Progressive Indiana Network: HoosLeft

HoosLeft This Week - July 19, 2026

Scott Aaron Rogers — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 18:01:17 GMT

SUMMARY:

On this week’s edition of HoosLeft This Week, Scott is joined by Fort Wayne Democratic House District 81 candidate Sharon Wight and first-time guest Allen Miller, Democratic candidate for House District 73, for a two-hour survey of a week that felt like a rerun of every bad week before it. The show opens on a cascade of ICE violence — a fatal shootings in Maine, a man hit by a truck while running from them in Florida, another death in a detention facility, and a GEO Group employee shooting a protester in Colorado — before moving to Pete Hegseth’s testosterone-testing “High-T Department of War” and the full collapse of the Iran MOU, with the naval blockade reimposed, nightly strikes on Iranian infrastructure, and American service members killed in Jordan. Congress blocked the NDAA over the war, 103 House Democrats voted to cut Israel aid, and Rubio launched campaigns to both dismantle the ICC and convene 60 nations around a left-wing terrorism threat the data doesn’t support. Canadian wildfire smoke blanketing much of the US, Trump’s prime-time election fraud speech, Mullin’s threats to state election administrators, and the Jay Clayton and Todd Blanche confirmation hearings round out the national block. The Indiana portion of the show covers the Chuck Goodrich/Gaylor Electric conflict of interest, the end of diversity contracting, SNAP enrollment down nearly 14% while the state sits on a $4 billion surplus, free school meals at risk for 650,000 Hoosier children, a third consecutive SUN Bucks opt-out, the Indianapolis data center moratorium and DC Blox approval, and a closing conversation on daylight saving time and the case for putting Indiana on permanent Central Standard Time.

Guest Info

Allen Miller: https://millerfor73.com/

Sharon Wight: https://www.electsharonwight.com/

IN DEPTH:

State Violence

Feds turn over evidence in Renee Good and Alex Pretti killings to Minnesota after months of delay (Politico)
- Federal prosecutors turned over long-withheld evidence — hard drives, body camera video, and Renee Good’s damaged SUV — to Minnesota investigators Monday, more than six months after the January killings of Good and Alex Pretti during immigration protests.
- The breakthrough appears linked to leverage: state prosecutors had offered to share their evidence in a separate case against ICE agent Christian Castro in the nonfatal shooting of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis only if the federal government reciprocated with the Good and Pretti evidence.
- AG Keith Ellison called the six-month delay “deeply troubling,” saying “it should never have taken this long” and expressing hope it signals “the beginning of a major course correction.” Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said she isn’t yet dropping her lawsuit against the administration.
- Pretti’s family’s lawyer noted federal officials still won’t publicly confirm any cooperation agreement exists: “No family should be required to beg federal authorities to do their job.”
- Meanwhile, Houston prosecutors say they face the identical stonewalling in a separate case — the DA there doesn’t even know the names of the ICE officers involved in last week’s killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, saying “the federal government has not invited us in.”
26-year-old Colombian man killed in Maine ICE shooting (Maine Public)
- A 26-year-old Colombian man, Joan Sebastian Durán Guerrero, was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Biddeford, Maine, Monday morning — and Sen. Angus King’s office says DHS Secretary Mullin initially told King the man was the intended target of an arrest warrant, then reversed hours later, confirming the victim was not the person named in the warrant.
- ICE’s official account: an “illegal alien” left a residence in a vehicle, agents attempted a stop, the vehicle tried to flee, and an officer “fearing for public safety” opened fire. No body cameras were present, according to King.
- Advocacy groups say the victim was actually authorized to work in the US and had been issued a Social Security number — directly contradicting DHS’s framing of him as someone who had been ordered to leave the country.
- Gov. Mills called the revelation that he wasn’t the intended target “even more disturbing and infuriating,” and roughly 200 people rallied in Biddeford within hours demanding ICE leave Maine. Vigils were planned in Biddeford and Portland that evening.
- Both of Maine’s senators — independent King and Republican Collins — are calling for a full, transparent investigation; DHS says its inspector general’s office in Boston has taken over, working with the FBI. The officer involved has been placed on leave, standard protocol for police-involved shootings.
Biddeford protests erupt after ICE shooting (Maine Public)
- Protests erupted at Mechanics Park in Biddeford within hours of the shooting, swelling from an impromptu gathering to over 100 people, then to hundreds more marching to Republican Sen. Susan Collins’s office chanting “ICE Out!”
- Rep. Chellie Pingree told the crowd her constituents want ICE defunded and dismantled: “They’re basically out of control.” Attorney General Aaron Frey confirmed the ICE officer will be placed on leave, with Biddeford, Saco, and Maine State Police assisting the investigation.
- One resident’s account captured the mood: “This happened a few hours ago, and there’s hundreds and hundreds of people who just sprang out of the frigging earth” — a city councilor calling the spontaneous turnout “the only thing that’s going to keep people safe right now.”
- Vigils were scheduled for Monday evening in both Biddeford and Portland, while local officials, including the mayor, called for a full and transparent investigation.
ICE agent who killed man in Biddeford identified as former Maine law enforcement officer (Portland Press Herald)
- The ICE agent who killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero has been identified as David Michael Brouillette, 37, of Manchester, Maine — confirmed by his ex-wife Ashley Brouillette, who says he called her admitting to the shooting and asking her to lie about his character.
- Per Ashley Brouillette, Brouillette claimed the shooting was justified because Durán Guerrero “tried to hit him with his car” — but she says the videos she’s seen don’t show that: “Nowhere in there does it show that this man charged at you with a car.” She described him as “unusually calm” discussing it.
- A separate AP report, citing Brouillette’s ex-wife, his 18-year-old daughter, and an estranged relative, found he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and ADD as a child, was initially rejected by military recruiters over those diagnoses, and was only admitted a year later after going off his medication.
- Ashley Brouillette also provided a voicemail from fall 2025 in which Brouillette tells her “you should have your f***ing throats cut” — she says she’d previously reported concerns about his mental health to his military superiors and wanted to go public because of that history.
- DHS has refused to confirm or deny his identity, with an ICE spokesperson calling any naming “doxxing” that puts officers “under constant threat from violent agitators” — even as multiple independent sources (a witness, coworkers at the Manchester Fire Department, and the crowdsourced ICE List database) converged on the same identification.
- Brouillette’s work history is scattered: volunteer firefighter positions in Manchester that ended after “several spats with department leadership,” a resignation from a Maine DHHS enforcement role after eight months, and various stretches as a corrections officer, VA police officer, and truck driver — with no criminal convictions found in a Maine background check.
Man fleeing immigration officers in Florida is struck and killed by tractor trailer (AP)
- A 28-year-old man fleeing ICE and Homeland Security Investigations agents near St. Augustine, Florida was struck and killed by a semi truck Tuesday while running across a busy road — the third death in a week tied to ICE encounters, following the Houston and Maine shootings.
- The article puts a running total on it: at least 10 deaths connected to encounters with immigration agents since Trump’s mass deportation campaign began last year. DHS confirmed the operation occurred but hasn’t disclosed what prompted it or the status of three other people in the vehicle.
- This fits an established pattern beyond shootings: a man in Southern California died last summer after being struck by an SUV while fleeing agents near a Home Depot; a Honduran gardener was killed by a pickup truck in Virginia in October during a similar foot-flight scenario.
- Mexico’s government said Tuesday it has asked US state attorneys general to review migrant deaths in ICE custody or during raids for possible criminal prosecution — an unusual diplomatic escalation from a foreign government into domestic law enforcement conduct.
Furious Trump overturns suspension of ICE traffic stops amid MAGA criticism (CNN)
- Trump was reportedly furious that Homeland Security paused most ICE traffic stops without telling him first — Mullin and Homan made the call unilaterally after the Houston and Maine shootings, and Trump only learned of it by watching news coverage framing it as him “weakening” enforcement.
- MAGA-aligned figures drove the reversal: Steve Bannon ally Mike Davis said on air, “You work for President Trump, you don’t work for Senate Democrats, you don’t work for Susan Collins... he needs to stop being a wimp” — directly targeting Mullin.
- The original pause specifically applied to ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations agents, barring them from initiating vehicle stops unless working with partner agencies to execute a criminal warrant on someone already in a vehicle — a real operational constraint that’s now been lifted.
- Crucially, CNN confirms neither Salgado Araujo nor Durán Guerrero — the men killed in Houston and Maine — was actually the target of the operations that killed them, undercutting the argument that traffic stops are simply targeting known criminals.
- DHS separately pledged to “rapidly” deploy body cameras nationwide in response to the shootings — a promise that has already been made and broken once before, after the Minneapolis killings in January.
Venezuelan man becomes 22nd person to die in ICE custody this year (Guardian)
- Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva, 45, died Monday while being transferred between Georgia ICE detention facilities — found “unresponsive” on a transport bus, with suspected cardiac arrest. He’s the 22nd person to die in ICE custody this year.
- His sister and advocacy groups say he went without necessary medication for an unnamed condition throughout his detention, despite family requests he be allowed to bring it — he reportedly called his sister from custody saying officials weren’t giving him what he needed. DHS disputes this, pointing to a line in its press release stating he “received medical care and was seen by medical professionals.”
- He was held at Irwin County Detention Center — a privately run facility with a documented history of abuse allegations, including a 2021 whistleblower complaint that led the Biden administration to terminate its ICE contract, and a 2022 Senate subcommittee finding that female detainees there were subjected to “excessive, invasive, and often unnecessary gynecological procedures.” The facility resumed ICE detentions last year.
- ICE reported 33 deaths in custody in 2025 — the highest total in over two decades — and deaths have continued climbing in 2026, prompting the UN human rights commissioner to call for “prompt, independent, impartial and effective investigations.”
Off-duty employee at Colorado ICE facility arrested for shooting protester (Guardian)
- An off-duty GEO Group employee, Brandon Booth, 42, shot and injured a woman Thursday outside the Aurora, Colorado ICE facility after protesters blocked employees’ vehicle entry — police say the woman and a friend had a verbal confrontation and photographed employee vehicles before Booth got out and fired a single shot as they walked away.
- Booth was arrested on probable cause of attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault, felony menacing, and unlawful carrying of a concealed weapon; GEO Group placed him on unpaid administrative leave. The victim’s injuries are non-life-threatening.
- GEO Group is a $4 billion private prison company with deep DHS ties — former GEO executive David Venturella was named acting ICE director in June, the same detention conglomerate whose Aurora facility is currently dealing with a tuberculosis outbreak that has sickened at least 12 detainees, which we covered earlier this week.
- Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain called it “a tragedy on all fronts,” pledging “an ethical, thorough, objective, and comprehensive review” while emphasizing “constitutional rights are a pivotal part of a just society – violence is not.”
Indiana Angle: Merrillville Council not ready to walk back opposition to potential ICE facility (IPM)
- Merrillville’s town council tabled — rather than granted or denied — Rokita’s demand to rescind their resolution opposing an ICE detention facility, voting to wait for his response to their explanation rather than immediately capitulating.
- Council member Shawn Pettit had moved to deny Rokita’s request outright, arguing “we don’t need somebody coming into town and telling us how to do economic development”; the tabling vote was a middle path proposed instead.
- Council member Keesha Hardaway pushed back hardest on Rokita directly: “This violates our First Amendment right on freedom of speech... he is trying to squelch the voices of the town of Merrillville, and I will not tolerate that.”
- The dispute may be moot regardless: Pettit noted the warehouse reportedly under consideration for the ICE facility has since been leased by private businesses, meaning federal officials may no longer be interested in the site at all.

Middle East

Hegseth Wants to Test Troops’ Testosterone Levels. It’s Absurd—and Dangerous. (Slate)
- Defense Secretary Hegseth announced service members over 30 will be tested annually for testosterone deficiency, with treatment (testosterone shots) offered to those who score low — part of what he’s branding “The High-T Department of War,” framed around “restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities” and keeping the military’s “leading edge of lethality.”
- Slate’s Fred Kaplan calls the policy “ill-informed on every level” scientifically: testosterone levels fluctuate throughout the day, and Harvard Medical School research says a single test showing abnormal levels “may actually be unrelated to this hormone” — there’s no clear consensus on what counts as “normal” in the first place.
- A major NIH study found testosterone correlates with muscle mass but not muscle strength — undermining Hegseth’s stated “lethality” rationale even on its own terms, since bigger muscles aren’t necessarily stronger ones.
- Real medical risk: the FDA added warnings last year that testosterone-boosting drugs increase risk of high blood pressure and blood clots, and an endocrinologist told Kaplan the injections can cause “aggressive behavior and mood swings” — a notable irony for a policy pitched around discipline and readiness.
- Kaplan’s sharpest point: testosterone has little bearing on how modern warfare actually functions — drone operators, AI programmers, and intelligence coordinators need “a knowledge of strategy and science,” which Kaplan notes Hegseth has “discouraged, even barred, U.S. officers from pursuing.”
US attacks Iran as Tehran retaliates against UAE tankers in Strait of Hormuz and Bahrain (AP)
- The US struck Iranian coastal and military sites early Tuesday, hours after Trump announced the US is “reinstating” a naval blockade on Iran — reversing the blockade lift that had been part of the interim deal.
- Iran retaliated by striking two UAE-linked tankers with cruise missiles, killing one mariner and wounding eight others, while also attacking Bahrain — home to the US Navy’s 5th Fleet — which sounded missile alert sirens twice. The UAE has threatened to retaliate directly against Iran, raising the risk that it gets pulled into direct fighting.
- In a major reversal of longstanding US policy, Trump announced the US will now charge ships a toll — 20% of cargo value — for safe passage through the strait, calling it reimbursement for “protection.” This abandons the freedom-of-navigation principle the US Navy has defended since the Barbary Wars.
- Trump told a conservative radio host the interim deal “was built to test” Iran and that Iran “didn’t honor the test” — framing the collapse as anticipated rather than a diplomatic failure.
- Oil prices jumped to a one-month high above $84/barrel — still below the war’s $120 peak, but the reversal in US policy plus the tanker attack threatens further disruption. The blockade resumes at midnight Wednesday Dubai time.
Yemen’s Houthis strike Saudi Arabia’s Abha airport with missiles and drones in a sharp escalation (AP)
- The Iran-backed Houthis struck Saudi Arabia’s Abha International Airport with missiles and drones, retaliating for Saudi airstrikes that hit Sanaa’s airport earlier the same day. No casualties reported on either side, but it’s the sharpest escalation between the two since a Saudi-led coalition last targeted Houthi areas years ago.
- The trigger: Saudi/coalition forces struck Sanaa airport’s runway specifically to prevent an Iranian plane from landing — Yemen’s ruling council said it had denied Iran’s request to fly a Houthi delegation home from Khamenei’s funeral because Iran wanted to bypass normal civil aviation protocols. The Houthis said the plane was diverted and landed elsewhere instead.
- A Houthi military spokesman warned airlines to avoid Saudi airspace entirely “until the blockade on Sanaa International Airport is lifted,” while Yemen’s government closed all the country’s airports “until further notice.”
- The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting, with officials warning “Yemen and the wider region cannot afford another cycle of escalation” and urging all sides back to UN-mediated talks — this breaks a relative calm that’s held since a 2022 UN-brokered truce.
Wednesday Latest: U.S. disables ship that allegedly tried to sail to Kharg Island as feud over Strait of Hormuz escalates (CBS)
- The interim ceasefire has fully collapsed: the US launched its fourth and fifth consecutive nights of strikes, reimposed the naval blockade on Iranian ports, and disabled a tanker that tried to reach Kharg Island — the first such action since the blockade resumed Tuesday.
- Trump escalated his rhetoric significantly, telling Fox News that next week “gets really bad” for Iran with plans to hit power plants and bridges “unless they get to the table and negotiate” — a threat experts say could constitute a war crime if it targets civilian infrastructure rather than military use.
- Casualties are mounting on the Iranian side: the death toll has reportedly grown to 35, with over 300 wounded and 72 hospitalized, following strikes on coastal cities and a military barracks. Iran continues retaliating against US allies — Jordan, Bahrain, and Kuwait all reported intercepting Iranian missiles and drones.
- Vance offered a notably candid defense of the administration’s diplomacy on Joe Rogan’s podcast, describing internal Iranian tension between “hardliners” and “pragmatists” and accusing well-funded critics of deliberately trying to “tank the negotiation” — a rare acknowledgment of friction both within Iran’s government and among US critics of the deal.
- Amid the chaos, a rare piece of good news: a US-Iran dual citizen, Dena Karari, was released after being barred from leaving Iran for over a year on unproven espionage allegations — she’d suffered a heart attack on July 8 while still trapped there.
US hits more bridges in Iran in an expansion of its airstrike campaign (AP)
- The US struck bridges in Iran’s Hormozgan province overnight, killing at least seven — part of Trump’s expanded campaign now explicitly targeting infrastructure like bridges and power stations to pressure Iran on the Strait of Hormuz. This is the sixth consecutive night of US strikes.
- Iran retaliated by firing missiles at Qatar — a key mediator trying to end the war — forcing the country to sound shelter warnings twice; falling debris wounded a child. Iran also struck Bahrain and Kuwait over the bridge strikes.
- The toll is mounting: Iranian officials say US strikes have killed more than 35 people and wounded over 300, with new casualties from Friday’s attacks not yet tallied.
- Trump’s primetime claim that “we are likewise winning big in Iran” sits awkwardly against Lloyd’s List data showing weekly cargo shipments through the strait dropped almost a quarter at the start of the month — before this latest surge in attacks — with some shippers now transiting with location devices off or simply refusing to move at all.
- US forces have redirected three vessels attempting to run the blockade, disabled one that didn’t comply, and boarded another to “ensure full compliance” — concrete evidence the blockade is being actively enforced, not just threatened.
Friday: US and Iran escalate strikes across Mideast; bridges and a water plant hit (AP)
- The US struck bridges, energy sites, and collapsed a surveillance tower at Iran’s Chabahar port Friday — the seventh consecutive night of strikes — while Iran retaliated against Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait, where a power and water desalination plant was damaged. About 90% of Kuwait’s drinking water comes from desalination.
- Casualties are climbing on both sides: Iranian officials say at least 46 people have been killed and over 400 wounded in recent strikes; the US acknowledged 13 additional service members injured since Monday, bringing the war total to 14 US troops killed and 427 wounded since it began in February.
- Iran acknowledged for the first time that US strikes have hit its power infrastructure, with the Energy Ministry asking southern provinces to conserve electricity amid extreme heat — though it didn’t specify what was struck.
- A separate strike in northern Iraq’s Kurdish region killed at least nine people, apparently targeting Iranian Kurdish dissident group Komala — Iran hasn’t claimed it but has targeted the group before.
- The strait remains the core of the conflict: crossings fell to a three-week low of just eight vessels Thursday, oil climbed above $86/barrel, and Iran continues insisting on exclusive control and fee-charging rights over what the world has long treated as an international waterway.
Senate Dems block defense bill in protest of Iran war (Politico)
- Senate Democrats blocked the $1.15 trillion NDAA defense policy bill Tuesday, with every Democrat present voting no in a 50-46 procedural vote that fell short of the 60 needed to advance — an unusually rare move that hasn’t happened since Republicans blocked defense legislation over “don’t ask, don’t tell” in 2010.
- Schumer tied the blockade directly to Iran: “The NDAA cannot become a permission slip for that recklessness... Trump does not get to drag the American people deeper into a war he cannot explain and does not know how to end, and then demand Congress look the other way.”
- The bill’s fate was foreshadowed weeks earlier — only 4 of 13 Democrats on the Armed Services Committee supported it in committee markup, and all four (including ranking member Jack Reed) flipped to “no” on the floor, giving Democrats unanimous opposition.
- Republicans call it playing politics with national security, touting a 3.6% troop pay raise, drone technology investment, and shipbuilding funds — but they’re privately pessimistic about the path forward, with Sen. Rounds saying Democrats need to make “a reasonable offer” to break the logjam, though “we haven’t heard what they want.”
- This adds to broader dysfunction heading into an October government funding deadline — separately, House GOP hard-liners already tanked their own competing NDAA version two weeks ago, though party leaders may have a deal to revive it.
Senate Stalls NDAA With Major Israel Plan Critics Call ‘Treason’ (Military.com)
- Buried inside the NDAA that Senate Democrats blocked over Iran war concerns is Section 1217, the “Israel FUTURES Act” — a provision requiring the Pentagon to establish permanent joint US-Israel defense research and technology integration, including AI, quantum computing, directed-energy weapons, and the “Golden Dome” missile defense system.
- Critics — spanning an unusual coalition from former NCTC director Joe Kent to online commenters using words like “treason” — argue the provision would embed Israeli companies and personnel inside sensitive Pentagon programs, citing the 2020 Iron Dome dispute (Israel refused to share source code needed for full US integration) and the Jonathan Pollard espionage case as cautionary precedent.
- A striking detail: the Defense Intelligence Agency reportedly raised Israel’s counterintelligence threat rating to “critical” — its highest level — with a senior US official describing Israeli intelligence collection against top American officials as “unhinged.”
- The vote itself doesn’t tell you who supports Section 1217 specifically — Sen. Gillibrand co-sponsored the underlying Israel FUTURES legislation but still voted against advancing the NDAA, meaning the 50-46 procedural vote reflects Iran war objections broadly, not a referendum on the Israel provision.
- The House hasn’t passed its version either — a procedural rule failed 198-224 on June 30 — and if both chambers eventually pass competing bills, negotiators would have to reconcile the House’s Section 219 with the Senate’s Section 1217, meaning the provision could still be stripped, altered, or preserved before any final NDAA.
In seismic shift, more than 100 House Democrats vote to end Israel aid (Politico)
- Wednesday’s House vote saw 103 of 211 voting Democrats (plus 10 “present” votes) back an amendment to cut $3.3 billion in Israel aid — a dramatic jump from just 37 Democrats who supported a similar effort two years ago. It still failed 314-104 due to near-unanimous Republican opposition.
- The vote split Democratic leadership publicly: Whip Katherine Clark and even Nancy Pelosi backed the amendment, while Minority Leader Jeffries opposed it, calling it poorly constructed and potentially harmful to Gaza humanitarian aid — though Jeffries also acknowledged “a meaningful change in direction is needed” in US-Israel policy.
- Support came from a genuinely broad ideological range — not just progressives like Rep. Casar, but also hawkish Rep. Seth Moulton (challenging a progressive senator from the right), campaign-arm leader Rep. Underwood, and leadership member Rep. Neguse — suggesting this isn’t purely a left-flank phenomenon.
- Jeffries managed the internal party rift by holding two private caucus meetings and ultimately telling members to “vote their conscience,” a notable departure from typical leadership whipping on Israel-related votes.
- Rep. Gottheimer, a pro-Israel Democrat, called the vote count “a seismic shift” and “devastating,” while Casar framed it as ending “an unaccountable blank check” for Netanyahu — both sides agreeing on the vote’s historic significance even as they disagree on what it means.
Israeli ministers announce plans for new illegal settlements in Gaza and West Bank (Guardian)
- Israel’s defense and finance ministers announced plans for three military “Nahal” outposts in northern Gaza and $318 million in new West Bank settlement funding — a pattern advocacy groups say is a “reckless pre-election sprint” ahead of October 27 elections, with bulldozers already working on at least seven settlements meant to be populated before polling day.
- Israel’s deputy chief of staff confirmed the military now controls 65% of Gaza — far beyond the 53% agreed under Trump’s ceasefire — and called it “victory,” citing over 70,000 Palestinians killed. That figure includes more than 21,000 children (over 1,000 under age one), 10,000+ women under 60, and 5,000+ elderly — all implicitly labeled “terrorists” in the general’s framing, which the IDF declined to directly address when asked.
- The West Bank commander, Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, publicly praised violent settler outposts — illegal even under Israeli law — as security “partners,” a stance that has prompted dozens of former Israeli political and military leaders, including two former prime ministers, to threaten legal action against their own government.
- The UN human rights office for Palestine released a report this week stating flatly: “Settler violence is state violence,” describing how Israel uses settlers to advance annexation while ensuring systematic impunity for violence.

Rubio vows to ‘dismantle’ International Criminal Court (CNN)
- Rubio announced a “whole-of-government campaign” to “dismantle” the International Criminal Court, urging allied nations to withdraw from it and cut financial support — with State Department officials threatening travel bans, visa revocations, and sanctions against countries that don’t comply.
- The pressure specifically targets countries that “partner with US law enforcement, host a US military presence, or benefit from the broader US security umbrella,” with officials warning those relying on US assistance while remaining ICC members “are likely to come under increased scrutiny.”
- Rubio’s WSJ op-ed characterized the ICC as run by “a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments” — rhetoric accompanying his rejection of calls to investigate alleged US war crimes tied to El Salvador deportations, deadly boat strikes on alleged narco-traffickers, and the Iran war.
- DAWN’s executive director pushed back on Rubio’s framing of their investigation request, telling CNN: “It is not the ICC that Rubio is dismantling brick by brick — but the rules-based international order that grew out of the ashes of World War II.”
- This escalates a campaign that began during Trump’s first term over Afghanistan war crimes investigations — the current administration has already imposed sanctions on ICC officials investigating both the US and Israel.
Human rights groups sue over Trump administration’s sanctions on ICC for investigations into Israel (AP)
- Human rights groups DAWN and Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide sued the Trump administration Wednesday, arguing sanctions imposed on the ICC over its Israel investigations have illegally forced them to self-censor their own advocacy work.
- The sanctions stem from a 2024 ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu and his former defense minister over alleged Gaza war crimes — Trump’s executive order responded by threatening “tangible and significant consequences” for anyone connected to the court’s “transgressions,” and the US has since sanctioned Palestinian rights groups, ICC judges and staff, and UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese.
- DAWN’s director Omar Shakir put it bluntly: “The government is violating the constitutional rights of American citizens in order to shield officials of a foreign government who have committed a genocide.” The lawsuit says DAWN has halted ICC submissions, stopped sharing evidence with sanctioned NGOs, and cut off engagement with Albanese entirely to avoid prosecution risk.
- The stakes described in the lawsuit are severe: violating the sanctions could mean prison time and major fines for anything characterized as providing a “service” to a sanctioned party — a term the plaintiffs call “extraordinarily capacious,” reaching almost any act that “confers a benefit.”
- This directly ties to Rubio’s WSJ op-ed pledging to “dismantle the ICC — brick by brick” — Rubio argues the court’s “overreach” could subject Border Patrol agents, prosecutors, and Marines to prosecution, framing ICC jurisdiction as an existential threat to US sovereignty.
Historical Context: How the John Birch Society radicalized the American Right (Niskanan)
- The Birch Society’s “Get US Out of the UN” campaign was rooted in the belief that international bodies exist to subordinate American sovereignty to a hostile global conspiracy — Dallek notes Birchers “rejected the United Nations, NATO, all international institutions, engagement” and saw US allies as “overrun with communists.” That’s structurally identical to Rubio’s argument this week that ICC jurisdiction “would mean the death of the U.S. as a sovereign and independent nation” and that accepting it means surrendering “control of our national destiny.”
- The specific mechanism differs — Birchers organized grassroots letter-writing and local chapters to pressure politicians; the current administration is using state power directly, sanctioning ICC judges, prosecutors, and even US advocacy groups like DAWN under threat of prison time. But the underlying claim is the same lineage: that international law and institutions are illegitimate impositions on American sovereignty rather than agreements the US voluntarily joined or a body it has interacted with since Nuremberg.
- Worth noting the throughline Dallek draws in the interview: mainstream conservatives of the Buckley/Reagan era were “interventionist,” not isolationist — they wanted the US engaged in shaping global institutions, not withdrawing from them. Today’s version scrambles that old alignment: the administration is simultaneously hyper-interventionist militarily (Iran) while treating international legal accountability as an existential threat — a fusion Birchers themselves never quite achieved, since their isolationism cut against military intervention too.
Rubio convenes countries on left-wing political violence (NPR)
- Rubio convened officials from over 60 countries — mostly European and Latin American — to address what he calls a rising threat of “left-wing” political terrorism, a talking point Republicans are prioritizing ahead of the midterms.
- The data doesn’t support the framing: a CSIS report found left-wing terrorism incidents technically surpassed right-wing incidents as of July 2025 for the first time in 30 years — but only because right-wing incidents dropped dramatically (from an average of 22.7/year 2016-2024 down to just 1 by mid-2025), while left-wing incidents rose modestly (to 5). The report’s own authors warn right-wing violence could easily return to elevated levels and that both should be taken seriously.
- Stephen Miller escalated the rhetoric sharply, framing the perceived threat in war-footing terms: “If your civilization is your home, you must defend it with the same passion and force as if an enemy intruder is inside your own house.”
- The administration is already acting on this framework: it designated four European antifa groups as foreign terrorist organizations in November, and Rubio announced Thursday a new policy giving the State Department broad authority to deny visas to anyone deemed to have supported, funded, recruited for, or logistically aided such groups.
- Republicans have repeatedly “conflated democratic socialism — which often centers on universal healthcare, higher taxes on the wealthy and stricter corporate regulation — with communism,” intensifying since Mamdani’s mayoral win and his allies’ primary victories in New York last month.

Wildfires

More Canadian wildfire smoke shrouds US midwest, mid-Atlantic and north-east (Guardian)
- Canadian wildfire smoke is affecting about 109 million Americans across the Midwest, mid-Atlantic, and Northeast — Chicago hit a “hazardous” air quality index of 361, with Baltimore, DC, Philadelphia, and Cleveland all in “very unhealthy” or worse territory.
- The smoke originates largely from roughly 194 out-of-control fires in Canada, including one 787,802-acre blaze near Ontario’s Wabakimi park — smoke plumes are expected to keep drifting east, potentially reaching Europe.
- The World Cup final in East Rutherford, NJ on Sunday is being watched closely: an incoming storm system could either clear the air or drag more smoke down to ground level depending on timing, with organizers “monitoring” conditions ahead of the 3pm kickoff.
- A 2025 Carnegie Mellon study estimated wildfire smoke caused $200 billion in health damages and 20,000 premature deaths in 2017 alone — useful context for the scale of harm beyond the visible haze.
Canada wildfire smoke leads to air quality alerts for Sunday, Monday (IndyStar)
- Indianapolis issued Knozone Action Days for Sunday and Monday due to Canadian wildfire smoke, while IDEM issued Air Quality Action Days for Saturday through Monday across northern and central Indiana — with heavy smoke lingering longest in the north due to a stationary weather front.
- The Canadian Climate Institute ties the severity directly to climate change: Canada is warming twice as fast as the global average, extending fire seasons and intensifying blazes in its boreal forests — while NASA separately confirms human-caused climate change has increased fire weather risk in the western US as well.
Indiana Sen. Jim Banks says U.S. should sanction Canada over wildfire smoke (WNDU)
- Sen. Jim Banks is calling for sanctions against Canada over recurring wildfire smoke, telling reporters “it’s time to sanction Canada, hold them accountable” and demanding Canada pay Americans’ healthcare costs tied to the smoke.
- Trump echoed the sentiment on Truth Social, accusing Canada of “willful negligence” in forest management — a claim that sidesteps climate science.
Moreno to Introduce Bill to Hold Canada Responsible for Wildfire Smoke (Firehouse)
- Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) will introduce the “CANADA FIRE Act” July 20, which would sanction Canadian officials, freeze their assets, revoke visas, and impose tariffs over wildfire smoke — the bill even directs the president to determine within 30 days whether Canada is at fault, triggering mandatory sanctions if so.
- Scientists directly contradict the bill’s premise: University of Waterloo’s Rebecca Saari says “climate change has increased wildfire activity in the U.S. and Canada,” and University of Alberta fire researcher Jen Beverly told the BBC that Canada’s boreal forests inherently produce hard-to-control fires that climate change is making more frequent — not something better government management could have prevented.
- Fire scientist Mike Flannigan put it bluntly: until governments address climate change itself, the smoke will keep coming — a direct rebuttal to the bill’s premise that this is a matter of Canadian “failed leadership” or “incompetence,” as Moreno’s statement claims.
- Canadian PM Mark Carney turned the criticism back on the US, noting Canada is investing in clean energy while the US has “obstructed” it, particularly wind power: “Climate change is the responsibility of everyone, truly everyone, including the United States.”

