineffective.

--Jim Geraghty

I take "ineffective" to mean, primarily, weak. Paralyzed. What if? but also ... what if...? Unable to calculate the forest because the trees are in the way.

Winning is not weak, and right now I can concentrate my hopes and energies on Democratic Party winners, starting with Josh Stein and Jeff Jackson in North Carolina, who are highly effective. Their styles are low-key, not hot and aggressive but reasoned and clear and in a word strong.

Democratic winners are actually pretty plentiful nationally. Susan Crawford defeated Republican Brad Schimel by10 points in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in April, where both Trump and Musk tried to put their thumbs on the scales for Schimel, especially Musk. Democrat Abigail Spanberger is clearly favored to win the race for Virginia governor in November, and Mikie Sherrill appears to be leading comfortably for governor of New Jersey. (I profiled both Spanberger and Sherrill when they first ran for and won seats in Congress in the Blue Wave of 2018. They've turned out to be rising stars.)

Zohran Mamdani belongs to a wholly unique class of one. His in-your-face vacation announcement video -- "Uganda Miss Me, But I'll Be Back Soon" -- is like nothing I've ever seen a candidate do, directly answer the "go back to Africa!" haters with an "up-yours" that's both funny and muscular. I'm praying he's as level-headed as the character he plays on TikTok.

No Matter How Slavishly You Lick Trump's Boot, You Still Get a Republican Primary

 

Maggie Haberman and Ken Bensinger, in the NYTimes:

[Paul Dans,] the Republican architect of Project 2025 — the right-wing blueprint that Democrats made a rallying cry in the presidential election last year — is mounting a primary challenge to Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, saying he isn’t sufficiently devoted to President Trump’s political movement.

As he begins his challenge, Dans, who is not originally from South Carolina, starts out as a distinct underdog. Mr. Graham, who has the support of Mr. Trump, has won past primaries handily despite appearing vulnerable, and he is likely to have a significant financial edge.

But Mr. Dans plans to run highlighting the work of Project 2025, from which Mr. Trump distanced himself during his campaign before enacting significant portions of it into his government. And while Mr. Dans had nothing but praise for Mr. Trump, his candidacy comes at a moment when some of Mr. Trump’s hard-line allies have been critical of some decisions, including his authorization of military strikes in Iran and his handling of files in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation.

He intends to cast Mr. Graham as an old-guard Republican who is not aligned with Mr. Trump’s movement.

Oh, It's On

 

MAGA Disdains Trump's Choice for US Senate

 

Michael Whatley,
Trump's choice for US Senate

Brant Clifton, who writes The Daily Haymaker, is about as MAGA as you get. He calls Trump "Boss" without the hint of a shred of irony.

As soon as the Trump-blessed Michael Whatley candidacy for Thom Tillis's seat became known, The Daily Haymaker went feral on Whatley's ass. Clifton wrote that Whatley "can most pleasantly be described as an unaccomplished schlub," and the post went on at great length cataloguing and detailing all the ways Whatley is an unaccomplished schlub. (For which, we thank the author.)

Don't miss the comments at the end.

Michael Whatley Is In, Lara Trump Is Out

 

GOP Party Chair Michael Whatley has announced his candidacy for Thom Tillis's US Senate seat. That means, of course, that Lara Trump ain't running. In the not very distant past, Whatley had been chair of the NCGOP. When Trump forced Ronna McDaniel out as chair of the national Republican Party, he put Whatley in (along with Lara as co-chair). 

Whatley is the round-faced people-pleaser who's previously been most aligned with the country club Republican "establishment" and who, according to Brant Clifton at The Daily Haymaker, plays at being a Trumpist lickspittle while really secretly harboring fear bordering on resistance. "[Whatley] loves to talk about Donald Trump and post pictures of himself with Trump’s plane. But much of what he does and says aligns much more with Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger — the two former 'Republican' congressmen who colluded with Democrats on the farcical so-called 'January 6 committee'.”

In other words, Whatley is more in the mold of Thom Tillis, and MAGA doesn't entirely trust him. He's not going to ignite enthusiasm, which he's going to need in extra measure against Roy Cooper.

After taking over the NCGOP in 2019, Whatley oversaw Trump’s win here in 2020, two U.S. Senate victories in 2020 and 2022, recapturing a supermajority in the state Senate and flipping control of the N.C. Supreme Court from 6-1 Democrats to 5-2 Republicans. Despite that sparkling career in North Carolina (Wikipedia sez he's a native of Watauga County), and despite Whatley's signature affability, the most MAGA wing of the Party ran John Kane for party chair against him in 2023. John Kane was and is the number one son of an elder John Kane, a renown Raleigh mega-developer who was actually honored as Tar Heel of the Year in 2016. The elder Kane is also renown for raising big money for Republicans. The younger John Kane emphasized his MAGA bona fides, hitting especially "election integrity," because (check!) the election of 2020 was stolen from Trump. The conservatives who don't trust Whatley remember that he went weak after the "Stop the Steal" tourist romp at the Capitol, and condemned it all as a riot. Like a lot of other Republicans back on January 7th who later developed a twitch and then couldn't remember, Whatley never said another negative word in public about insurrection. Conservatives hate weakness, especially in their servants and allies.

Whatley easily won reelection to the NC chairmanship in 2023, with the endorsement of Trump, incidentally. "Mr. Trump likes Mr. Whatley for one overwhelming reason, according to people who have discussed him with the former president: He is a 'stop the steal guy,' as one of the people described him. He endorses Mr. Trump’s false claims about mass voter fraud and Mr. Trump believes he did a good job delivering North Carolina, a 2020 swing state, to him." [Zachary Roth]

Update on the Attempt To Suppress Voting in NC

 

The North Carolina State Board of Elections (SBOE) announced last month that it would be sending mailers to roughly 194,000 N.C. residents, directing them to update their voter registration information -- ultimate fall-out from the never-ending NC Supreme Court election involving one Jefferson Griffin and his accusations of illegitimacy against voters who were missing that information, and then the inevitable piling on of Trump's strong-arm enforcer (a.k.a. Dept. of Justice), which sued the SBOE.

