Wildflowers I saw the other day:
Spambot of the day
I was wondering who made it:
We made the shirt your group chat already wrote about your dog.
And then there’s Wisconsin and Francesca Hong
Here we go again. A DSA far-leftist named Francesca Hong is running for the Democratic nomination for governor of Wisconsin.
Wisconsin is a purple state, and that’s a statewide office. So the Democrats are understandably nervous about her:
Most political observers assume Democratic insiders are trying to stop Francesca Hong because they fear she would lose a general election. Given Hong’s support for abolishing police, abolishing prisons, and other positions well to the left of most Wisconsin voters, many Democrats worry she could squander what they believe is a favorable political environment in 2026 while dragging down legislative candidates and jeopardizing hopes of a Democratic trifecta.
There is certainly some truth to that.
But the deeper fear has far less to do with November than it does with what happens afterward.
If Hong wins the Democratic primary, she instantly becomes the face of Wisconsin Democrats. Whether she wins or loses in November almost becomes secondary. She would emerge as the standard bearer for the Democratic Party, and an influential voice who can fundamentally re-shape Democrat politics in the state. …
Establishment Democrats see the direction their party is heading—both in Wisconsin and across the country. And many are increasingly fearful that Democratic Socialism is no longer a fringe movement, but the future of the Democratic Party. And they are terrified that they will lose their position of power in this new-look Socialist Party.
Yes, but I’m more worried that, as in New York, these DSA candidates will win elections. I suppose it’s likely that Wisconsin isn’t ready for Hong. But in a few years it may be.
The article goes on to discuss a host of more local races in Wisconsin in which ultra-leftists are challenging more moderate Democrats and even conventionally “progressive” candidates. It’s become very apparent that this DSA takeover attempt is an extremely well-organized national movement.
Here’s some background on Hong, who is from deep-blue Madison:
Hong was born on November 4, 1988, in Madison, Wisconsin, to Korean American immigrant parents
During the 2024 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Hong backed the Uncommitted National Movement to protest President Joe Biden’s policies towards the Gaza war, and drafted a letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Hong also joined the State Assembly’s Socialist Caucus in 2024. …
Hong has described herself as the “wild card” in the race, running as a progressive outsider. During her campaign, she was compared to fellow democratic socialist and then-mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in New York City. Hong has drawn inspiration from Mamdani’s mayoral campaign in running her own gubernatorial campaign.
Hong is the Democrats’ frontrunner in a recent poll, and she also leads the GOP frontrunner although her advantage is well within the margin of error and the number of undecided voters is large.
About Wisconsin’s history with socialist candidates:
Barry Burden, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek that Hong’s style, message and organization approach are working well in the primary, but her style of politics is “less tested in a general election environment.”
“Socialist and populist messages have had resonance in Wisconsin at various times, from the reforms of Robert La Follette a century ago, to several socialist mayors in Milwaukee, to a strong showing by both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the last decade,” he said. “There are more conventional Democratic candidates in the field who fare just fine in a general election but could also fail to fully rally the progressive base.”
Meet Chris Rabb, who will be the House member from the 3rd District of Pennsylvania
DSA member Chris Rabb will be representing the 3rd US House District, which is in Philadelphia. Why do I say he “will,” as though it’s already a fait accompli? After all, the election hasn’t happened yet. The reason is that Rabb is running unopposed; the GOP realizes it would be a waste of time and money to field a candidate there, it is such a deep deep blue area. In fact, it’s the bluest district in the entire House, according to this video.
You can see from the video that Rabb has a great deal of ambition for the DSA message, which he thinks can also resonate in districts that aren’t so deep blue:
Rabb’s story in the primary has been a familiar one. He beat out two Democrats who were not as radical as he and who had more name recognition. All three candidates were black and so I assume race had little to nothing to do with his win over his opponents:
Rabb, who ran an unapologetically progressive campaign, set himself apart from the initially crowded field of candidates by describing himself as the “anti-establishment” Democrat in the race.
His progressive stances – and allyship with leftist organizations, including the Democratic Socialists of America and Working Families Party – proved to be key to his winning the deep blue seat against a party leader in Sharif Street and a tough newcomer in Dr. Ala Stanford.
“A couple of months ago, I was on the precipice of withdrawing from this race,” Rabb said to supporters at his election watch party. “I was reminded that tough times pass, but tough people last.”