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Election Security

Trump Makes Outlandish Claims About Election Results in Address (NYT)
- Trump’s prime-time address made sweeping, unsubstantiated claims that US elections have been “rigged and stolen,” citing newly declassified documents — but the actual documents released by the White House, per the Times’s live fact-checking, don’t support his claims and in several cases directly undercut them.
- On Venezuela: Trump claimed the documents show a “specific plot” to “digitally rig” elections with methods “that could not be detected.” The actual CIA analysis says Venezuela had “some capability” to manipulate its own elections but explicitly found it had no ability to affect elections outside Venezuela — the opposite of what Trump claimed.
- On Michigan: Trump touted a Muskegon voter registration investigation as new evidence of fraud — but it’s been public since 2020, no fraudulent registrations ever resulted in an actual ballot being cast, and the FBI closed the investigation in September 2025, finding no criminal violation or national security threat.
- The speech doubled as a pressure campaign for the SAVE America Act — Trump wants Congress to pass his voter ID/citizenship verification bill, which remains stalled in the Senate because Thune says the votes simply aren’t there to break a filibuster.
- Georgia’s senators pre-butted the speech aggressively: Ossoff called Trump “the world’s most famous sore loser” and warned that delegitimizing Georgia’s 2020 results would be “declaring Georgia voters illegitimate”; Warnock called him “a liar, a cheater and a fraud.” Notably, Senate Majority Leader Thune also distanced himself, calling 2020 “a closed issue” and saying Republicans are focused on 2026, not relitigating Trump’s grievance.
- TV coverage split sharply along ideological lines: Fox and Newsmax aired the speech live unedited, but even Fox notably hedged afterward — Sean Hannity called Trump’s claims “pretty remarkable” without endorsing them, and correspondent Aishah Hasnie said on-air the network “is not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president’s statements and claims at this time,” a notable distancing from a network that paid $787 million to settle a defamation suit over its 2020 election coverage. ABC, CNN, and NBC declined to carry the speech live at all, opting instead for post-speech fact-checking segments.
Mullin pushes states to comply with election demands, echoing Trump’s claims about midterm risks (AP)
- DHS Secretary Mullin threatened states with lost funding, investigations, fines, or prison time if they don’t comply with Trump’s election demands — but experts say the threats are likely hollow, since courts have repeatedly ruled the federal government can’t legally compel states to hand over voter data.
- Mullin repeated Trump’s unsubstantiated claim of 250,000 noncitizen voters found across California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania — based on DHS’s use of public data that election experts say is too incomplete and outdated to reliably determine citizenship status. Election officials in the named states said they’ll review the findings but noted noncitizen voting is exceedingly rare, backed by research.
- Newsom’s response was blunt: “California has free, fair, and secure elections and we will fight for them. Try us.” Nevada’s Secretary of State Aguilar said his office has already done “significant work” to keep voter rolls clean independent of federal involvement.
- The legal record is stark: David Becker of the Center for Election Innovation and Research says 15 courts — including six Trump-appointed judges — have already confirmed the federal government cannot legally demand states’ sensitive voter data, calling Mullin’s threats “illegal.”
- The irony under the surface: Mullin pledged updated cybersecurity resources for election officials within 30 days, but Trump’s administration has already gutted CISA’s election security operation — placing over a dozen election-focused staffers on leave, cutting $10 million from related cybersecurity initiatives, and leaving the agency without a Senate-confirmed director. Aguilar’s reaction: “Actions speak louder than words, and in their case, it’s all been talk.”
Now We Know the Road to Emergency Rule (Hartmann Report)
- Hartmann’s central prediction: if Democrats appear to be winning in November, Trump will invoke Thursday’s election-fraud speech as pretext, declare a state of emergency, deploy ICE and a National Guard “Rapid Reaction Force,” and frame resulting protests as attacks by “left-wing communist radical domestic terrorists” — a scenario explicitly speculative, not reported fact.
- His argument for why this time differs from January 6: in 2020, Trump’s own Attorney General, FBI Director, DNI, Joint Chiefs Chairman, DHS Secretary, and National Guard chief would have refused an illegal order — this time, Hartmann argues, those positions are filled with loyalists like Blanche, Miller, and Homan who wouldn’t refuse.
- Hartmann draws directly on this week’s Rubio-Mullin coverage as supporting evidence — the designation of leftist groups as terrorist organizations, the SAVE program pressure campaign, and Thursday’s speech all fit his framework of pretext-building.
- His practical argument isn’t really about Trump — it’s about ordinary people in unremarkable positions (National Guard officers, county clerks, poll workers) who comply with unlawful orders under pressure. He draws the comparison to Nazi Germany, arguing the country “didn’t fall to a majority” but to widespread small compliances.
- His concrete recommendations for listeners: meet local election officials now, ask sheriffs on the record whether they answer to the county or to Washington, identify local election lawyers, and build relationships before a crisis — arguing that people who’ve already decided what they’ll do behave differently than those improvising under pressure.

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Confirmation Hearings

Trump’s intelligence nominee Jay Clayton clashes with Democrats over 2020 election (AP)
- Jay Clayton, Trump’s nominee to lead national intelligence, repeatedly declined during his confirmation hearing to directly say Biden won the 2020 election, instead saying only that the results were “certified” — frustrating Democrats including Sen. Ossoff, who asked the question multiple times before Clayton said “I’m not going to get into this with you.”
- Sen. Mark Warner, the intelligence committee’s top Democrat who had previously praised Clayton’s nomination, called himself “bitterly disappointed” after the hearing; Schumer called Clayton’s performance “abysmal” and said it makes Democratic votes less likely.
- Clayton also declined to say whether former intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard’s visit to a Georgia election office during an FBI search was appropriate, initially claiming he wasn’t aware of it, then appearing to backtrack — Warner said it “strains credibility” that he hadn’t known.
- Clayton, currently the Manhattan US Attorney, faced questions about his office’s subpoenas of four NYT journalists over Air Force One security reporting — he wouldn’t discuss details or confirm White House involvement, saying only he’s “confident in procedures we have in place to protect freedom of press.”
- The confirmation has real legislative stakes: it could unlock a stalled bipartisan renewal of FISA Section 702 surveillance authority, which expired in June — though Trump has said he won’t sign any FISA renewal unless Congress also passes his voter citizenship verification bill, which lacks the votes to pass the Senate.
Takeaways from Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing for attorney general (NPR)
- Blanche, currently acting AG, faced skepticism from both parties over the “anti-weaponization fund” — a $1.776 billion fund tied to settling Trump’s IRS lawsuit. He’s declared it dead, but a federal judge blasted the underlying settlement Monday, and Sen. Cornyn established that Trump technically hasn’t agreed in writing to kill it, meaning it remains an enforceable contract Trump’s lawyers could try to invoke later.
- Blanche’s own words underscored Democratic concerns about his independence — when asked if he and Trump are friends, he said “I’m his lawyer — was his lawyer. And now I’m the deputy attorney general,” referencing his prior role as Trump’s personal defense attorney in criminal cases. Sen. Booker said this “casts a shadow over any ideas of independence.”
- The Epstein files remain a bipartisan sore spot: Blanche claimed the administration has been “extraordinarily transparent,” but Sen. Durbin countered that it took an act of Congress to force disclosure at all, and Blanche took responsibility for repeated redaction failures that exposed victims’ identities.
- Durbin pushed Blanche to personally meet with 10 Epstein victims within 30 days; Blanche wouldn’t commit, saying they could meet with a staffer instead — a claim Booker called “utter nonsense.”
- Republican support isn’t guaranteed either — Sen. Tillis had been hesitant beforehand but ended his questioning telling Blanche “you’ve done a great job today” after Blanche agreed the anti-weaponization fund should be codified out of existence by Congress.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche Commits To Ending Abortion Pills By Mail (HuffPost)
- Blanche committed to Sen. Katie Britt that DOJ will “prioritize” restricting mail-order abortion pills, saying “I very much commit our resources to stopping this” — despite mifepristone’s two-decade record of FDA-approved safety.
- ACLU’s Deirdre Schifeling said Blanche “demonstrated that if confirmed... he will be content to go along with anti-abortion extremists’ plan to restrict medication abortion nationwide,” noting he repeatedly entertained “dangerous misinformation” and “fringe legal theories” from senators without pushing back.
- The DOJ’s ongoing lawsuit against the FDA seeking to block mifepristone by mail remains unresolved — when pressed on it, Blanche repeatedly deferred to the FDA’s separate safety review, avoiding a direct commitment on the litigation itself.

Epstein survivors urge Senate to reject Blanche as attorney general (The Hill)
- Epstein survivors and advocacy group World Without Exploitation are publicly urging the Senate to reject Blanche’s confirmation, citing the DOJ’s release of files that exposed survivors’ names, phone numbers, and home addresses while many alleged abusers’ names remained redacted.
- Virginia Giuffre’s brother and sister-in-law appeared in the group’s video campaign holding her photo, saying “our family’s safety was put at risk” by the DOJ’s handling of the disclosure — Giuffre died by suicide last year.
- The group also alleges millions of Epstein-related DOJ files remain unreleased, and claims the government has failed to pursue individuals allegedly complicit in Epstein’s crimes, “shielding them from greater accountability.”
- Blanche has tried to distance himself from the controversy, telling Fox News in April that the Epstein files “should not be a part of anything going forward” and framing the document release as a resolved chapter — a characterization directly at odds with the survivors’ ongoing public campaign against his confirmation.
Blanche meets Epstein survivors after Tillis demand (Reuters)
- Blanche met with Epstein survivors Thursday only after Sen. Thom Tillis — one of two Republicans whose votes he can’t afford to lose on Judiciary — publicly conditioned his support on that meeting happening.
- Survivor Dani Bensky, who’d testified before the committee that same day, called the meeting insufficient: “He danced around his wording, repeatedly interrupted us and could not commit to anything that would demonstrate good faith or begin to restore trust.” She said he offered no credible plan for accountability beyond Epstein and Maxwell themselves.
- Survivors say they’d been requesting meetings with Blanche for months with no response — undercutting any framing of this as a proactive gesture rather than a vote-securing maneuver forced by Tillis’s ultimatum.
- The anti-weaponization fund remains the other lingering problem: Sen. Cornyn told Reuters Wednesday he’s still undecided because it’s unclear the fund has actually been killed — Blanche has said it’s “dead” but continues declining to put that in writing, leaving the underlying contract enforceable.

Epstein

Former Obama counsel ‘not completely truthful’ in Epstein testimony, Democrats say (Guardian)
- Democrats emerged from Kathryn Ruemmler’s closed-door testimony calling her account not credible — Rep. Robert Garcia, top Democrat on Oversight: “It is difficult to see how she’s being completely truthful in there.” He noted she wasn’t under oath, unlike her prior sworn testimony obligations.
- Her own emails undercut her “casual acquaintance” framing: she called Epstein “Uncle Jeffrey” and “sweetie,” accepted luxury gifts, was listed as a backup executor of his will, and in 2015 wrote him that “getting you some peace with respect to all of this legal shit is important to me” — years after his 2008 conviction.
- Comer’s sharpest criticism: her communications show her trying “to rehabilitate his image after he was convicted of solicitation of a minor,” not simply representing a shared client as she claims.
- Despite announcing her Goldman Sachs resignation in February, reports emerged in June that CEO David Solomon asked her to stay on as an adviser — a decision Sen. Warren and Rep. Krishnamoorthi are now formally questioning, asking the bank what Ruemmler had disclosed about her relationship with Epstein before joining the bank.
- Ruemmler’s own closing framing was notably self-exculpatory: she called Epstein “a masterful liar” who “used me... to legitimize his standing” — recasting herself as one of his victims of deception rather than a willing beneficiary of the relationship.
Epstein Associate Leon Black Agrees to Testify in Congressional Probe (NOTUS)
- Leon Black deposition scheduled for Thursday this week has been moved to September 3. Last month, he showed up for a voluntary interview but refused to hand over nondisclosure agreements or answer key questions, prompting bipartisan frustration from the committee, which then subpoenaed the co-founder and former CEO of Apollo Global Management. He must also turn over the NDAs by the end of next week.
- Comer’s central question remains unanswered: whether Epstein was directly involved in drafting or funding NDAs paid to women. Black has claimed no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes, only awareness of his 2008 conviction — a claim lawmakers clearly aren’t taking at face value given the subpoena.
Alan Dershowitz cancels on House Oversight ahead of planned Epstein interview (Politico)
- Alan Dershowitz, who helped craft Epstein’s controversial 2008 plea deal, backed out of his scheduled Monday interview with House Oversight — his lawyers told the committee he wouldn’t appear, and the panel is now trying to reschedule.
- Dershowitz’s role has long drawn scrutiny: critics say his work securing that lenient plea deal allowed Epstein to continue abusing victims for years before his 2019 arrest and death in custody.
- This adds to a growing witness list: former JPMorgan/Barclays executive Jes Staley is set to testify July 23, and Leon Black — as we just covered — is now scheduled for a sworn deposition September 3.

AI-Data Centers

Anthropic has a counter to OpenAI’s ‘reverse federalism’ play (Politico)
- Anthropic is pursuing what amounts to a regulatory arms race across states — rather than pushing the same AI safety bill everywhere like OpenAI, it’s endorsing progressively stronger laws in each new state (California, then New York, Illinois, now Massachusetts), each one exceeding the last.
- The strategic split has a name: OpenAI’s lobbyist Chris Lehane calls his company’s approach “reverse federalism” — getting states to adopt similar rules to build a de facto national standard by consensus. Anthropic’s Cesar Fernandez explicitly rejects that framing, saying “we’re looking for legislation that meaningfully raises the bar on safety,” not uniformity.
- Anthropic’s Massachusetts-backed proposal is notably aggressive: it would require leading AI companies to hire independent evaluators assessing catastrophic risks like bioweapon development assistance, with enforcement power given to the state attorney general — which Anthropic calls the strongest state AI safety proposal in the country.
- The article ties this to Anthropic’s own Claude Mythos model, which the company found during testing could exploit security flaws in every major computer operating system — triggering the export controls covered in our product info that were later lifted.
- Both companies are now spending heavily in state political campaigns through dueling super PACs, with Anthropic additionally cutting direct checks to California legislators aligned with its safety views — Fernandez says the company isn’t coordinating with employees who separately donate, but acknowledged those employees “work at Anthropic because they’re concerned about the future of AI.”
Councilors advance temporary data center moratorium that Hogsett backs (IndyStar)
- The Indianapolis City-County Council’s Metropolitan and Economic Development Committee voted 10-3 to advance a moratorium on new data center approvals — all Democrats in favor, three Republicans opposed over the lack of a formal definition of “data center,” which Lewis says will be added before the full council vote August 10.
- Mayor Hogsett publicly backed the pause Monday night, ending months of avoiding direct comment on the issue — his statement came minutes after a resident publicly challenged him to stop “hiding behind the veil” of calling it a land-use issue for others to decide.
- DMD Director Megan Vukusich also endorsed the pause, saying her department has spent over a year trying to craft zoning rules and has been forced to evaluate data center proposals case-by-case in the absence of specific regulations — calling DMD “a target caught up in an issue discussed nationally, but with no decision-making power.”
- The moratorium could run through December 31, 2027, giving the city time to study data center size limits, height, environmental impact, generator testing, and e-waste disposal — though Lewis said the actual pause could end up shorter.
- If it passes, Marion County would join 19 other Indiana counties that have already paused or banned new data centers — over 30 residents rallied outside the meeting chanting “Pause today, protect tomorrow,” backed by the Citizens Action Coalition, which has sponsored billboards calling data centers the state’s “number one threat to utility affordability, reliability and environmental sustainability.”
‘You’re poisoning our community’: Irvington data center is approved (IndyStar)
- The MDC approved the DC BLOX Irvington data center 6-1 despite months of organized opposition — the meeting erupted into chaos immediately after the vote, with residents shouting expletives and one yelling “You’re poisoning our community!”
- The moratorium the council advanced earlier this week won’t apply retroactively — this project, along with the earlier-approved Martindale-Brightwood and Decatur Township centers, sails through untouched, while the city debates rules that arrive too late to matter here.
- Local council members split along the district line running through the site: Democrat Andy Nielsen (Irvington) opposed it, citing a survey showing over 80% of his constituents against it; Republican Michael-Paul Hart supported it for the tax revenue — roughly $30 million over 10 years under abatement — despite being booed repeatedly during his remarks.
- DC BLOX’s attorney touted closed-loop and waterless cooling systems, claiming the facility would use less water than a single restaurant — worth scrutinizing given what we learned from the Cheyenne story last week about what “closed-loop” actually means in practice and what maintenance discharges these systems can still generate.
- A same-day complication elsewhere: DMD Director Megan Vukusich publicly opposed a separate $56 million tax incentive package for the Metrobloks data center, urging IEDC to withdraw it and cautioning against rushing decisions while the moratorium process is still underway — a notable inconsistency, since her own department’s land-use recommendation helped clear the way for DC BLOX just hours earlier.

State Contracts

Indiana commerce secretary to continue leading major electric contractor (ICC)
- Newly installed Commerce Secretary Chuck Goodrich will keep his job as CEO of Gaylor Electric, one of the nation’s largest non-union electrical contractors, while simultaneously serving as commerce secretary — taking just a $1 state salary while working full time in both roles.
- Goodrich said the firm may continue to compete for state economic development incentives even while he leads the state agency that administers them: “If Gaylor is developing jobs in high demand, they will submit just like everybody else.”
- Gaylor already has active contracts with the state — signed in 2019 — promising millions in investment and over 100 jobs in exchange for tax credits, and the company specifically builds large-scale data centers, an industry facing growing local backlash across Indiana.
- Goodrich donated $25,000 to Braun’s 2024 campaign; Braun praised his business background, saying he’s “signed the front side of a paycheck.” Goodrich previously chaired the non-union National Associated Builders and Contractors group that backed Indiana’s 2012 right-to-work law.
Who bankrolled Trump’s redistricting revenge effort? We now have a clue (IndyStar)
- Gaylor Electric — CEO Chuck Goodrich’s company, now led by Indiana’s new commerce secretary — was the largest individual/business donor to the American Leadership PAC, giving $300,000 less than a month before May’s primary to help fund Trump’s redistricting retaliation campaign against Indiana Republicans who opposed mid-decade redistricting.
- Braun’s own political group, Hoosiers for Opportunity, Prosperity and Enterprise, gave $750,000 — more than the $500,000 previously reported — while Reps. Houchin, Yakym, and Messmer each contributed $75,000 from campaign funds. The largest donor overall was Trump-aligned Securing American Greatness at $2.5 million.
- The spending worked: five of seven Trump-targeted incumbent senators lost their primaries in May, plus an additional Trump-endorsed challenger won an open seat — a total of $13 million in ad spending statewide, per AdImpact.
- The timeline is notable: Goodrich donated in May, then was appointed commerce secretary weeks later — a sequence worth noting given Goodrich’s $25,000 direct donation to Braun’s 2024 campaign and his continued role as Gaylor CEO while overseeing the very state economic development apparatus his company can now compete for incentives through.
Indiana to end race, gender preferences in state contracts (ICC)
- Braun ended race- and sex-based contracting preferences in Indiana’s 40-year-old diversity business program, based on a Rokita legal opinion citing the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions Supreme Court ruling — but left veteran-owned business preferences intact.
- Democrats call the move an executive overreach: Rep. DeLaney said “we now have an imperial governor,” and Rep. Gore argued “the Attorney General does not invalidate statutes. The Governor does not repeal laws” — since the underlying statute was never repealed by the legislature.
- Sen. Yoder’s characterization of the new “merit-based” system as a “VIP entrance for the wealthy” is the through-line to the Goodrich story — the state is dismantling programs designed to offset historic exclusion from capital and professional networks while simultaneously installing a sitting corporate CEO to run economic development with minimal separation from his own business interests.
- Rep. Harris, chair of the Black Legislative Caucus, noted the diversity program exists precisely because “race-neutral” policies failed for decades — a rebuttal that lands differently once you see how “merit” is actually being applied elsewhere in the administration.

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State Funding Priorities

Indiana families dropped from SNAP as state and federal changes collide (WFYI)
- Indiana SNAP enrollment dropped nearly 14% statewide from April 2025 to April 2026 -– driven by both federal cuts and new state restrictions taking effect simultaneously. Marion County saw an even steeper 17.5% decline.
- Trump’s budget law cut federal SNAP funding by $186 billion, the largest cut in the program’s history, while Indiana’s own Senate Enrolled Act 1 narrowed eligibility further — ending expanded categorical eligibility (expected to remove about 3,112 households) and lowering the asset limit from $5,000 to $3,000 for households without an elderly or disabled member.
- The new state law also requires applicants to report the citizenship status of every household member, even those not applying for benefits, with unverifiable statuses reported to federal immigration authorities — a policy likely to discourage mixed-status families from applying at all.
- A local public health official’s blunt warning: “Neither local government nor charitable food assistance is going to be able to offset the reduction in benefits.” Congress also eliminated funding for SNAP-Ed, the nutrition education program that helped recipients stretch limited grocery budgets.
Cuts to SNAP, Medicaid could impact free school meals at high-poverty schools (ICC)
- Falling SNAP and Medicaid enrollment threatens a domino effect on free school meals: schools qualify for the Community Eligibility Provision — automatic free breakfast/lunch for all students, no paperwork — when at least 25% of students are enrolled in SNAP or similar programs. As enrollment drops, schools risk losing that status.
- The Center for American Progress identifies 643,773 Indiana students whose automatic free/reduced meal eligibility could be jeopardized, citing the same SNAP decline we covered in the previous article — a 15% drop from January 2025 to April 2026, or 92,000 fewer Hoosiers receiving benefits — plus 174,000 Hoosier children no longer covered by Medicaid in that same window.
- The financial stakes if a school loses CEP status: families must individually apply and prove income under $42,900 (family of four) for free meals or $61,050 for reduced-price — those who don’t qualify pay full price, an estimated extra $1,080/year for a typical two-child Hoosier family.
- Nearly 2,000 Indiana K-12 schools are eligible or near-eligible for CEP already, but only 400,000 of 1 million eligible Hoosier children currently get automatic free meals — some schools already opted out over concerns federal reimbursement doesn’t cover full meal costs, meaning the erosion described here compounds an existing gap.
Indiana not to participate in SUN Bucks in 2027 (FOX59)
- Indiana will opt out of the federal SUN Bucks (Summer EBT) program for a third consecutive year in 2027 — the program provides $120 per student for summer groceries when kids lose access to free school meals, and it kept over 650,000 Indiana children fed when the state participated in 2024.
- FSSA’s stated rationale shifted this year: last December, the agency cited cost — an estimated $5-7 million needed to administer the program — but this week’s statement instead says the program is “no longer necessary” because “our economy now stronger” and families have access to “well-established summer meal options.”
- Advocates dispute that framing directly — Mark Lynch of Indy Hunger Network noted Indiana is one of very few states to opt out, and emphasized SUN Bucks lets parents choose their own family’s food rather than requiring them to physically transport kids to feeding sites.
- Rep. André Carson introduced the Summer Meals for Kids Act last month, which would force state participation in SUN Bucks nationally — his framing: “We can find the money when we need the money. Our kids should not pay the price of adults fighting over politics.”
- Indianapolis mother Dee Johnson, who received the benefit in 2024, described its value plainly: “It’s a small thing that they can do to help people. Why wouldn’t you want to help people?”
Indiana’s state budget reserves jump 60% in past year to $4B (ICC)
- Indiana’s cash reserves jumped 60% to nearly $4 billion, driven by tax collections growing 6.8% when only 0.8% growth had been projected — Braun is framing this as fiscal strength giving the state “flexibility.”
- Democrats want action now rather than waiting for January’s session — Rep. Porter argued the state shouldn’t sit on a growing surplus while asking “what about the students? What about those parents that need childcare vouchers to go to work?” — pointing to K-12 schools and childcare programs he says have been squeezed under the current budget.
- The reserves are projected to hit $5.3 billion next year — about 23% of state spending, well above the 10-15% range Republicans have historically targeted, undercutting the argument that this level of reserve-hoarding is fiscally necessary rather than a political choice.
- Even the Republican Senate Appropriations chair struck a cautious note, citing a $500+ million road funding shortfall, a Department of Child Services budget overrun, and unfunded teacher pension liabilities as reasons to hold back — worth noting since Braun’s gas tax holiday is a direct contributor to that road funding shortfall.
- The surplus won’t trigger Indiana’s automatic taxpayer refund law, which only activates if reserves exceed 12.5% of spending in odd-numbered years — meaning ordinary Hoosiers won’t see a rebate check despite the state sitting on record reserves, even as Porter and other Democrats say basic services remain pinched.
Indiana purchases pricey hospitality suite for historic DC race (ICC)
- The Indiana Economic Development Corp. is spending $200,000 (up to $250,000 with add-ons) on a hospitality suite for the Freedom 250 Grand Prix, an IndyCar street race circling the National Mall August 22-23 as part of the 250th anniversary celebrations.
- The suite includes 30 tickets and all-inclusive food and beverage, with IEDC able to buy up to 10 more tickets at $5,000 each for a maximum of 40 attendees.
- The state’s framing leans on Indiana’s genuine motorsports credentials: the industry generates $2.75 billion annually and supports over 11,000 jobs statewide, with most IndyCar teams headquartered in Indianapolis — giving Braun’s administration a plausible economic development rationale for the spend, distinct from pure political optics.

…and Finally This Week

House passes Trump-backed bill that would make daylight saving time permanent (NBC)
- The House passed the Sunshine Protection Act 308-117 Tuesday, which would make daylight saving time permanent nationwide — locking clocks to the time currently observed March-November unless a state opts out before the law takes effect.
- Trump has publicly pushed for passage, calling the biannual clock change “ridiculous” and framing it as a political win for Republicans, while sponsor Rep. Vern Buchanan carried the bill through the House.
- The bill’s fate in the Senate looks shaky: Sen. Tom Cotton blocked a fast-track version last year over safety concerns — permanent DST means sunrise as late as 9am in parts of the country, creating dark morning commutes — and a Senate aide says Cotton will again ask Majority Leader Thune not to bring it to a vote. Thune himself was noncommittal, noting a prior permanent-time mandate “was tried once before and repealed.”
- This mirrors a failed 1970s precedent: Nixon signed a similar permanent DST law during the oil crisis, but it was repealed within a year after public backlash over dark early mornings — a history several House members cited as reason for skepticism the Senate will act differently this time.
- Rep. Rich McCormick, an ER doctor, offered a health rationale: “You get more depression, you get out of joint” from the twice-yearly time shifts — while 19 states have already passed contingent legislation ready to adopt permanent DST if Congress acts.
What permanent daylight saving time would look like in your state (The Hill)
- If permanent daylight saving time passes, Indianapolis would see the latest sunrise of winter shift from 8:06am to 9:06am, while the earliest sunset would move from 5:20pm to 6:20pm — meaning darker mornings but lighter evenings.
- That 9am winter sunrise puts Indianapolis among the more extreme cases nationally — comparable to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and worth flagging given the article’s core safety concern: permanent DST tried in the 1970s led to multiple children being struck by vehicles walking to school in pre-dawn darkness, including eight deaths in Florida, before the law was repealed within a year.
- Indiana is notably absent from the 19 states that have already passed contingent legislation to adopt permanent DST if Congress acts (a list that includes several Midwest neighbors like Minnesota) — meaning Indiana would default to observing whatever Congress mandates unless the state legislature acts separately.
- Bottom line for Hoosiers: nothing changes right away even if the Senate eventually passes it — but if it does take effect, Indianapolis parents would be sending kids to school before sunrise for a significant stretch of winter, the same safety dynamic that killed the original 1970s experiment.

HoosLeft Podcast #134 - Disability Pride Month w/ Sharon Wight & Tabitha Zeigler

Scott Aaron Rogers — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 10:03:13 GMT

Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net

HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us

Sharon Wight: https://www.electsharonwight.com/

Tabitha Zeigler: https://tabithazeigler.com/

SUMMARY:

In this Disability Pride Month conversation, Scott sits down with two longstanding friends of the show: Sharon Wight, statehouse candidate for HD-81, communication scholar, and disability advocate from Fort Wayne; and Tabitha Zeigler, former congressional candidate, autism advocate, and mother of three autistic children. What begins as a personal conversation about how each guest came to disability advocacy — Sharon through a deaf Girl Scout leader, a master’s degree in sensory processing, and her own invisible disabilities; Tabitha through COVID babies, three autism level 3 diagnoses, and a battery of tests that put herself on the spectrum — quickly becomes a reckoning with the Trump administration’s active dismantling of disability rights. From the June DOJ opinion reversing the Olmstead integration mandate to Indiana’s ABA therapy cuts to the Medicaid work requirements hitting disabled parents, the conversation traces a through-line from Indiana’s own eugenics history (mandatory sterilization laws on the books from 1907 to 1974) to the present-day push back toward institutionalization — and closes with a call for mutual aid, bolder Democratic candidates, and the recognition that building a society where no one is expendable is the most pro-life position available.

WHAT’S INSIDE:

00:00:23 Introduction: Disability Pride Month, the ADA, and Tonight’s Guests

- Scott opens with Disability Pride Month, which marks the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act signed July 26, 1990, and credits the Gang of 19 protest in Denver in July 1978 as foundational groundwork for the ADA.

- He notes that while conservative attacks on Black civil rights and the Voting Rights Act have drawn attention, the Trump administration’s dismantling of disability protections has gotten less.

- Guests: Sharon Wight (HD-81 candidate, Fort Wayne) and Tabitha Zeigler (former congressional candidate, autism advocate) — both with disability advocacy at the center of their political work.

00:02:20 Support the Show

- HoosLeft and Progressive Indiana Network don’t paywall content or charge candidates — support at progressiveindiana.net ($5/month or $50/year) keeps it going.

- Social handles: @hoosleft.us on Bluesky, Instagram, and Threads; @HoosLeft on Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube; PIN is @PINIndiana on Bluesky and TikTok.

00:03:38 Welcome and Scott’s Personal Connection to Disability Advocacy

- Scott thanks both guests for stepping in on short notice after a scheduled interview with Greg Ballard fell through.

- He shares that disability advocacy is personal to him: his son was born disabled, and the ADA allowed him to live a full life — go to school, graduate, do things with other kids. Scott gets briefly emotional.

00:05:18 Sharon Wight: From Girl Scouts to the Inclusion Institute

- Sharon’s path started with a deaf Girl Scout leader in elementary school and continued when she took American Sign Language in college.

- In 2020, with extra time at home, she began analyzing her own sensory issues — which led to pursuing a master’s degree focused on sensory processing disorder.

- She got involved with Fort Wayne’s Inclusion Institute, a part of The League — Northeast Indiana’s Center for Independent Living — that trains people as disability advocates. She also lives by the motto that anyone can become disabled at any time — something she experienced personally after major surgeries in 2022 and a ruptured disc that had her using a cane through most of 2023 into 2024.

00:07:52 Sharon Wight: Invisible Disabilities, the Cane, and “You Don’t Look Disabled”

- Sharon has two invisible disabilities: a blood clotting disorder and fibromyalgia. There are days she simply cannot get up and do what she wants to do.

- She also developed aphasia after COVID in 2020 — a communication disorder that causes difficulty finding words, deeply distressing for someone who studies communication.

- Managing her conditions requires monitoring stress, sleep, and triggers to avoid flare-ups during a political campaign. She’s heard “you look fine” even from friends in the disabled community — invisible disabilities require visual proof before many people believe them.

00:08:03 Tabitha Zeigler: COVID Babies, Autism Levels, and Getting Herself Tested

- Tabitha had children during COVID and initially wondered if developmental delays were mask-related — kids weren’t seeing mouths and couldn’t develop speech normally. Turns out that wasn’t it.

- Her first child was diagnosed with global developmental delay and then autism level 3. Once she knew one child had autism, she learned siblings are statistically more likely to have it as well; both twins also came back autism level 3. (The autism “levels of support”)

- Watching her kids, she recognized behaviors from her own childhood. She got tested: on a 10-point scale where 5 and above indicated autism, she scored an 8. Her response: “So I’m super autistic then.” She leans into things with humor — though right now there’s a lot that isn’t funny.

00:11:13 Scott and Tabitha: Are We All on the Spectrum? Why That Framing Is Problematic

- Scott admits he’s said “we’re all on it” and been told that’s problematic — he asks Tabitha to explain why.

- Tabitha uses the gay analogy: saying you’re “a little autistic” is like saying you were “gay in college.” You either are or you aren’t — it’s not something you switch off. Autism has triggers and presentations, but you can’t be a little autistic.

- Her advice: ask questions, lean in, have meaningful conversations with the disability community. Very few people will be offended; most will be flattered you care enough to ask.

00:13:40 Scott: Invisible Disabilities, MS, and the Disability Pride Flag

- Scott describes the Disability Pride Flag that’s serving as his background: five stripes on black. The black represents mourning for those who’ve been victims of neglect, abuse, ableism, and misunderstanding.

- The five stripes: red (physical disabilities — what most people picture); gold (neurodiversity — Tabitha’s territory); white (invisible and undiagnosed disabilities, including fibromyalgia); blue (emotional and psychiatric disabilities — mental illness, anxiety, depression); green (sensory disabilities — deafness, blindness, auditory processing disorder, like Sharon’s Girl Scout leader).

- He notes that about 80% of all disability is invisible, per Tabitha’s figure — and that the things we build for the disability community (ramps, curb cuts, closed captions) benefit everyone.

00:15:08 Sharon Wight: Blood Clotting Disorder, Fibromyalgia, COVID Aphasia, and PIN as Accessibility

- Sharon elaborates on her invisible disabilities and their day-to-day management, and notes that Progressive Indiana Network provides an accessibility service — even on days when she can’t canvass or be in public, she can talk, which is her strongest mode of engagement.

- She connects the broader principle: whether it’s someone saying they’re gay, disabled, or anything else you can’t outwardly see — don’t question it. Lean into learning what’s important to them rather than arguing with their identity.

00:20:04 Tabitha Zeigler: Autism Is an Invisible Disability — and Why She Started Putting Her Kids Online

- Tabitha adds that autism is itself an invisible disability — her children look “normal,” and kids without visible markers get far less grace from the public. Neurodivergent kids are called bad kids; Sharon notes they were called “emotional.”

- Tabitha had resisted putting her children on social media, but recently decided the current political climate made it important to show what autism actually looks like — to give people better vocabulary to be allies.

00:21:57 Scott: The Community Is Larger Than People Think — and Under Sustained Attack

- Scott frames the political stakes: the disability community is much larger than people realize, and the solidarity of that community and its allies is urgently needed right now.

- Progress since the Gang of 19 and the ADA has been real — wheelchair ramps, bus ramps, bathroom handles, closed captioning, curb cuts — but the current administration is actively rolling it back.

- Sharon adds the key point: becoming disabled is the only protected class anyone can join at any time. Everyone ages into it eventually. Attacking the disability community is attacking our future selves.

00:24:44 Scott: The DOJ Opinion, Olmstead, and the Push Back Toward Institutionalization

- In June, the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion arguing that neither the ADA nor Section 504 requires states to provide community-based care instead of institutionalization.

- Principal deputy attorney general Lanora Pettit’s opinion admits this reading is out of step with the common understanding of the Olmstead Supreme Court decision, which mandated home and community-based care.

- States like Texas are arguing the integration mandate itself is unconstitutional. Scott: this administration is trying to send people back into institutional settings.

00:25:51 Tabitha Zeigler: Indiana’s Eugenics History, 1907 to 1974

- Tabitha reads from her notes: by the late 1800s, Indiana authorities believed criminality, mental problems, and poverty were hereditary. In 1907, Governor J. Frank Hanly approved the nation’s first state eugenics law, making sterilization mandatory for certain individuals in state custody.

- Sterilizations halted in 1909 under Governor Thomas R. Marshall; the Indiana Supreme Court struck down the 1907 law in 1921 as a violation of 14th Amendment due process. A 1927 law reinstated sterilization with court appeals. Approximately 2,500 people in state custody were sterilized total.

- Governor Otis Bowen repealed all sterilization laws in 1974; related restrictive marriage laws were repealed in 1977. Tabitha’s point: institutionalization leads to sterilization. The Nazis got their eugenics playbook from the United States.

00:28:18 Scott: Eugenics, Elon Musk, and the Unhoused Community

- Scott connects Tabitha’s history to the present: Elon Musk talking about repopulating the species with his seed is the same thinking, dressed up differently. The irony: Musk is likely on the spectrum himself.

- He connects the “bad kids” language Sharon raised to how the unhoused are described as adults — both reflect untreated and undiagnosed disability being labeled as moral failure.

00:29:56 Tabitha Zeigler: Disability, Homelessness, and the Pipeline From Cuts to the Street

- Without a caretaker, independence, or family support, disabled people become unhoused. The connection is direct and documented — friends of Tabitha’s who run Indianapolis unhoused nonprofits confirm it.