Starting in 2013, NC’s voter registration form unintentionally appeared to make filling out a driver’s license number or Social Security number optional. Many registered in good faith using those faulty forms. In 2023, the SBOE fixed its form. But Pam Bondi demands that all incomplete registrants must be updated with missing info. Hence, an explanatory demand mailer going out now from the SBOE to a first batch of 103,270 North Carolina voters.

Bryan Anderson with the help of WCU prof Chris Cooper sussed out some statistics. While the average age of a North Carolina voter is 51.4 years, the average age of the voters with incomplete registrations is 38.9 years. (Anderson reminds us that it makes sense that people who registered with faulty forms during that 10-year span -- 2013-2023 -- are likely to be younger than the average voter.)

Of the first batch of 103,270 voters who need to cure their registrations, 63% are Unaffiliated, 23% are Democrat, 14% are Republican.

Yeah, He's Running

 

WRAL, on it:

Former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper is ramping up his political fundraising efforts, with a focus on national politics....

In a recent fundraising email to supporters, Cooper slammed congressional Republicans for passing a bill backed by President Donald Trump that would eliminate Medicaid coverage for more than 650,000 North Carolinians. The letter included a link that leads readers to a sign-up page, which then redirects readers to a donation page.

“You stood with me before as we fought to pass Medicaid expansion here in NC,” Cooper said in the July 17 email. “Now, we need to stand together again. Will you let me know you’re with me by adding your name to support health care access for every American?”

Cooper has kept open the political campaign apparatus that operated his runs for governor, even though he was term-limited in 2024 from seeking a third straight term. It was that campaign — Cooper for North Carolina — that sent the fundraising email.

Repeal the Big Beautiful Bill, You Dopes!

 

Our midterm march starts with a simple phrase every candidate can blast on every screen and stage: We demand a repeal. A repeal of Mr. Trump’s spending law is the one word that should define the midterms. It is clear, forceful and full-throated. It must be slathered across every poster, every ad, every social media post from now until November 2026. That single word is our core message. Every Democrat can run on it, with outrage directed not at the president or a person but at this disastrous bill. And the reasons are countless, each one a venom-tipped political dagger.

--James Carville

I think Carville's on it. And I think he's doubly right that the civil war among the Democrats that's inevitable (Mamdani's following v. the old establishment, for instance) needs to wait until after the midterms. Job Number One is flipping the U.S. House. Job Number One for North Carolinians is flipping the Senate seat. Thom Tillis could even give us tips for "We demand a repeal." But we can't be fighting a civil war among ourselves until later. Whoever wins the 2028 Democratic Presidential primary will possibly settle the issue.

"You're Goddamn Right, I'm Antifa"

 

This guy, David Clayton -- I just learned from a poster on this site -- says he's running against Virginia Foxx next year in the 5th CD as an Independent (he doesn't mention that NC law requires signatures on a petition, completed by next June). I discovered he's got over a half-million followers on TikTok -- kind of eye-opening -- so the required petition to get on the ballot may be no big deal for him (but keep in mind that only residents of the 5th CD of NC can sign the petition of candidacy).

I'm not on TikTok, but I see things occasionally when they get shared. When I followed David Clayton to TikTok -- where he's "Official Empathy Tour" (@DavidBoomer) -- it was like a trap-door opened suddenly beneath me and I fell into a maze of dozens -- probably hundreds -- of short videos of David Clayton's talking head -- often shaded by the bill of a baseball cap -- often beginning with the little poem, "I'm not MAGA. Please don't scroll. I've got a moral compass and a soul." A sample:

Clayton has filed with the FEC. Reported raising $8,112.22. Cash-on-hand at filing: $3,888.06. He's been endorsed by the "blue" influencer Goods Unite Us, best known for tracing dirty money behind various corporate logos.

He's on Blue Sky as "Empathy Tour -- David Clayton," with frequent posting. I haven't found him on Twitter or on Facebook, except for a single reel (which is also a good introduction to his vibe and his message) -- https://www.facebook.com/reel/646712508314181. 

I haven't found the campaign website that I've seen him talk about, with all the biographical info I'm missing and would like to know. It would possibly take the rest of my life to look at all that TikTok material, but something of a biography might eventually be stitched together. One tiny bit: He's not a veteran, though you'd probably cast him as a tough Marine trained for hard duty, but he's an intellectual on what's happening to our nation. He might have gained early followers from actions he took to help homeless veterans "across 33 states" and four years of his life (he says), but that's as much detail as I've gleaned. (Perhaps that charity was the genesis of "Empathy Tour?"). 

Incidentally, he talks directly about the performance of Virginia Foxx. He doesn't pull punches.

The Berger-Page Republican Primary Got Ugly Fast

 

Check out the "Berger War Room" on X, billing itself as "the unofficial fan page and rapid response defender of NC Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and his reelection campaign." Whoever's writing it is making a career out of harassing rival candidate Sam Page, dogging him recently about the late filing of required reports about campaign money-raising -- "You got something to hide?" That was the taunt.

Pretty sinister, that. The fact is Sam Page has little to hide because he's raised so little campaign cash. He seems confident that what he has to offer the voters of Rockingham County is worth more than all Berger's million plus. What's he going to do with a big pile of money when everyone in Rockingham already knows him as a rock solid conservative and has known him for two decades in service as sheriff. If Page actually beats Berger for that NCSenate seat, it'll prove once again that you can't buy love.