You can see, however, that Rabb didn’t get a majority, although he got a strong plurality.
Here’s a quote from Rabb for Independence Day:
Rabb is the Democrat nominee for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District who thought it was a good idea to actually denounce the Declaration of Independence ahead of America’s semiquincentennial.
“Those screeds that were very lofty but were notoriously catering to a performative aspect of collective genius that purposely erased indigenous and black peoples,” Rabb said at “America at 250 — Trump Fascism, Historical Erasure, and the Battle Over Truth.”
“It created distance from an empire to help very privileged people continue that privilege and ultimately institutionalize that through the U.S. Constitution many years later. But it certainly did not provide independence to indigenous and black peoples,” he claimed. “And we cannot talk about anything today without acknowledging that this is a nation born on stolen land & stolen labor.”
He hits every leftist note, master of the buzzword (“performative,” “privilege,” “stolen land”).
Rabb’s Wiki entry is interesting. In a familiar pattern, he is an Ivy League graduate (Yale in his case, with a Master’s in organizational dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania), and his father is both a doctor and a college professor. He is a descendent of many activist leaders in the black community:
Rabb was born in Chicago, to an ophthalmologist and professor father, Maurice Rabb Jr., and a politically active mother, Madeline Murphy Rabb. His maternal grandmother, Madeline Wheeler Murphy, was a Baltimore-based community activist, and his maternal grandfather, William H. Murphy Sr., was a judge in Baltimore. Rabb’s great-great-grandfather, John H. Murphy Sr., was born into slavery and founded the Baltimore Afro-American in 1892.
Rabb hasn’t gotten the same kind of publicity as some of the other DSA progressives. But it seems to me he could be a rising star in the Democratic Socialist movement.
How the new comment system will work – the idea is that there will be a minimum of disruption
You may not even notice the change. At least, that’s what my research indicates.
For previous commenters, as long as you use the name and email address you’ve used here right along, you should be grandfathered in and have no problem whatsoever.
New commenters will have their first comment held in moderation until I approve it. After that, it should be smooth sailing for them, too.
I probably will make the switchover some time this weekend. I’ll announce it at the time. Let me know through an email if you encounter any difficulties when it happens. No regular commenter should have any trouble with the transition, but you never know with these things.
Open thread 7/9/2026
The person who compiles this series of video interviews is excellent at what he does. The note he wrote for this video states that it went viral and that as a result the woman got gifts and cards from all over the world:
Platner says buh-bye
His fifteen minutes of fame is apparently up.
The Democrats must have made him an offer he couldn’t refuse – or a threat he couldn’t defy. Or both.
He argued the real threat was never the allegations themselves, but what the political establishment plans to do with them. Cut off his fundraising. Cut off his voter data. Starve the campaign of everything it needs simply to function. He made his read on their real preference painfully clear.
“They would rather see Susan Collins win than have me be the next senator from Maine,” he said.
No, I don’t think so. They would rather have a different candidate than you, one they think has a better chance of winning. They knew the GOP had the goods on you and was going to wait till after the point of no return, July 13, to reveal it. So they finessed the GOP and revealed it themselves in order to force you out. Believe me, they want to win. This isn’t about you.
He added, about his victory in the primary:
“We went toe-to-toe with one of the most entrenched political systems in the history of the world, and we won,” Platner said.
“We beat them on June 9th in overwhelming numbers.”
But to the best of my recollection, his main (Maine?) opponent, Janet Mills, had dropped out by then. His rise was also promoted by major backers such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, hardly outside of an “entrenched political system.”
Let’s see; what else?:
“And I just want to make it clear this is all false,” Platner said.
“The things that have been claimed did not happen; it’s not real.”
He described the past few days as an ordeal no regular person should have to survive, a normal guy suddenly thrust into a spotlight he says he never wanted. He accused the media and the political establishment of skipping the investigation entirely and jumping straight to a verdict.
“I learned about this through press inquiries with no time to truly respond, no time for investigations before a corporate media system and the political establishment got to act as judge, jury and executioner,” he said.
“Accusations are supposed to be the beginning of things, not the end.”
I don’t know whether he’s innocent or guilty, but I do know that apparently Politico saw emails in which his accuser made the Platner rape allegations to friends very close to the time the rape supposedly occurred. Back then, he was not a political figure at all, but merely her ex-boyfriend.