- She invokes “ugly boxes” — wooden enclosures from the late 1800s and early 1900s used to confine disabled children — as a historical analogue to the current direction.

- The institutions that would receive people are mostly closed; reopening them costs more than community care. In 1997, a major incident in New Castle (Tabitha said New Albany) led Indiana to shut everything down and discover that empowering family caregivers was cheaper. Now that progress is being rolled back. Institutions, Tabitha says, always lead back to killing people. That’s the end of the eugenics process.

00:33:20 Sharon Wight: The Asset Trap — How the System Engineers Poverty for Disabled People

- People receiving disability services are not allowed to build up assets above a very low threshold — meaning they’re at dramatically higher risk of becoming unhoused if anything falls through the cracks.

- As Medicaid becomes harder to qualify for, more expensive, and more bureaucratically burdensome, disabled people are being incrementally pushed toward homelessness — and then treated like dirt when they get there.

- Sharon connects this to the broader living wage problem: the system sets people up to fail and then blames them for failing.

00:34:38 Medicaid Cuts, the One Big Beautiful Bill, and the Fraud That Goes Unpunished

- The One Big Beautiful Bill Act cut roughly a trillion dollars from Medicaid, with cuts now going into effect. The mechanism: requiring people to prove their eligibility more frequently — twice a year instead of once — through complex paperwork processes.

- This is sold as fighting waste, fraud, and abuse. But in Indiana, there’s currently roughly three-quarters of a billion dollars in Medicaid fraud perpetuated by hospitals — which the state won’t touch because the hospitals are major political donors.

- Scott recalls navigating these systems for his own son: it’s a full-time job even for well-resourced people, and now they’re multiplying the burden.

00:37:04 Neurodivergence, Paperwork, and Being Beaten Down on Purpose

- Sharon speaks for herself: as a neurodivergent person, paperwork is genuinely difficult — she lives, as she and Scott have joked, on vibes. The complexity isn’t incidental; she believes it’s intentional.

- Making the process overwhelmingly difficult beats people into giving up. The goal isn’t efficiency — it’s attrition.

00:37:52 Tabitha: ABA Cuts, Three Kids With Autism, and No Summer Resources

- Indiana’s April 1st Medicaid changes led Tabitha’s ABA therapy providers to announce drastic service reductions. She had to pull the twins in May and her older son shortly after — leaving her with three autistic children all summer, no ABA, still waiting on the Medicaid waiver.

- Her older child is having extreme behavioral issues; she’s trying to get him into a specialized charter school despite being philosophically opposed to charters, because she’s not certain public school can accommodate him.

- The work requirement trap: she can’t hold a full-time job because schools call her in for behavioral incidents. You can only be called away so many times before you’re fired. And after termination, a bad reference can follow you. These parents aren’t unreliable — they’re doing the work of three full-time jobs caring for high-needs children while the state pulls the rug out.

- Sharon adds the other side: people in their generation are also beginning to care for aging parents, with similarly limited options.

00:42:02 Mandating Poverty: Right-to-Work, IEPs, and the Road to Reinstitutionalization

- Indiana’s right-to-work environment means workers can be fired for a small number of absences, making it nearly impossible to both hold a job and care for a disabled child.

- The public school system — with IEPs and mandated accommodations — is the educator and caregiver of last resort for disabled kids. But its funding is being siphoned off to charter and private schools that can select their students.

- The logical conclusion: the only kids left in public schools will be the highest-need kids, with ever-fewer resources. Universal vouchers and fully privatized education is just a longer route to reinstitutionalization.

00:44:07 Sharon: Have Babies, But Not Imperfect Ones — the Impossible Standard

- Sharon, as a childless woman who didn’t necessarily choose it, calls out J.D. Vance directly: not everybody chooses not to have children.

- The contradiction: constant pressure to have babies — but don’t have a baby that isn’t perfect. If you don’t have children, you’re a villain. If you have a child with a disability, you’re a villain. If you struggle to raise them without adequate support, you’re a villain.

- None of it makes sense. It’s by design.

00:45:32 Tabitha: With What Help? The Pronatalist Contradiction

- Tabitha has one child with her on the call: pronatalists want 10 children from everyone, but with what resources and what help?

- Connection drops briefly. When she returns: the forced-birth position combined with the elimination of support systems is about subjugation — of women, children, and everyone else who doesn’t fit the desired profile.

- Scott: in the 1850s, disabled children were thrown in the river. The current direction isn’t toward 1953 — it’s toward 1853.

00:47:03 What Does Rebuilding Look Like? What Should We Be Aiming For?

- Scott asks both guests: assuming the sane and compassionate can retake power, what does a caring society for disabled people actually look like? What are we aiming for?

- Sharon: In a perfect world: universal closed captions on everything (Sharon has auditory processing disorder), and accessibility that goes beyond the legal minimum.

- The image of a ramp that’s two-thirds of a mile long to avoid putting it next to the front stairs — that’s minimum compliance without care. The goal should be what’s actually good for people, not what keeps you out of trouble.

- Most fundamentally: people showing care and compassion again.

-Tabitha: Near-term: mutual aid. If we don’t proactively take care of our people without depending on the government, things could get very bad very fast.

- Long-term: replace every politician who is against humanitarian values. It doesn’t matter whether it’s disability rights, gay rights, trans rights, immigrant rights, or women’s rights — if you’re not a straight white man right now, you’re not being looked after.

- The specific frustration: Democrats are too cautious. They’re sitting on a wide open lane and not taking the layup. While they wait for Republicans to implode, Tucker Carlson and his ilk are doing what Democrats should have been doing from the start. When you have an open lane — give the fastest kid the ball and let them make the layup every single time.

00:51:02 Scott: Republican Extremism Has Made Democrats the Conservative Party

- The ongoing emergency has turned Democrats into defenders of what already exists — and what already exists has been whittled away to almost nothing.

- What’s needed isn’t protection of the current system — it’s something far better.

- Democrats are betting that Republicans are so bad that people won’t vote for them. Tabitha, coming from a very red area, calls this political suicide.

- If Democrats give Republicans too much room, Republicans will eventually do a strategic layup of their own — throwing a well-timed moderate-sounding gesture to capture softening opinion. Tucker Carlson is already doing it.

- Candidates need to be clear, specific, and bold on disability rights, LGBTQ+ rights, immigrant rights. These aren’t losing positions — they’re what people want. Say the thing. Speak to your people.

- Scott warns about the encirclement: the far right co-opts leftist language — anti-corporate, anti-war, pro-worker — but intends to turn capitalism up to 11 and use people as expendable.

- Capitalism already views certain people as expendable. The goal is a society in which no one is expendable. That, Scott says, is the most pro-life position one can take.

00:55:07 Where to Turn

- Tabitha is working with a group to fill the gaps Indiana is leaving open for the autism community — the Unique Needs Alliance, currently forming.

- National landing pages: Autism Society of America and similar national organizations are good starting points to find local resources.

- Sharon highlights the League for the Blind and Disabled in Fort Wayne — an authorized Center for Independent Living serving 13 counties, where she got her disability advocacy training.

- She closes with a personal value: a world of diversity — racial, cultural, disability — is better than one where everyone is the same. Her own public education was enriched by that diversity, and it’s part of why she’s running.

00:58:06 Closing: Where to Find Sharon Wight and Tabitha Zeigler

- Sharon Wight: electsharonwight.com (translated into 13 languages); Facebook at facebook.com/electsharonwight. This Saturday: a live Dungeons & Democracy fundraiser stream — tune in for a look at a slightly sillier Sharon.

- Tabitha Zeigler: find her on social media @tabithazeigler; podcast and resources at tabithazeigler.com/staring-down-the-storm. Email at staringdownthestorm@gmail.com

- Programming note: HoosLeft This Week on YouTube will now broadcast live exclusively on the Progressive Indiana Network channel; replays still available on the HoosLeft feed.

- Sunday on HoosLeft This Week: Sharon Wight returns, joined by statehouse candidate Allen Miller (District 73).

RESOURCES:

Uniquely You Magazine: https://indy.uniquelyyoumag.com/

Allies for Humanity (Dignified Housing): https://www.alliesforhumanity.org/

HANDS in Autism (IU): https://handsinautism.iu.edu/

Autism Society of Indiana: https://www.autismsocietyofindiana.org/

The Arc of Indiana: https://www.arcind.org/

Connie’s Clubhouse Day Program: https://www.conniesclubhouse.work/

Noble Disability Services and Support: https://www.mynoblelife.org/

Tangram Disability Services: https://thetangramway.org/

Sycamore Services: https://www.sycamoreservices.com/

BeeFree Bakes (Bakery & Employment Services): https://www.beefreebakes.org/

For Parents w/ Kids on the Spectrum:

-Prana Play — A Sensory Haven (Carmel): https://pranaplaycarmel.com/

-Kids Gym Indoor Playground (Carmel): https://werockthespectrumcarmel.com/

Waves of Change Foundation for Neurodiversity: https://wavesofchangefoundation.org/

Ausome Indy: https://ausomeindy.org/

Quillo Connect (micro-learning app for I/DD): https://myquillo.com/

HoosLeft This Week - July 12, 2026

Scott Aaron Rogers — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 18:31:25 GMT

SUMMARY:

On this edition of HoosLeft This Week, Scott is joined by Hamilton County Democratic State House candidate Lauren Cole and Bloomington DSA organizer Bryce Greene for a two-hour survey of a week in which the Iran ceasefire collapsed entirely — with renewed strikes, Strait of Hormuz escalation, Trump’s “Islamic Republic of Japan” gaffe, and the $533 million cost of the ongoing Indiana gas tax holiday put in sharp relief. The show moves through Hamas dissolving its government and Israel immediately striking the negotiators who announced it; Ro Khanna’s detention by West Bank settlers; a NATO summit where Trump reportedly authorized new Iran strikes from the dinner table and then fled home on his old Air Force One after assassination intelligence emerged, with the Times journalists who reported the switch subsequently subpoenaed; White House construction corruption; Trump’s FIFA intervention on Folarin Balogun’s suspension; and GOP lawmakers’ racially coded letter to the WNBA. Micah Beckwith’s Islam/Nazism remarks and the Fishers mass deportation rally headlined by former CBP Commander Greg Bovino bookend a stretch covering the ICE killing of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston — with eyewitnesses pressured to self-deport — and two more federal law enforcement fatalities in Memphis. The back half covers Mallory McMorrow’s exit from the Michigan Senate primary, Graham Platner’s forced withdrawal from Maine and the replacement convention underway, and the dueling death watches for Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham. The show closes on Indiana Democrats fielding their largest candidate field in decades, before a final block on ACA enrollment losses, the Planned Parenthood Medicaid fight, an Indiana Supreme Court abortion records ruling, and a dense run of data center stories — from the OpenAI copyright trial to Meta’s bacteria contamination in Wyoming to the Marion County moratorium announced by Council President Maggie Lewis.

Guest Info

Lauren Cole: https://www.laurencoleforin.com/

: https://x.com/TheGreeneBJ

IN DEPTH:

Iran

Tanker set ablaze after being struck by projectile in the Strait of Hormuz as Iran mourns Khamenei (AP)
- Another tanker was struck by a projectile in the Strait of Hormuz early Tuesday, catching fire near Limah, Oman while traveling south out of the strait — the latest attack on a vessel using the Omani coastal route Iran has declared off-limits.
- Talks between the US and Iran remain on hold until after Khamenei’s burial Thursday in Mashhad — his body was flown to Qom overnight, where tens of thousands gathered at Jamkaran Mosque for funeral services.
- Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, has still not appeared publicly at the funeral ceremonies and is believed to be in hiding after reportedly being wounded in the strike that killed his father — Israel has previously threatened to kill him.
- Transit numbers through the strait reached at least 108 ships over the weekend across various routes, showing slow recovery — but the ongoing attacks on vessels using the Omani route continue to undercut the MOU’s promise of safe passage.
US carries out another round of strikes on Iran after Trump says ceasefire is over (AP)
- Trump declared the ceasefire “over” Wednesday after Iran struck three ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and the US launched a second consecutive day of strikes — hitting targets including Bushehr, Chabahar, Konarak, Bandar Abbas, and Sirik — while threatening to “just finish the job” and renewing threats against civilian infrastructure and Kharg Island.
- The US also revoked the Iranian oil sales license that had been part of the interim deal, effectively unwinding one of the key economic concessions granted to Tehran under the MOU.
- Iran retaliated by striking US military installations in Bahrain and Kuwait — Kuwait intercepted two ballistic missiles and 13 drones, with shrapnel knocking out power lines.
- Trump added a contradictory hedge: “They can talk, but I think they’re wasting their time” — suggesting negotiations could technically continue even as he declared the ceasefire dead, leaving the status of the deal genuinely unclear.
- The internal Iranian divide appears to be driving the attacks: hard-liners want permanent control over the strait as strategic leverage; pragmatists want sanctions relief through a permanent deal. The ships targeted were using the Omani route Iran had declared off-limits — suggesting the IRGC is enforcing its position regardless of what Iran’s negotiators are saying in Doha.
US and Iran exchange intensifying fire across Mideast, threatening ceasefire deal (AP)
- The US launched strikes hitting 90 targets across Iran Thursday — including what Iranian officials say was a strike near the Bushehr nuclear power plant, which Central Command neither confirmed nor denied — while Iran fired back at Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Jordan, with all incoming missiles reportedly intercepted.
- Khamenei was buried in Mashhad Thursday amid massive funeral processions, with US strikes hitting railway and road bridges on the route to the city during the mourning period — signs carrying “death to Trump and Netanyahu” visible in the crowds.
- Trump renewed threats to hit Iran’s civilian infrastructure — electricity and desalination plants — and to seize Kharg Island, through which 90% of Iranian oil exports pass; Iran’s parliament speaker responded: “If you strike, you’ll get hit.”
- Ship traffic through the strait reached 576 transits in June compared to 233 in May — but still far below the 3,100+ that transited in June 2025, and the renewed strikes are already chilling whatever recovery had occurred.
- Negotiations toward a permanent deal were supposed to begin after Khamenei’s funeral — Iran’s foreign minister was on the phone with Saudi, Turkish, Omani, and Pakistani counterparts Thursday, suggesting back-channel efforts to create conditions for talks to proceed despite the exchange of fire.
Trump and Iran’s supreme leader trade threats as mediators try to save their crumbling deal (AP)
- Trump threatened overnight that “ a thousand missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, with thousands more to immediately follow, should the Iranian Government act on its threat,” on his website. — a response to banners at Khamenei’s funeral calling for his and Netanyahu’s deaths.
- Iran’s new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei — still not seen publicly since the war began — vowed in a statement that avenging his father’s death “is the will of our nation and must certainly be carried out.”
- The core dispute remains the Strait of Hormuz: the US wants Iran to publicly declare it open with no attacks on shipping; Iran insists it alone controls the strait and intends to charge transit fees, a position the world has rejected for decades. Iran’s FM met his Omani counterpart Saturday to keep talking “at the technical and political levels.”
- Iran accused the US of violating the interim deal by revoking oil sale waivers in response to the tanker attacks — FM Araghchi: “Reality check: There can only be mutual compliance.”
- US officials attribute the resumption of strikes to “a rogue faction of Iranian hard-liners” trying to sabotage the ceasefire, though Iran insists its government is unified. The latest two days of US strikes killed at least 17 people and wounded 115, per Iran’s Health Ministry.
Trump says ‘Islamic Republic of Japan’ fired missiles at US ship (USA Today)
- Trump claimed the “Islamic Republic of Japan” fired 111 missiles at the USS Abraham Lincoln — obviously meaning Iran, not Japan, which has been a US military ally for nearly 75 years and hosts roughly 60,000 American troops.
- The underlying incident is real but disputed: Iran claimed it struck the carrier with a ballistic missile in March; US Central Command flatly denied it, saying “the Lincoln was not hit. The missiles launched didn’t even come close.”
Indiana Angle: Gas tax breaks to cost state, local governments $533M (ICC)
- The full cost of Braun’s gas tax holiday is now confirmed at $533 million total — $358 million to INDOT and $175 million to local governments — with impacts felt through October, hitting hardest in August when INDOT alone absorbs $108 million in a single month.
- Braun has pledged to make local governments whole by November 1, with the first formal transfer request going to the State Board of Finance on July 21. What remains unclear: whether the state will tap its surplus to reimburse INDOT itself, or just let the highway fund absorb the loss. The State Budget Agency didn’t respond to the Capital Chronicle’s inquiry.
- Indiana gas averages $3.06 per gallon — lowest in the country and well below the $3.80 national average — giving Braun a political win even as the funding hole grows.
- The tax breaks end August 6, and Braun has said further extensions would require legislative action. He hasn’t discussed a special session with legislative leaders but hasn’t ruled it out either.
- The longer-term problem Braun himself acknowledged: steel and concrete costs are up 50%, meaning road funding was already buying less before the holiday — making the January budget session’s road-funding discussion more consequential than a typical year.

Israel

Hamas dissolves Gaza government ahead of eventual transfer of power to technocrats (Times of Israel)
- Hamas dissolved its “Emergency Committee” governing structure Monday, announcing a formal handover of administrative authority to the technocratic National Committee for the Administration of Gaza — a body created under Trump’s October 2025 ceasefire deal.
- The Board of Peace responded cautiously: “Our assessment will be guided by actions, not promises” — and made clear that a genuine transfer requires “consolidation of all weapons under the control of the NCAG,” which Hamas has yet to do.
- An Israeli official dismissed it as “spin without meaning,” saying Hamas is stalling to avoid being declared in violation of the agreement. The NCAG itself has been blocked from entering Gaza for months, reportedly due to Israeli objections.
- The core deadlock hasn’t moved: Hamas won’t disarm before a Palestinian administration is established; Israel won’t fully withdraw until disarmament is verified; and Israel now controls at least 60% of Gaza — more than when the ceasefire began — having continued pushing its boundaries despite the truce.
An American Politician is Blocked by Israeli Settlers in the West Bank (NYT)
- Rep. Ro Khanna was blocked for 90 minutes by armed Israeli settlers while visiting Khirbet Zanuta, a demolished Palestinian Bedouin village in the southern West Bank — Israeli soldiers arrived but reportedly chatted with the settlers rather than intervening, then blocked the road themselves after the settlers left. He was eventually freed after calls to the US embassy and Israeli police.
- Khanna, exploring a 2028 presidential run, said the incident “made me realize how hard a two-state solution is going to be in practice” and that he intends to make Palestinian rights central to his political identity going forward, regardless of whether he runs.
- The trip reflects a broader shift: potential Democratic 2028 contenders are now touring the West Bank to build credentials as Israel critics rather than supporters — Rahm Emanuel gave a similar critical speech in Tel Aviv the same week, calling for an end to US military aid to Israel.
- Recent polling shows Democratic voters are now more likely to be critical of Israel than supportive — a reversal the article calls “monumental” — and the issue has become a litmus test in Democratic primaries from Michigan to New York.
- Khanna visited multiple Palestinian towns, met with the family of activist Awdah Hathaleen (killed by an Israeli settler), and a school where a 14-year-old was shot by a settler. His closing line to Israeli officials: “It’s not a good idea to detain long-shot presidential candidates. Not how you’re going to build good will with the next American president, whoever that is.”
Iran Hatched Fresh Plot to Kill Trump, Israel Told US (WSJ)
- Israel shared new intelligence with the US indicating a fresh Iranian plot to assassinate Trump, according to people familiar with the matter — neither the Israeli Embassy nor Iran’s UN mission would comment, and the White House pointed only to Trump’s own remarks in Ankara.
- Trump himself alluded to the threat Wednesday: “They want to take out the U.S. leader — me. I’m on every list... so far, I guess I’ve been a little bit lucky, but that maybe doesn’t last very long.”
- The report comes amid visible strain between Trump and Netanyahu — Netanyahu wants to continue the war, Trump wants an exit citing economic risk, and their once-frequent late-night coordination calls have grown “tense.” They spoke Thursday and agreed to keep coordinating.
- Mourners at Khamenei’s funeral displayed a banner reading “We Will Kill Trump” — real, documented evidence of the rhetoric surrounding this claim, separate from the unverified intelligence itself.
- Opinion – given Netanyahu’s clear interest in keeping the US engaged in the war and Trump’s stated desire to exit it, an unverifiable intelligence claim about a plot on Trump’s life conveniently serves Netanyahu’s position. That doesn’t mean the intelligence is false, but the incentive structure is worth naming.

Takeaways: Trump leaves NATO summit declaring ‘a lot of love’ with allies after a rocky start (AP)
- Trump authorized new Iran strikes from the NATO summit dinner table — an unusual move that underscored his frustration that allies didn’t help keep the Strait of Hormuz open. NATO Secretary-General Rutte pointedly refused to rule out a future alliance role in the war.
- The summit’s biggest deliverable for Ukraine: Trump announced the US will license Patriot air defense production overseas, allowing Ukraine to manufacture its own systems — a significant shift after years of Zelenskyy requests. Trump also notably dropped his usual critical tone, calling Zelenskyy someone who has “done an amazing job.”
- NATO allies agreed on an €80 billion military support package for Ukraine for 2026-2027 — entirely from European and allied funds, with no US contribution. European defense spending is up nearly $300 billion over the past two years.
- Trump signaled he may lift sanctions on Turkey and restore F-35 sales — blocked since 2019 when Ankara purchased Russian missile defense systems — despite Israeli objections. “I haven’t totally made up my mind,” he said, while Erdogan gave a thumbs-up.
- A notable loose end: Albania was supposed to host the 2027 NATO summit, but the closing declaration only said leaders “look forward to our next meeting” — leaving the venue and timing unresolved amid concerns about Albanian defense spending and allies’ reluctance to risk another contentious Trump summit.
Security Precaution Led Trump to Use Old Air Force One in Leaving Turkey (NYT)
- Trump swapped from the new Qatari-donated Air Force One to the old jet for his departure from Turkey Wednesday — a change the Secret Service urged as a security precaution, according to people briefed on the plans, not because of a specific threat.
- Trump publicly denied any security motive, claiming the swap was so the new plane could make an early stop at a UK military base to be shown off to troops — but he also repeatedly told reporters he was Iran’s “No. 1 target” and referenced having seen a list of Tehran’s targets.
- Notable procedural detail: when Trump boarded the old plane in Ankara, he did so unusually quickly, before traveling journalists could photograph him — and passengers were told to pull their window shades down before takeoff. Afterward, Trump told reporters they’d likely been told to do that because they were “on a dangerous plane.”
- The core technical question remains unresolved: the old Air Force One reportedly carries missile-blinding systems and chaff countermeasures; whether the Qatari jet has comparable protections is unclear, and the Air Force declined to answer the Times’s direct questions on the matter.
- A former Air Force official who ran the Air Force One program under Biden said a genuine security retrofit of a 747 requires structural modifications that take over a year — longer than the roughly one-year timeline used for the Qatari jet — suggesting the more complex protections (missile defense, EMP hardening) likely weren’t completed in the compressed timeframe.
Times Journalists Subpoenaed as Trump Escalates Pressure on Media (NYT)
- The Trump administration issued grand jury subpoenas Friday to four New York Times reporters — Julian Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager, and Eric Schmitt — after they reported on security concerns with Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One, with federal agents delivering subpoenas to some reporters’ homes.
- Before the story ran, an FBI official contacted the Times asking that the article be held as a “national security” issue, but declined to explain what the actual security concern was. The Times published anyway.
- The Times’s top lawyer called it “a brazen act” intended to intimidate journalists rather than protect security: “The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution.”
- The subpoenas were issued by Manhattan US Attorney Jay Clayton — who Trump has separately nominated to be director of national intelligence — and follow a broader pattern: the DOJ sought similar testimony from WSJ and Washington Post journalists earlier this year (later withdrawn), and FBI agents searched a Washington Post reporter’s home in January, seizing her devices.
- The Times is simultaneously fighting multiple Trump-related legal battles: a defamation suit Trump filed against it, an EEOC discrimination suit the Times says is retaliatory, and two lawsuits over restricted Pentagon press access — suggesting a coordinated escalation across multiple fronts rather than an isolated incident.

…and MORE White House Destruction

Trump says he’s building a White House helipad for a new, more powerful Marine One (AP)
- Trump announced a new granite helipad on the White House South Lawn, saying Sikorsky/Lockheed Martin will pay the estimated $6 million cost — Lockheed confirmed the contribution was made to the National Park Service “in full accordance with applicable laws.”
- The stated rationale is real: the new VH-92A Patriot helicopters delivered in 2024 exhaust heat downward, scorching the South Lawn, and have seen limited White House use as a result.
- The corruption angle worth noting: Sikorsky is a Lockheed Martin subsidiary — a defense contractor whose revenue depends almost entirely on federal government contracts. Lockheed saying they “felt a little bit guilty” and are paying full cost for a $6 million White House amenity is a significant gift to the sitting president from a company that needs his administration’s goodwill to survive.
- The helipad joins a growing list of Trump White House renovation projects — Rose Garden patio, Presidential Walk of Fame, East Wing demolition for a ballroom, column paint stripping — with inconsistent and often unclear funding sources, some initially described as private that turned out to use public money.
White House Fortifying Front Door Where Tarps Hang Amid Trump’s Construction Blitz (Forbes)
- The White House’s North Portico is under construction for column restoration, with tarps covering scaffolding — one of at least 18 major Trump construction projects across Washington that could total $1.2 billion, most reportedly funded by taxpayers.
- The South Lawn helipad project has grown: contractor records show the White House sped up construction and added $875,000 to the $13 million bill in anticipation of an upcoming state visit — the Post reports it’s likely Xi Jinping, expected in September.
- The Kennedy Center tarps — up for nearly a month, blocking the venue’s sign after a court ordered Trump’s name removed — are now the subject of a separate federal court order demanding an explanation by end of July.
- Trump’s $600 million ballroom project, the botched Reflecting Pool restoration, the Rose Garden, Lafayette Park, and a proposed 250-foot arch round out a construction agenda that Democratic lawmakers say requires congressional approval he hasn’t sought.
Crews again drain Trump’s troubled reflecting pool (Guardian)
- Crews drained the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool again Friday — the second draining since Trump’s renovation, which has now cost over $16 million, was plagued by algae blooms and a peeling liner even before Independence Day.
- Interior Secretary Burgum confirmed the administration won’t seek competitive bids for the new repair round, saying they’ll simply reuse the same contractors — Ohio-based Green Water Solutions ($1.7 million) and Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings ($14.7 million) — despite those firms’ work being tied to the original problems.
- The vandalism narrative continues to unravel: former Olympic cyclist David Hearn, charged with a felony for allegedly damaging the pool, says he was told by a park worker to examine the peeling sealant and it came off in his hand. His lawyers: “This indictment reflects the administration’s effort to shift blame for their own failures.”
- Democratic lawmakers are now investigating the project’s taxpayer funding and contractor selection, amid reports several contractors have longstanding ties to Trump.

Sports

Inside the White House push to get Folarin Balogun back on the field (Politico)
- Trump personally called FIFA President Infantino to request a review of striker Folarin Balogun’s one-match suspension after a red card against Bosnia — FIFA’s disciplinary committee then suspended the ban, allowing Balogun to play against Belgium. Trump confirmed the call but said “all I did was ask for a review.”
- The backlash was immediate and international: UEFA called it “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable” and said it “crossed a red line”; Belgium formally challenged Balogun’s eligibility; the European Commission demanded “fair play and transparent competition.” FIFA ruled the Belgian appeal inadmissible.
- There’s a historical precedent worth noting: in 1962, Brazilian star Garrincha had his red card suspension overturned after Chile’s president lobbied FIFA — so this isn’t entirely without precedent, though the scale of White House involvement and the transparency of the pressure campaign are new.
- FIFA insists the 18-person disciplinary committee acted independently, but has not published a report explaining the decision or confirmed whether it was decided by vote — unusual for committee rulings.
- The political subtext runs deep: Belgium hosts NATO headquarters and is a founding EU member; its foreign minister said the decision “raises many questions”; and former FIFA president Sepp Blatter — himself ousted in a corruption scandal — said “football must never become a playground for political power.”
Republicans warn WNBA of federal scrutiny over violence against Caitlin Clark (WRTV)
- Republican lawmakers sent a letter to WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert warning the league could face federal civil rights scrutiny — from the DOJ, Department of Labor, or EEOC — over what they describe as repeated physical violence against Caitlin Clark, including being struck in the neck, poked in the eye, and hip-checked.
- The letter was led by Rep. August Pfluger of Texas and co-signed by three Indiana Republicans — Houchin, Stutzman, and Spartz — along with seven others. The league has until July 24 to answer questions about its review mechanisms, accountability processes, and protections from online harassment.
- Neither the Fever nor Clark were consulted before the letter was sent, per the team’s communications VP — and Rep. Stutzman’s statement calling the play “thug-like violence” echoes language with well-documented racial connotations, in a league that is predominantly Black, directed at conduct toward a white player.
Doyel: With politicians involved, Caitlin Clark culture wars have spun out of control (IndyStar)
- The incident: Phoenix Mercury’s Alyssa Thomas dived for a loose ball June 24 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, landing on Clark with a knee to her midsection and a fist to her neck. No foul was called in real time; Thomas was suspended one game after review. Thomas then received death threats and racial slurs from Clark “supporters.”
- Clark’s own words, July 3 — five days before the congressional letter: “I think people using my name in ways that are inappropriate is frustrating. You don’t know me, you don’t know who I am.” She specifically defended Thomas and condemned the harassment directed at her.
- The Fever’s response to the congressional letter was a pointed first sentence: “Our organization nor Caitlin have had any interaction with this congressional group and we were unaware of their letter” — as close to a public distancing as a business can get without burning the ticket-buying base.
- Doyel’s core argument: the letter’s language — “racially motivated” violence, “thug-like” attacks, DOJ threats — are dog whistles that directly contradict what Clark herself has been saying, and the congresspeople don’t care because they have elections to win.
- The through-line worth flagging on air: Clark has repeatedly tried to de-escalate; the Republican congressmen escalated anyway, five days after her public statement, without contacting her or the Fever first.

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Beckwith

Beckwith ignites new round of criticism after claiming Islam worse than Nazism (Indiana Citizen)
- Beckwith told podcast host Daniel Horowitz that Islam is “actually worse” than Nazism, calling it “a more dangerous ideology,” and reiterated calls for the state to ban public calls to prayer and investigate mosque funding.
- He falsely claimed the Supreme Court’s Kennedy v. Bremerton ruling established that “Christianity takes precedence over all other faiths” — IU law professor Steve Sanders called this “simply wrong,” noting the decision protected an individual coach’s religious expression without ranking religions.
- CAIR-Chicago’s communications director called the adhan characterization “a malicious falsehood” and noted the Constitution guarantees religious liberty for all faiths, not preference for one — pointing to CAIR’s 2025 report documenting 8,683 anti-Muslim discrimination complaints, the highest since 1996.
- Beckwith renewed his attack on GOP Treasurer Daniel Elliott, who has publicly said Beckwith’s views don’t reflect Republican or Hoosier values — Beckwith called Elliott “ignorant” and accused him of “suicidal empathy.”
- Beckwith claimed Braun privately agrees with him: “I think the governor and I see eye to eye on this... I’m a little bit more of a lightning rod than he is.” Braun has not addressed the substance of Beckwith’s claims, only saying he “probably regrets” his phrasing. Neither Braun, Beckwith, nor AG Rokita responded to requests for comment.
Indiana Angle: Former CPB Commander Bovino to Hold “Mass Deportation” Rally in Fishers (Heritage Rallies)
- Save Heritage Indiana — a group dedicated to “reversing mass migration” and a member of the Mass Deportation Coalition — is hosting a $50 invitation-only rally in Fishers on August 1 featuring Greg Bovino, a former US Border Patrol Commander at Large who claims the true number of undocumented immigrants in the US is “closer to 100 million” — roughly 30 times the official estimate.
- Bovino’s own promotional materials quote him saying undocumented immigrants — whom he describes as “hundreds of millions” — represent a greater threat to American society than violent criminals or terrorists because they “don’t care about your history, customs, values, beliefs.”
- Indiana Lt. Governor Micah Beckwith will deliver video remarks at the event — his participation lending official state government credibility to a rally organized by a group whose explicit mission is ethnic and cultural preservation.
- A $500 VIP dinner the night before in Carmel promises an “off-the-record strategy session” with Bovino — “no press, no cameras, no performance” — for “donors, organizers, and citizens who understand that the work ahead requires more than applause.”
- The event’s invitation-only format, dress code requirement (”suit and tie for men; dresses for women”), and vetting process — applicants must explain why they should be invited — reflect the organizers’ intent to curate an ideologically homogeneous audience for what they describe as “unfiltered” and “unrehearsed” remarks from a former senior DHS official.