The "Don't Say Vote" Bill in the General Assembly

 

[Democracy Docket] North Carolina Republicans have introduced a sweeping elections bill [H 958) that, among other steps, would bar election officials from encouraging or promoting voter turnout....

The proposed ban “raises real questions about what democracy means in North Carolina, who really holds the power, who government is answering to,” Andrew Garber, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Voting Rights and Elections Program, told Democracy Docket.

Rep. Allison Dahle, the top Democrat on North Carolina’s House Elections committee, was blunter.

“I get the feeling that people don’t want democracy,” Dahle told Democracy Docket.

Andy Beshear, Drawing Attention

 

As Democrats fight over whether they paid a price for moving too far left on some social issues, Beshear is using his red-state experience to argue the party need not run away from those topics.

--Hannah Knowles 

Andy Beshear has got my attention. He has twice won the governership of Kentucky while Trump was taking the state by over 30 points. Beshear carried his reelection in 2023 by 5 points. He's a boyish man, with "zero coolness," his son jokes, but with the eyes of a killer Huck-Finn. I watched his lengthy interview with Kristen Welker recently on Meet the Press. He keeps a fixed pleasant face as he listens, inscrutable, but the concentrated eyes give away an alert intelligence. When he talks, two very prominent front incisors flash in the light!

I stumbled on this video of Governor Beshear and his wife Brittany doing a funny comedy bit titled "Mean Tweets" in which the two of them read aloud both the praise and the insults that flew at them in 2024. I like the Beshear in this video, who both humorously confirms his nerd-dom and displays quick timing and a genuine chemistry with his wife:

Beshear and Brittany have been doing the "Mean Tweets" act since at least 2020 (check YouTube), and the governor has cemented himself as a self-deprecating good fellow who doesn't have any difficulty hearing the insults. He's achieved what looks to me like the "good dad" vibe of the wise family man who can take the slings and arrows without losing his balance. He bespeaks resilience. One tweet in the 2024 roundup said Beshear "sounded like a goober" and is "the goober that America needs." I'm aware that could be true, so I need to know more about the man.

Beshear just spent some time in South Carolina, ostensibly to present the keynote address for the annual AFL-CIO state convention in Greenville, but he made several other stops that were clearly self-interested in nature, since South Carolina is a very early presidential primary state. Such a visit as Beshear's is a de facto admission of presidential ambition, and he was full of helpful advice for Democrats. Democratic candidates should "talk like normal human beings,” Beshear said, eliminate the jargon of the Left, and "show voters that Democrats are focused on bread-and-butter issues." It seems to work for him in deep-red Kentucky. Democrats can “win everywhere” with good governance and a determination to be “the party of common sense, common ground and getting things done.” Emphasis on common sense.

Hannah Knowles, the WashPost embed with the Beshear expedition into South Carolina, provides color:

Beshear rose in Kentucky politics as the son of a former governor, aided by voters familiar with the family name. Nationally, he isn’t as well-known as other Democratic governors such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was also in South Carolina last week. And his message, as a red-state governor used to working with Republicans, is not as fiery and combative as some in the party are seeking.

Beshear rebuked Trump and the GOP during his stops — calling the president’s agenda a “punch in the face” to the rural communities that voted for him — but also talked about creating “the grace and the space for people to disagree” on hot-button issues....

Beshear leaned into Kentucky’s similarities with South Carolina, telling crowds that as a southerner, “I know if you say ‘bless your heart,’ it’s ain’t good.” ... He urged Democrats to stop using wonky terms such as “substance abuse disorder” and “justice-involved populations” — a phrase that prompted members of one audience to wrinkle their faces and exclaim, “What?”

"Stop picking on those kids!" was Beshear's defiant veto message to Kentucky Republicans about their House Bill 495, an LGBTQ+ bill which he vetoed that aimed to reverse the governor's executive order banning conversion therapy for minors and restricting Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care. “I vetoed it because it was the right thing to do,” he said. “I said my faith teaches me that all children are children of God, and I didn’t want people picking on those kids.”

Phil Berger, Fundraising Himself Right Out of the Senate?

 

Rockingham Co. Sheriff Sam Page

There's a North Carolina campaign report deadline next week, but Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger didn't wait. He was too proud to report a 6-month haul of $1.7 million in campaign cash. He's likely going to need a lot of that to get past Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page's primary challenge.

“Clearly he’s behaving as if he’s feeling pressure,” said Chris Cooper, a Western Carolina University political scientist who specializes in North Carolina politics. “He’s announcing endorsements well over a year before the primary. He’s been aggressive on social media going after Sam Page. He wouldn’t be doing that if Sam Page wasn't a threat.”

Meanwhile, Sheriff Page, who likes to sport a cowboy hat, has only a few thousand dollars in his campaign account and appears quite relaxed about it. Page is probably right about this: 

"This Senate race will not be won by the millions of dollars from big donors," he said. "Instead this Senate race will be won by the personal relationships that have been established for my more than 27 years while serving my community and my country as the Sheriff of Rockingham County."

If indeed Phil Berger's power palace in Raleigh has caused him to lose touch with his constituents, Sheriff Page's decades-long popularity in office will be a huge boost and perhaps enough to make Berger's millions a liability.