Now the Democrats get to do what they do best: undo the will of the people and replace one candidate with another, in the nick of time. I wonder what Biden might say to all of this.
Who might be the new nominee? Here’s a report on the process:
Earlier Wednesday evening, the state party said it had decided to hold a nominating convention to pick a replacement candidate and plans to “announce the full timeline,” as well as details and requirements for contenders. It promised transparency.
The possible candidates:
[Troy] Jackson, who was a Platner ally before calling on him to step aside Monday, swiftly launched his Senate bid after Platner suspended his campaign. …
A logger with long ties to organized labor, he’s quickly attracted attention from many of the oysterman’s progressive supporters. Our Revolution, a progressive organization founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), has already thrown its support behind Jackson.
But already, some votes from his 20-year history in the legislature are resurfacing, such as his 2009 state Senate vote against a bill to legalize same-sex marriage, giving Platner’s base a bit of pause. He later called that the “worst vote I ever took.” His closeness to Platner during the primary may also give pause to some Democrats as they choose their next nominee. …
[Dan] Kleban also announced his bid Wednesday. The 49-year-old founder of Maine Beer Company had dropped out of the Democratic Senate primary earlier this year and threw his weight behind establishment-backed Gov. Janet Mills. …
[Nirav] Shah, a former public health official, is “evaluating” whether he will mount a Senate bid, he told POLITICO Tuesday afternoon. But he was already positioning himself as a candidate before Platner’s announcement. …
Shah oversaw the state’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. He mounted his first run for public office earlier this year, finishing second in Maine’s gubernatorial primary. He said in an interview that he is “very, very much aligned” with Platner’s politics. …
[Shenna] Bellows, who also ran unsuccessfully for governor, has been fielding calls about a potential run, according to a person familiar with her campaign, granted anonymity to speak about private conversations. The person pointed to her ideological alignment with Platner on progressive issues and compelling biography — she grew up poor in rural Maine and flipped a GOP-held state Senate district — providing an early glimpse of part of her pitch if she decides to enter the race.
There are a bunch of others, most of whom are previous Platner supporters.
Roundup
(1) Judge Hannah Dugan is guilty as sin, but free as a bird (as Bill Ayers might say):
Former Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan won’t face any prison time for her conviction of obstructing federal immigration officials.
In April 2025, the FBI arrested Dugan after video caught her directing agents away from a suspect, an illegal alien, whom they wanted to arrest. Her help allowed him to evade arrest temporarily.
A jury convicted Dugan in December 2025.
At today’s sentencing, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman imposed a $5,000 fine on Dugan.
“I think this is a situation where an otherwise good person, upset by immigration policies in this country, made a bad decision in the moment,” Adelman said, according to The Associated Press.
The jury convicted her, but in this case the judge got to set the sentence and had a lot of leeway in doing so. And yet her violation made a mockery of the law; I guess the judge who sentence her wasn’t especially concerned with that aspect.
(2) The circle of political life:
On Wednesday, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) took to his official X account with a startling announcement; an investigation by Senator Grassley has uncovered that anti-Trump prosecutor Jack Smith and his team, in the course of investigating President Trump for alleged mishandling of classified documents, did in fact carry out precisely the infraction for which they were investigating the president: Mishandling of classified documents, and the possible compromising of national security.
Fancy that.
(3) Scott Jennings wonders why Democrats are bailing on Platner now. He doesn’t seem to have an answer. Jennings is a very very smart man, but I’m surprised that he – and many others – don’t seem to agree with me that it happened now because Platner was sinking in the polls.
The trend over time was clear: Platner’s lead over Collins in polls was getting smaller and smaller and she was even starting to lead. Collins’s opponents have a history of polling better than they deliver, and I’m pretty sure the internal polls were much worse even than the polls we see on the chart at the link. I strongly believe he was dumped for one reason only, as I’ve written before: they started to see him as a loser. That’s the only reason the Politico story about rape came out. It’s not the other way around – they weren’t reacting to the story, they were allowing it to go public.
(4) The Tyler Robinson preliminary hearing is happening in Utah. The evidence against him is overwhelming, and that’s been clear for a long time:
On the second day of testimony of the preliminary hearing, and after a battle by the defense attorneys claiming that it would be prejudicial to Robinson’s case, prosecutors were allowed to show video of him entering the Utah Valley University campus at least four times on the day of the shooting. Some of the video had never before been seen by the public.