State Violence

A Mexican father was shot and killed by an ICE officer. His son is demanding an independent probe (PBS)
- Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national who spent 35 years in Houston building homes and sending three American citizen sons to college, was shot and killed by an ICE officer Tuesday during a vehicle stop in the city’s historically Mexican American Magnolia Park neighborhood — the eighth death from encounters with federal immigration officials since the start of the second Trump administration.
- DHS says Salgado Araujo ignored commands and attempted to ram an officer; his family says he had no criminal convictions, was actively pursuing legal status through a work permit with biometrics already done, and his son says if he fled it was likely out of fear of tool theft — not knowledge that the vehicles pursuing him were federal agents.
- No video or damage photos have been released by federal officials — civil rights groups are urging witnesses not to turn footage over to ICE, citing a documented pattern of initial official accounts being contradicted by video evidence in previous ICE shooting cases.
- The shooting came after a late June surge to 10,000 arrests over five days — arrests had fallen after backlash over two fatal Minnesota shootings earlier this year, suggesting a deliberate tactical recalibration followed by a renewed escalation once Congressional funding arrived.
Texas ICE Killing Darkens: Rep Says Witnesses Pressured to Self-Deport (TNR)
- Three eyewitnesses were in the van with Lorenzo Salgado Araujo when he was shot and killed by ICE Tuesday — his brother Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo and two construction workers — and all three were detained by ICE during the encounter.
- LULAC CEO Juan Proaño, who represents the families, tells TNR the three detainees are being pressured by immigration officials to sign self-deportation orders — removing the only known eyewitnesses to the shooting before they can give public accounts of what happened. ICE’s statement to TNR did not address the three men’s status.
- The three men reportedly have no legal representation yet; Proaño says some may be inclined to self-deport simply to avoid longer-term detention — a dynamic that would achieve the same result as explicit coercion.
- Criminal justice reform expert Radley Balko: “You don’t pressure witnesses to a shooting to self-deport if your goal is to get to the bottom of what happened. You pressure them to self-deport when you want to make sure that nobody learns what actually happened.” He notes precedent: in a separate Minneapolis ICE shooting, a migrant eyewitness was transferred to a detention center hundreds of miles away before he could testify.
- Mexico’s president Sheinbaum is preparing a criminal complaint over the killing — an escalation beyond the diplomatic statements she made earlier this week.
DHS was granted $20M for body cameras. ICE agents in fatal Houston shooting had none (AP)
- Congress appropriated $20 million specifically for ICE body cameras in April — yet the officers who shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston this week had none. DHS says cameras have been deployed to “more than half” of ICE field offices, with the rest coming in 60 days; acting ICE director Venturella told Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) directly that less than a third of officers nationally have them.
- DHS is blaming Democrats — specifically “back-to-back Democrat shutdowns” — for the slow rollout. Garcia called that “ludicrous”: “They made a commitment.”
- The pattern is now established across multiple shootings: Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January, and now Salgado Araujo in Houston — in none of these cases were all officers on scene wearing cameras, and in none of them has body camera footage been publicly released despite promises of “full transparency.”
- A notable sidebar: Salgado Araujo was not even the target of the ICE operation — Rep. Garcia disclosed that in a separate statement, making the absence of any video evidence of DHS’s “he rammed our vehicle” claim even more significant.
National Guard members on patrol in Memphis fatally shoot man during pursuit, police say (PBS)
- Two Tennessee National Guard soldiers deployed to Memphis under Trump’s federal crime-fighting program fatally shot 20-year-old Tyrin Johnson early Sunday after he allegedly turned toward them with a gun during a foot pursuit downtown.
- Johnson’s cousin told AP he was living in Nashville, working construction, taking college classes, and had just had his first child this year: “I just want to know, how they shot a 20-year-old twice in the chest — he hadn’t harmed anyone.”
- The article notes that violent crime in Memphis and dozens of other Democrat-run cities has dropped significantly since a pandemic high, predating and running parallel to the deployments — undermining the stated justification for the federal intervention.
- A pending federal lawsuit alleges task force members have retaliated against residents who filmed their operations, including following them and showing up outside their homes in unmarked vehicles.
Second person in 4 days is fatally shot in Memphis by federal task force member (AP)
- A DEA agent serving a drug warrant at a Memphis hotel shot and killed a person Wednesday — the second fatal shooting by a Memphis Safe Task Force member in four days, and the fourth death involving the unit since it launched in September.
- The official accounts already conflict: the US Marshals said the man “pointed a handgun at task force members”; the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s statement says only that “for reasons still under investigation, the situation escalated, resulting in a DEA agent firing into a room” — a notably vaguer description.
- The full pattern: four deaths in task force encounters since September, five total shootings — two National Guard members shot Tyrin Johnson Sunday, a DEA agent killed Darrin Pigram in May, a Homeland Security agent shot Jonah Neal in late May under circumstances still unclear, and a Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper shot someone in a traffic stop in December.
- All five shootings are being investigated by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation — none have resulted in charges.
- The task force is costing taxpayers nearly half a billion dollars through December, projected to exceed $1 billion this year, deployed in a city where violent crime was already declining before the federal intervention began.

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Elections

Mallory McMorrow drops out of Michigan’s crucial Democratic Senate primary (CNN)
- Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow dropped out of the Democratic Senate primary Sunday, narrowing the field to Rep. Haley Stevens (establishment pick) and Abdul El-Sayed (Sanders-backed progressive) ahead of the August 4 primary.
- McMorrow’s exit didn’t come with an endorsement — she said “whoever wins this primary will have my full support,” leaving her supporters up for grabs in what’s essentially a two-way race between the party’s establishment and progressive wings.
- The stakes are high: Michigan’s open seat (held by retiring Gary Peters) is considered a must-hold for Democrats’ path to Senate majority, and Republicans see former Rep. Mike Rogers as a credible general election threat.
- McMorrow’s departure reflects both her own campaign struggles and a coordinated effort among establishment Democrats to consolidate behind Stevens and block El-Sayed — Michigan AG Dana Nessel, a McMorrow ally, immediately endorsed Stevens after the announcement.
- McMorrow’s parting shot echoed the broader progressive critique: “The energy is there. People are crying out for change. And we owe it to them to listen” — without telling her supporters where to direct that energy.
Platner Assault Allegations
- Exclusive: Woman who dated Graham Platner says he sexually assaulted her (Politico)
  - A Maine woman, Jenny Racicot, has gone on record with Politico alleging that Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner entered her home uninvited while heavily intoxicated in late 2021 and forced himself on her despite repeated objections — the first sexual assault allegation against him.
  - Corroboration includes: a subsequent partner who heard the account in 2023, Facebook messages from 2023 warning an acquaintance away from Platner, and emails with her therapist referencing “sa/rape” — all predating Platner’s political career.
  - Platner categorically denies the allegation and his campaign called it “coached and coordinated by out-of-state establishment operatives,” noting the timing one week before a ballot deadline — echoing his campaign’s response to earlier allegations before the primary.
  - Racicot said she came forward despite agreeing with Platner politically: “I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person.”
  - Context: Platner, who won the Democratic primary last month, already faced controversies including offensive online comments, a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol he says he didn’t know the meaning of, and prior allegations of mistreating women — all of which he denied.
- Platner says he is ‘taking the time to reflect’ on his candidacy (Politico)
  - Within minutes of the Politico story publishing, Platner posted a video saying he is “taking the time to reflect on the best path forward” — the first time he has signaled he might exit the race despite a string of prior scandals.
  - His framing was notable: he called the allegation “troubling” and “serious” while still denying it, then acknowledged “the political reality it will inflict” — essentially conceding the story is damaging regardless of its accuracy.
  - Even some progressive commentators who had stood by him through earlier controversies broke ranks — Hasan Piker told his Twitch audience “I believe this allegation. That is curtains.”
- Democrats have abandoned Graham Platner (Politico)
  - Within hours of the Politico story, the dam broke completely: Schumer called for Platner to “immediately withdraw,” joined by DSCC chair Gillibrand, DNC chair Ken Martin, and Senate Majority PAC — meaning all three major Democratic Senate-focused organizations pulled support from a must-win race simultaneously.
  - A flood of senators followed, including former Platner backers Warren, Heinrich, Ossoff, Booker, Schiff, Kelly, Slotkin, and Gallego — along with Our Revolution, VoteVets, and End Citizens United rescinding endorsements.
  - The contrast with prior scandals is stark: the party had absorbed the Nazi tattoo, offensive online comments, and earlier mistreatment allegations. The sexual assault allegation broke that tolerance entirely.
  - If Platner withdraws before July 13, Maine Democrats can replace him — former Gov. Troy Jackson, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, and former public health official Nirav Shah are already taking calls about stepping in.
  - Sanders, whose endorsement was central to Platner’s primary victory, had not yet commented as of publication.
- Maine Democrats plan convention to replace Platner: What to know about Senate race (AP)
  - Platner formally announced Wednesday he is dropping out, and the Maine Democratic Party voted the same day to hold a nominating convention to choose a replacement — the party has until July 27, with Platner needing to formally withdraw by July 13.
  - Troy Jackson, Maine’s former state Senate president, officially entered the race Wednesday — he ran for governor this year with Platner’s backing and Our Revolution’s support, positioning himself as the progressive continuity candidate. Nirav Shah, former Maine CDC director, is still evaluating. Others circulating include Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, Maine Beer Co. founder Dan Kleban, and gubernatorial nominee Hannah Pingree.
  - The Platner-party relationship soured even on the way out: the state party accused his campaign of trying to “put their thumb on the scale” in selecting a replacement; his team denied it and sent a survey to supporters asking what message they have for both Platner and the party — a move the party called a distraction.
  - Trump, asked if Democrats should be allowed to replace Platner: “You question whether you believe the woman. A lot of people say big falsehoods... I’d imagine he’s going to lose.” — a notably hedged response that neither defended nor condemned Platner.
  - Volunteers who had galvanized around Platner’s anti-establishment campaign are drawing parallels to the Biden replacement in 2024 — one Scarborough voter said “we rally behind somebody, and at the eleventh hour that failed. I sort of feel we’re in a similar boat.”
Is Mitch McConnell Alive?
- Senate Republican leaders say they’ve spoken to Mitch McConnell as he remains hospitalized (ABC)
  - McConnell has been hospitalized since June 14 — nearly a month — with no diagnosis disclosed and no timeline for return. ABC News reviewed audio suggesting EMS responded to his Washington home for an unconscious person in apparent cardiac arrest the same day he was admitted.
  - Senate leaders Thune and Barrasso both say they’ve spoken with him by phone recently, and conservative commentator Scott Jennings says he had a nearly 20-minute conversation with McConnell Tuesday morning covering Iran, Ukraine, Maine, and “a little Senate history” — but every claim about McConnell’s condition and activities comes from his own spokesperson or from allies with political incentive to project strength. No independent verification exists.
  - McConnell’s office says he is “continuing to improve” and “working closely with staff on Senate matters” — language carefully chosen to convey engagement without providing any medical specifics, following a pattern from his previous health episodes including a 2023 freezing incident and a 2024 fall.
  - McConnell, 84, is set to retire at the end of his term in January — making the question of his actual condition relevant not just personally but politically: if he cannot serve, Kentucky’s Republican governor would appoint a replacement, affecting Senate vote margins in the lame-duck period.
- Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear asks Sen. Mitch McConnell to give a public update on his condition (AP)
  - Beshear sent a letter Wednesday asking McConnell to publicly disclose his condition — but Kentucky law, changed twice by Republican legislators specifically to limit Beshear’s power, gives him no role in filling a vacancy. Instead of appointing a replacement, he would only call a special election.
  - Trump, asked about McConnell aboard Air Force One returning from the NATO summit in Turkey: “I have no idea how he’s doing” — the two have not spoken.
  - The succession math matters: without McConnell, Republicans have a maximum of 52 votes. He had been among the senators blocking Iran war powers resolutions — his absence gives Trump less of a buffer — but he had also been among Republicans refusing to support the SAVE America Act.
  - The special election law is untested and vague: it says Beshear “shall” call an election but specifies neither when nor what the election date must be. Some officials argue a vacancy after August 3 would mean a concurrent special election alongside the November general; others say the seat could simply remain vacant until January.
  - Bottom line: Republicans changed Kentucky law in 2021 and again in 2024 specifically to prevent Beshear from appointing a Democrat if McConnell’s seat became vacant. It worked — but the replacement mechanism they created has never been tested and is already generating legal uncertainty.
Sen. Lindsey Graham dies at 71 after ‘brief and sudden illness’ (NBC)
- Sen. Lindsey Graham died Saturday night at 71 from what his office called “a brief and sudden illness” — EMS responded to a cardiac arrest call at his Capitol Hill home.
- Graham was chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, seeking a fifth term, and one of the chamber’s most prominent voices on defense and foreign policy — known for hawkish positions on Ukraine and Iran and for his years-long partnership with the late Sen. John McCain.
- He died just two days after meeting with Zelenskyy in Kyiv; Zelenskyy said Graham had recently been “working on important initiatives that could help bring peace closer, including strengthening sanctions against Russia.”
- Trump called him “a true American Patriot”; tributes also came from Netanyahu, NATO’s Rutte, and Iranian dissident Reza Pahlavi, while Iranian state media noted his death and described him as anti-Iran and a war hawk.
- South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster will appoint an interim successor through January 3; Republicans must find a new nominee for the November race, with a special primary expected by August 11.
Indiana Angle: Democrats running in nearly all Indiana legislative races while GOP not challenging 20 House seats (ICC)
- Indiana Democrats will appear on the November ballot in 97 of 100 House races — their largest candidate field this century — while Republicans are leaving 20 Democratic incumbents unchallenged, including 10 in Indianapolis and five in Lake County.
- Democrats’ goal is modest but significant: flipping just four seats would break the Republican two-thirds supermajority that currently allows the GOP to act without Democrats even being present in the chamber.
- Republicans currently hold a 70-30 House majority and a 40-10 Senate majority — the structural math is steep, but the candidate recruitment story itself signals Democratic organizational energy heading into November.
- One notable Senate development: Democrat Joseph Baughman — who we’ve spoken with on HoosLeft — withdrew from a southern Indiana Senate race after running unopposed in the primary, leaving that seat uncontested for Republican Jeff Ellington.

Healthcare

Affordable Care Act enrollment shrank dramatically in many states over the past year, new federal data shows (PBS)
- New federal data shows ACA enrollment dropped by roughly 2.6 million people nationally since January, when enhanced premium tax credits expired — causing many Americans’ monthly premiums to double or triple overnight.
- Ohio and Oklahoma each lost over 32% of their enrolled population — the steepest drops in the country. Arizona, South Carolina, Minnesota, Indiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Louisiana and Missouri each lost more than a quarter of enrollees.
- The Trump administration attributed the decline to a crackdown on fraudulent “phantom” enrollment — analysts say that’s misleading and the data clearly points to subsidy expiration and tightened immigrant eligibility as the primary drivers.
- Most people leaving the ACA marketplace are likely going uninsured, not finding coverage elsewhere — the marketplace is typically a “place of last resort” for people ineligible for employer or other plans.
- One exception: New Mexico gained 14% more enrollees — the only state to fully replace lost federal subsidies with its own funds, demonstrating that the coverage loss elsewhere was a policy choice, not an inevitability.
Obamacare premiums likely to surge again next year (Stateline)
- ACA Marketplace insurers are proposing a median premium increase of 14% for 2027 — a double-digit hike for the second consecutive year, and the second-highest requested increase since 2018. Indiana is among the 16 states included in the analysis.
- The driver: when enhanced premium tax credits expired at the end of 2025, healthier enrollees left the Marketplace because they could no longer afford it — leaving behind a sicker, more expensive pool that insurers are now pricing accordingly. That’s the death spiral dynamic the ACA’s enhanced subsidies were specifically designed to prevent.
- The compounding effect: 2.6 million fewer Americans are enrolled this year, premiums are proposed to jump 14% next year, and the only state that bucked the enrollment decline — New Mexico — did so by fully replacing lost federal subsidies with state funds. Every other state is watching the market contract.
Indiana Angle:
- Planned Parenthood decries block on Indiana Medicaid funding despite end of federal ban (ICC)
  - The federal ban on Medicaid payments to abortion providers — included in last year’s “big, beautiful” budget law — expired July 4, returning the question of Planned Parenthood funding to individual states. Indiana is not restoring payments.
  - Indiana has a 2011 state law barring funding to any organization that performs abortions, which federal courts blocked for over a decade. Planned Parenthood has agreed to remain suspended from Indiana Medicaid while the 7th Circuit rules on whether that injunction should be lifted.
  - The framing matters: Planned Parenthood has been banned from providing abortions in Indiana since 2022, so the Medicaid funding fight is entirely about non-abortion care — birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing, and wellness exams for low-income patients.
  - The 7th Circuit sent the case back to the district court Monday, and the original judge has signaled she’s “inclined” to lift her 2013 injunction — meaning Indiana’s funding ban could soon take permanent legal effect.
  - Indiana paid Planned Parenthood $1.6-1.7 million annually in recent years for Medicaid services; Rokita’s office says the state won’t seek to recoup past payments.
- Indiana abortion reports remain confidential after unanimous state Supreme Court action (ICC)
  - Indiana’s Supreme Court unanimously let stand a December Court of Appeals ruling that terminated pregnancy reports — documents doctors are required to file about individual abortions — must remain confidential as protected medical records, blocking their release to the public.
  - The case originated when the Braun administration reversed the Health Department’s policy of keeping the reports private and entered a settlement with anti-abortion group Voices for Life, which had sued to obtain them — ostensibly to monitor whether doctors were complying with Indiana’s abortion ban.
  - The stakes were concrete: Dr. Caitlin Bernard was already reprimanded in 2023 for publicly discussing an abortion she performed on a 10-year-old rape victim, using information similar to what the reports contain — age, state of residence, gestational age, approximate date. Releasing individual reports creates real risk of patient identification even when redacted.
  - Rokita’s office said it is “reviewing the Court’s order and evaluating our options” — leaving open the possibility of further legal maneuvers despite a unanimous decision by a court composed entirely of Republican-appointed justices.

AI/Data Centers

News outlets urge a judge to sanction OpenAI in a high-stakes AI copyright fight (AP)
- The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Daily News and other outlets are asking a federal judge to sanction OpenAI for alleged evidence tampering — accusing the company of hiding datasets and ChatGPT logs that could show how it trained its AI on copyrighted news content, and of making “misrepresentations” for two years about its ability to search for that content.
- The core legal question is whether AI training on copyrighted material constitutes “fair use” — a theory being tested in dozens of simultaneous lawsuits from news outlets, authors, visual artists, and music labels, with mixed results so far.
- One data point on the financial stakes: Anthropic — which is preparing to go public at a $965 billion valuation — already settled with book authors for $1.5 billion for training Claude on pirated works. The Times has spent over $28 million in legal costs just fighting OpenAI and Perplexity so far.
- The business model threat the Times is really fighting: Google’s AI-generated search summaries cut off the advertising revenue that flows when readers click through to original sources — making AI not just a copyright issue but an existential threat to ad-supported journalism.
- Worth noting: the AP itself signed a licensing deal with OpenAI in 2023 — meaning the wire service reporting on this story has a financial relationship with the defendant.
Cheyenne BOPU traces rare bacteria discharge to Meta data center contractor (Wyoming Tribune Eagle)
- A Meta data center contractor introduced a rare bacteria, Cupriavidus gilardii, into Cheyenne’s wastewater system during construction by discharging “fill-and-flush” water — a construction process that circulates purified water through pipes to remove debris before operation — into the city’s sanitary sewer.
- The bacteria never entered Cheyenne’s drinking water, but some passed through the wastewater treatment process and entered Crow Creek. The primary concern was the reclaimed water system, which sprays treated wastewater onto parks and golf courses — creating aerosol exposure risk, particularly for immunocompromised individuals.
- In direct response, Cheyenne’s utility board permanently terminated Meta’s discharge privileges and adopted a new policy prohibiting fill-and-flush discharges from data centers into the municipal sewer system entirely.
- Meta’s contractor disputes the finding — its own independent testing found “no trace of the substance” — while the utility board says both treatment plants have since tested negative and reclaimed water irrigation has resumed.
- The incident is being watched as a cautionary tale: Cheyenne officials note closed-loop cooling systems can also contain glycol and other chemicals that municipal wastewater treatment plants aren’t designed to process — raising broader questions about data center construction and operational practices nationwide.
Neighbors call construction on Meta Lebanon data center a ‘nightmare’ (IndyStar)
- Meta is building a 13-building AI data center campus in Lebanon’s LEAP district — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — and neighbors within a half mile describe constant noise making their homes vibrate, blinding lights casting shadows inside their houses at night, and dust forcing them to keep windows closed.
- The city has almost no legal recourse: Lebanon’s noise ordinance only covers sites within 500 feet of residential zones, and the PUD ordinance regulating lights and landscaping only applies to finished buildings, not construction. Neighbors living on unincorporated agricultural land have even fewer protections.
- A Mortenson subcontractor drained retention ponds onto a neighbor’s soybean field in March; a 22-year-old Mortenson dump truck driver was killed in a head-on collision on SR 32 in May; and police have spent overtime funds increasing patrols after “numerous complaints” about reckless drivers and trucks with leaky loads.
- The economic pitch from Lebanon’s mayor: Meta’s payments in lieu of taxes will reach $7.5 million per year — potentially 30% of the city’s annual budget — which he plans to pass on as property tax rebates to homeowners. Meta has also committed $120 million to Lebanon’s water infrastructure, roads, and transmission lines.
- Construction won’t be complete until at least mid-2027 at the earliest, with the southern half of the campus on hold until INDOT finishes rerouting SR 32 — not planned until next June. One neighbor’s summary: “A lot of us are God-fearing people, and we do pray for bad weather. Because bad weather is the only thing that will shut the lights off in that place.”
Georgia developer finalizes plans to downsize $2 billion data center on Indy’s east side; cites community feedback (FOX59)
- DC Blox has scaled back its proposed $2 billion Irvington data center campus, eliminating an entire building, cutting 25 diesel backup generators, and reducing critical IT load by 28 megawatts — citing community feedback from residents and “national scrutiny over data center power consumption.”
- The revised footprint will be pushed further south to expand green space and a larger environmental buffer along the Pennsy Trail — a direct response to neighborhood density concerns from Irvington and Warren Township residents.
- The project still involves $700-800 million in construction costs plus $1.3-1.4 billion in servers and hardware, would generate 35 permanent jobs, and would use a closed-loop cooling system the developer says would consume water comparable to an office building.
- Worth noting: the Marion County MDC’s new data center zoning rules — which the DC Blox proposal may be exempt from as a previously filed variance request — might be having their intended effect even before passage, with the developer proactively downsizing in response to community pressure.
City staff didn’t initially support Martindale Brightwood data center (IndyStar)
- Emails obtained by IndyStar show city planners initially decided on December 18 to recommend denial of the Metrobloks data center in Martindale Brightwood — then reversed course 12 days later, with no explanation provided, after DMD Director Megan Vukusich intervened, according to a former city employee.
- Vukusich told IndyStar the reversal wasn’t her call but a collaborative decision, and that recommending denial would have been “an illegal overreach” given Indianapolis has no clear zoning definition for data centers — leaving staff to rely on past precedent from telecom and colocation facilities.
- The flip is significant because staff recommendations, while not binding, almost always predict commission outcomes — and at no point during two subsequent public hearings did any staff member publicly express the reservations documented in their own internal emails.
- The project was approved by the MDC in April and rubber-stamped by the City-County Council in May, over the objections of Martindale Brightwood residents who called it “egregious disrespect” to a historically Black neighborhood that has long absorbed industrial development. Residents filed suit in May to block the rezoning.
- The case illustrates the broader regulatory vacuum: the new Marion County data center zoning rules won’t apply to proposals already filed — including this one — and DMD’s director acknowledged staff has been put in “an impossible task” with “no baseline regulations.”
Indianapolis council president to ask for data center moratorium (WFYI)
- Indianapolis City-County Council President Maggie Lewis announced Friday she will introduce a moratorium on new data center approvals in Marion County, to be presented Monday at the Metropolitan and Economic Development Committee meeting as it considers the proposed zoning framework.
- The moratorium would pause approvals while the council, city administration, industry experts, and community stakeholders evaluate long-term impacts including infrastructure demands, utility capacity, environmental concerns, and neighborhood quality of life.
- Marion County would join at least 17 Indiana counties that have enacted temporary moratoriums, with Marshall and Cass counties having gone further and banned new data centers altogether — meaning nearly a third of Indiana’s 92 counties have now moved to restrict the industry.
- The announcement comes days after the MDC voted to advance a new zoning framework that critics said was rushed, and just before the MDC’s July 15 vote on the DC Blox east side proposal — which the developer scaled back this week in an apparent attempt to get ahead of the backlash.

HoosLeft Podcast #133 - Live w/ Katie Robins

Scott Aaron Rogers — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 01:00:27 GMT

Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net

HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us

Katie Robins: https://www.katierobinsforindiana.com/

Donate to her campaign: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/katierobins4indiana

SUMMARY:

In this conversation, Scott sits down with Katie Robins -- critical care nurse, single mom, and Democratic candidate for Indiana House District 31 in Marion, Grant County -- for an extended examination of what it actually looks and feels like to work on the front lines of a broken American healthcare system. Robins started her nursing career in the ICU in January 2020, which put her directly in the path of COVID, and describes it as the radicalizing moment that drove her into politics. The conversation covers the gap between the people making healthcare policy and the people living with its consequences; the administrator-driven pressure that puts nurses in legal jeopardy for systemic failures; Indiana’s right-to-work environment and the wage gap with neighboring states; hospital consolidation and the blacklist threat; the Medicare for All argument Scott and Katie both make -- and the generational propaganda that has made it a harder sell than the math warrants. They close with Katie’s read on whether voters are starting to connect the dots.

WHAT’S INSIDE:

00:00:22 Introduction: The Broken American Healthcare System

- Scott sets the table: the American healthcare system is completely broken, and in Indiana -- home to Eli Lilly and Elevance Health — it’s even more broken than in neighboring states.

- The people holding the system together with bubblegum and duct tape are nurses and other frontline workers doing their best inside a dysfunctional structure.

- Katie Robins is introduced: critical care nurse, single mom, candidate for HD-31 in Marion.

00:03:36 Guest Introduction: Katie Robins, Critical Care Nurse and HD-31 Candidate

- Scott welcomes Katie, noting she appeared on HoosLeft This Week the prior Sunday and this podcast is a chance to dig deeper.

00:04:09 Who Is Katie Robins? Marion, Grant County, and Why She’s Running

- Katie lives in Marion, Grant County -- between Muncie and Fort Wayne — an old factory town with a GM plant and a few other manufacturers.

- She’s been a nurse for six years (eight years in healthcare total), primarily in critical care, and is a single mom to a seven-year-old.

- Her reason for running: she’s sick of feeling underrepresented. HD-31 has been uncontested for eight years, and her attitude was simply: why not?

00:06:51 Starting in the ICU in January 2020: A Radicalizing Moment

- Katie started as a new grad nurse in the ICU in January 2020 -- and walked directly into COVID. They ran out of ventilators. People wore whatever they could find on their faces instead of proper masks.

- Watching the people making the laws fail to understand or care about what was happening on the floor was her political radicalizing moment.

- The pandemic was horrible -- and it was also where she made some of her closest friendships, because having each other was the only way through it.

00:08:26 The Pandemic Exposed the System: More Spending, Worse Outcomes

- Scott notes the U.S. spends more per capita on healthcare than anywhere in the world, yet handled the pandemic worse than comparable wealthy nations -- over a million Americans died from COVID.

- The country has never really reckoned with it; capitalism just sweeps things under the rug and keeps plowing ahead.

00:09:22 Trauma Bonding, PTSD, and the Emotional Toll of Nursing Through COVID

- Katie describes nursing humor as a coping mechanism — “if we don’t laugh we cry” — and COVID as the moment that dynamic blossomed into something more intense.

- She went to therapy afterward and her therapist confirmed how traumatic the period was; she was waking up with dreams of coding patients.

- Some people still don’t believe COVID was real. Katie was there. She saw it.

00:11:00 From Heroes to Villains: How Disinformation Turned on Healthcare Workers

- Scott recalls the early-pandemic hero parades for healthcare workers in New York, and how within months disinformation had turned segments of the public against the very professionals trying to save them.

- Scott recounts being at a party and hearing someone tout ivermectin, and having to restrain himself.

- Katie and Scott agree: the resentment toward healthcare is real, but it’s not directed at nurses and doctors — it’s the result of everything broken around them.

00:12:38 The System Is Broken at the Top, Not the Bedside

- Katie is unequivocal: the broken healthcare system is a universal experience, regardless of political background, and the problem is not the nurses, doctors, CNAs, and support staff — it’s the people at the top making decisions from behind a desk.

- Taking away mandatory safe staffing ratios, for example, is the kind of decision administrators make without understanding that being one nurse short can mean a patient falls and dies.

- The people making the decisions can’t understand the front lines because they’re not there.

00:13:50 The Administrator Problem: Spreadsheets vs. the Floor

- Scott draws a direct parallel to his wife’s experience as a nurse: administrators look at spreadsheets and bottom lines, while nurses have someone’s life in their hands. Those two things come into conflict constantly.

- Katie adds a disclaimer — her opinions are her own and don’t reflect her employer —then connects the dynamic to her father’s experience at Delco/Delphi: the person at the bottom of the totem pole is always the first to go.

- When a sentinel event happens because of understaffing, the liability falls on the nurse — who could lose their job and their license for something that was fundamentally out of their control.

00:16:57 Licensing, Liability, and Who Bears Responsiblity When Staffing Fails

- Scott crystallizes the problem: the buck stops with nurses even when the people managing the bucks are making the staffing decisions that create the conditions for mistakes.

- Small errors that are predictable consequences of systemic understaffing become career-ending events for individual nurses.

00:17:38 Right-to-Work Indiana: Nurses Without Collective Bargaining Power

- Indiana is a right-to-work state — unions can’t automatically collect dues, can’t require membership, and can’t run closed shops. The practical result is weaker union presence and weaker bargaining power for nurses.

- States with strong nurses unions — California, New York — have better health outcomes, better working conditions, and better pay. They’re mostly blue states, Scott notes.

- Without collective bargaining, it’s one nurse versus an entire corporation. A mistake, or even a political disagreement with a supervisor, can get someone blacklisted from the entire regional health system.

00:19:07 Indiana Nurses Are Paid Less for the Same Job

- Katie confirms what Scott mentioned before they started recording: Indiana has a lower median nurse salary than neighboring states — sometimes $10,000-$20,000 less per year for the same work.

- Nursing is the same job regardless of state lines, and Indiana’s lower pay isn’t justified by any difference in the work itself.

- Corporations view nurses as bodies, not people — that’s the bottom line.

00:20:39 The Double Whammy: Harder Work, Worse Pay

- Scott makes the irony explicit: in states without strong union bargaining for nurse-to-patient ratios, nurses are doing more with less — and then being compensated less for it on top of that.

- Katie’s experience: her dad told her she’d be making “crazy money” as a nurse. She got out and was expecting better. In one year she received a 1.8% raise while still under $40/hour — well below inflation.

00:22:13 Wages, Inflation, and a Pound of Ground Beef at Eight Dollars

- At roughly 4% inflation — driven partly by Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war — a 1.8% raise is effectively a pay cut.

- Katie’s wages haven’t kept up with daily living expenses: ground beef that cost $4 three years ago now costs $8. Gas, groceries, everything has outpaced her compensation.

- Many nurses she knows work multiple jobs. So do many teachers. You are expected to do more with less, and paid less to do it.

00:24:35 The Nurse Hangover: 12-Hour Shifts, a Kid at Home, and a 45-Minute Commute

- A 12-hour shift becomes a 14-hour day with commute. Katie drives 45-50 minutes each way because she didn’t want to work at the one hospital in Marion.

- Getting home at 10 p.m. to a seven-year-old who needs a shower or wants to hang out leaves no recovery time. Two shifts in a row and she’s wiped for days afterward.

- Picking up even an extra six or eight hours throws off her whole week. Working a second job in those recovery windows would be nearly impossible.

00:26:08 The Cruelest Irony: A Nurse Without Health Insurance

- Katie’s current employer doesn’t provide health insurance. She, her mom, and her son are all uninsured. Her son was on Medicaid and got kicked off.

- She’s in the gap: her wages are just enough to disqualify her from assistance but not enough to afford marketplace coverage, which runs at least $300/month for herself alone — without dental.

- Her decision: pay out of pocket for doctor visits she can’t avoid and put everything else off. That’s the reality for vast numbers of Americans.

00:27:12 Hospital Consolidation and the Blacklist

- Scott notes the consolidation wave accelerated partly as an unintended consequence of the ACA — a genuine improvement that created perverse incentives toward monopoly formation.

- In many Indiana communities there’s one hospital, maybe two. If a nurse is blacklisted from a system that owns 70% of regional hospitals, their career options in that area can effectively disappear.

- Even if you stay employed, the system’s insurance may require you to see its own doctors — meaning you lose continuity with a physician you’ve seen for years if you switch employers.

00:29:37 The Healthcare Monopoly in Indiana: IU Health, Ascension, Eskenazi, and the Rest

- Scott names the handful of systems that dominate Indiana: IU Health, Ascension, Eskenazi, Franciscan Health — a few players controlling vast swaths of the state’s healthcare infrastructure.

- These same hospital monopolies are among the largest political donors in Indianapolis, predominantly to Republicans who control most offices — which buys them a friendly regulatory environment that further entrenches their dominance.

- Katie: it’s not just the hospital systems — pharma companies like Eli Lilly and Pfizer are in the same feedback loop, funding candidates who protect their interests.

00:32:22 Big Pharma, Utilities, and the Political Feedback Loop

- Katie connects the dots: pharmaceutical companies, hospital systems, utility companies — it all traces back to candidates they’ve paid to do their bidding. Money and politics are a cancer to society.

- The cycle is constant and traceable across years of campaign finance: friendly regulation → more profit → more donations → more friendly regulation.

00:33:20 Natural Monopolies Should Be Publicly Run: The Case for Medicare for All

- Scott draws the analogy to utilities: in most towns there’s one power company, and it would be inefficient to have competition. Utilities are therefore publicly managed.

- Hospitals are similar — you’re often lucky to have two. Where competition doesn’t work as a mechanism, public ownership does.

- The logical conclusion is Medicare for All — and Katie agrees: single-payer saves money in the long run because hospitals absorb enormous uncompensated care costs when patients simply can’t pay tens of thousands in bills.

00:35:50 The Public Option That Wasn’t: 2009 and the Lobbying That Killed It

- The ACA debate in 2009 had a public option on the table — not even full Medicare for All, just a government competitor to keep private insurers honest. It was killed by Democratic senators lobbied by the insurance and healthcare industries.

- Now the ACA has had its legs cut out from under it by years of Republican sabotage; premiums have surged and subsidies have been slashed.

- Scott’s argument: if you actually want a public option, you start by demanding Medicare for All and negotiate back. Starting from the center means you end up with crumbs.

00:38:05 Medicare for All Is the Popular Position — So Why Don’t We Have It?

- The majority of Americans support a single-payer system. Katie herself is uninsured, her mom is uninsured, her kid lost Medicaid.

- Yet decades of calling any improvement “socialism” — starting with Truman’s post-WWII universal healthcare proposal — have kept the conversation frozen.

- Scott’s counter: Medicare is socialism. It kind of is. We should lean into that, because it’s popular, and because the alternative — shoveling money to administrators who buy vacation homes and yachts — is the “American way” only in the sense of enriching the few at the expense of the many.

00:39:45 The Net Savings Argument: Why Universal Care Costs Less

- The question people always fixate on is whether taxes would go up. The answer is yes — but the savings from eliminating private premiums, deductibles, and co-pays dwarf the tax increase for most families.

- One medical emergency can push a family into bankruptcy. Most people are closer to that outcome than to becoming a millionaire.

- Katie: I want my tax dollars going to people’s healthcare, food, and medications — not to foreign wars or billionaires’ government contracts.

00:41:47 Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Generational Propaganda

- Scott says Rush Limbaugh ate his dad’s brain. Katie says him too — she has distinct memories of riding in her dad’s Buick, cigarette lit, Rush Limbaugh on the radio.