When the President of the United States Practices Revenge

 

It appears to be common knowledge that Trump's animas for public TV dates back to 1988 when Sesame Street parodied him as "Ronald Grump" the garbage can developer. Here's a compilation of that and several other satiric depictions of Trump that appeared on Sesame Street:

Okay, the man can't stand to be made fun of on a kid's TV show, but why the direct assault on National Public Radio? I cannot for the life of me even fantasize an image of Trump listening to NPR, like we know he watches TV. (I hardly ever watch broadcast TV, so very rarely PBS. I know. My loss.) But I do listen to WETS which is based on the campus of East Tennessee State University in Johnson City. Listen to. The radio in my office is permanently tuned to 89.5 FM. If I'm sleepless in the wee hours, I can hear the BBC's World Service, until 5 a.m., when Morning Edition comes on and lasts through 7 a.m. (and then the whole program repeats 7-9). I can't do without Morning Edition for the way it breaks down news to the meat and potatoes of the way the world is working and why people do what they do. 

All day with NPR is a much better day than being without NPR. Trump took away a big chunk of funding for little NPR stations serving rural areas. Out of hateful spite.

What powerful person uses the powers of their office to put pure personal revenge on the approved to-do list? What Republic allows that? A minority of our particular Republic set revenge above honor -- severe punishments meted out to target groups. They've seized the moment of Trump's control to purge their ranks of "soft" Republicans who don't practice revenge enough, like those Republican members of local boards of election in Harnett, Randolph, and Craven counties (article in The Assembly) who've been kicked off because they were considered "soft."

Yes, We Know Your Heart, Congresswoman

 

Danielle Battaglia gives us what is most often missing in any coverage of the legislative career of Madam Virginia Foxx -- some eye-witness reading of body language. Those of us who knew Foxx back in the day when she was an assistant dean at AppState already recognize the bullying personality, paired with the odd ability to impersonate tears on cue. I always noted that her eyes were never wet in those displays. Considering her reputation for brusque rudeness, she's brittle and avoids direct confrontation with people angry about her politics. I've seen her literally break into a sprint to escape the microphone of a reporter.

No doubt she's more formidable now. Also oddly weak, having sold out any claim to the moral high ground by literally mortgaging her morals to a strong man.

Battaglia was there in the hearing room for the Rules Committee Monday night, with Rep. Foxx chairing the meeting, when the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Jim McGovern, of Massachusetts, proposed an amendment to a bill on cryptocurrency that forced the committee’s Republicans to decide whether the Trump administration must release the Epstein files. Battaglia watched Foxx's reaction:

Rep. Virginia Foxx sat at the front Monday night and smiled slowly before her face stiffened. She pinched her thumb against her pointer and middle fingers and rubbed them together.

She started to speak, just for a moment, but instead clenched her jaw. 

The first amendment failed in a 5-6 vote, with Rep. Ralph Norman, a Republican from South Carolina, agreeing to the release. Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican from Texas, withheld his vote. 

McGovern tried a second related amendment to the Epstein files, including releasing whether any files had been destroyed. The vote failed again, this time 8-4. 

“You, with your vote, will be preventing even the consideration of the release of the Epstein files,” Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, a Democrat from New Mexico, told the Republicans before the vote. “You will be voting against the release of the Epstein files. You have the power, let’s see how you vote.” 

It was that statement that caused Foxx to tense up. She narrowed her gaze on Leger Fernandez and said, “None of us like to be told why we are voting a certain way .... You don’t know our minds. You don’t know our hearts.”

Make Trust the Issue of 2026

 

Pat Dennis

"The disgraced financier [Jeffrey Epstein], who died in federal jail in 2019 after being charged with sex trafficking, traveled in powerful circles for many years. The public understandably wants to know why Trump is backtracking on his administration’s promises to release material that might shed more light on his crimes."

--Pat Dennis 

So of course I'm going out of my way to read an article titled "Democrats Finally Found an Anti-Trump Argument That Works" in the WashPost, by Pat Dennis, who is the president of American Bridge 21st Century:

American Bridge PAC is a liberal American Super PAC and opposition research group that supports Democratic candidates and opposes Republican candidates. Founded by David Brock in 2010 and associated with Media Matters for America, the organization is one of the largest networks of liberal donors in the U.S. (Wikipedia)

Dennis's Twitter profile is much more revealing and much more hilarious: "Used to do campaigns. Oppo guy. Scrappy coder. College dropout. I like building and winning." So he's someone I want to hear political practicalities from. He starts where any campaign operative would start: What's the current (and highly specific) polling RE Epstein?

An Economist-YouGov survey conducted July 11 to 14 found that 81 percent of Harris voters and 59 percent of Trump voters believe the government is covering up Epstein evidence.... A CNN-SSRS poll collected July 10 to 13 shows 56 percent of Democrats, 52 percent of independents and even 40 percent of Republicans are dissatisfied with how little information Washington [Trump] has released.

Dennis notices those cracks in MAGA, and he sees the obvious path (by thinking out of the box): Democrats need to take MAGA's side, demand the truth no matter who it hurts and stand on that principle. Dennis can imagine the Democratic candidate who might riff on trust and draw supporters. Dennis can almost hear the voice, rising in volume and certitude: "If Trump will break our trust to protect whatever is in the Epstein files, don't you start to wonder whether he's been lying about other things, and why? To protect his powerful and wealthy friends. Who benefits from massive tax cuts? Who is really paying the cost of Trump’s tariffs? Who will face the pain of Medicaid cuts? Who is responsible for rising inflation?" The litany on trust.

Dennis sez to Democrats:

We need to say, loudly: “You gave him a shot as an outsider, but he cut your community’s health care, took his eye off the ball on prices and focused on tax cuts for billionaires — while he tried to shut up everyone, including his own supporters, who wanted to talk about elite billionaire sexual predators.”