And yet much of it had already been seen. The conspiracy theorists ignore that, knowing that their fans are ignorant. Or they just say – as Candace Owens has been busy saying – the videos and photos are of lookalikes dressed as Robinson in order to frame him.
Speaking of long time, is it not amazing that Charlie Kirk was killed less than a year ago? I was unsure enough of that that I had to check the date again, even though I pretty much knew it: September 10, 2025. It seems like he’s been gone for a very very long time, so much has happened since then.
(5) Nigel Farage has announced he’s resigning from Parliament:
“Today I will resign as a Member of Parliament for Clacton-on-Sea, thereby forcing a by-election, which will happen, I hope in short order,” he said in a press conference broadcast from the Reform UK YouTube channel.
“This will be a people vs. the establishment by-election. It’s a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment, to frankly tell them where to go, and that is why I will be putting my name forward to stand in this by-election,” he said. …
Farage’s resignation followed a series of scandals surrounding gifts he received from wealthy donors while out of office.
Farage denied any wrongdoing, stating: “Let me be absolutely clear. I have done nothing wrong. I have not broken the law in any way at all. I have not misused public money.”
An investigation into Farage’s conduct by Parliament’s Commissioner for Standards is ongoing.
Details at the link.
Will Platner stay or will he go?
Micky Kaus pointed out that Platner “has the leverage. All he has to do to screw the Dem party is… nothing.” And my RedState colleague Bonchie described the Left’s “nuclear levels of cope” over their rapey Nazi: “He’s a mentally disturbed do-nothing who works for his mom. He doesn’t care about the party. Why would he? And there is no mechanism to forcibly remove him.”
You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
Platner seems like the kind of guy who likes to throw his weight around, and not just with women. Right now he’s the nominee, although the Democrats would like to forget that inconvenient truth.
From Devon Murphy-Anderson, the Executive Director of the Maine Democratic Party:
“We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like,” she noted. “We have also reiterated that Graham Platner must drop out of this race so that Democrats in Maine can focus on defeating Susan Collins this November.”
No, neither Platner nor his “team” has a role in determining the next Democratic nominee from Maine for the US Senate. But he certainly as a role – a big one – in determining who is the present Democratic nominee from Maine for the US Senate, because at present he is that nominee and he can’t be forced out. Murphy-Anderson speaks of the “process” but acts as thought that process is that she will tell Platner what to do. But he’s not a party animal – that is, he’s not a Party animal. So he doesn’t need to do it – unless they make him an offer he doesn’t wish to refuse, whether it be money or status.
… I think there’s at least a decent possibility that he’s such a narcissist, so tremendously full of himself and arrogant, that he might even refuse to drop out at all.
However, Platner doesn’t actually hold all the cards here. The Democrats have one huge card – at least, as far as I can tell – which is the threat of prosecution for rape. I looked up the statute of limitations in Maine for the crime, and although the law is fairly complex in that it depends on certain elements of the crime, it’s pretty clear that – since the incident is alleged to have occurred in 2021 – there is plenty of time to prosecute.
However, because this case rests almost entirely on the testimony of the alleged victim, she would have to agree to testify. That could be a stumbling block.
Trump says talks with Iran are off …
… and that the Iranian leaders are “scum.”
But note the qualifiers such as “I think”:
There may be somewhat of a distinction between the people they’ve been talking to and the people in charge of decisions to attack, although Trump doesn’t say that in those remarks. But many of us have speculated that those two groups are not quite the same.
Trump also leaves some wiggle room for negotiations to continue. In other words, we still don’t know where this will go. Trump is highly motivated to keep oil prices down before the midterms, and the Iranians know it. That’s a huge factor in all of this. Note, also, that he’s not threatening to bomb them into the Stone Age (or even the Bronze Age).
Open thread 7/8/2026
Things heat up with Iran
There’s a new wave of US attacks on Iran, in retaliation for Iran’s recently firing on ships in the Strait:
The U.S. strikes are in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s demonstrated aggression was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire.
What’s more, there’s this:
President Trump is officially REVOKING the US license that allowed Iran to sell their oil, after the mullahs STRUCK vessels in the Strait of Hormuz — Reuters
The US says Iran’s actions WILL be met with consequences.
How does that get enforced? Does the US once again block Iranian ships from leaving the country and getting through the Stait?