- She thinks that upbringing is part of why she’s so outspoken today — she grew up in that house and had to figure her way out of it.

- Her dad has come around on some things but still thinks climate change is a hoax. Scott: “Have you looked outside this week?”

00:43:00 Billionaires, Bootstraps, and Elon Musk as Welfare Queen

- Scott’s observation: the myth of rugged individualism obscures the reality that America’s biggest fortunes are built on government contracts. Elon Musk is the largest welfare recipient on earth.

- Katie: people who think Musk is a genius are fine with him receiving billions in government money, but furious about a poor family buying Coke on a food stamp card.

- The disconnect is engineered: the people who control the levers of power have spent generations making sure working people fight each other instead of looking up.

00:45:41 There Are More of Us Than There Are of Them

- Katie’s core argument: everyday working people — everyone without eight zeros in their bank account — vastly outnumber the billionaire class that controls so much of what happens to us.

- We have more in common with each other than any of us have with the people at the top. Her dad doesn’t get it. A lot of people don’t get it.

- They’re fighting over bathrooms while being robbed blind.

00:46:38 Divide and Conquer: Why Nurses Don’t Organize in Indiana

- Scott and Katie agree: the obstacle to unionization in Indiana isn’t just right-to-work law — it’s the decades of propaganda, absorbed by co-workers and supervisors alike, that unions are bad for workers.

- Katie’s co-workers complain about staffing and patient loads, say they need a union, but don’t understand how hard it is to organize in Indiana’s legal environment.

- She had a boss who was deeply opposed to her political views and fed the same anti-union propaganda — administrators are often as thoroughly propagandized as anyone else.

00:48:25 The Non-Voters: Disillusioned Nurses Who’ve Given Up

- The organizing challenge isn’t just Trump voters — it’s the large number of nurses who simply don’t vote because they feel disillusioned and disenfranchised.

- Katie has had co-workers who express frustration about staffing and patient ratios in one breath and refuse to engage politically in the next, because they don’t believe anything they do matters.

- The key is breaking it down for them: show them how the political decisions being made are the direct cause of the conditions they’re complaining about.

00:50:34 Rugged Individualism as a Myth: The Cookie Cartoon

- Scott invokes the political cartoon: a billionaire (Rupert Murdoch-adjacent) sits at a table with a blue-collar worker. The billionaire has a mountain of cookies. The worker has one. The billionaire says: watch out for that immigrant coming for your cookie.

- It works. It has always worked. Katie extends it: it’s not just immigrants — it’s Black people, Brown people, anyone different. That’s how society has been engineered by the people who control the levers of power.

- The result: working people fight over scraps while being robbed in plain sight.

00:53:12 Are People Starting to Get It? Tariffs, the War, and Data Centers

- Scott asks if voters are starting to connect the dots. Katie’s answer: yes and no.

- Some Trump loyalists still hold firm even as they feel the everyday effects of his tariffs, the Iran war, and rising prices. But data centers have opened eyes — people are seeing that Republicans at the federal and state level are both fine with it.

- What voters across the board want, Katie says, is somebody to actually stand up for something — somebody who puts the community first.

00:55:45 Closing: How to Find Katie Robins and Support Her Campaign

- Facebook: Katie Robins for Indiana; Instagram: katierobins4indiana; TikTok: KatieRobins4Indiana

- Website: katierobinsforindiana.com — events, volunteer sign-up, newsletter, donation, and biography.

- Programming note: HoosLeft This Week will now broadcast live exclusively on the Progressive Indiana Network YouTube channel; replays will still be available on the HoosLeft feed.

- HoosLeft This Week guests Sunday: central Indiana statehouse candidate Lauren Cole and Bloomington DSA organizer and activist Bryce Greene.

HoosLeft This Week - July 5, 2026

Scott Aaron Rogers — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 18:01:04 GMT

SUMMARY:

On this Independence Day weekend edition of HoosLeft This Week, Scott is joined by Democratic State House District 31 nominee Katie Robins and Equality Indiana Executive Director G. David Caudill for a two-hour look at a country at 250 that seems to be relitigating its own founding questions in real time. The show opens on the week’s record-breaking heat waves in Europe and the US, connecting climate denial, fossil fuel doubling-down, and the energy demands of unchecked data center expansion — including Indianapolis’s Metropolitan Development Commission overriding community opposition. From there the panel digs into Governor Braun’s consolidation of power across the IURC, the IU Board of Trustees, and his own office — where a Capital Chronicle investigation found nearly 60% of his staff’s salaries are being paid by other state agencies. The Iran conflict, immigration enforcement, the warden’s resignation at the Miami Correctional detention facility, and Indiana’s preparation of firing-squad execution infrastructure round out the first half. The back half is dominated by a dense run of Supreme Court decisions: birthright citizenship narrowly upheld, a geofence warrant ruling offering partial privacy protections, Humphrey’s Executor overturned giving the president sweeping control over independent agencies, a unanimous transgender sports ban, and coordinated campaign spending limits struck down. The show closes with Colorado’s progressive primary victories, Greg Ballard securing a ballot line for the Secretary of State race, a catalogue of Trump administration corruption tied to the Freedom 250 birthday celebration and $2 billion in new presidential wealth, and a Fourth of July reflection on America’s founding ideals — how far the country has and hasn’t come, and whose struggle has always done the work of perfecting our union.

Guest Info

Katie Robins: https://www.katierobinsforindiana.com/

G. David Caudill: https://equalityindiana.org/

IN DEPTH:

Climate

France records around 1,000 additional deaths as extreme heat breaks European records (AP)
- France recorded roughly 1,000 additional deaths during just three days at the peak of last week’s heat wave, with daily deaths spiking from a baseline of 900-1,000 to over 1,400 — 85% of victims were 65 or older. The WHO says over 1,300 excess deaths have been recorded across Europe since June 21.
- The WHO director-general warned that Europe is now the fastest-warming continent, heating at twice the global average, and that “once-in-a-generation” heat events are now occurring nearly every year.
- A new World Weather Attribution study found the heat would have been virtually impossible five decades ago and is 200 times more likely today than 20 years ago — directly attributing the event to climate change.
- Germany hit 41.7°C (107°F), Poland 40.5°C (104.9°F), and the Czech Republic a new all-time record of 41.9°C (107.4°F). Wildfires broke out in forests still contaminated with WWII unexploded ordnance, complicating firefighting in both eastern and southwestern Germany.
- Infrastructure buckled across the continent: highway concrete broke up, Leipzig trams shut down due to heat-damaged tracks, 600 train passengers were stranded without power or air conditioning, and Berlin police deployed water cannons — normally used on protesters — to cool crowds at the Brandenburg Gate.
Europe’s extreme heat would be impossible without climate change, scientists say (AP)
- 45% of the 850 European cities analyzed have broken or are expected to break records for heat stress — a measure combining temperature and humidity that directly reflects the human body’s ability to cool itself.
- The heat would have been 3.5°C cooler during the day and 2.4°C cooler at night in the climate of 1976 — the scientists say this event would have been essentially impossible then, and still very rare as recently as 2003.
- One outside climate scientist not involved in the study says even these findings likely underestimate climate change’s role: “All similar assessments are actually underestimating the role that climate change is playing here.”
- Europe has been warming at twice the global average since the 1980s — and this heat arrived in late June, weeks before the continent’s typically warmest period in July and August.
Heat wave: European countries report 3,700 excess deaths (DW)
- At least 3,700 excess deaths have been recorded in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands alone from the June 20-28 European heat wave — France reporting 2,025 (up 29% above normal), Belgium 1,222 (up 39%, described as “unprecedented”), and the Netherlands 480.
- Deaths at home in France rose over 90% during the peak week — a stark indicator of how many people died without access to cooling or medical care. Authorities warn the final figures will be higher.
- The heat wave broke all-time temperature records in Germany, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, with more than two-thirds of Europe’s 410 million people experiencing temperatures above 35°C.
- Only 24% of French households have air conditioning — up from 18% in 2023 but still starkly low. During the peak of the heat wave, Carrefour sold 30,000 AC units in a single day — “a thousand times more than on a normal day.”
- French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu faces a no-confidence vote over the government’s handling of the crisis — a political consequence that underscores how deadly heat waves are now being treated as governance failures, not just natural disasters.
Brutal heatwave scorches eastern US ahead of Fourth of July weekend (Guardian)
- A dangerous heat wave is gripping the central and eastern US through the Fourth of July weekend, with heat index values forecast to reach 115°F across the Midwest, Ohio Valley, and East Coast — the NWS calls prolonged extreme heat “among the deadliest weather hazards” because impacts build over time.
- New York City hit 100°F in Central Park Thursday — its first triple-digit day since July 2012 — with heat index values forecast to reach 115°F Friday. Mayor Mamdani deployed cooling vans with medical personnel; Gov. Hochul warned the state’s electric grid is under “heavy strain.”
- Philadelphia hit 102°F; organizers of the city’s Semiquincentennial parade have already shortened the route due to the heat. Washington DC, Baltimore, and parts of Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana face heat index values up to 110°F.
- The US heat wave follows last week’s record-breaking European heat wave directly — two continental-scale extreme heat events in consecutive weeks, both tied by scientists to climate change.
Alberta pitches southern route for West Coast pipeline, with a price tag of $35B or more (CBC)
- Alberta formally proposed a $35-43 billion oil pipeline running roughly 1,200 kilometers to BC’s West Coast, designed to move more than 1 million barrels per day to Asian markets — part of Alberta’s goal to double oil production to 8 million barrels per day over the next 10-15 years.
- The project is almost entirely taxpayer-funded: private partner Pembina Pipeline takes only a 10% stake and won’t risk capital before a final investment decision — critics note this makes it “another almost 100-percent-funded-by-taxpayer pipeline.”
- BC Premier Eby acknowledged his province cannot legally stop it and won’t fight it in court, but secured the North Coast tanker ban, environmental safeguards, spill protection commitments, and a potential royalty payment in exchange.
- No oil producers have yet committed to using the pipeline — a significant unresolved question that has one former TransCanada pipeline executive openly skeptical the project is financeable.
- Ottawa linked its support to the Pathways carbon capture project, claiming 16 million tonnes of annual emissions reductions — critics say this greenwashing math doesn’t add up when you’re simultaneously planning to double oil production.
Largest US power grid PJM orders emergency curbs as electricity use nears record peak (Reuters via Investing.com)
- PJM — the largest US power grid, serving 67 million people from the Mid-Atlantic to DC — activated emergency electricity reduction orders Friday, calling on industrial and commercial customers under mandatory curtailment contracts to cut usage as generator outages, overloaded transmission lines, and heat-driven AC demand converged.
- Thursday’s peak load hit approximately 163 GW, approaching the all-time record of 165.6 GW set 20 years ago — suppressed only by demand response programs. Spot wholesale electricity prices surged beyond $2,500 per megawatt hour, compared to roughly $40 per MWh under normal conditions.
- PJM was already straining before this week — the grid has been under mounting pressure from data center growth and EV demand. The hot weather alert extends through Sunday for the Mid-Atlantic zone, which includes the world’s largest concentration of data centers.
Heat adds to strains on areas with data centers, raising the temperature on AI debates (AP)
- Heat waves are the worst-case scenario for data centers: cooling demands spike, grid strain increases, and backup diesel generators may fire — worsening air quality in already-burdened communities like the low-income, majority-Cambodian American Sacred Heart neighborhood in Lowell, MA profiled in this article.
- The choice is stark: refrigeration-based cooling is energy-intensive; evaporative cooling is water-intensive. One Lowell facility uses 118,000 gallons of water per day at peak summer.
- Lowell’s City Council voted 10-0 in February for a one-year moratorium on data center expansion — and tensions ran high enough this week that police removed a 14-year-old girl from a community forum for speaking out of turn against the facilities.
- A researcher who has studied data centers for 30 years says national electricity demand growth from data centers has been moderate — but locally, the environmental costs, grid strain, and community impacts are very real and need accounting for.
Indiana Angle - Data center rules proposal clears initial vote in Indianapolis (WFYI)
- Indianapolis’s Metropolitan Development Commission voted 5-3 Wednesday to recommend a new special zoning class for data centers in Marion County, covering where they can be built, how close to residences, and noise limits — the proposal now heads to the full City-County Council with final approval unlikely before August.
- The vote was contentious: residents asked for a pause to allow more expert input, and Commissioner Brent Lyle moved to delay for the same reason, but Commission President John Dillon pushed ahead citing Council pressure. “There are a lot of fervor on this, and we just went over a dozen suggestions in this room that we have not even seen written,” Lyle said.
- Key procedural detail: the new rules would close a loophole developers have used — submitting variance requests instead of full rezoning petitions — which currently allows them to bypass the relevant City-County Councilor’s ability to force a full council vote.
- The rules would not apply retroactively to data centers that have already filed rezoning requests — meaning the controversial DC Blox $2 billion Irvington campus may be exempt.
- The broader context: Indiana currently has no specific data center regulations statewide, even as the 2019 Holcomb-era tax incentives have made Indiana a national destination for the industry.
Trump administration can remove history and climate info from US parks, court says (Guardian)
- A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration does not have to reinstate climate, immigration, and slavery materials removed from national parks — reversing a lower court order that had given the government 21 days to put the signage back.
- The First Circuit panel found the district court erred on the “irreparable harm” standard: the advocacy groups challenging the removals didn’t demonstrate specific enough harm to themselves — reputational damage and reduced membership weren’t tied closely enough to Burgum’s removal mandate.
- The underlying dispute: Trump’s 2025 executive order directed the NPS to remove materials deemed “ideological indoctrination,” with Interior Secretary Burgum instructing the agency to flag anything that “inappropriately disparages Americans past or living.” The district court judge had called the removals “a dangerous precedent of censorship and sanitization.”
- The legal battle continues — this ruling is on the preliminary injunction, not the merits. The advocacy groups can still pursue their underlying lawsuit.

Utility regulator resigns from post; Braun looks for replacement (ICC)
- David Veleta formally resigned from the IURC June 26, effective August 31 — his resignation letter praised his colleagues and made no mention of political pressure.
- With Veleta gone and Zay demoted to regular commissioner, Braun now has an open seat to fill. The only holdover he didn’t appoint is David Ziegner, who has served under five governors since 1990.
- Braun is advertising the vacancy with an explicit ideological litmus test: “I am looking for a commissioner who understands that every decision has a real impact on Hoosier families and businesses and who will keep ratepayers front and center.”
- Worth noting: Braun appointed three of the five commissioners in December, including Zay as chairman, then demoted him roughly six months later for approving a rate increase he publicly condemned. He is now filling a vacancy left by another commissioner who voted the same way — rapidly reshaping the supposedly independent commission around a single political priority heading into the 2026 election cycle.
Higher Ed
- Gov. Braun appoints three new trustees to IU board (WFIU)
  - Braun appointed three new IU trustees Tuesday: Matt Ferguson (former CareerBuilder CEO), Steve Henke (CEO of Henke Development Group and IU Foundation board emeritus), and Mel Raines (CEO of Pacers Sports & Entertainment and former assistant to VP Dick Cheney). All serve until June 30, 2029.
- Concerned about IU’s ‘direction,’ board member leaves Foundation (WFIU)
  - IU Foundation board member Jim Fielding declined a fourth term Wednesday, publishing a detailed LinkedIn post explaining he can no longer “in good conscience” champion an institution “whose direction I am no longer able to publicly defend” — citing IU’s pattern of quietly absorbing federal and state pressure rather than pushing back.
  - Fielding’s core governance complaint: the board evolved from productive debate into a rubber-stamp body where members were told to “be on the team or not be in the room.” His summary: “A board that is asked to stop asking is not a board anymore.”
  - Specific grievances include the removal of alumni-elected trustees by Braun in May 2025, the dismantling of DEI infrastructure, and donors to the Queer Philanthropy Circle being told emergency LGBTQ+ scholarship funds could no longer be designated that way due to risk to federal grant funding.
  - Fielding says positive responses to his post have come largely from IU alumni, faculty, staff and students who feel they cannot speak out themselves — suggesting the concerns are broader than one departing board member.
  - The IU Foundation’s response was a single boilerplate sentence thanking him for his service.
$2M in governor’s office salaries bankrolled by other state agencies (ICC)
- Over half of the 33 employees reporting to Braun’s governor’s office are paid by other state agencies — $2.3 million of the $3.9 million in total salaries, or 58% — with the administration calling it “historical practice going back decades.”
- Some of the arrangements raise eyebrows: a governor’s office spokesman is paid by FSSA; an executive assistant and spokeswoman are paid by the BMV (the latter earning more than the BMV’s own spokesman); and a senior policy adviser is paid by INDOT at $180,000 — more than the INDOT commissioner’s $175,000 salary.
- The most striking case: former DCS director Adam Krupp, who spent over three months on medical leave, returned in April as a “special adviser to the governor” in a role created specifically for him — still drawing $210,000 from DCS, the highest salary in that agency, matching the new DCS director.
- The Public Access Counselor’s office — already struggling with a backlogged workload — has only three employees, yet a governor’s office deputy general counsel consumes nearly a third of the office’s entire salary budget while presumably doing governor’s office work.
- Rep. Ed DeLaney’s summary: “He has way too many layers of authority, and now he’s confused their wallets.”
Braun extends gas tax holiday for fourth — and likely final — time (WFYI)
- Braun extended Indiana’s gas tax holiday for a fourth and final time Thursday — this is the last 30-day extension he can order without legislative approval, costing the state roughly $140 million per month.
- Braun also announced this week he would “make good on” local governments’ financial losses from the suspension — worth flagging given our earlier coverage, which noted the Association of Indiana Counties was pursuing a State Board of Finance transfer on June 30 precisely because no specific plan or statute existed.
- Braun acknowledged steel and concrete costs are up roughly 50% and said the legislature will need to address long-term infrastructure funding — a significant admission given the gas tax is the primary mechanism for road funding and he’s been suspending it for months.

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Iran War

Iran attacks Bahrain and Kuwait following US strikes and threatens to halt talks (AP)
- Iran’s foreign minister threatened a “complete halt” to negotiations if US strikes continue, insisting Iran must govern the Strait of Hormuz and calling the US-backed Omani route a source of “further complications.”
- Trump accused Iran of violating the ceasefire on social media, warning of a point where the US “will be forced to militarily complete the job” — adding “the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist” if that happens. Pakistan says talks resume Tuesday; the Trump administration says nothing has been canceled.
- Hezbollah rejected the Israel-Lebanon framework agreement, its leader saying fighting continues until Israel withdraws from Lebanon. Iran is calling for an emergency meeting of a new “conflict control unit” among the US, Iran, and Lebanon.
- Israel shelled Abdin village in southern Syria after residents threw rocks at an advancing Israeli convoy; UN peacekeepers intervened and Israeli troops withdrew before the shelling. Israel has occupied southern Syria’s UN-patrolled buffer zone since December 2024 and now says the occupation is indefinite.
Trump presses Syria to take on Hezbollah, raising alarm in Lebanon and Israel (AP)
- Trump has openly suggested letting Syria fight Hezbollah instead of Israel, saying Syrian President al-Sharaa “would do a better job” — al-Sharaa has denied any such plans and says Trump’s comments were misinterpreted.
- Syria’s new Islamist-led government has been clear it wants no part of regional conflict, focused instead on rebuilding after 14 years of civil war and repatriating millions of refugees.
- Regional analysts call Trump’s proposal driven by “profound ignorance of the dynamics on the ground” — Syria’s military is not a coherent institution, includes thousands of foreign jihadi fighters of uncertain loyalty, and experienced sectarian revenge killings in the months after Assad’s fall.
- Lebanon has bitter memories of decades of Syrian military occupation ending in 2005 — Trump’s suggestion dredges up those fears among Lebanese Shiite, Christian, and Druze populations.
- Israel is also alarmed, watching al-Sharaa’s government with suspicion while simultaneously occupying a strip of southern Syria — creating a situation where Trump is pressuring Syria to fight Iran’s proxies while Israel is actively seizing Syrian territory.
UPDATE: Syria rules out military intervention in Lebanon despite US pressure (France 24)
- Syria’s foreign minister visited Beirut Thursday to explicitly rule out military intervention in Lebanon, telling President Aoun that Damascus had “no intention of undertaking such a move” — directly pushing back against Trump’s repeated suggestions that Syria should “take care of Hezbollah.”
- The visit broke new ground in Syria-Lebanon relations: Shaibani met Hezbollah ally and parliament speaker Nabih Berri for the first time, didn’t rule out future Hezbollah meetings, and extended an invitation for Aoun to visit Syria — which would be a historic first.
- Lebanon and Syria announced a high-level committee to develop economic and security agreements — a notable step given Syria’s decades of military occupation of Lebanon and its role in numerous Lebanese political assassinations.
- The new Syrian government’s position on Hezbollah is complex: hostile in principle — it has arrested alleged Hezbollah cells and cut former supply routes — but not willing to go to war with them, despite US pressure to do so.
US and Iran hold separate meetings in Qatar and agree to continue discussions (AP)
- US and Iranian negotiators met separately Wednesday with Qatari and Pakistani mediators in Doha — no direct talks between the two sides — with Qatar describing “positive progress” and agreeing to continue discussions after Khamenei’s funeral Saturday.
- The Strait of Hormuz remains the central sticking point: Iran insists on controlling vessel routes and charging fees after the 60-day window; the US and Gulf states refuse. Iran reinforced its position Wednesday when a container ship ran aground using a non-Iran-approved route, with state TV using the incident to underscore Tehran’s claim to control the waterway.
- Lebanon is the other major obstacle: Iran demands all fighting end and Israel withdraw from southern Lebanon; Israel insists on holding the territory and retaining freedom to strike Hezbollah.
- Ship traffic is slowly recovering — Thailand reports 10 of 11 vessels safely out, South Korea 24 of 26 — but the weekend attacks have clearly chilled transit numbers.
- A US Navy MH-60S helicopter made an emergency water landing in the Arabian Sea Wednesday, with one crew member missing; the Navy says there’s no indication of hostile action.
Where the U.S. and Iran stand after Doha negotiations (Japan Times)
- Indirect US-Iran talks in Doha concluded Wednesday with Qatar and Pakistan reporting “positive progress” — Iran’s deputy FM said sides agreed to establish a communications channel to record alleged ceasefire violations, and reviewed release of a portion of Iran’s $6 billion in frozen assets.
- Trump told reporters “the denuclearization of Iran is moving along well” — but a source familiar with the talks said the Doha discussions focused more specifically on Strait of Hormuz arrangements, with nuclear issues slated for later.
- The next round of talks will be scheduled after Khamenei’s funeral proceedings conclude — his public funeral begins Saturday in Tehran, with burial set for July 9 in Mashhad, his birthplace.
- On the ground: exchanges of fire in the Persian Gulf had calmed in the days leading up to the Doha talks; Lebanon remains relatively quiet but Israel has not yet begun withdrawing from pilot zones under the framework agreement, and Tehran continues to insist any deal must include Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon.
Iran and Oman propose fee plan for Strait of Hormuz, sources say (NBC)
- Iran and Oman have presented the US with a joint proposal to administer the Strait of Hormuz that includes collecting administrative fees from shipping companies — framed not as mandatory tolls but as voluntary charges for navigational, environmental, and rescue services, modeled on the Strait of Malacca fee structure.
- The distinction matters legally: Rubio has said flatly that “no country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway” — but the Omani foreign minister is drawing a line between mandatory fees and voluntary service charges, and a Middle East official told NBC that Iran believes the Americans will eventually accept some version of fees.
- The US position is conflicted: a source familiar with discussions says American negotiators have concerns but believe the issue can be resolved, and the White House emphasized that Oman has maintained its commitment against mandatory tolls.
- The stakes are significant: before the war, ships carrying 20% of the world’s oil and gas transited the strait without any fees. Any monetization — voluntary or otherwise — would be a fundamental change to how one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes operates.
U.S. officials believed Israel was plotting to kill Iranian negotiators (NYT)
- US officials believed Israel was plotting to assassinate Iran’s chief negotiators — Foreign Minister Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf — during active ceasefire talks, and went so far as to warn Iran through regional intermediaries that Israel might target them.
- Israel had already killed other potentially pragmatic Iranian officials the US had hoped to negotiate with, including Ali Larijani and Kamal Kharazi, both killed in Israeli airstrikes while involved in US negotiations.
- The most dramatic incident: on Ghalibaf’s return from the April Islamabad talks with Vance, Iranian security forces intercepted intelligence that Israel planned to shoot down his plane, with two Israeli jets reportedly entering Iranian airspace. The plane made an emergency landing in Mashhad; the delegation drove eight hours back to Tehran. A senior Ghalibaf adviser confirmed this account publicly.
- Pakistan escorted the Iranian delegation’s planes with fighter jets for the entire Islamabad trip, reflecting how seriously Iran took the assassination threat.
- The through-line: US and Israeli war aims diverged sharply and early — Israel wanted regime change, destruction of Iran’s proxy forces, and serious damage to its missile program. The US wanted a negotiated off-ramp. Israel viewed the resulting MOU as a disaster, and has been obstructing it ever since.

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Immigration

Homeland security secretary tells migrants to seek permanent status or leave (Guardian)
- DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told CNN Sunday that TPS holders should either pursue permanent residency or leave — offering a $2,100 payment and a plane ticket — following the Supreme Court ruling that stripped protections from an estimated 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians.
- The offer rings hollow against the State Department’s own current travel advisory warning against going to Haiti or Syria, citing widespread violence, gang control, terrorism, and kidnapping.
- Even some Republicans broke with the ruling: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine called it “a mistake,” noting “violent gangs run most of the country” in Haiti, and Republican Reps. Mike Lawler and Don Bacon called for TPS extensions.
- In Springfield, Ohio — where Trump falsely accused Haitians of eating pets during the 2024 campaign, triggering bomb threats and white supremacist marches — Haitian residents described the ruling’s immediate impact on a community that rebuilt a previously struggling local economy.
- Advocates warn the ruling opens the door to ending TPS for all 1.7 million people from 17 countries currently enrolled in the program, effectively dismantling a humanitarian protection that has existed since 1990.
Indiana Angle
- AG Rokita warns Merrillville not to oppose any ICE detention facility (Indiana Citizen)
  - AG Todd Rokita sent a cease-and-desist letter to Merrillville June 24, threatening a lawsuit if the town doesn’t rescind a January resolution opposing an ICE detention facility — even as the community is still rebuilding from an EF-2 tornado that destroyed over 200 buildings on June 11.
  - Merrillville’s legal response is straightforward: a resolution has no force of law under Indiana Home Rule — only ordinances do. The town says it’s simply expressing an opinion, protected by both the US and Indiana constitutions, and has not blocked any federal action.
  - Rokita’s letter claims local officials have “interrupted multiple real estate transactions” over the past four months, but cites no specific instances or evidence — only that his office has “received reports.”
  - The timing is particularly pointed: Merrillville officials said they were “frankly surprised” the AG sent the letter while the town is managing one of the largest disaster recovery efforts in its history.
  - Relevant context: by June, ICE was already pulling back from the warehouse detention center plan nationally — making Rokita’s threat against a tornado-ravaged town over a facility that may never be built even harder to justify.
- State judge grants injunction on enforcement of immigration detainer law in Monroe County (WFIU)
  - A Monroe Circuit Court judge granted a preliminary injunction Tuesday blocking enforcement of the FAIRNESS Act’s ICE detainer mandate in Monroe County — finding the requirement to hold people beyond their scheduled release dates based on civil immigration detainers, not judicial warrants, raises Fourth Amendment concerns.
  - The constitutional question is straightforward: ICE detainers are issued by immigration officers, not judges, and are based on civil rather than criminal probable cause — meaning complying with them could amount to warrantless detention.
  - Rokita claimed on social media that Marté “lost big time” in federal court and “failed” in state court — but the article notes the federal denial was on jurisdictional grounds, not the merits, and the state court had simply paused while the federal case proceeded. Rokita’s characterization is misleading.
  - Sheriff Marté’s statement frames it as a constitutional obligation, not an immigration policy stance: “No public official should be placed in the impossible position of choosing between violating constitutional rights and violating state law.”
  - The law went into effect statewide today — Monroe County is currently the only jurisdiction where enforcement is blocked.

Indiana Prisons

Warden resigns from Indiana prison housing hundreds of ICE detainees (IndyStar)
- The warden of Miami Correctional Facility, Brian English, quietly resigned June 26 — his LinkedIn post described the facility as a “difficult place” when he arrived in 2022, citing lockdowns, staffing shortages, and strained community relations.
- The facility houses more than 600 ICE detainees alongside roughly 1,800 state prisoners, making it one of the Midwest’s largest immigration detention centers — two detainees have died there, prompting calls for investigation from Rep. André Carson and others.
- Problems documented by IndyStar before and during English’s tenure include rampant violence, drug use, inadequate medical care, inconsistent food service, and hygiene difficulties — and while state officials promised the ICE arrangement would be profitable, delayed federal payments have so far left expenditures exceeding revenue.
- No interim warden or replacement has been identified; the Indiana Department of Correction did not respond to IndyStar’s inquiry.
Indiana’s new prison already equipped for firing squads as death penalty debate continues (ICC)
- Indiana’s new Westville Correctional Facility is being built with firing squad execution capability — even though Indiana law currently only authorizes lethal injection and the legislature has not approved firing squads.
- Indiana currently has zero execution drugs on hand; its entire pentobarbital supply was exhausted after last October’s execution. Braun says he’s confident the state can obtain more if needed, but acknowledged the procurement process is opaque and expensive — and said lawmakers “ought to take a look” at alternative methods.
- The federal government is pressing Indiana to authorize firing squads: the DOJ said Indiana’s lethal-injection-only statute is a “practical constraint” on federal executions at Terre Haute, and the Bureau of Prisons is evaluating whether to relocate or expand federal death row to a state with broader execution authority — a move it says would become unnecessary if Indiana authorized firing squads.
- Firing squad legislation narrowly failed in this year’s session; Rep. Jim Lucas plans to reintroduce it in 2027, and Rokita’s office says it’s ready to help draft and defend the legislation.

Supreme Court

Supreme Court strikes down Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship (SCOTUSblog)
- The Supreme Court struck down Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship Tuesday, with Roberts writing that children born in the US to parents here illegally or temporarily “satisfy both elements of the Citizenship Clause” and “are citizens at birth.”
- Roberts traced birthright citizenship from English common law through the 14th Amendment’s repudiation of Dred Scott to the 1898 Wong Kim Ark ruling — calling the 128-year precedent unambiguous and the government’s “domicile” theory “dramatically revisionist” with “scant evidence.”
- Kavanaugh concurred in the result but on different grounds — he thinks the executive order violates federal statute, not the Constitution, leaving open the possibility Congress could legislate new exceptions to birthright citizenship.
- Thomas and Gorsuch dissented, calling the majority’s historical account inaccurate. Gorsuch separately flagged an unresolved question: if undocumented immigrants are considered to have no domicile, how does that square with the Court’s longstanding principle that every person is domiciled somewhere?
- Alito called the ruling “one of the most important decisions in the history of the Court” and “a serious mistake” — arguing the 14th Amendment was intended to confer citizenship only on children who owe allegiance solely to the US at birth.
Supreme Court will not consider $5 million verdict against Trump (SCOTUSblog)
- The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear Trump’s appeal of the $5 million jury verdict against him in E. Jean Carroll’s sexual abuse and defamation case, letting the 2nd Circuit’s ruling stand with no noted dissent.
- Trump had argued the jury shouldn’t have heard testimony from other women alleging assault or the “Access Hollywood” tape; Carroll’s lawyers said the rest of the case was strong enough regardless.
- Still pending: Trump is expected to file a separate petition over the $83 million verdict from Carroll’s second defamation case, which the same appeals court also upheld.
Court rules that law enforcement’s use of “geofence warrant” was a “search” (SCOTUSblog)
- The Court ruled 6-3 that police use of a “geofence warrant” — demanding Google hand over location data for everyone near a crime scene — counts as a Fourth Amendment “search,” sending the case back to lower court to decide if this particular warrant was “reasonable.”
- Kagan’s majority opinion built directly on the 2018 Carpenter ruling on cell-site data, rejecting the government’s argument that voluntarily letting Google collect your location data forfeits any privacy interest — that data, she wrote, “is the automatic price of conventional cell-phone usage.”
- Alito’s dissent argues the ruling is largely symbolic for this case: lower courts already found police acted in “good faith,” and Google has since changed its Location History service to prevent this kind of warrant from working again anyway.
Court prevents Trump from firing Fed governor (SCOTUSblog)
- The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Fed Governor Lisa Cook can keep her job while her firing challenge proceeds — Roberts writing for a majority that included Kavanaugh.
- Roberts held that the “for cause” removal protection Congress built into the Fed isn’t symbolic — pretextual firings would be “corrosive of the independence that Congress sought to preserve.”
- The ruling is interim relief, not a final merits decision, but Roberts signaled the government is unlikely to prevail and rejected its argument that courts can’t reinstate fired officials during litigation.
- Trump fired Cook in August over alleged 2021 mortgage fraud — conduct predating her appointment — without giving her procedural notice or an opportunity to respond.
- Thomas’s dissent frames the stakes as a separation of powers issue: the majority “upholds an injunction against the President’s removal of an executive officer for the first time in the Constitution’s 237-year history.”
But… Supreme Court allows Trump to fire FTC commissioner and overturns major restraint on presidential power (SCOTUSblog)
- The Court ruled 6-3 Monday to strike down the law protecting FTC commissioners from at-will removal, overturning the 91-year-old Humphrey’s Executor precedent and giving Trump sweeping new authority over roughly two dozen independent agencies.
- Roberts’ reasoning: the FTC exercises executive power — enforcing 80 statutes, conducting investigations, filing federal lawsuits — so its commissioners are presidential subordinates subject to removal at will.
- The ruling explicitly carves out the Federal Reserve, noting it “follows in the distinct historical tradition” of earlier national banks that were never subject to presidential control — directly relevant to the same-day Cook ruling.
- Sotomayor’s dissent puts the stakes plainly: the decision “reshapes our Government,” handing the president control over the FTC, FERC, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Consumer Product Safety Commission, and Merit Systems Protection Board, among others.
- Gorsuch concurred but said the majority didn’t go far enough — he wants Congress and the courts to claw back the “enormous legislative and judicial powers” agencies now wield.
Court rules that states can exclude transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports teams (SCOTUSblog)
- The Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that states can bar transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ sports teams, holding that Idaho and West Virginia’s laws don’t violate Title IX — with Kavanaugh writing that when Title IX was enacted in the 1970s, “sex” meant biological sex, and separate teams based on biological sex are expressly permitted.
- Kavanaugh also upheld the laws under the Constitution’s equal protection clause, finding states have legitimate interests in competitive fairness and safety that justify the classification — and rejecting individualized exemptions for athletes on hormones as administratively unworkable.
- The division came on constitutional grounds specific to the West Virginia case: Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissented only on the question of whether Pepper-Jackson — a 15-year-old who has never gone through male puberty — was actually “similarly situated” to cisgender boys, arguing the Court skipped necessary fact-finding before ruling against her constitutional claim.
- Thomas used his concurrence to go further, writing flatly: “Men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or girls” and calling language to the contrary “a lie.”
- The ruling comes a year after the Court’s 6-3 decision upholding Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors, cementing a clear pattern in the Court’s approach to transgender rights cases.
Justices strike down campaign finance law (SCOTUSblog)
- The Court struck down 6-3 the federal law limiting coordinated spending between political parties and their candidates, overruling a 2001 precedent and allowing parties to spend unlimited amounts in coordination with candidates.
- Kavanaugh’s majority holding: the only valid rationale for campaign finance limits is preventing quid pro quo corruption, and existing contribution limits plus disclosure laws already do that — the coordinated expenditure limits are an unnecessary speech restriction.
- Kagan’s dissent cuts to the practical consequence: a donor who can only give $7,000 directly to a candidate can now give a party up to half a million dollars earmarked for that candidate’s bills — exactly the circumvention the law was designed to prevent.
- The case was brought in 2022 by then-Senator JD Vance and the NRSC and NRCC — Vance is now vice president and the direct beneficiary of the administration that declined to defend the law in court.
- Worth noting: the ruling applies equally to Democrats and Republicans on paper, but the original challengers were Republican committees, the Trump administration sided with them, and the practical effect favors whichever party has wealthier donor networks.