Deja Foxx: A Generational Change Agent

Deja Foxx, revving her supporters, June 2, 2025

There's a Democratic primary today in Arizona's 7th Congressional District that could produce an upset -- indicative of the temperature on the Left for a radical changing of the guard. Fox News said this special election (to fill the remaining few months of Congressman Raul Grijalva's term) would provide "a barometer of where the Democratic Party is headed as the party deals with longstanding divisions between its establishment and its outsiders...."

There are five candidates on the ballot, including Raul Grijalva's own daughter, who has the backing of the Democratic establishment, and one big, powerful outsider -- Deja Foxx -- who's suddenly surged in the polls and set off a media storm of attention. Foxx, who is now 25, learned early at the ripe age of 16 to make herself heard, to use her own narrative of homeless struggle to enlighten, galvanize, and motivate an audience. At the age of 16 she went viral in a confrontation with Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake over his vote to cut off Federal funding of Planned Parenthood -- at a packed town-hall (memorialized in this video).  She learned the power of commanding an audience, of speaking truth and being wildly applauded for it. She became in short order a well-known political activist and outspoken advocate for women's rights. 

Her own story of poverty, of learning "code switching" between the world of all-white public schools and the spiraling environment created by her single mom, who got into drugs and bad company. (Foxx's mom eventually turned her life around and is now Deja's Number One door-knocker for this campaign). Young Deja says she was forced at age 15 to take the extraordinary step of emancipating herself from her mother. And thus becoming functionally homeless, a kind of camper who depended on the kindness of friends to give her a temporary bedspace. She was for years part of what she calls "the hidden homeless," particularly young people who move from friend to friend to relative and back to friend. 

She learned the power of sharing her story and soon went to Capitol Hill as a teenager to do lobbying work for Planned Parenthood. It was a natural step from there to motivational speaker and social media content producer before she was 20. According to Politico, she's of a class that is peculiar to the 21st Century, savvy young people -- some smart, some beautiful, some both -- like Deja Foxx --finding a voice and building a presence that can become little digital empires with a history of forcing change. "Influencers," indeed.

Her 10-minute campaign autobiography tells it best. It's a compelling story of a survivor who learns her power as a wise narrator of life. I commend it as an authentic story of American struggle and American achievement. 

Foxx has gained nearly 400,000 followers on TikTok and over 245,000 followers on Instagram. "She’s become a real figure in the Democratic Party’s online firmament," doing social media for Kamala Harris’ failed 2020 presidential campaign, appearing at the 2024 Democratic National Convention and helping host the Hotties for Harris party at the convention.

So not surprisingly Foxx has surged in polling. She's attracted a good deal of attention as another AOC. Media attention drives polling (though Deja Foxx is being compared to her, both AOC and Bernie Saunders have endorsed Adelita Grijalva as the birthright candidate). David Hogg has campaigned for Foxx (and damn the Democratic Party establishment that ran that kid off!). Hogg recently stepped down from his position as a Democratic National Committee vice chair after upsetting party leaders for his efforts backing primary challenges against what he called "asleep at the wheel" older, longtime incumbents in safe, blue districts (Fox News). His campaigning for Foxx sends a clear message that the rebellion will continue.

Brad Elkins, a longtime Democratic consultant who is advising Foxx’s campaign, marveled that even before the campaign started its advertising, the 25-year-old candidate “couldn’t go anywhere without people recognizing her.”

I'll be looking for those Arizona returns late tonight.

UPDATE

Polling was wrong or at least misleading, and generational change will have to wait in the 7th Congressional Dist. of Arizona. Adelita Grijalva won easily and going away, 60% against four other candidates including Deja Foxx (21%), Grijalva's closest competitor. Will Foxx stay in politics and continue to build a base of Gen Z?

The No. 1 Competitive, Pick-up Senate Seat

NC Senate Dist. 11 -- Nash, Franklin, and Vance counties

Sydney Batch of Wake County is the Minority Leader in the NC Senate, and she has named Lisa Stone Barnes as the top Republican target in 2024 for flipping a Senate seat, a potential upset that could end the supermajority dictatorship of the Senate Republicans under Phil Berger. Batch went to Rocky Mount on July 10th for the campaign roll-out of Barnes's Democrat opponent, Rev. James Gailliard (for historic context on both, use the Q bar above). Gailliard used his own home as launching pad and gathered a crowd which included NC Associate Justice Anita Earls and many of the operatives active right now in the NC Democratic Party and in the DemsSenateCaucus. Gailliard has clearly been anointed, and Batch told Will Doran of WRAL that the candidate will need around $3 million to mount a winning campaign. I bet he'll raise it.

Gailliard is impressive by several metrics. He's a well educated Northern transplant who worked in corporate management before being called to the ministry (as the saying goes). He was the founding pastor of Word Tabernacle Church in Rocky Mount, and has 20 years behind him as senior pastor of what became a mega-church, building a strong self-help community base that stretched over several North Carolina counties and up into Virginia. Word Tabernacle is considered one of the largest historically Black churches in the state. In 2013, it was named among 100 fastest growing churches in the whole country. From that base, in 2018 Pastor Gailliard ran for and won a seat in the NC House, was reelected in 2020, and then lost the seat in the Biden mid-term of 2022.