Elections

FBI directing hundreds of analysts to dig into Georgia election probe subjects (MS NOW)
- The FBI is surging 260 intelligence analysts from field offices nationwide into what Director Kash Patel has designated a “priority” investigation into the 2020 Georgia election, with overtime authorized including weekends and holidays, and analysts expected to complete 708 records checks each by July 17.
- The investigation traces back to a January FBI raid that seized over 600 boxes of Fulton County election records — ballots, ballot images, voter rolls, tabulation materials — based on a warrant that a federal judge later criticized as relying on “misleading” or “troubling” justifications, largely sourced from claims previously debunked by Republican-led investigations in Georgia.
- What analysts are actually looking for, per an official: “Derogatory information is the short answer. The idea is to build a case. Look at associations between people, look into their social media, their business activity, travel, contact with other investigative subjects.”
- The investigation was initiated based on a referral from Kurt Olsen, a White House election integrity official who backed Trump’s 2020 fraud claims. Joe Biden won Georgia by 11,779 votes.
- The Atlanta FBI special agent in charge was ousted shortly before the warrant was executed; former DNI Tulsi Gabbard accompanied the FBI during the raid and arranged for Trump to speak by phone with agents — a move Democrats called deeply inappropriate.
The Left Wins in Colorado—and It’s Not Because of Gaza or Socialism (TNR)
- Colorado’s Tuesday primaries added to the insurgent wave: democratic socialist Melat Kiros defeated 30-year incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette by double digits, and AG Phil Weiser beat former front-runner Michael Bennet for the open governor’s seat — not on ideology but on anti-Trump positioning, hammering Bennet for confirming several Trump cabinet nominees.
- Sen. John Hickenlooper survived but took 45%+ from progressive challenger Julie Gonzales — an unusually strong showing against an incumbent senator.
- The New Republic’s key analytical point: these Colorado incumbents weren’t Manchin-style centrists — DeGette is a Congressional Progressive Caucus member, Bennet voted against nearly all of Trump’s proposals. What they lacked was visible fighting spirit, not liberal credentials.
- The through-line connecting New York, Maine, Michigan, and now Colorado: Democratic base voters aren’t simply ideological lefties — they’re angry at party leaders for being slow to oppose Trump and willing to bet on fresh faces over reliable-but-forgettable incumbents.
- The author’s frame: “Democratic politicians can channel that anger against Trump — or it will be channeled against them.”
Indiana Elections: Ballard officially on secretary of state ballot (IndyStar)
- Greg Ballard has officially qualified for the November ballot as an independent under the Lincoln Party, with 40,000 signatures certified as of July 2 — clearing the 37,000 threshold despite the forged-signature controversy and late campaign finance filing fines.
- The Lincoln Party name isn’t just branding: if Ballard gets at least 2% of the vote in November, future independents can run under it — giving the campaign stakes beyond this single race.
- A poll of 400 voters by Independent Indiana earlier this year showed Ballard at 23%. He faces Republican Max Engling, Democrat Beau Bayh, and Libertarian Lauri Shillings in November.

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Corruption

Trump takes 1st flight on Air Force One gifted by Qatar, but retrofitted using taxpayer dollars (ABC)
- Trump took his first flight Wednesday on the retrofitted Qatari-gifted 747, now designated Air Force One, flying to North Dakota — the plane will serve as Air Force One until shortly before he leaves office, at which point ownership transfers to the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation.
- The US Air Force has been modifying the jet in Texas since September at an estimated cost of under $400 million in taxpayer funds — meaning the total cost of the “gift” to taxpayers may approach or match the plane’s original $400 million value.
- The arrangement is unusual on multiple fronts: a foreign government gifting a head of state a $400 million aircraft, taxpayer-funded retrofitting of a plane that will end up in a private presidential library, and a Boeing contract already in place to deliver next-generation Air Force One jets around 2028.
- Inside: 14 lie-flat press pods with massage functions, beige and gold interior, dark wood accents — and Fox News on the TVs during the inaugural flight.
Belgian diamond group that won tariff relief gifted Trump a lavishly encrusted ring (AP)
- Belgium’s Antwerp World Diamond Center gifted Trump a ring encrusted with 321 diamonds, 56 sapphires, 13 emeralds, and six rubies — estimated at $25,000-$35,000 — months after winning zero-percent US tariff status on more than $2 billion in annual diamond exports to the US.
- The constitutional issue: gifts from foreign governments are prohibited by the foreign emoluments clause without congressional assent. The article frames it as “breaking with decades-old custom” — the commenter calling that framing a dodge has a point, though the legal question hinges on whether this is classified as a gift to Trump personally or to the nation.
- The ring fits a broader pattern documented in Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure: a $250,000 sculpture, 10 World Cup final tickets from FIFA’s Gianni Infantino, and — as we covered — the $400 million Qatari plane now serving as Air Force One.
As America Turns 250, a Trump Adviser’s Firm Rakes in Federal Cash (Mother Jones)
- Event Strategies Inc. — the firm that organized Trump’s January 6 Ellipse rally — has received nearly $40 million in federal contracts since January 2025 to produce America’s 250th anniversary events, often through sole-source contracts with no competitive bidding.
- The conflict: ESI partner Justin Caporale simultaneously serves as Trump’s unofficial “events guy,” attending White House meetings and reportedly helping draft budgets for anniversary spending — then collecting fees when ESI executes those same events. Rep. Huffman’s summary: “He’s practically writing his own paychecks.”
- Freedom 250 — the semi-private LLC Trump aides created to replace the bipartisan America250 — has received at least $79 million in federal funds but claims it doesn’t have to tell Congress how it’s spending them, structured through the National Park Foundation to avoid oversight.
- Corporate donors to Freedom 250 include companies with active lobbying campaigns before the administration: Palantir, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon parent RTX, United Airlines (which pitched a merger to the administration months before donating), and ScottsMiracle-Gro, whose glyphosate product Trump signed an executive order boosting after the company donated.
- The January 6 connection is documented: a 2020 text from Caporale described the Ellipse rally as “a call to action to march to the Capitol and make noise,” per the House January 6 committee’s final report.
Trump earned over $1 billion on cryptocurrency and coin ventures last year (WaPo)
- Trump’s 2025 financial disclosure shows over $1.4 billion in income from crypto and digital token ventures — more than double his $600 million total income in 2024 — driven by $635 million in royalties from Celebration Coins, $525 million in World Liberty Financial token sales, $196 million from a stablecoin transaction, and $65 million from World Liberty Financial equity.
- He also reported $86.5 million from lawsuit settlements with Twitter, ABC, CBS, YouTube, and Meta — five separate cases.
- Resort income grew: Trump National Doral hit $121 million (up from $110 million) and Mar-a-Lago $77 million (up from $56 million).
- The White House denied any conflicts of interest, noting Trump has “made the United States the crypto capital of the world” — while the president who signed crypto-friendly legislation and executive orders is simultaneously collecting hundreds of millions from crypto ventures.
- For contrast: Vance’s disclosure ran 17 pages; his biggest income bump was “Hillbilly Elegy” royalties jumping from $50,000-$100,000 to $1-5 million.
Vance Downplays Watergate and Compares Himself to Nixon (NYT)
- Speaking at the Nixon Presidential Library, Vance said Watergate would be “like a 12-hour news story” today and that “the idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy” — framing Nixon as a victim of the “deep state” rather than a president who directed the CIA to obstruct an FBI investigation into a crime his administration committed.
- Vance compared himself to Nixon directly: “Young senator, vice president, writes some best-selling books, is hated by the media. It kind of sounds like JD Vance.”
- Columbia historian and former Nixon Library director Timothy Naftali pushed back sharply: “We have more than enough information from the Nixon era to know that there was no intelligence conspiracy against Richard Nixon. He brought his house of cards down upon himself.” Naftali noted the irony that Vance is essentially saying the FBI shouldn’t investigate federal crimes if the White House is involved.
- The visit was partly a book tour for Vance’s new memoir and partly a fundraiser — he raised $4.2 million at a subsequent RNC dinner in Palo Alto where supporters paid $250,000 each. Vance is the first VP to serve as RNC finance chair, positioning himself for a 2028 presidential run.

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USA at 250

Trump uses Mount Rushmore speech to allege ‘mortal threat’ from communism (SD Searchlight)
- Trump used the Mount Rushmore 250th anniversary speech to declare communism “a mortal threat to American liberty — greater than World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11” — without directly naming Democratic socialists but clearly alluding to recent primary wins by DSA-aligned candidates.
- He then pivoted to electoral politics, telling the crowd Republicans “will not lose an election for a hundred years” if they kill the filibuster and pass the SAVE America Act — with Senate Majority Leader Thune, who has pledged to protect the filibuster, sitting in the audience.
- The article notes the distinction Trump ignored: democratic socialists advocate expanding the social safety net through democratic means; communist tenets include central planning and abolishing private property. They are not the same thing.
- The fireworks show itself raised environmental concerns: parts of Pennington County are in severe drought, the Park Service relied on a six-year-old environmental assessment, and the noise could harm endangered northern long-eared bats and tricolored bats recently listed for protection. Total cost is expected to exceed the $4 million tab from the 2020 event.
- Mount Rushmore sits in the Black Hills, land sacred to the Lakota Sioux that was seized by the US government in violation of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty.
250 Years of Genocide, Theft, and Displacement (Simon Moya-Smith in The Nation)
- Moya-Smith opens with a flat rejection of the 250th anniversary celebrations as “a red, white, and blue circle jerk” — arguing that any honest reckoning must begin with the foundational genocide of Indigenous peoples, not with the founding fathers.
- The documented record he cites: Washington’s policy of destroying Native crops and food supplies to starve tribes; Jefferson’s statements that Natives justified their own extermination; Lincoln’s authorization of the largest mass execution in US history, of 38 Dakota men; Jackson’s Trail of Tears, which killed at least 10,000; and the boarding school system designed to “kill the Indian in him, and save the man,” whose mass graves are still being discovered.
- His sharpest irony: Indigenous peoples serve in the US military at a higher rate than any other demographic — fighting to protect a nation that classified them as non-citizens until 1924 and still leaves many reservations without running water or electricity.
- The closing indictment connects to the Declaration itself: five paragraphs after Jefferson wrote “all men are created equal,” he referred to Native people as “merciless Indian savages” — a contradiction the 250th anniversary celebrations show no interest in confronting.
What to the Slave Is the 4th of July? (Frederick Douglass via Teaching American History)
- Delivered July 5, 1852 in Rochester — the date itself a deliberate argument — Douglass refused to celebrate with the nation and instead indicted it, telling a predominantly white abolitionist audience that the Fourth of July reveals to the enslaved “more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.”
- His central rhetorical move: he declined to argue that slavery was wrong, calling such argument an insult to his audience’s intelligence. “There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.” The time for argument had passed — “scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.”
- His sharpest indictment: the Fugitive Slave Law had nationalized slavery, making the entire nation complicit — “New York has become as Virginia” — and the church had made itself “the bulwark of American slavery and the shield of American slave-hunters.”
- Notably, Douglass rejected the abolitionist argument that the Constitution was a pro-slavery document — he read it as “a glorious liberty document” whose plain text contained no warrant for slavery, and whose principles were entirely hostile to it.
- He closed not with despair but with genuine hope — “I do not despair of this country” — grounding his optimism in the belief that the forces of history, commerce, and interconnection were moving inexorably toward freedom’s vindication.
Here are the Declaration of Independence’s Grievances Against King George III. Many Apply to Trump. (Mother Jones)
- Jefferson’s Declaration devoted roughly half its text to 27 specific grievances against King George III as a “tyrant” who had forfeited his right to rule by breaking his own laws — Mother Jones maps those grievances onto Trump’s conduct.
- The strongest parallels: tariffs imposed without congressional vote (”taxes without consent”), deportations to El Salvador without due process (”depriving us of trial by jury”), War Powers Resolution violations on Iran, DOGE’s unlawful access to federal data systems, and Trump’s role in January 6 (”exciting domestic insurrections”).
- Some comparisons have sharpened since publication: the birthright citizenship executive order the article cites has since been struck down by the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court has now also handed Trump broad new authority to fire independent agency commissioners — making the “erecting new offices” grievance cut both ways.
- The article also notes what hasn’t happened yet: Trump has not canceled elections, suspended Congress, or deployed private mercenaries for deportations — the authors’ hedges are worth preserving on air.
- The through-line: Jefferson’s case against King George was less about abstract tyranny than about a specific pattern of ignoring laws, bypassing representative bodies, and using military force against civilian populations — a pattern the article argues is recognizable today.
Mayor Mamdani on 250 Years of a Grand Experiment in Self Governance (Zohran Mamdani in The Nation)
- Mamdani used New York Harbor as his organizing metaphor — the same waters that carried Lenape dugouts, slave ships, immigrant vessels, and Washington’s retreating army — to argue that America’s story has always been written by those told they weren’t exceptional, not by those who claimed to be.
- His central argument: American exceptionalism isn’t about power or wealth — it’s that “nothing is fixed into place,” and the work of fulfilling the Declaration’s ideals belongs to everyone, including and especially the newest Americans.
- His sharpest critique came without naming Trump: “too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as an asylum for the persecuted — but rather as one that persecutes those seeking asylum.” He called division “the oldest trick in politics, and the cheapest.”
- He closed on patriotism as dissent — “who loves America more than those who have sacrificed so much to make it free?” — invoking July 9, 1776, when Washington had the Declaration read aloud to his troops within range of British guns, before New Yorkers melted down the statue of King George III into bullets.
Notes on the Revolution: Reflections on the U.S. at 250 (Jared Yates Sexton)
- Sexton argues the American Revolution was simultaneously a genuine popular uprising for liberty and a carefully managed transfer of power from British monarchy to a new American wealth class — one that depended on westward expansion, Native American dispossession, and slavery for its economic foundation.
- His central thesis: the mythology of the founding has always served to obscure the material interests of the founders, and what we’re witnessing under Trump is not a betrayal of American values but their full expression — “a king was overthrown to make way for a new class of kings.”
- The closing argument is notably not despairing: the revolutionary spirit that inspired Vietnam, Haiti, and labor movements worldwide was borrowed from — not owned by — the American founding, and “the human desire for a better world is eternal and unshakeable.”
Why I Refuse to Give Up on America (Raphael Warnock in The Nation)
- Warnock opens with Benjamin Franklin’s warning from the Constitutional Convention — “A republic, if you can keep it” — and frames the 250th anniversary as a genuine test of whether Americans will keep it or surrender to weaponized despair.
- His diagnosis: the crisis is spiritual before it is political — the gap between what government claims to deliver and what it actually delivers for ordinary people has created fertile ground for authoritarianism. “Donald Trump is both a problem and a symptom of a problem.”
- His indictment of Citizens United is sharp and specific: the 2010 ruling created the conditions for legalized corruption that explains why meaningful progress on healthcare, guns, clean energy, and children’s mental health remains impossible — politicians are “stuck between children’s coffins and campaign coffers.”
- His personal testimony grounds the abstract: the 11th of 12 children, raised in public housing, first college graduate in his family, now a US senator — and his haunting observation that it would be significantly harder for him to achieve that same path today than it was then.
- His closing call echoes Isaiah and the civil rights tradition: “We suffer not from a paucity of resources, but a poverty of courage and moral imagination” — and a refusal to cede the creed of “We, the people” to any “megalomaniac or politician’s self-serving ambitions.”

HoosLeft Podcast #132: Independents Day

Scott Aaron Rogers — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 10:02:30 GMT

Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net

HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us

Ben Davis: https://www.bendavisforindiana.com/

Joshua Brant: https://electjoshuabrant.org/

Harrison Jacobo: https://socialistpartyin.com/

SUMMARY:

For the week ending in Independence Day, the same week in which independent candidates must submit signatures to qualify for November’s ballot, Scott sits down with three Indiana candidates running entirely outside the two-party system: Ben Davis, democratic socialist running for Statehouse District 13 under the Socialist Party of Indiana banner; Joshua Brant, independent candidate for State Senate District 23; and Harrison Jacobo, Secretary of State candidate for the Socialist Party of Indiana who is not making the ballot this cycle. The conversation is grounded in the concrete experience of doing something the system is designed to make nearly impossible: getting on the ballot as an independent in Indiana. From signature thresholds and verification rates to county party cold shoulders and constitutional barriers, the guests document the structural gauntlet that filters out working-class and insurgent candidates before a single vote is cast. Framed against Scott’s opening on the Zohran Mamdani-endorsed sweep in New York’s congressional primaries and Jaime Harrison’s backlash quote, the episode argues that the left is told it can’t win inside the two-party system and can’t run outside it either — and that the only way forward is to elect independents who will dismantle the rules that protect the duopoly.

WHAT’S INSIDE:

00:00:21 Introduction: Mamdani, Jaime Harrison, AOC, and the Case for Independents

- Scott opens with Zohran Mamdani’s endorsed Democratic Socialist sweep in New York congressional primaries, which triggered backlash from Hakeem Jeffries, James Carville, and former DNC Chair Jaime Harrison -- the last of whom told progressives not to use the party’s resources if they hate the party.

- Scott’s counter: when progressives go outside and draw votes, they get accused of playing spoiler. You can’t have it both ways.

- AOC’s 2020 observation frames the structural argument: the U.S. two-party umbrella compresses an entire spectrum into two labels. Last week’s guest Metin Pekin proposed a no-party system; another path is electing independents who will revoke the two parties’ special legal privileges.

00:02:44 Support the Show

- HoosLeft and Progressive Indiana Network don’t paywall content or charge candidates -- support at progressiveindiana.net ($5/month or $50/year) keeps it going.

- Social handles: @hoosleft.us on Bluesky, Instagram, and Threads; @HoosLeft on Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube; PIN is @PINIndiana on Bluesky and TikTok.

00:04:00 Welcome and Framing: Ballard’s 74,000 Signatures and the Ballot Access Challenge

- Scott introduces the three guests -- Ben Davis (HD-13, SPI), Joshua Brant (SD-23, independent), Harrison Jacobo (Secretary of State, SPI) -- and uses Greg Ballard’s 74,000-signature haul as a benchmark.

- Ballard turned in double the required statewide threshold because a large share will be thrown out during verification -- standard practice, but easier when you have the resources to do so.

- Scott notes the disparity in resources: Ballard had financial backing including support from former Governor Mitch Daniels. Tonight’s guests did not.

00:06:15 Ben Davis: 384 Signatures, 650 Gathered, 63% Verification Rate

- Ben’s threshold for HD-13 was 384 verified signatures. His team of over 30 volunteers -- including Harrison Jacobo -- knocked roughly 2,500 doors over six months and collected 650 raw signatures, coming in at 428 verified.

- The 63% verification rate reflects two main failure modes: people who weren’t registered to vote at all, and people registered at a different address than where Ben knocked in District 13.

- Ben was aiming for a modest buffer above the threshold in case the state office “decided to do anything funny.”

00:08:34 Joshua Brant: Going It Alone, Coming Up Short in May

- Joshua had no volunteer network to draw on as a first-time independent candidate -- he knocked doors primarily alone, walking miles over months.

- He had planned on a 30% buffer but discovered at the end of May he was still about 200 signatures short of his target, requiring an intensive push in June to reach his number with any cushion.

- His county put his threshold at 628; his own initial calculation was partially inaudible but in that range.

00:10:07 Harrison Jacobo: 37,000 Needed and Why He Won’t Make It

- A group came from Seattle, excited about the Socialist Party of Indiana forming, and collected around 400-500 signatures over four or five days -- but those came from across 20 different counties, creating logistical problems for county-by-county submission without funding or infrastructure.

- Today -- June 30th -- is the final submission day. Harrison is not making the threshold. Scott asked if signatures needed to come from all parts of the state -- Harrison isn’t certain it’s a constitutional mandate, and Joshua confirms the signatures themselves don’t need to come from a varied geography.

00:13:29 The Lincoln Party, the SPI, and What Ballot Lines Actually Mean

- Greg Ballard is running not just as an independent but under the Lincoln Party banner. If he earns enough votes in November, the Lincoln Party gains official ballot access for four years.

- Ben explains the petition form mechanics: candidates check either “independent, no party” or “independent with party.” His ballot will say Socialist Party of Indiana; Ballard’s will say Lincoln Party -- but neither party currently has official minor party status.

- The SPI’s path to recognition requires 2% of the prior election in signatures to get on the ballot, then 2% of the general election vote to secure the ballot line for four years. With Harrison not on the ballot, that clock resets. The SPI will continue running candidates as independents until another statewide shot.

00:17:38 Joshua Brant’s Origin Story: Why He’s Running as an Independent

- Joshua traces a political evolution: proudly liberal in his 20s, more centrist in his 30s, and then -- as a veteran with kids -- arriving at the conclusion that centrism is also sometimes wrong. There are clear rights and wrongs, and staying in the middle isn’t always a virtue.

- His motivation: he doesn’t want his kids or anyone else’s kids to inherit the political mess being created if nobody does something about it.

- His ballot line will simply say “independent.”

00:20:17 Harrison’s Plans Without a Ballot Line: Building the SPI

- Harrison is not a fan of Beau Bayh or Greg Ballard; Scott adds that he’s presumably not a fan of Republican Max Engling either. Harrison confirms.

- His focus now shifts entirely to building SPI party infrastructure -- applying what was learned from this cycle to develop a stronger organizational base for future candidates.

- The goal is to gain a genuine foothold for the longer-term project of breaking the two-party system.

00:21:53 What Voters Said at the Door: Blythe Potter, Bargersville, and Bipartisan Excitement

- Harrison’s canvassing experience was more mixed than expected in terms of immediate excitement for the SPI specifically -- but he was surprised by how many Democrats responded positively to the competition argument.

- Some voters said they were holding out for Blythe Potter; Harrison’s message was that signing his petition doesn’t affect their November vote.

- Harrison had already spoken with Potter directly -- she lives down the road from him in Bargersville. Democrats who signed his petition, including some previously elected ones, said simply: competition is good.

00:23:30 Ben Davis: The Three-Way Race in HD-13 and the Spoiler Question

- Since Scott and Ben last spoke in January, a Democrat has entered the HD-13 race, making it a three-way contest. Ben has not faced significant spoiler pressure -- most local Democrats disagree with the Tippecanoe County Democratic chair’s decision to deny him a party endorsement because he’s a democratic socialist.

- The chair’s reasoning: “we don’t want a Democratic Socialist on our ticket.”

- Ben is running a full campaign, not a paper candidacy. The 2024 paper candidate got 26% just by existing. Ben is planning win numbers as if it were a two-way race and wants to demonstrate that an independent democratic socialist can win in the heartland.

00:27:11 Joshua Brant: SD-23, Spencer Deery, and the Copenhaver Dilemma

- Scott notes that Dr. David Sanders -- a previous guest -- is the Democrat in Joshua’s SD-23 race, and that the Republican barely survived his primary by only three votes: incumbent Spencer Deery over far-right challenger Paula Copenhaver.

- Joshua admits he was genuinely torn -- Copenhaver might have been easier to beat, but maybe not better for Indiana. He settled on wanting Spencer to win the primary, but now that he has, it’s time for someone else to take over.

- Scott draws the broader lesson: boosting the opponent you think is easier to beat can backfire -- he cites Hillary Clinton and Trump in 2016 as the cautionary tale.

00:30:12 Harrison Jacobo: The Indiana Constitution and Why It Has to Be Amended

- Harrison identifies the core structural problem: Indiana’s constitution explicitly enshrines a two-major-party system, defining support as going to the parties with the most and second-most votes. Minor parties receive no state resources.

- Fixing this requires amending the constitution to eliminate the “two major parties” distinction -- making all parties simply “parties.” Statutory workarounds are possible but legally vulnerable.

- He notes the constitution isn’t always followed anyway -- public education is constitutionally mandated and chronically underfunded -- but constitutional language is the right long-term target.

00:32:18 Ben Davis: Paper Signatures, Electronic Access, and the Process Reform Case

- Ben holds up his six months of paper signatures to illustrate the physical reality: all of it door-to-door, ink on paper, no electronic or mail-in option -- a process that consumed all three guests’ lives.

- For context: major party candidates get on the ballot either by voting in the last two primaries (a few minutes per election) or by getting a letter from their county chair. Independents run a six-month campaign just to get to the starting line.

- His near-term legislative ask: allow electronic signatures. He also agrees with Harrison that a constitutional amendment is ultimately necessary.

00:34:37 Joshua Brant: Two Parties Won’t Dismantle Themselves -- and Candidacy as a Fundamental Right

- Joshua argues that before the Republican Party existed, the only barriers to candidacy were constitutional ones. Every time third parties or independents have risen in popularity, the major parties have added new statutory barriers -- something he thinks is unconstitutional, though he’s not a lawyer.

- Scott frames it as collusion -- a form of corruption -- which is the centerpiece of Joshua’s campaign platform.

- Joshua’s anti-corruption proposal addresses this directly: he wants candidacy recognized as a fundamental right. Every individual component of running for office is already a fundamental right, but the act of being a candidate is not. He finds that gap staggering.

00:36:44 Harrison Jacobo: 45% Are Independents, But Even Progressives Get Shut Out

- About 45% of Americans identify as independent -- more than either major party. But the structural capture runs deep: the Democratic Party couldn’t even tolerate Dr. Valerie McCray’s 2024 U.S. congressional campaign on its own ticket because she hadn’t gone through the approved nomination process.

- Harrison was on that campaign and saw firsthand not just lack of support but active condemnation from within the party.

- If progressives can’t run inside the Democratic Party without being attacked, the party is never going to help build a broader alternative.

00:38:36 Ben Davis: Independence Day Press Event at the Stargate

- Ben announces a press event Thursday at 10 a.m. at the Stargate -- the sculpture between the Indiana Statehouse and the Indiana Government Center -- timed to coincide with the final signature submission day and the Fourth of July weekend.

- The goal: draw attention to the structural barriers independents face and make clear these aren’t hobbyist campaigns -- they represent months of serious organizing.

- Joshua and Harrison will both be there.

00:40:06 Scott: Sean Steele, the Democratic Brand Problem, and Rural Indiana

- Scott flags another independent to watch: Sean Steele, running in House District 75 in Lawrence County, where there appears to be no Democratic challenger. He’s confirmed Steele for the show on July 28th.

- The experiment: can an independent run against a Republican incumbent in rural Indiana without the Democratic Party label working against him?

00:42:08 Joshua Brant: Refusing to Be Labeled Left or Right

- Joshua consistently refuses to let voters pre-sort him. His answer: take each issue individually, weigh both sides, form your own conclusion about what I am. He doesn’t want to be tied to a label someone else has already defined.

00:42:58 Ben Davis: The Socialist Label at the Door -- Fewer Reactions Than You’d Expect

- Ben introduces himself as an independent socialist candidate -- not a Republican or Democrat -- and is consistently surprised by how few people react to it.

- What actually resonates is the independence itself: people say they want more options. That sentiment, not ideological alignment, is the common thread Ben hears from the roughly 45% of Hoosiers who identify as independents.

00:44:17 Harrison Jacobo: The Socialist Label and Staying on Policy

- Harrison’s strategy with the socialist label: don’t over-explain, don’t apologize, stand firm and redirect to policy. If people try to denigrate the label, the counter is: what are you actually doing for your community?

- He notes the demagoguery around socialism -- including the bad-faith attempt to tie it to Nazism because the word appears in the party name -- but says the label has less power than it used to.

- Best approach: avoid getting into label debates and focus on the actual issues.

00:47:09 Harrison Jacobo: The Golden Rule, Identity Politics, and LGBTQ+ Rights

- Scott raises the accusation leveled at independents who don’t support Democrats: that they’re sacrificing people of color and the LGBTQ community.

- Harrison’s response is grounded in the golden rule -- treat others as you’d want to be treated. He supports trans friends in their journeys because that’s how he’d want to be treated. The principle doesn’t require a party affiliation.

- Scott adds the small-government framing: letting people determine these things for themselves and keeping government out of it is, by definition, a conservative position.

00:49:19 Joshua Brant: Tax Restructuring and Reinvestment in Indiana

- Scott presents the standard accusation against socialists: big government, high taxes. Joshua’s response: the Republican restructuring plan proves that lowering taxes at all costs isn’t good governance -- Hoosiers want efficiency, doing as much as possible with as little as possible.

- His reciprocal tax plan removes rewards from corporations extracting profit from Hoosiers and shipping it elsewhere, and instead incentivizes reinvestment back into Indiana.

00:51:13 Ben Davis: Indiana’s Flat Tax and Starting From Scratch

- Senate Enrolled Act 1 for 2025 is pulling millions from schools while delivering minimal property tax relief to middle-income homeowners and actively hurting owners of lower-cost homes.

- Indiana’s flat income tax -- one of the lowest rates in the country -- disproportionately benefits the wealthy, who keep a larger absolute amount, while hitting lower-income Hoosiers harder in relative terms.

- Ben’s position: no part of Indiana’s tax structure should be held sacred. Start from first principles -- food, clothing, shelter, education, health care -- and build backward from what every Hoosier needs to survive.

00:53:22 Harrison Jacobo: One SOS Commitment -- Corruption, Contracts, and Voter Information

- Scott asks what Harrison wants to see from the next Secretary of State. Harrison focuses on two things: transparency and accountability in how business contracts are awarded (particularly affecting small businesses), and active voter education so people know who is actually on the ballot.

- A less-informed electorate, Harrison argues, is a feature rather than a bug of the current system -- it keeps people voting for whoever they’d want to get a beer with rather than on the merits.

- Scott adds: straight-party-ticket voting in Indiana is a structural obstacle to independents that compounds the problem.

00:55:04 Joshua Brant: Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing and Expecting Different Results

- Joshua’s closing thought: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity -- often attributed to Einstein. Another wise man might say that’s also the definition of practice. But practice implies improvement, and Indiana’s political system hasn’t shown much of that.

00:55:59 Ben Davis: Unsung Heroes -- County Election Staff and the Case for Electronic Signatures

- Ben closes by thanking county election staff, who have to individually verify every independent candidate signature against voter rolls -- one staffer told him it’s the single most tedious task in her entire job.

- His second point: if the rules were changed to allow electronic signatures, it would reduce the burden on candidates and clerks alike, making the democratic infrastructure work better for everyone.

00:57:47 Closing and How to Find Each Candidate

Ben Davis: https://www.bendavisforindiana.com/

Joshua Brant: https://electjoshuabrant.org/

Harrison Jacobo: https://socialistpartyin.com/

HoosLeft This Week - June 28, 2026

Scott Aaron Rogers — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 18:00:42 GMT

SUMMARY:

On this week’s edition of HoosLeft This Week — broadcast despite a cascade of opening technical difficulties — Scott is joined by writer and Hoosier Lemon Substack creator and Democratic House District 47 nominee Michael Potter for a two-hour blitz through a double-stuffed week in the news. First, a block of stories framed as “the death of neoliberalism in three acts”: the passing of Alan Greenspan, the collapse of Keir Starmer’s government in the UK, and a progressive sweep in New York Democratic primaries that sent the party establishment into a panic. The show then covers the Iran memorandum of understanding already buckling under renewed hostilities, Trump holding the bipartisan housing bill hostage to his voter suppression agenda, favorable federal court rulings on voting and courthouse arrests, and devastating Supreme Court decisions on Temporary Protected Status and asylum rights. The back half opens with the extreme terrorism sentences handed to Prairieland ICE protest defendants and Trump’s lawfare against ABC News, before turning to a dense Indiana block: the DOJ memo gutting disability integration rights, Indiana’s selective approach to Medicaid fraud, the Holcomb-Raimondo AI retraining nonprofit, the latest installment of the “Mr. Clean” corruption investigation into Mayor Joe Hogsett, school funding referendums in Indianapolis and Carmel, the Indiana Republican platform’s push to eliminate property taxes and close primaries, Braun’s firing of his own IURC chair over a utility rate hike, and a rundown of consequential new Indiana laws taking effect July 1st.

IN DEPTH:

US/World News

Death of Neoliberalism

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan dies at 100 (AP)
- Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve chairman from 1987 to 2006, died Monday at 100 from complications of Parkinson’s disease. His wife, NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell, announced his death.
- Greenspan was celebrated as “Maestro” for presiding over the longest economic expansion in US history at the time, holding unemployment below 4% and keeping inflation dormant — but his reputation collapsed after the 2008 financial crisis, which investigators tied directly to the deregulation and easy-money policies he championed.
- His own postmortem was candid: “I made a mistake in assuming that banks could essentially regulate themselves.” The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission concluded his 30-year push for deregulation “stripped away key safeguards, which could have helped avoid catastrophe.”
- A Juilliard dropout who played clarinet and saxophone alongside Stan Getz, Greenspan became an Ayn Rand disciple in the 1950s — Rand stood beside him when he was sworn in as Ford’s chief economic adviser in 1974, a detail that contextualizes his lifelong faith in self-regulating markets.
- As recently as January 2026, at 99, Greenspan co-signed a statement with former Fed chairs and Treasury secretaries condemning Trump’s investigation of Fed Chair Jerome Powell as “an unprecedented attempt to use prosecutorial attacks to undermine” the Fed’s independence.
Alan Greenspan Was a Faithful Servant of the Ruling Class (Jacobin)
- Where the AP obit portrays Greenspan as a well-meaning ideologue who made a mistake about self-regulating markets, Jacobin argues he wasn’t a dogmatist at all — he was ideologically flexible whenever flexibility served the wealthy, consistently abandoning principles when they inconvenienced the powerful.
- The piece’s sharpest point: Greenspan’s celebrated “miracle economy” of the late 1990s was built on what he privately called the “traumatized worker” thesis — the Fed explicitly understood that low inflation and low unemployment coexisted because Volcker’s recession had so frightened American workers that they stopped demanding raises, and Greenspan’s policy was premised on keeping that fear intact.
- Greenspan backed the Bush tax cuts after spending the Clinton years as a deficit hawk — the deficit apparently mattered less under a Republican president redistributing wealth upward. He later expressed regret; at the time, he was happy to lend his credibility to the effort.
- The piece’s closing argument: Greenspan’s rehabilitation as an anti-Trump institutionalist is ironic, since his career was dedicated to the same upward concentration of wealth and power that created the conditions for Trump’s rise. “A young Greenspan imagined gold as the ultimate protector of the wealthy; the policies he enacted delivered us a gilded tyrant.”

International Elections

Andy Burnham prepares for power as emotional Keir Starmer bows out (Guardian)
- Keir Starmer resigned as UK prime minister Monday, less than two years after a historic Labour election victory, conceding he was “no longer the right man” to lead the party into the next general election amid mounting pressure from MPs and the threat from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
- Andy Burnham — former Greater Manchester mayor, just elected to Parliament that same day in a byelection — is all but certain to become the UK’s next prime minister, potentially as early as July 16-17, after Wes Streeting declined to challenge him and no other Labour MP appears likely to get the 81 nominations needed to force a contest.
- Burnham is considering appointing former Labour leader Ed Miliband as chancellor to challenge “Treasury orthodoxy,” while keeping Shabana Mahmood at the Home Office; he’s also in talks with economist Jim O’Neill about becoming chief economic adviser.
- Starmer’s resignation speech was notably emotional — voice cracking as he spoke about his wife and children — while insiders describe him as privately furious at Burnham’s ambitions, saying he’ll support his successor “through gritted teeth.”
- Nigel Farage was the only opposition leader calling for an immediate general election; Burnham has signaled he won’t call one, and his allies say the next election will be “won or lost in the first 100 days.”
Colombian right-wing candidate De La Espriella wins tight presidential race (Reuters)
- Trump-endorsed right-wing candidate Abelardo De La Espriella won Colombia’s presidential runoff by less than one percentage point — 49.66% to Ivan Cepeda’s 48.7% — ending leftist President Gustavo Petro’s four years in office.
- De La Espriella, a lawyer with no prior political experience and US, Italian, and Colombian citizenship, has pledged to end peace talks with armed groups, boost oil and gas, cut the state by up to 40%, and crack down on crime — though his thin margin will force compromise with a Congress where Petro’s party holds the most seats.
- His background carries baggage: local outlet La Silla Vacia found many of his businesses dissolved or unprofitable, and critics highlight his past legal representation of clients tied to right-wing paramilitaries and money laundering for Maduro’s Venezuela.
- The result fits a clear regional pattern — Chile, Argentina, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Ecuador, and now Colombia have all swung right recently, with Peru’s Keiko Fujimori also poised to win.
- Trump openly endorsed De La Espriella, called the race “very important to the future of Colombia and its relationship to the United States,” and is building a broader regional military alliance of right-wing governments called the Shield of the Americas.

US Elections

New York
- New York primary could forecast future for Democrats. Here’s what you need to know (NPR)
  - New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed three progressive challengers in competitive House primaries — and all three won, including two who unseated sitting Democrats.
  - The biggest upset: 32-year-old democratic socialist organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier narrowly defeated five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in NY-13. Brad Lander decisively beat two-term Rep. Dan Goldman in NY-10. Claire Valdez won the open NY-7 seat, defeating the hand-picked successor of retiring Nydia Velasquez.
  - AIPAC money was a central issue in both upset races — Espaillat and Goldman both received AIPAC support, and the role of pro-Israel lobbying money has become an increasingly explicit litmus test in safe Democratic primaries.
  - AI companies spent tens of millions in NY-12, where super PACs tied to OpenAI spent millions against pro-regulation candidate Alex Bores, while Anthropic-linked groups and a crypto billionaire spent millions for him. Bores still lost — and his concession statement named the dynamic directly: “Some of the richest people on the planet decided to make an example out of this race. They set out to make people afraid to stand up to them.”
  - The one genuinely competitive general election race: Army veteran Cait Conley won the Democratic primary in NY-17 to face vulnerable Republican Rep. Mike Lawler in what Cook rates a toss-up — a must-win if Democrats want to retake the House.
- Establishment Freakout
  - Hakeem Jeffries says Mamdani has ‘work to do’ to make up with congressional Dems (NY Post)
    - Jeffries told reporters Mamdani “has got work to do in terms of the conversations that he’s going to have with members of Congress moving forward” — having personally endorsed both incumbents Mamdani just helped oust.
    - When asked if he feared a similar primary challenge in 2028, Jeffries bristled: “When you ask me a serious question, I’ll give you a serious answer.”
    - A Jeffries insider downplayed the losses, saying “this isn’t a case of Jeffries-backed candidates losing” and predicting November outcomes won’t change — but Mamdani supporters were already booing Jeffries on TV screens at watch parties and chanting “you’re next.”
  - Letitia James ‘Disappointed’ in Mamdani After Progressives Sweep NY Primaries: ‘All of Us Are a Little Frustrated’ (Mediaite)
    - NY Attorney General Letitia James — who backed Mamdani in his mayoral run — went on record calling herself “disappointed” in him, saying his endorsed candidates “do not understand the politics of New York City, the cultural differences from district to district” and are “relatively new to the body politic.”
    - James acknowledged broader frustration but drew a firm line: “All of us are a little frustrated with the Democratic Party. But you don’t blow it up. That’s what MAGA has done.”
    - The significance: James is one of the few prominent Democrats willing to criticize Mamdani by name — most party leaders expressing frustration have done so anonymously, making her public statement notable.
  - Chris Murphy Ratios Jamie Harrison (X)
    - Harrison’s Original Tweet:
      - I say this with no ill will or animosity: if you hate the Democratic Party, then please don’t run for our nomination.
      - Don’t use our resources. Don’t rely on our volunteers. Don’t use our infrastructure. Don’t ask Democrats to invest their time, money, and energy in your campaign.
      - Focus on building the party you actually support.
      - Political parties aren’t perfect, but they’re built by millions of people who knock doors, make calls, organize meetings, and fight for the values they believe in. If you don’t believe in the party, then don’t ask its members to carry you across the finish line.
    - Continuing…
      - And let me be clear: I don’t care if you’re progressive, moderate, or conservative.
      - I’ve worked with Democrats across the ideological spectrum. We didn’t always agree, but we understood that building a stronger Democratic Party was part of the job.
      - If you hate the party, spend your days attacking it, and have contempt for all the people who make it possible, then see above.
    - Murphy’s Response:
      - I don’t know man, who is “the Democratic Party” if it’s not the voters?Democratic voters choose candidates, not party leaders. And party leaders need to listen to what voters are telling us - and right now they are demanding our party be bolder.
  - Centrist Democrats are freaking out about progressives’ winning streak (Politico)
    - Claude responded: Moderate Democrats are in open panic after the New York sweep, with a centrist PAC co-founder admitting: “Centrist Democrats, normie Democrats, need to realize…
    - Moderate Democrats are in open panic after the New York sweep, with a centrist PAC co-founder admitting: “Centrist Democrats, normie Democrats, need to realize we’re the insurgents, and they’re the new establishment. It’s a long-term structural problem.”
    - The progressive winning streak extends well beyond New York — left-flank candidates have already toppled DCCC-preferred picks in California and Maine battlegrounds, and upcoming primaries in Colorado, Michigan, and Wisconsin are the next tests, with democratic socialists mounting strong challenges in all three.
    - Establishment Democrats are pouring millions into Michigan to prop up Rep. Haley Stevens against Bernie-backed Abdul El-Sayed, and centrists are consolidating in Wisconsin around Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez to stop democratic socialist Francesca Hong — who has prior “defund the police” statements Republicans are already sharpening into attacks.
    - Schumer tried to spin it as unified energy: “You’re seeing centrist energy in Virginia, Iowa, and New Jersey, progressive energy in New York City — we’re going to harness it all.” Progressives were notably more magnanimous — Brad Lander, who just won by 30 points, said he’d go help frontliners in competitive districts and hoped moderates would return the favor.
South Carolina
- Alan Wilson wins South Carolina Republican governor runoff after Trump hedges his bet on race (AP)
  - South Carolina AG Alan Wilson won the Republican gubernatorial runoff Tuesday, defeating Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette — whom Trump had endorsed in the closing days of the primary — by a wide margin.
  - Trump had hedged his bets late in the race by saying he supported both candidates, after his preferred gubernatorial picks lost in Iowa and Georgia earlier this month — a pattern suggesting his endorsement power in governor’s races is weaker than in congressional primaries.
  - Wilson, son of longtime Rep. Joe Wilson and AG since 2011, will face Democratic state Rep. Jermaine Johnson in November.
Utah
- All the results for Utah’s 2026 congressional and state primary elections (KUER)
  - Former Rep. Ben McAdams won the Utah Democratic primary in a redrawn Salt Lake City-area district that Democrats are favored to win this fall — a potential pickup in the fight for House control that Democrats need by only a few seats.
  - On the Republican side, Reps. Celeste Maloy and Blake Moore both fended off conservative challengers to hold their nominations.
  - The data center backlash continues to reshape Utah politics: Senate President Stuart Adams — a powerful lawmaker in office since 2010 — lost his primary, with the ongoing Box Elder County data center controversy cited as a factor in his defeat.

Vance says talks with Iranian officials set ‘good foundation’ for a deal to end the war (AP)
- Vance emerged from two days of talks in Switzerland saying the US and Iran laid “a good foundation” for a final deal, with progress on mechanisms to keep the Strait of Hormuz open and address Lebanon — as of Monday evening, the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire was holding, the longest lull since fighting began March 2.
- Tanker traffic through the strait is recovering but still far below normal — 71 transits over the weekend versus 100-130 per day before the war; ships are still avoiding the mined central route. Oil prices dropped to around $77/barrel, trending back toward the pre-war $70 level.
- The US Treasury issued a 60-day sanction waiver on Iranian oil — notably allowing Iranian oil imports into the US for the first time since the 1990s.
- Kushner and Qatar floated an idea to unfreeze Iranian assets specifically for purchases of American soy, corn, and wheat — framed as benefiting the Iranian people; Iran hasn’t responded.
- Trump wasn’t in Switzerland but disrupted the talks anyway with comments from the Oval Office that “offended the Iranians,” per the AP — his summary of the US approach: “As long as they respect us — I don’t want to use the word fear because that’s an inappropriate word — we’re not going to have any trouble.”
Senate votes to halt Iran war despite Trump’s push for peace deal (Politico)
- The Senate voted 50-48 Tuesday to cut off US military action against Iran without congressional authorization — the 10th attempt to rein in Trump on the war, and the first to succeed, with four Republicans breaking ranks: Cassidy, Collins, Murkowski, and Rand Paul. Democrat John Fetterman voted no.
- The vote is largely symbolic — it’s a concurrent resolution that doesn’t go to Trump for signature or veto and lacks the force of law — but it’s politically significant as the first time both chambers have gone on record against the war.
- The outcome hinged on GOP absences: McCormick and the hospitalized McConnell missing the vote prevented a 50-50 tie that would have killed the measure.
- The contradiction at the heart of the Iran deal is sharpening: both Vance and Trump say Iran agreed to allow nuclear inspectors, but Tehran denies making that concession — and Schumer’s critique is pointed: “Trump gave Iran everything — their terrorist proxies, their control over the Strait, their oil revenues — and it’s still unclear what we got in return.”
- Trump plans to address skeptical Senate Republicans at their Wednesday lunch, saying critics of the deal “have to be educated, even if they’re friends of mine.”
Trump’s Capitol visit devolves into shouting match with GOP senator he helped oust in primary fight (CNN)
- Trump’s closed-door Senate lunch Wednesday devolved into a shouting match with Sen. Bill Cassidy — one of four Republicans who voted to rebuke his Iran war powers — with Trump calling Cassidy a “lunatic,” Cassidy refusing to sit when ordered, and the exchange escalating to matching volume before colleagues intervened.
- Hours later, Cassidy flipped his vote on a similar Iran resolution after receiving a White House briefing from Vance and Witkoff — illustrating how the confrontation functioned as both venting and pressure tactic.
Senate Republicans reject war powers resolution after Trump berates them at Capitol meeting (PBS)
- Senate Republicans held a late-night vote Wednesday to walk back their Iran war powers rebuke, rejecting a nearly identical resolution 47-50-1 just before midnight — Cassidy flipped after his White House briefing, and Rand Paul voted present “to give the President more space and leverage.”
- Thune called Trump after the vote; Trump was “pleased with the outcome” and posted that the vote “puts Iran on notice” — though both the original resolution and Wednesday’s vote are largely symbolic and neither carries full force of law.
- The bigger story coming out of the day: Trump torpedoed his own party’s best election-year talking point by refusing to sign the landmark housing affordability bill — the largest in a generation, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support — holding it hostage to demand the SAVE America Act, which Thune has repeatedly told him doesn’t have the votes.
Israel to withdraw from two areas in Lebanon under newly signed agreement (CNN)
- Israel, Lebanon, and the US signed a framework agreement Friday in Washington under which Israel will withdraw from two specific areas in southern Lebanon — one north and one south of the Litani River — transferring them to the Lebanese military as part of a pilot program.
- The withdrawal is narrow and symbolic: Netanyahu explicitly said Israel will remain in most of the territory it occupies in southern Lebanon and will hold it as long as Hezbollah is not disarmed — describing the two sites as areas the IDF “does not need.” His defense minister said just one day earlier that Israel would not withdraw from Lebanon even if the US demanded it.
- Netanyahu framed the limited pullback as a win for Israel and “a major blow to Iran,” saying the agreement effectively tells Iran that Lebanon is “none of your business” — while Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc rejected the talks entirely, calling anyone who “shakes hands with the enemy a criminal.”
- Rubio called it “the beginning of the beginning” and acknowledged a long road ahead; Lebanon’s president framed it as a step toward full sovereignty, with an implicit dig at Iranian influence through Hezbollah.
- The deal is a framework for future negotiations — Israel and Lebanon have never had diplomatic relations — and leaves the core question of Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon largely unresolved.
U.S. Strikes Iran in Retaliation for Attack on Vessel in Strait of Hormuz (NYT)
- Iran struck the Ever Lovely, a container ship transiting the Strait of Hormuz Thursday — the first known Iranian attack on a commercial vessel since the MOU was signed — because the ship was using a US-backed southern route hugging the Omani coast rather than passing through Iranian waters, which Iran says is the only authorized passage under its interpretation of the deal.
- The US launched retaliatory strikes Friday that lasted approximately 90 minutes, hitting Iranian missile and drone storage sites and coastal radar installations along the strait and on Qeshm Island. Iran claims it then struck US military positions in the region — the US military had not confirmed that as of publication.
- Both sides claim the other violated the ceasefire: Vance said the US “honored” the MOU and warned “violence will be met with violence”; Iran’s IRGC called the US strikes a ceasefire violation and warned its response would be “more extensive” if attacks are repeated.
- The core problem remains unresolved: the MOU’s language that Iran would use “best efforts” for safe passage is vague enough that Iran and the US are operating on incompatible interpretations — Iran insists it controls strait access as a coastal state; the US and Gulf Cooperation Council jointly declared navigation must be “free, unconditional and unrestricted.” Iran called that declaration “interventionist and provocative.”
- Transit numbers dropped from 73 to 54 ships in a day, the IMO suspended efforts to help stranded vessels leave the Persian Gulf, and at least two tankers turned around after Iran’s warning.
US military says it struck 10 targets in Iran as ceasefire is strained by 2nd day of attacks (AP)
- The ceasefire is unraveling fast: a second Iranian drone struck an oil tanker — the Kiku, carrying over 2 million barrels of crude — in the Strait of Hormuz Saturday, prompting the US to strike 10 Iranian military targets including surveillance infrastructure, air defense sites, drone storage, and minelaying capabilities. Iran says it struck US military positions in the region in response.
- The core dispute remains unresolved: ships are using a US-backed route hugging the Omani coast, Iran insists all traffic must pass through its waters, and the US Navy is now expanding the Omani route to handle both inbound and outbound traffic — a move likely to provoke further Iranian retaliation.
- Iran also launched drones at Bahrain, home to the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, calling it “a flagrant threat to the security of citizens and residents.” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it targeted “US terrorist army” positions without specifying locations.
- Trump escalated his rhetoric sharply on Truth Social, warning of a point where the US “will be forced to militarily complete the job” and threatening that “the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist” if that happens.
- The IMO has halted evacuation efforts for stranded ships until there are guarantees against attack; about 115 ships have moved through in recent days but the threat level is described as “substantial,” with mines still present and a naval presence required for clearance operations.

Housing

Trump refuses to sign bipartisan housing bill into law. What does that mean for homebuyers, renters? (AP)
- Trump is holding the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act hostage, refusing to sign it until Congress passes the SAVE America Act voter ID bill — which his own Senate majority leader has repeatedly said doesn’t have the votes.
- The housing bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan margins: 358-32 in the House, 85-5 in the Senate — both veto-proof, meaning Congress could override a veto, though that would require another vote.
- What’s actually in the bill: streamlined environmental reviews and construction permits, limits on corporate landlords buying single-family homes, expanded manufactured housing loans, funding to convert abandoned infrastructure into housing, expanded rental assistance, and new renter protections.
- The stakes: home prices are up 54% since 2020, the median home now costs nearly five times the median household income, and rents are still 17% above pre-pandemic levels — the housing market is stuck near a 30-year low for sales.
- Speaker Johnson told reporters he’d spoken with Trump and was confident he’d ultimately sign it — but every day of delay sets back the construction pipeline that the bill is meant to accelerate.
Trump cancels housing affordability bill signing until SAVE Act is passed (Axios)
- Trump hasn’t actually received the bill yet — Republican congressional leaders can withhold it from the White House indefinitely, which means the 10-day constitutional clock for automatic enactment hasn’t started running. Johnson is using that window to give Trump time to come around.
- The timing was particularly brutal: Rep. French Hill was literally praising the bipartisan housing bill and Trump’s role in it at a House press conference — “let’s show the American people what legislating looks like” — when Trump’s Truth Social post canceling the signing dropped.
- Warren’s summary: “He could be over here trying to claim a victory lap, and instead he’s saying he doesn’t want anything to do with it. It’s because he really doesn’t care about American families.”

Voting

Trump keeps sabotaging legislation over a voting bill. Here’s what’s in it (NPR)
- It would also require photo ID for in-person voting AND a copy of photo ID submitted with mail ballots, mandate states turn over complete unredacted voter rolls to DHS, require purging of alleged noncitizens, and create criminal penalties against election officials who register voters without citizenship documents.
- The premise is based on a false claim: Trump believes the bill would ensure Republicans never lose another election for 50 years because he believes Democrats only win due to noncitizen voting — which the Bipartisan Policy Center and election experts describe as extremely rare.
- Trump’s executive order requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration was permanently blocked by a federal court Wednesday — the same day he canceled the housing bill signing to demand the SAVE Act.
- The Senate filibuster requires 60 votes; the bill doesn’t have them, Republican leaders won’t eliminate the filibuster to pass it, and this same obsession has already derailed FISA reauthorization and nearly wrecked the immigration enforcement spending bill.
Federal judge blocks key pillars of Trump executive order restricting mail voting in 2026 election (Votebeat)
- A federal judge Thursday blocked key pillars of Trump’s second elections executive order — ruling the federal government has no constitutional authority to create centralized lists of adult citizens or give the Postal Service power to decide who receives mail ballots.
- The order had directed DHS and Social Security to build a nationwide verified citizen list, and USPS to only deliver mail ballots to voters on pre-approved federal lists — the day before the ruling, the Postmaster General had explicitly said the agency would refuse delivery to voters not on those lists.
- The injunction covers 23 states and DC — including Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — but only for 2026 elections; the judge dismissed challenges to future elections as not yet ripe.
- This is the latest in a string of judicial losses for Trump’s election overhaul push: courts have now blocked his citizenship proof executive order, his SAVE database expansion, and now this mail voting order — making the SAVE America Act the last viable avenue for his election agenda, which is why he’s holding the housing bill hostage for it.
- The White House signaled it will appeal, saying it’s “confident we will ultimately prevail.”

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Immigration

Judge says Trump administration can’t make immigration arrests at courthouses (PBS)
- A federal judge Tuesday issued a nationwide ban on immigration arrests at courthouses — ruling the Trump administration’s reversal of an 80-year policy against such arrests showed “not merely unreasoned decision-making but a complete lack of decision-making.”
- The judge found the arrests — which often followed plainclothes agents coordinating with DHS attorneys to detain people in courthouse hallways after hearings — also violated a 12-hour limit on holding detainees in nearby cells.
- This is the second such ruling: a New York judge blocked courthouse arrests in May, but only within that state; Tuesday’s decision invalidates the policy nationwide.
- DHS general counsel called it “naked judicial activism in service of an anti-American, open borders agenda” — the administration’s standard response to judicial losses on immigration enforcement.
Court allows Trump administration to end removal protections for Syrian and Haitian nationals (SCOTUSblog)
- The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 Thursday to allow the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for Haitian and Syrian nationals, holding that the TPS statute’s bar on judicial review is broad enough to block courts from second-guessing the secretary’s termination decisions — effectively removing a legal shield for hundreds of thousands of people.
- The majority, written by Alito, also ruled that the Haitian TPS holders would likely lose their equal protection claim — dismissing Trump’s statements about Haitians eating pets, calling Haiti a “shithole country,” and claiming Haitians “probably have AIDS” as “heated language” that was “not overtly racial” and could rest on policy grounds unrelated to race.
- Kagan’s dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, was pointed: those statements “fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the President’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country” — and she noted the majority declined to even put Trump’s words in print. She closed: “I dissent from the Court’s decision that they may be put on the next plane.”
- Thomas went further in concurrence, arguing noncitizens can’t invoke equal protection against the federal government at all — only against states.
- The practical stakes: TPS designations for Haiti dating to the 2010 earthquake and Syria dating to Assad’s 2012 crackdown have been repeatedly extended for over a decade — this ruling clears the path for mass deportations to both countries.
In Blow to Asylum Rights, Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration to Block Asylum Seekers at Border (AIC)
- In a separate Supreme Court ruling Thursday, the Court allowed the Trump administration to turn back asylum seekers at official ports of entry — ruling that physically blocking people from setting foot on US soil to request asylum does not violate federal immigration law.
- The case addressed a now-defunct “metering” policy from Trump’s first term, but the ruling has immediate implications: it effectively gives the executive branch authority to override the statutory requirement that officials inspect all people presenting at ports of entry — a requirement in place for over a century.
- Sotomayor’s dissent, joined by Kagan and Jackson, said the ruling “blesses the Executive Branch’s decision to slam the door shut on all who are fleeing persecution, despite the detailed inspection and asylum system that Congress enacted and commands.”
- The practical consequence: people turned back at the border are forced to remain in Mexico or return to the dangers they fled — advocates say the original policy resulted in deaths, and the ruling now validates that approach going forward.

Weaponization

Texas anti-ICE protesters convicted of terrorism charges sentenced to at least 50 years in prison (Guardian)
- Nine activists convicted of terrorism charges stemming from a Fourth of July protest last year at the Prairieland ICE immigrant detention center in Texas received sentences ranging from 30 to 100 years — sentences a former federal prosecutor called far outside the normal range, noting judges typically run counts concurrently rather than stacking them consecutively as happened here.
- The sentences exceed those handed to January 6 seditious conspiracy convicts: Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio got 22 years, Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes 18 years. The longest sentence — 100 years — went to Benjamin Song, who fired an AR-15 hitting a police officer in the shoulder after the officer drew his weapon and pointed it at the back of a fleeing protester.
- The “material support for terrorism” convictions swept up defendants with vastly different levels of involvement — including one man who wasn’t at the protest at all but was convicted for moving his wife’s books and zines after her arrest, and received 30 years. Legal observers widely criticized the use of reading materials as evidence of terrorist ideology.
- These are the first terrorism convictions tied to alleged “antifa” involvement — notable because antifa is not an organization but a loose constellation of left-wing views. Prosecutors used the convictions to further that framing, even though the “material support” statute requires only that defendants supported one of a list of crimes, not any actual terrorist ideology. Legal observers widely criticized the use of political reading materials as evidence of a conspiracy.
- The case fits a documented pattern of the administration criminalizing left-wing protest — similar prosecutions have been brought against ICE protesters in Minneapolis, Spokane, and Chicago, where one case collapsed after grand jury misconduct was revealed.
Trump triples down on Reflecting Pool vandalism claims (Forbes)
- Seven people have now been arrested in connection with alleged Reflecting Pool vandalism, and Trump said more arrests are coming — but experts say the evidence for vandalism is thin, and a pool coating specialist told PBS the lining material is “extremely strong and puncture resistant” with no evidence it was cut.
- Trump’s own words undercut his vandalism claim: on May 4, weeks before the renovation was completed, he said of the new coating “if you had a knife, you can’t even cut it, so strong, so powerful” — he’s now claiming vandals cut a 350-foot gash with a box knife.
- FactCheck.org documented that the new lining was already showing problems before the alleged vandalism occurred, Democrats are demanding answers about why renovation contracts were awarded without a bidding process, and the pool won’t be drained until after July 4 — meaning the algae problem will be on full display during America’s 250th anniversary celebration.

Media

Trump threatens to sue ABC News over Reflecting Pool renovations coverage: ‘I like their money’ (Independent)
- Trump threatened to sue ABC News over its Reflecting Pool coverage, writing “I like their money, which will be given to the U.S. Treasury” — his second lawsuit threat against ABC, which already paid him $16 million to settle a previous defamation suit.
- His Truth Social post falsely claimed Obama and Biden spent over $100 million on the pool; the Independent notes Biden did no major work on it, and Obama’s renovation cost about $35 million over two years, not $100 million-plus.
- The pool renovation has been a disaster: algae keeps blooming, the newly resurfaced bottom is cracking and peeling, and Trump is blaming vandals — including a “crazy pro-algae (likely paid) protestor” in a frog costume. At least five people have been arrested, including former US Olympian David Hearn, who says he touched a loose flap out of curiosity and denies any vandalism.
- The broader pattern: between May 1 and June 10, Trump talked about his Washington construction projects 70% more than the Iran war — a striking ratio given the scale of what’s happening in the Middle East.
ABC encourages viewers to back network amid FCC investigations (Guardian)
- ABC is running on-air ads during The View urging viewers to submit public comments to the FCC in support of the network, as it faces two simultaneous FCC investigations — one into whether The View violated equal-time rules for political candidates, and a broader challenge to its license renewals for eight owned stations.
- The ad frames it as a free speech fight: “The FCC wants to control who is allowed to appear on the show. Viewers, use your voice.” The FCC’s response called it “a campaign of misinformation.”
- Context that matters: ABC already settled a Trump lawsuit for $16 million, Trump regularly attacks the network, and critics say Carr’s FCC is running “open season” on ABC — some of the licenses under challenge weren’t scheduled to expire until 2031.
- Public comment deadlines: The View investigation closes June 22; license renewal petitions close June 29.

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The Crossroads - Disability Rights

DOJ memo stokes fear among disability advocates of a return to institutionalization (NPR)
- A DOJ Office of Legal Counsel memo quietly reversed nearly 50 years of bipartisan federal policy by arguing that states have no legal obligation to provide home- or community-based care to people with disabilities — effectively gutting the integration mandate that has kept 8.4 million Americans out of institutions since the Supreme Court’s 1999 Olmstead decision.
- The memo’s own author acknowledges its novelty: “We recognize that this view of Olmstead’s import is out of step with the common understanding of that decision within the federal courts” — yet it is now the official position of the US government.
- The timing is not accidental: the memo arrives as Texas and several other states are challenging the integration mandate in court, and the federal government is now aligned with the plaintiffs. It also arrives alongside deep Medicaid cuts from the One Big Beautiful Bill that defund the community-based services the memo says states no longer have to provide — essentially cutting the funding and removing the legal obligation simultaneously.
- The broader context: Trump’s July 2025 executive order on homelessness explicitly called for “shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings” through involuntary civil commitment, and a 2023 campaign video has Trump pledging to bring the severely mentally ill “back to mental institutions, where they belong” — the DOJ memo is the legal architecture for that agenda.
- Disability advocates call it a return to “a dark and shameful era” of institutionalization, noting that research shows institutional care is actually more expensive for states than community-based services — not less.
Indiana FSSA to use AI to detect Medicaid fraud (ICC)
- Indiana FSSA is joining a 90-day federal pilot using Oracle AI software to detect Medicaid fraud before claims are paid — analyzing billing patterns for upcoding and ghost services — in exchange for assessing whether the model can be rolled out to other states.
- The context: FSSA is already seeking to recover $200 million in alleged improper payments from attendant care providers after audits found errors in nearly all claims reviewed, and new federal law will reduce Indiana’s Medicaid matching rate based on future error rates — giving the state a financial incentive beyond the anti-fraud rhetoric.
- Worth noting: Braun is aggressively pursuing small-scale provider fraud through audits and AI pilots while still declining to intervene in the single largest alleged Medicaid fraud case in state history.
Braun, Rokita sit out Indiana’s biggest Medicaid fraud case | Opinion (IndyStar)
- A federal whistleblower lawsuit alleges Indiana’s Medicaid program was defrauded out of up to $724 million by hospitals and insurance companies — already dismissed once because plaintiffs couldn’t prove the state cared, refiled and awaiting a new ruling.
- The alleged fraud traces to the Holcomb era, when state officials shifted from clawing back overpayments to searching for underpayments hospitals claimed they were owed — an approach no other state Medicaid program was using at the time.
- Holcomb had documented ties to hospital and healthcare lobbyists, received significant industry campaign contributions, and maintained a revolving door of advisers transitioning directly into lobbying roles — ties typical of high-level Indiana Republicans and the industry players who fund them.
- The fraud-recovery contractor switch made things worse: IBM’s system netted $5.8 million over two years; Deloitte’s replacement cost $11.8 million while recovering only $6.3 million.
- Braun and Rokita have both championed Medicaid fraud recovery in public — Rokita celebrated $100 million recovered, Braun ordered an independent audit — but neither has intervened in the single largest alleged Medicaid fraud case in state history, which risks dismissal again for lack of state interest.

Indiana News

AI/Data Centers

Holcomb launches group to ease workforce transition to AI with $500M backing (ICC)
- Former Gov. Eric Holcomb is co-chairing RAISE US, a new national nonprofit aimed at retraining workers for an AI economy, alongside former Biden Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo — the bipartisan pairing is the explicit point, with $500 million raised toward a $1 billion goal and backing from Anthropic, Microsoft, OpenAI, IBM, Cisco, and Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly.
- It’s Holcomb’s most prominent public role since leaving office, though the initiative’s workforce development framing sits in some tension with Indiana’s current policy environment — the state is simultaneously cutting school funding, losing teachers, and welcoming data centers that are driving up energy costs for the same workers RAISE US aims to retrain.
- [July, 2019] Indiana’s Governor Signs Data Center Incentive Bill, Granting the State a Critical Competitive Edge (Data Center Post)
  - Indiana’s data center tax incentive — signed by Holcomb in June 2019 — offers up to 50-year sales tax exemptions on equipment, construction, and electricity, the longest such exemption period of any state in the country.
  - The law was the result of a 13-year lobbying push by the data center industry, with Holcomb and a Republican state legislator credited as the driving force behind its passage.

Corruption

Mr. Clean, Part 3: Hogsett vowed to fight insiders. His campaign advanced their interests behind closed doors (Mirror Indy)
- “In previous installments, we’ve detailed how Hogsett ignored Cook’s secret relationship as public dollars flowed to developers he represented. After being forced to resign from the city over a prohibited relationship, Cook negotiated more than $80 million in city incentives for his clients while in a relationship with Scarlett Andrews, who at the time was head of the department that oversaw those incentives.”
- “Reporters also found that Hogsett allies routinely benefited from no-bid city contracts, despite the mayor’s campaign pledge to pursue a competitive process wherever feasible. The city and public agencies over which Hogsett has influence have awarded contracts worth up to at least $6.5 million to his former staffers and top campaign contributors.”
- The investigation found that Hogsett’s top campaign fundraiser, Emily Gurwitz, arranged for donor “wish lists” of preferred city contracts to be physically delivered to then-Public Works Director Dan Parker. Three of the wished-for contracts were subsequently awarded, worth up to $1 million combined, to companies whose executives have donated nearly $200,000 to Hogsett over a decade.
- An ethics expert told the outlets the arrangement “could violate Indiana’s bribery statute” — describing it as “at best questionable and at worst a violation of the law.” The administration denies Gurwitz had any role in contract decisions.
- The same fundraiser recommended donors for mayoral board appointments — in at least one case, within days of a donation. A former staffer called it “inappropriate,” saying Gurwitz’s involvement existed “to keep a link alive between campaign and official business.”
- Former chief of staff Dan Parker sent emails from his personal account to city employees’ personal accounts asking them to phone-bank for Hogsett’s 2023 reelection campaign. One staffer said he “felt tricked” into attending what he thought was a work meeting that turned out to be a campaign event. Ethics experts say Parker’s conduct likely violated both the Hatch Act and Indiana’s ghost employment statute.
- Hogsett — who campaigned as “Mr. Clean” and promised to serve only two terms — is now weighing a fourth term, sitting on a $1.2 million war chest heavily funded by city contractors, some of whom have inked new contracts in the months following fundraisers.
Indy Democrats call for modest ethics change after ‘Mr. Clean’ investigation (Mirror Indy)
- In direct response to the Mr. Clean investigation, Indianapolis City-County Council Democrats are proposing a one-year cooling-off period before senior city officials can take jobs with companies they oversaw — notably, the same reform Hogsett himself promised when he ran for mayor over a decade ago and never implemented.
- The immediate trigger: former chief of staff Dan Parker joined American Structurepoint — an engineering firm that has landed millions in city contracts — shortly after leaving the administration, a move ethics experts told the outlets raises serious conflict-of-interest concerns.
- Council reactions split predictably: Vice President Barth and Republican Paul Annee called for deeper investigation; Democrat Jesse Brown said “donors are treated better than voters”; Hogsett ally Ron Gibson called it people “just capitalizing on relationships.” Mayoral candidate Vop Osili used it to draw contrast, pledging to close ethical loopholes if elected in 2027.
- The proposed reform addresses only one element of the investigation — the revolving door — and would not touch the donor wish lists, the campaign-to-government coordination, or the ghost employment concerns raised in the same reporting. Hogsett called the underlying investigation “absurd.”