Gailliard's good deeds as a community leader were recognized and honored. He was named the 2016 Distinguished Citizen by the Rocky Mount Chamber of Commerce, and most recently was recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award from President Joe Biden. Gailliard is the founder Chair of The REACH Center, Inc, a member of the Board of Trustees, Elizabeth City State University as well as the Board of Preachers, Morehouse College, his alma mater, and he is the former Chairman of the Board for the North Carolina Legislative Black Caucus Foundation. He was also named to the Board of Visitors at NC Wesleyan College. "His academic background is a combo of theology, counseling, and business administration." (Source: Word Tabernacle)

His public speaking can be judged in this video of his keynote address to the NC Black Alliance, May 6, 2025:

LISA STONE BARNES, Republican incumbent

Barnes previously served a couple of terms as a Nash County commissioner and then moved up to the NC House (District 7) in the elections of 2018, defeating incumbent Democrat Bobbie Richardson in the rare blue-to-red flip that year of the Blue Wave. That upset made Barnes an instant rising star, so pretty instantly she announced she would run in a three-way Republican primary for an open Senate seat in 2020, and she won it easily. During that campaign, I called Barnes "something of a moderate" because she nowhere played the Trump card, putting his name all over her website like most lower-level Republican candidates did and still do, and she didn't parade the label "conservative." She seemed more interested in economic development for her rural district than in social hot-buttons (she had pushed the expansion of broadband in rural areas). 

Lisa Stone Barnes

Her business interests greatly define her legislative "moderation." "Barnes’ family runs a massive farming operation throughout multiple eastern North Carolina counties that’s one of the world’s largest sweet potato producers, in addition to growing other crops. It was taken over by a foreign bank last year after defaulting on $40 million in loans" (Doran).  In March 2024, the farm was fined $187,000 because of the heat-related death of a Mexican worker: "The Department of Labor said Barnes Farming violated three worker safety rules, including not providing breaks, not having adequate access to water and not having adequate emergency response procedures." (NCVoices). 

Though she was targeted by the state Democratic apparatus in 2024, she hung on for reelection. In 2026, she'll be dragging more baggage.

Dave's Redistricting calculates Senate District 11 as 50.0% D, 48.5% R, and 1.6% Other (which I know doesn't add up, but whattya gonna do?). For the 2024 race, the Civitas Partisan Index rated the district "Lean Republican," even with a D+1 rank (whattya gonna do?). The district no doubt does lean Republican, especially in a Republican year. Is 2026 going to be a Republican year? Not damn likely.

Trump's Cabinet Reflects Trump's Values -- Surfaces Are Everything

 

It’s a paradox: If you choose your cabinet based on looks, you are likely to end up with a cabinet that makes you look bad.

--Maureen Dowd

 

How did Kristi Noem get her job at Homeland Security, and how's that going? Dowd supplies the short answer: "Even good-looking dodos are still dodos." What qualified Noem for her job? Not just good long hair and pouting lips but blind loyalty to Jethro, and the imagination to do what she thinks Trump will applaud -- not to mention a history of snap judgements, like shooting a puppy. Elevated to high office and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Noem has rotely done the trumpian things: fired a bunch of people, froze a bunch of money, insulted the press, demonized foreign brown people.

But as an administrator over crucial Federal disaster agencies, for which no one ever swore she was remotely qualified, she's been a disaster. She doesn't know what she's doing, though she obviously thinks she's doing right, executing Trump's threat to shut down FEMA. She had already fired hundreds of emergency call center workers, so that almost two-thirds of all calls from the Texas flood zone went unanswered. She had also demanded tight control -- her personal authorization -- of any expenditure over $100,000. Can you not guess what happened next? Her personal authorization means FEMA’s deployment of rescue teams to the Texas hill country didn't get the orders until more than 72 hours after the flooding began.

The Trump Cabinet: Absolute loyalty plus a good Q rating* on TV, which means Fox News, which means MAGA's gonna cheer another dodo named Pete Hegseth, a 2nd-tier Fox host. Most recently he likely thought he was doing something Trump would applaud -- cut off arms shipment to Ukraine -- but he only managed to embarrass Trump in public. At a White House press conference, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked the president who authorized the pause on weapons shipments to Ukraine. Trump replied, defensively: “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?” Yikes.

And consider the blondie loyalty of Pam Bondi, who has played the MAGA crowd like a virtuoso choir director, but then she stepped on her weenie. She baited the conspiracy theory hook, promised a salivating MAGA a big Epstein scandal revelation, and then took it back: "There is no Epstein client list."  She's thereby and quite inadvertently reminded everyone of Trump's many connections to Epstein, and if there's one thing Trump wants everyone to forget, it's any connection he had to Epstein's life style and criminal activity. At a recent Cabinet meeting, with the press in the room, a reporter asked Bondi a followup Epstein question. But before Bondi could answer, Trump cut her off, turned on the reporter: “Are people still talking about this guy, this creep?” 

What's the old country saying? A hit dog will holler. "Are people still talking?" is a total self-own.

No end of Trump Cabinet brilliance. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins suggested people on Medicaid could replace deported immigrants as field hands. Some people think Robert Kennedy Jr. is beautiful like classic architecture, but he's leading us into a medical wilderness, starting with a spreading measles epidemic.

 * Q score is a measurement of the familiarity and appeal of a TV personality to a specific audience. 

Senator Tillis, Pecking at the Edges

 

Senator Thom Tillis, since his resignation announcement, has been talking in public, especially on CNN. An interview with Jake Tapper made solid news for North Carolina politicos. But while Tillis pecks effectively at the rough edges of trumpism, he avoids the elephant in the room: 

“I don’t have a problem with President Trump. I got a problem with some of the people I consider to be amateurs advising him. And I want to make it very clear to them: When you act like the president when he’s out of the room, you don’t impress me.”

Hmmm. Another Stephen Miller sighting?

But isn't it always the fault of advisors, in recent U.S. history? Some underling started Watergate. A whole bunch of underlings told LBJ he could win Vietnam. Etc. As though what's fundamentally wrong with this present administration is just the wayward underlings doing poor work or giving even poorer advice. About Hegseths’ recent failure to inform the White House before he authorized a pause on weapons shipments to Ukraine: “The whole idea of having a pause on Ukraine defensive arms, that’s just amateurish.” And in the same interview, he added: “With the passing of time, I think it’s clear Hegseth’s out of his depth as a manager of a large, complex organization.”

About passage of the BBB tax and spending cuts package that Trump signed into law last week -- without Tillis’s vote -- Tillis volunteered this political warning: “I told the president, I really do believe the Big Beautiful Bill could be his Obamacare. I think it’s politically just devastating.”

And Tillis said he stood on principle against any presidential nominee who "excuses" January 6th: “They’re not going to get confirmed in my remaining tenure in the US Senate.” 

Yeah, right. In the immediate aftermath of that threat, Tillis announced he'll "probably" vote to advance the nomination of Emil Bove, Trump’s former criminal defense attorney and unethical hit-man, picked for a lifetime judgeship on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Bove was instrumental in the presidential pardon for the Jan. 6th rioters.

Dan Osborn, "The Guy From the Shop Floor"

 

Dan Osborn's populist run against U.S. Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., in 2024 made national headlines for turning an expected safe race for Republicans into a potential upset. He attracted an extraordinary fundraising haul of $14 million for a federal candidate in Nebraska without direct ties to a major party, including some late money from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee once they saw his momentum.

--Nebraska Examiner

I discovered the independent candidacy of Dan Osborn back in May, and Michelle Goldberg reminded me of him this morning, with something titled, "How to Make Senate Republicans Pay For Their Awful Bill." Dan Osborn is looking to flip Pete Ricketts' Nebraska Senate seat from bright red Republican to shining purple left populism. 

Short Sketch: He's liberal on abortion and on the rights of organized labor -- yet he ran for U.S. Senate in '24 as a hard-nosed critic of both Democratic and Republican machines and said he agreed with Trump about the border and about confronting China. He's a believer in the 2nd Amendment but accepts safety limitations. He presented in 2024 as an irritable independent, a powerful emanation of working-class anger. A master machinist, so he knows how to work effectively with his hands, and he's got a head for union leadership. Before that he was a Navy man and a National Guardsman, all of which has made him a plain talker who radiates steel. 

Does he have a platform? My good Lord, yes. It's quite extensive. These are points that caught my attention:

Pete Ricketts 

He wants to ban billionaires from buying elections. The current senator, Pete Ricketts, is the billionaire eldest son of Joe Ricketts, founder of TD Ameritrade, and as a 2-term former governor of Nebraska, he's the boss hog. Osborn: "We have one man who's bought up every level of government in Nebraska. That's wrong. It doesn't matter whether it's George Soros or Pete Ricketts: spending millions to buy an election undermines this country." (Osborn has dubbed this contest, “The C.E.O. versus the guy from the shop floor."

Secure the border: "Legal immigration helped build this country and is critical to Nebraska’s economy. Illegal immigration creates a pool of cheap labor with no rights and is detrimental to every American worker."

He is maybe most passionate about "the right to repair," from which I learned that the basic human freedom of farmers and ranchers to repair their essential equipment has been seriously eroded by manufacturers, many of whom now restrict repair options, often requiring customers to use only their authorized service centers or to purchase new devices instead of repairing existing ones. Such lifetime repair and upkeep contracts have also run small-time auto shops out of business. Something needs to be done!

Profiteering off Senior Services: "Private equity buys out elder care facilities, saddles them with debt, forces them to sell off real estate holdings, and pockets the savings. Facilities are then forced to reduce staffing and services. Overwhelmingly, we see two outcomes of private equity buyouts: decline in quality of care, and increase in Medicare spending. [Therefore] we must: Block private equity firms from taking over healthcare firms providing covered services when such a takeover would put those being served at risk."

School vouchers: "Although sometimes well-intended, voucher systems weaken public schools and punish rural areas that lack private options."

Handouts to Big Pharma: "Taxpayers have sent Moderna $10 billion in COVID subsidies. The CEO of Moderna made $398 million in 2022. Moderna just more than quadrupled the price of the COVID vaccine. This is madness. Stop handing huge subsidies to super-profitable pharmaceutical companies. In the heat of the pandemic, Congress handed over tens of billions of dollars to Big Pharma. Some of this turned into the vaccine. Much of it turned into CEO pay. As Senator, I will never support handing huge pharmaceuticals a blank check."

Osborn issued a statement just yesterday reaffirming his independence from the Democratic Party, promising if elected to caucus with neither party. “I’ve been a registered independent from the time I could vote,” Osborn said, and I checked: It's true. His designation as Independent is not a recent or convenient smokescreen for some standard Libtard running disguised as a Libertarian in a heavily Republican state.

Democrats are often scared of jumping on a populist bandwagon, because of the anti-elitist vibe embedded in populism's understanding of the hidden wounds of class. But at least the Nebraska Democratic Party more than hinted support: “Breaking up the one-party stranglehold on our state is going to take an unlikely alliance of Democrats, Republicans and Independents coming together to fix a very broken Washington, D.C.”

ChatGPT Goes All Mealy-Mouthed Over Trump's Believability

 

Netanyahu handing over the letter he says he
wrote nominating Trump for Nobel Peace Prize

I asked ChatGPT this question:

Me: Was Trump really surprised being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize?

ChatGPT: Trump's surprise at being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize appears to be authentic and spontaneous based on coverage from the White House dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on July 7–8, 2025. Netanyahu hand-delivered the nomination letter during a private dinner at the White House. Trump’s reaction:

“Thank you very much! This I didn’t know -- wow, thank you very much…” thedailybeast.com+1nypost.com+1 He described the nomination as “particularly meaningful coming from Netanyahu” and expressed genuine appreciation:

“Coming from you in particular this is very meaningful” thedailybeast.com

Multiple news outlets note he seemed caught off guard, responding with clear surprise and gratitude.

Is this genuine emotion?

Given Trump’s well-documented affinity for formal recognition—as noted by his reverence for letters and symbolic gestures like personal notes (thetimes.co.uk+15washingtonpost.com+15washingtonpost.com+15)—his surprised and pleased reactions seem consistent with how he values public acknowledgment. It aligns with his past behavior: although he's been nominated several times before (e.g., by Pakistan in June 2025 and by Christian Tybring-Gjedde in 2018/2020) (foxnews.com+8en.wikipedia.org+8en.wikipedia.org+8), being nominated in person by Netanyahu added a personal and symbolic weight.

Bottom line: Yes—based on multiple credible reports—Trump was genuinely surprised in the moment and visibly appreciated the honor, especially coming directly from Netanyahu. The element of surprise matches what’s been reported....


Me (sarcastically): Yeah, right!

ChatGPT: Totally fair reaction — it does sound a little theatrical coming from Trump, who’s not exactly known for humility. While he probably didn’t know about this particular nomination ahead of time, some skepticism is warranted: Trump’s been nominated before, multiple times, and has frequently talked about deserving the Nobel. In 2020 he even complained that Obama got one “for nothing” and suggested he was owed one for brokering peace deals.

His surprised reaction might have been partially performative — Trump is highly image-conscious, and public moments like this are often stage-managed. It wouldn’t be shocking if his team had a sense it was coming, or even helped coordinate it with Netanyahu.

Still, the hand-delivery did seem to catch him slightly off guard — not the idea of a nomination, but maybe the timing and gesture.

So while his specific surprise may be real, the broader “aww shucks” humility act? Yeah, many would share your side-eye.

Is It Necessary To Spell Out G E S T A P O?

 

Oh, it's just a dozen or more heavily armed and armored military types in masks with no visible identification, marching up the sidewalk like they owned the joint. Who you gonna call? You got no one to call, so you start yelling. You pull out your phones and start filming. And so far, troops of ICE have retreated in the face of neighborhood opposition. But what happens when one of those masked agents of the State puts his rifle butt into someone's forehead, because he thinks that someone got too close to him? Or was too insulting? Or too loud? And that someone probably was -- protesting not just ICE's presence in the neighborhood but also its very existence as an insult to human evolution and to every moral value we ever learned from our elders. 

The scene in MacArthur Park two days ago.

My Gawd, people. Trump's Big Beastly Bullshit Bill increased the funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to $170 billion, making ICE the largest law enforcement agency in the U.S., "with a bigger budget than most of the world's militaries" (Newsweek). You can look forward to many more, only bigger raids in public spaces, a greater show of force, who knows what theatrical intimidation and of course a higher body count of detainees. Some say that the Trump administration will have at least 750,000 detainees confined within a year -- children, parents, longtime residents, even a scattering of naturalized citizens because they were suspicious.  But never worry. They'll be elegantly "housed" in dangerous remoteness -- like that demented alligator alcatraz (where people have already died).

Not that Donald Jethro Trump had a clue of the details in that thousand-page BBB law. No. We know he doesn't read. He gets Stephen Miller to translate his meanness on immigration into action, into blah blah blah legal language. That's why I think the above dawning reality is really "Stephen Miller's Gestapo," not Trump's Secret Police.

Stephen Miller. The Miller Perplex

Stephen Miller has his mitts all over every piece of government pertaining to who gets to live here. He has a real grudge against people he considers trash. Jason Zengerle's lengthy unraveling of the Stephen Miller Perplex retells the story of when Stephen Miller ran for student body president in a rich California suburban high school -- as the son of a well to do Jewish family (parents were firm liberals. And you could write paragraphs on the ancient rebellions of sons against the values of their fathers). According to Zengerle, Stephen demonized people he considered his brown servants. Direct quotation from Miller's high school campaign speech: “Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us?” Yes, Stephen Miller got his start in "politics" as a walking paradox, a Jewish white supremacist and obviously a perfect fit for Trump 2.0. In Zengerle's analysis, Stephen Miller is really in charge of Trump's Homeland Security. The confirmed secretary may be ole limberlips Kristi Noem, but she does what Stephen Miller tells her, and Miller told her that ICE needed to greatly increase the round up of the browns. Miller...

paid a visit to the Washington headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he berated officials for not deporting nearly enough immigrants. He told the officials that rather than develop target lists of gang members and violent criminals, they should just go to Home Depots, where day laborers gather to be hired, or to 7-Eleven convenience stores and arrest the undocumented immigrants they find there.

Just yesterday, 90 uniformed, masked, heavily armed ICE "troops," some actually on horseback for that extra dose of intimidation, marched into and across the famous MacArthur Park in L.A., "like Pickett's Charge," someone said, and you know how that worked out for Robert E. Lee. They moved as a threatening wave into the park and scared a bunch of playing kids. These storm troops were backed up by some 17 Humvees, four military cargo trucks, and two military ambulances. However (and praise the Lord!), the neighborhood wasn't standing for it, and like other neighborhoods have begun to do, they came out in loud and handkerchief-waving opposition. They followed the ICE, filming them with their phones. Which appeared to take a lot of air out of the military show of force. ICE apparently left without a single detainee. The whole show was just a little escalation of the whole gestapo itch.

When do you reckon they'll point those guns at the protesters?

During the '24 campaign,Trump reportedly once quipped in a meeting with operatives, "If it was up to [Stephen] Miller, the population of the United States would be only 100 million people and they’d all resemble Stephen Miller." Now that same guy has his hands on the biggest and best-funded strong-arm force in the world. Highly secretive. Puts the Stasi in the shade.

What will you do when they show up in your neighborhood?