Education

Indianapolis voters will decide a four-year school tax that still forces $20M in IPS cuts (WFYI)
- IPEC voted unanimously to put a 37.2-cent per $100 assessed value property tax rate on the November ballot — generating about $87.8 million annually, split evenly between IPS and roughly 60 charter schools inside the district boundary. For a median-value $150,000 home, that’s about $8.71 more per month.
- Even if voters approve it, IPS still faces $20 million in additional cuts on top of $24 million already announced — plus it needs $10 million in efficiencies, $12 million reimbursed by innovation schools, and state help on a $40 million special education gap that IPS argues the state should be covering.
- The IPS board president pushed for a higher 42-cent rate and lost; IPS commissioners backed the measure only reluctantly, calling it “still just not enough.”
- This is the first time charter schools — which are publicly funded but privately governed and not accountable to elected boards — will share in local property tax revenue. The law change that created IPEC was explicitly designed to make that happen, and IPS students are now subsidizing schools that until recently got nothing from local taxpayers.
- The ballot question goes to the state in late July; voters decide November 3.
Carmel school board approves $62M referendum for November ballot (WTHR)
- Carmel Clay Schools is putting a $62 million, 8-year operating referendum on the November ballot after Indiana’s property tax law changes are projected to cut district revenue by roughly $120 million over the same period — essentially erasing the value of a referendum Carmel voters already approved in 2023.
- The board president put it plainly: without the referendum, the district faces cuts that would mean larger class sizes and eliminated programs — “the only way to cut millions of dollars is in personnel.”
Editor’s note: IPS serves roughly three times as many students as Carmel Clay but is seeking eleven times the annual referendum funding, which suggests IPS’s per-student funding crisis is dramatically deeper — likely driven by the combination of the property tax cuts, the $40 million special education gap, the expiring 2018 referendum, and the structural inequities in how Indiana funds districts serving high concentrations of low-income students and English learners. Carmel’s referendum is essentially a maintenance problem; IPS’s is an emergency.

GOP Platform

State GOP demands end to property taxes, pushes closed primaries in new platform (IndyStar)
- The Indiana Republican Party officially added two major planks to its platform at the June 20 convention: eliminating property taxes entirely and closing primaries to registered Republicans only — signaling both issues are likely to come before the legislature next year with a more conservative Senate caucus.
- The property tax elimination push would replace the tax with a 7% levy on services like haircuts and landscaping — making Indiana the only state without property taxes if passed. But schools and local governments rely heavily on property tax revenue, and the proposal would eliminate tools like school referendums and TIF districts, compounding the funding crisis already squeezing districts statewide.
- The closed primary push gained momentum after Democrats crossed over to support Sen. Spencer Deery against Trump-endorsed Paula Copenhaver in the three-vote SD-23 recount fight — and it’s now a centerpiece of GOP secretary of state nominee Max Engling’s platform.
- The timing matters: a new, more conservative Senate caucus is likely in January, with Trump-endorsed newcomers having knocked out powerful incumbents in the primary — creating political conditions more favorable to both proposals than previous sessions where they repeatedly failed.

Utilities

Trump administration renews order keeping Indiana coal plants open for the third time (ICC)
- The Trump administration renewed its emergency order keeping two aging Indiana coal plants — NIPSCO’s Schahfer and CenterPoint’s Culley — online through September 19, the third such 90-day renewal since December.
- The absurdity is hard to miss: CenterPoint’s own regional president called Culley “inefficient and increasingly unreliable,” and two of Schahfer’s units are currently offline for major turbine and boiler repairs — yet the order mandating their operation stands.
- The Sierra Club estimates the cost to consumers at $174,000 a day for Schahfer and $21,000 a day for Culley — all while Hoosiers are already absorbing AES and Duke rate increases and Iran war-driven gas price spikes.
- The Sierra Club’s Indiana director went directly after Braun and Rokita: “Gov. Braun and Attorney General Rokita can step in immediately on behalf of Hoosiers struggling to afford their utility bill and block these costs from continuing to fall on them” — a direct challenge to the governor who just fired his own IURC chairman over utility affordability.
Braun replaces chairman of the Utility Regulatory Commission days after AES rate-hike decision (ICC)
- Braun removed Andy Zay as IURC chairman Monday — just days after Zay was among three commissioners who approved the $71 million AES rate increase Braun publicly condemned — replacing him with Commissioner Anthony Swinger, who hadn’t voted on the AES case due to a prior conflict.
- Zay stays on the commission but loses the chairmanship and its $11,000 salary premium; Braun stopped short of removing him “for cause,” which the law permits.
- A fourth commissioner, David Veleta, posted what reads like a resignation announcement on LinkedIn hours after Braun’s announcement — 17 years at the IURC, “ready for what’s next” — though neither Braun’s office nor Veleta confirmed it.
- The throughline: Braun appointed Zay in December specifically promising his picks would prioritize affordability, then publicly humiliated him six months later for doing exactly what regulators do — weighing utility requests and approving a reduced version. The “new sheriff in town” is now reshuffling his own posse.

…and Finally This Week

Public camping ban, military police and other laws go into effect July 1 (ICC)
- Indiana’s public camping ban takes effect July 1, making it a Class C misdemeanor — up to 60 days jail and a $500 fine — to sleep or shelter on unauthorized public property. Critics note it criminalizes homelessness while Indiana’s affordable housing shortage remains unaddressed; a veterans’ homeless services CEO warned it could harm homeless veterans specifically.
- SEA 76 mandates local law enforcement honor ICE detainer requests — turning what was voluntary into a legal obligation — and prohibits employers from knowingly hiring unauthorized workers. Monroe County Sheriff Marté’s federal lawsuit challenging the law was denied a preliminary injunction this month.
- Schools must implement a full bell-to-bell personal device ban starting July 1 — phones, tablets, and smartwatches must be left home or stored powered-off all day, with narrow exceptions for medical needs.
- The Indiana National Guard can now establish a military police force with arrest, search, and seizure powers, deployable statewide at the governor’s direction.

HoosLeft Podcast #131: UK Author Metin Pekin

Scott Aaron Rogers — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 02:59:15 GMT

Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net

HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us

Metin Pekin: https://www.metinpekin.com/

SUMMARY:

In Scott’s first-ever transatlantic interview, he sits down with British author Metin Pekin — serial entrepreneur and author of the award-winning Breaking Democracy’s Chains: Freeing and Fortifying Democracy Against Hidden Capture. Using the Indiana Democratic Convention’s closed-door selection of Beau Bayh over grassroots candidate Blythe Potter as a live illustration, Pekin argues that the problem runs far deeper than any one party or election: parties themselves are the mechanism by which money captures democracy, filter genuine choice before voters ever see a ballot, and whip representatives into accountability upward toward donors rather than outward toward constituents. The conversation covers why more parties don’t solve the problem (the Netherlands and Israel as cautionary tales), how a no-party system would actually work at the state level, why the founding fathers warned against factions and were ignored, the shared foreign policy record of Labour/Tory and Democrat/Republican on Iraq, Libya, and surveillance, and the practical near-term steps — electing independents, introducing a progressive democracy tax on large donations — that could begin to break the party monopoly on representation. Pekin draws on Václav Havel’s Power of the Powerless and the women’s suffrage movement to argue that seemingly immovable systems do fall — when people refuse to consent to old rituals and force a new paradigm.

WHAT’S INSIDE:

00:00:22 Introduction: HoosLeft’s First International Guest

- Scott introduces Metin Pekin, British author of Breaking Democracy’s Chains, as HoosLeft’s first international guest — recording was done Saturday June 20th due to the five-hour time difference between the UK and eastern US.

- Pekin’s bio: BA in political economy from the University of Greenwich, serial entrepreneur, gold award-winning author who noticed a troubling pattern — no matter which party won, inequality deepened, surveillance expanded, whistleblowers were punished, and wars continued.

00:02:02 Support the Show

- HoosLeft and Progressive Indiana Network don’t paywall content or charge candidates — listener support at progressiveindiana.net ($5/month or $50/year) is what sustains the project.

- Social handles: @hoosleft.us on Bluesky, Instagram, and Threads; @HoosLeft on Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube; PIN is @PINIndiana on Bluesky and TikTok, @progressiveindiananetwork everywhere else

00:03:37 The Indiana Hook: Blythe Potter, Beau Bayh, and the Convention

- Scott frames the conversation with the Indiana Democratic Convention two weeks prior: he supported Blythe Potter, the grassroots progressive candidate for Secretary of State, against Beau Bayh — legacy political dynasty, backed by private equity, school privatizers, and fossil fuel money.

- The establishment argument for Bayh: name recognition, fundraising capacity, and electability in a red state. Bayh won the delegate vote roughly 60-40.

- The deeper problem Scott identifies: the choice was made by roughly 2,000 convention delegates — a slice of a slice of a slice of Democratic voters — before any general election voter had a say. Pekin uses this immediately as the entry point into his thesis.

00:06:15 Pekin’s Opening: The Illusion of Choice and the Curated Ballot

- When Hoosiers go to vote in November, Blythe Potter won’t be on the ballot — a small percentage of delegates eliminated her. That, Pekin argues, is not democratic.

- Every voter in every election faces a curated choice, not a real one — they are endorsing managers of the system rather than exercising genuine democratic power.

- Voter apathy, he argues, isn’t apathy at all — it’s a rational response to a system that has removed meaningful choice. Pekin admits he himself stopped voting for a period, calling it wrong in hindsight but understandable.

00:08:10 How Money Captured Both Parties: Reagan, Thatcher, and Tony Blair

- In the UK, Labour once genuinely represented the working class and the Conservatives the business class — an imperfect but real class distinction in representation.

- That ended with Reagan and Thatcher: neoliberal policies killed domestic industry, trade unions were broken (especially the UK mining unions), and Labour’s primary funding source — union membership — dried up.

- Tony Blair responded by rolling out the red carpet for Rupert Murdoch and courting business donors — mirroring the Republican/Democrat convergence in the US. The same structural pressure, the same result on both sides of the Atlantic.

00:11:14 Parties Monopolize Representation — and the Founding Fathers Warned Us

- Pekin’s core structural diagnosis: parties have monopolized representation, they filter choice, and they are accountable to donors rather than to people.

- Minor tweaks won’t fix this — the problem has been building for decades and arguably was anticipated at the founding. John Adams dreaded nothing so much as the division of the Republic into two great parties; Jefferson said he would not go to heaven with a party; George Washington warned that ambitious, unprincipled men through parties would subvert the will of the people.

- Scott notes the irony: Americans revere the founding fathers but only selectively heed their warnings.

00:12:03 Third Parties Aren’t the Answer: The US Two-Party Trap

- Scott lays out the structural barriers to third parties in Indiana: the two major parties are codified into the state constitution, the Libertarian Party has maintained ballot access for 20 years (correction: now 32 years) but rarely breaks 5%, and friends of his attempting to form a Socialist Party of Indiana face signature thresholds and geographic verification requirements that are deliberately prohibitive.

- Pekin’s central counterintuitive argument: the solution is not more parties. Adding parties doesn’t break the underlying mechanism — it just multiplies the number of capture points.

00:14:44 Mo’ Parties, Mo’ Problems: The Netherlands and Israel

- About 45% of American adults identify as independents rather than with either major party — so the impulse toward more parties is understandable. But parties are broad tents that bundle policies no individual voter fully agrees with, containing moderates, extremists, and everything in between.

- The Netherlands: up to 20 parties, which sounds like real choice — but coalition negotiations after their last election took seven months, producing a weak government and even weaker opposition scrutiny.

- Israel: the multi-party system gave far-right figures like Ben Gvir and Smotrich disproportionate influence over Netanyahu’s government, enabling policies most Israeli people oppose. More parties amplified, rather than diluted, extremism’s power.

00:19:24 How a No-Party System Would Actually Work: Electing the House

- Pekin’s proposed system, illustrated at the Indiana state level: elect 100 House representatives as independent candidates, without party labels or party filters.

- Candidates qualify by gathering a small threshold of voter signatures — enough to weed out novelty candidates while keeping the bar accessible. A half-percent of district voters is his suggested benchmark.

- Each candidate publishes their top policy pledges on a common government website — voters know where each candidate stands on immigration, abortion, redistricting, and so on — and those pledges can even appear on the ballot paper itself. Pekin references Lilliana Mason’s research on how parties have fused political and cultural identities into polarizing mega-identities, arguing this pledge-based system breaks that fusion.

00:23:47 Choosing the Governor Without a Party: The Proposed Mechanism

- With 100 independent representatives elected, they convene, choose a temporary speaker, then use a ranked-elimination voting process among governor candidates — each of whom must secure backing from at least 10 representatives to be taken seriously.

- Candidates with the fewest votes are progressively eliminated until two finalists remain; those two go to a statewide popular election. The winner becomes governor; the runner-up becomes minority/opposition leader — both independently mandated.

- The result: a governor with a broad mandate, independent legislative scrutiny, and no party machine coordinating both. The structure parties currently provide — government and opposition — is preserved without the capture mechanism.

00:26:48 Absolute Power, Gerrymandering, and Negative Partisanship

- When one party controls the governor’s office, the House, and the Senate simultaneously — as Republicans do in Indiana — the result is absolute power, and absolute power corrupts absolutely: gerrymandering, entrenchment, rules drawn to maintain grip.

- Scott identifies the trap Pekin’s system resolves: under the current system, voters keep sending bad representatives back not because they like them, but because they fear the other side more. Negative partisanship — “I hate the other brand” — is not accidental, it’s deliberate.

- In a no-party system, voters can remove a representative who betrays them without any fear of “letting the other side in,” because there is no other side — just other candidates.

00:29:26 Do Republicans and Democrats Actually Differ? The War and Austerity Test

- Pekin argues that on the issues that most affect people’s lives, there’s little daylight between the parties: Bush and Blair both went to war in Iraq under false pretenses, both funded by the same military-industrial complex and fossil fuel donors; Yugoslavia was bombed under Clinton; Libya under Obama; surveillance of American citizens continued and expanded under both parties; Julian Assange’s prosecution spanned multiple administrations.

- The 2008 crash: banks were vilified for weeks, then the media turned to lecturing ordinary people about austerity while $700 billion went to bail out the institutions that caused the crisis — under Bush and then continued under Obama.

- Pekin’s distinction: yes, there are real cultural differences between the parties, but on the structural questions — war, surveillance, austerity — the donor class gets the same result regardless of which party wins.

00:33:17 Parties as Capture Mechanisms: Farage, Crypto Billionaires, and the Whip

- More parties don’t solve the capture problem. In the UK, Nigel Farage is personally funded by a crypto billionaire to the tune of five to seven million dollars — undeclared — because parties are a perfect host for money seeking influence. The leader is identifiable; the money flows to him; he is compromised.

- In a no-party system, you don’t know in advance who will be the governor or the president — there’s no party boss to buy. Capture a party’s leadership and you capture the entire whipped block of representatives; in a no-party system, money has to try to buy individuals one by one.

- Pekin traces his own voting history: Labour until the Iraq War, then Conservatives until David Cameron bombed Libya, then gave up on both — a personal journey that mirrors the structural argument.

00:36:00 The Refugee Crisis We Made: Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Blowback

- Trump and Vance’s rhetoric about England being “swamped” by refugees is being echoed by Farage, who models himself on Trump, and by Rupert Lowe of Restore Britain, an even further-right new party.

- Pekin traces the refugee crisis directly to Western foreign policy decisions made by the same bipartisan donor-captured parties: supporting Saddam Hussein against Iran, then sanctioning him, then the Gulf War, then the Iraq War that killed an estimated million people; Operation Timber Sycamore in Syria, which removed the secular Assad and installed Ahmad al-Jolani — a former Al-Qaeda figure with a bounty on his head; bombing Libya and leaving a failed state.

- The leaders now demanding border control destroyed the countries these refugees fled. Pekin’s question: did you not foresee this?

00:39:31 Freedom of Association YES; Party Monopoly NO

- Scott raises the free-association objection: if people want to band together as a party, why can’t they? Pekin’s answer: freedom of association is not banned under his proposal — associations, unions, business groups can all exist and can support individual candidates.

- The distinction is between association and monopoly: we don’t allow monopolies in critical economic sectors — why allow a party monopoly on political representation?

- What’s prohibited is parties as legal electoral entities going onto ballots as organized blocs. Associations back individual independent candidates; those candidates then form issue-based coalitions in the legislature as they see fit, voting with different partners on different issues.

00:42:01 Madison, the Low-Information Era, and Why Parties Are Now Obsolete

- James Madison acknowledged that factions are inevitable and dangerous, and his solution was a large republic where each faction’s influence would be diluted. That was a reasonable answer in 1789 — no television, no radio, no internet, no cars.

- Parties fulfilled a genuine organizational function in a low-information era, when voters needed bundled platforms to navigate complex choices. That function is now obsolete: information is abundantly available and communication is instant.

- The analogy: we’re not proposing to ban telephones, we’re proposing to move from landlines to cell phones. The technology exists. The upgrade is available.

00:44:04 Issue-Based Coalitions, the Whipping Problem, and True Accountability

- Without a party whip, representatives form fluid coalitions by issue: two representatives might vote together on immigration and split on abortion. The whip — the mechanism that tells representatives how to vote regardless of their constituents’ wishes or their own conscience — disappears.

- Pekin illustrates the whipping trap: a Republican voter elects a representative believing he’ll vote against the wall; the party whips him to vote for it; the voter can’t punish him without letting “the other side” in. Accountability runs upward to party bosses, not outward to constituents.

- In the no-party system, accountability is fully outward: betray your voters, get replaced in the next cycle without any partisan consequence for the broader system.

00:47:04 Real-World Examples: Nebraska and the Chicken-and-Egg Problem

- Nebraska already has a unicameral, nonpartisan legislature — candidates run without party labels. Scott notes, however, that candidates still self-identify ideologically and the system largely behaves as partisan in practice.

- Pekin’s response: that’s the chicken-and-egg problem. As long as parties retain legal electoral status, they’ll back nominally independent candidates who still operate within the party framework. The structural change has to remove parties’ legal standing in elections — not just their label on the ballot.

- The path forward: even within the current system, independent representatives with thin margins between the two major parties — like Bernie Sanders — demonstrate that a handful of true independents can have outsized influence and begin normalizing the idea.

00:51:17 The Landline Analogy and the Constitutional Barrier

- Scott acknowledges the appeal of the upgrade metaphor but points out the telephone poles are still very much standing: in Indiana, the two major parties are written into state law. Eliminating parties’ legal electoral status would require constitutional amendments — and those amendments have to pass through the very party system they’re designed to dismantle.

- Pekin concedes this is a fair and real concern — in history, nobody in power has voluntarily let go of that power out of decency.

00:53:15 Václav Havel’s Greengrocer: The Ritual That Sustains the System

- Pekin invokes Václav Havel’s essay The Power of the Powerless: a Czech greengrocer displays a “Workers of the world, unite” sign in his window — not because he believes it, but because every shop on his street does it. That ritual of performed compliance is what sustains the oppressive system, not just the oppression itself.

- The parallel: voting for existing parties — even when you’re frustrated with them — is the ritual that legitimizes the party system. Withdrawing that participation — choosing not to vote, or voting for independents — is how the system loses credibility and eventually collapses.

- It is people, not kings or emperors, who historically brought about democracy. Those reforms required thinking bigger and acting outside the existing framework.

00:55:41 The Practical Path: Pass a Democracy Tax, Elect Independents

- Women’s suffrage took 140-plus years after men’s suffrage in the UK, and during that entire period the denial of women’s votes was considered normal and immovable. The party monopoly is the next mountain.

- Near-term practical steps within the current system: introduce a progressive democracy tax on political donations above a certain threshold — say $10,000 — with the revenue ring-fenced to level the playing field for independent candidates, not pooled into general government funds.

- Scott’s synthesis: vote for people outside the two-party system, elect independents. Pekin affirms it — your vote is the most powerful, most peaceful, most democratic tool available.

00:58:18 Artificial Fences, Squid Game, and the Definition of Patriotism

- Scott’s closing synthesis: artificial fences herd us into easily controllable camps. Tear them down and the political process becomes more nuanced, more human, and less a game of death.

- Pekin’s response: while we fight each other — pointing fingers left and right — we’re not pointing upward, like Squid Game players pulling the strings instead of identifying who holds them. Media and social media amplify polarization because conflict gets clicks; decent conversations don’t.

- Pekin’s closing argument: patriotism is loyalty to country, not to a party. Parties have divided families. We are fellow citizens who should be able to respect and tolerate each other’s views — that common denominator is where we have to start.

00:59:44 Closing: Where to Find the Book and Connect with Metin Pekin

- Breaking Democracy’s Chains is available wherever you get books; e-book available for $7.99 at bookshop.org; audio version not yet released. Publisher: Paragon Publishing UK.

- Pekin online

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HoosLeft This Week - June 21, 2026

Scott Aaron Rogers — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 18:01:16 GMT

SUMMARY:

On this Father’s Day edition of HoosLeft This Week, Scott is joined by Hancock County Democratic Vice Chair Chuck Gill and State Senate District 38 Democratic nominee Kacey Blundell, with a surprise guest appearance from State House District 81 candidate Sharon Wight with Kacey in Terre Haute. The panel opens on UFC fighter Josh Hokit’s transphobic, racist slur against Michelle Obama at Trump’s White House birthday fight night, contrasted with the Obamas’ dignified twin speeches at the opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. From there the show turns to Trump’s Iran “peace deal” — a thin memorandum of understanding already collapsing under Israeli strikes in Lebanon, Iran’s repeated closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and a $300 billion reparations package that has Republicans suddenly comfortable with the kind of Iran payout they once attacked Obama for proposing — before covering the G7 summit, a narrowly defeated Swiss population-cap referendum, and Indiana’s own affordability crisis: Governor Braun’s gas tax holiday gutting local road funding even as the state sits on a massive surplus, new state price caps on hospital systems, back-to-back utility rate hikes for Duke Energy and AES customers approved by Braun’s own IURC appointees, the data center backlash spreading across Indiana counties, Bernie Sanders’ proposal for public ownership of AI companies, Attorney General Todd Rokita’s water-contaminant lawsuit targeting mifepristone, and a Guardian profile on shadow Pentagon power broker Stephen Feinberg. The back half of the show digs into the leaked membership roster of Peter Thiel’s secretive Dialog society (which includes both major parties and several Indiana-connected figures), the chaotic Indiana Secretary of State race following Max Engling’s convention win over a scandal-plagued Diego Morales, a slate of Tuesday primary and runoff results from Georgia to California, new reporting on Trump White House discussions of suspending habeas corpus, several ICE enforcement and detention stories including an Indiana case, a federal reorganization of special education and civil rights enforcement, Indiana’s declining national education rankings, an update on the state’s historic spring tornado outbreak, and the city of Martinsville’s first-ever Juneteenth celebration.

IN DEPTH:

UFC Fighter Insults Michelle Obama

The UFC’s Despicable Night at the White House (Mother Jones)
- UFC fighter Josh Hokit capped the White House fight night by shouting a transphobic slur about Michelle Obama during his post-fight interview with Joe Rogan — drawing a mix of cheers and boos from the crowd.
- Even Dana White distanced himself, saying he’s “completely against saying nasty and false things about people’s families” — though Hokit built his UFC profile on exactly that kind of rhetoric, including statements about kicking out Mexicans and attacking transgender people.
- The moment put a fine point on the evening: a private, for-profit cage fight on the South Lawn, ostensibly celebrating America’s 250th birthday, ending with a racial and transphobic slur against a Black former first lady at the White House.
Barack and Michelle Obama Decry Trumpism in Rousing Presidential Center Speeches (Rolling Stone)
- The Obama Presidential Center opened in Chicago Thursday with Clinton, Bush, and Biden in attendance, plus performances from Bruce Springsteen and Christina Aguilera. Both Obamas delivered speeches widely read as veiled critiques of Trump, without naming him.
- Obama warned against those who “see government as nothing more than a way to divvy up the spoils and punish enemies, and keep those who are different in their place,” and made the case that American foreign policy succeeds when it leads through democratic example rather than dominance.
- Michelle Obama listed her husband’s presidential accomplishments — including a “peace prize” win — a clear jab at Trump’s well-known fixation on the Nobel; the line reportedly sent Hillary Clinton into laughter.
- She also warned more directly: “Failing to see the humanity in all people puts us all on a slippery slope, and once that slide starts, there’s no telling where it stops.”

Iran War

US-Iran ‘peace deal’ announced; Trump says Strait of Hormuz reopening (Al Jazeera)
- Trump announced Sunday that a US-Iran ceasefire deal has been reached, declaring the Strait of Hormuz open for toll-free shipping and lifting the US naval blockade — a signing ceremony is set for Switzerland on Friday, June 19.
- Pakistan’s PM Sharif confirmed the deal covers “all fronts, including Lebanon” — though Israel, which is still bombing Beirut and has issued forced displacement orders to 24 Lebanese towns, is not a party to the agreement.
- The deal is described as a memorandum of understanding, not a final settlement — nuclear details are to be worked out in the 60 days after signing, and Trump simultaneously warned Iran in a NYT interview that the US could restart military operations or become “the guardian of the Middle East” in exchange for 20% of the region’s revenues.
- Vance called it “a new era” and said he plans to attend the signing; UK, France, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia all praised the deal and called for swift implementation. Iran’s deputy FM confirmed the agreement Sunday.
- One significant caveat buried in the article: an Israeli airstrike on Beirut’s southern suburbs nearly derailed the announcement earlier Sunday, and Lebanese residents remain skeptical — the fighting that Iran most wanted addressed may be the least settled element of the deal.
What to know about the deal to end the Iran war (AP)
- The Iran-US memorandum of understanding is, per Vance, “about a page and a half long” and “a very general document” — the full text remains confidential.
- The deal essentially returns both sides to the pre-war status quo, with the same core disagreements over Iran’s nuclear stockpile, missile program, and proxy network punted to 60 days of negotiations.
- Lebanon is the live wire: Iran says the deal covers all fronts including Lebanon, but a US official confirmed it does NOT require Israeli withdrawal — a contradiction that could blow up the arrangement.
- Netanyahu has been visibly sidelined, is losing Republican support, and faces criticism from within his own coalition — with Israeli elections this fall.
- Bottom line from analysts: none of Trump’s stated war aims — obliterating Iran’s missiles, severing its proxy ties, preventing a nuclear weapon — were achieved, and Iran’s leadership emerged “seemingly bolder.”
Weapons, money and ships: How is this Iran deal different from others? (BBC)
- The signed MoU is far thinner than the 2015 JCPOA: it contains no enrichment caps, no IAEA verification mechanism, and no mention of destroying Iran’s uranium stockpile — despite US officials briefing that destruction was “the minimum standard.” It also says nothing about Iran’s ballistic missiles, which Trump himself cited as a war justification in March.
- On sanctions, the US will issue immediate waivers letting Iran export crude oil and access banking and insurance services — with no conditions attached — a notably stronger position than Iran held before the war. The US and regional partners also commit to a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran.
- On shipping: the naval blockade ends within 30 days, and Iran promises free passage through Hormuz — but only for 60 days. After that, Iran has already signaled it intends to charge “fees” for use of the strait, and the deal includes no mechanism to stop it. Traffic through Hormuz collapsed from a daily average of 94 ships in 2025 to just 6 during the war.
- Bottom line: Iran emerges with sanctions relief, an oil export pathway, $300 billion in reconstruction money on the table, and an unresolved path to charging strait fees — all without firm commitments on its nuclear stockpile or missile program, the two things the war was supposedly fought over.
Even with a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, it could take weeks or months for oil to fully flow (AP)
- Even with a deal, analysts say it could take weeks or months for oil to flow normally — mine clearance alone could take six months, ~500 ships are trapped in the Gulf, and captains aren’t rushing passage until they’re sure it’s safe.
- Iraq, hardest hit by production shutdowns, could take up to a year to recover; Capital Economics puts overall energy flows at 80% of prewar levels by September at best.
- A core contradiction remains unresolved: Trump says the deal includes toll-free passage, but Iran hasn’t confirmed that — and Iran’s designated toll-collection entity is US Treasury-sanctioned, meaning paying could expose shippers to sanctions violations.
- Inflation won’t drop quickly regardless — economists expect prices to stay above target through at least mid-2027, and could tick up further when temporary government fuel relief expires.
Trump goes after Netanyahu as he pursues deal with Iran, putting their friendship to the test (AP)
- Trump previously called Netanyahu “crazy” — a remark first reported two weeks ago — and claimed at the G7 “without me, there would be no Israel,” the sharpest public criticism of an Israeli prime minister by a sitting US president in modern memory, coming from the man who started the war alongside him.
- The break is driven by self-interest: Israeli strikes in Lebanon nearly blew up the Iran deal Trump desperately wants ahead of midterms, where the unpopular war has driven up gas prices and tanked his approval ratings.
- The bipartisan pro-Israel consensus in Washington is visibly fraying — liberals over Palestinian treatment, conservatives increasingly questioning unconditional support — and Trump’s comments are accelerating that shift.
- Pro-Israel conservatives are split: the Republican Jewish Coalition is calling it family disagreement; the Zionist Organization of America warned Trump may be playing to an increasingly Israel-skeptical American public. One analyst’s bottom line: “If Netanyahu gets in between something Trump really wants, Trump is prepared to use the leverage he has.”
Israel and Hezbollah agree to a ceasefire after intensified fighting threatens Iran talks (NBC)
- Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire Friday after escalation in Lebanon nearly derailed the US-Iran peace talks — but Israel killed at least 47 people in over 150 strikes since midnight, and four Israeli soldiers died, prompting Netanyahu to order a forceful response he called justified by a ceasefire violation.
- Vance canceled his trip to Switzerland for the scheduled US-Iran talks, which were postponed; Trump says Vance will likely go “a little bit later,” with Steve Witkoff going separately.
- Israel says it’s not bound by the US-Iran MOU and will stay in its southern Lebanon “security zone” indefinitely — directly contradicting the deal’s language calling for an immediate end to fighting “on all fronts, including Lebanon.”
- Iran is threatening to walk away from its own deal with the US if Israel’s Lebanon campaign continues — Iran’s army says it has its “hand on the trigger,” while Vance publicly criticized Israeli officials for attacking “the only powerful ally” they have left.
  - “Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,” Vance said. “If I was in the Cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”
- Despite the chaos, the Strait of Hormuz is reopening in trickle form — five ships left the Persian Gulf Thursday into Friday after being stuck since February, and Iran’s new strait authority says it won’t charge fees during the 60-day negotiation window.
Trump envoys head to Switzerland for potential Iran talks (Axios)
- Witkoff and Kushner are heading to/already in Switzerland for the Iran talks, but the original Friday start was postponed due to the Israel-Hezbollah fighting in Lebanon — no new time confirmed yet.
- Iran’s FM Araghchi reportedly told mediators the Lebanon ceasefire is “make or break” for the broader negotiations and wants to see it actually hold before he’ll travel to Switzerland (he’s tentatively planning to arrive Saturday).
- Vance postponed his trip Thursday night and it’s unclear if he’ll still go this weekend — Qatar’s PM, a key mediator, has already arrived.
Iran says it shut Strait of Hormuz over truce violations, but U.S. says it remains open (CBC)
- Iran’s IRGC declared the Strait of Hormuz closed Saturday, citing US and Israeli ceasefire violations, and warned ships not to approach — but US Central Command flatly denied it, saying “Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz” and that traffic continues to flow.
- The declaration came hours after Israeli strikes killed at least 20 people in Lebanon, including a family of four in a residential building — just hours after the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire took effect Friday.
- Vance says he still expects to travel to Switzerland “in the next couple of days,” with Kushner and Witkoff already there working “technical elements”; Iran’s negotiators were also set to depart for Switzerland Saturday.
- Lebanon’s Health Ministry says at least 4,057 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since March 2 — a staggering toll that underscores how much is riding on a ceasefire that’s already fraying within a day of taking effect.

Takeaways from the G7: Trump’s new attitude toward allies buoyed by their praise for Iran deal (PBS)
- Trump showed up to the G7 in a notably better mood than in past years — buoyed by allied praise for his Iran deal — after spending only a day at last year’s summit before cutting out early. This time Macron kept him through the full three days, capped by a dinner at Versailles.
- The summit produced unusual unity on two issues that have long divided Trump from allies: leaders jointly praised “the strong leadership of President Trump” on the Iran deal, while Trump in turn signed onto a statement pledging “unwavering support for Ukraine,” including more air defense systems — a shift from his past “Ukraine has no cards” rhetoric.
- That unity cracked on China. The G7 issued a joint statement vowing coordinated action against Chinese economic coercion, but Trump then publicly thanked Xi Jinping and Putin for staying “neutral” during the Iran war, undercutting his own delegation’s message.
- Asked about accountability if the Iran deal falls apart, Trump named his fall guy outright: “If it works out, I’m going to take the credit. If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD. You better be careful, JD” — notable since Vance was the one doing the media rounds promoting the deal and was set to represent the US at Friday’s signing ceremony.
- Overall takeaway: three days of informal access gave European leaders real traction with Trump, especially on Ukraine, where they say they made the case — contrary to what Trump told Zelenskyy last year — that Russia isn’t assured of winning.
G7 protest turns from carnival to violent stand-off (Inquirer)
- An anti-G7 protest in Geneva drew roughly 20,000 people Sunday — the vast majority peaceful — but around 600 Black Bloc demonstrators merged into the march and turned parts of it violent, attacking the Geneva offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers, smashing UN agency memorials, and setting a Tesla on fire.
- Police responded with tear gas and made several arrests; no injuries were reported as of Sunday evening.
- The protest targeted the G7 summit taking place across the border in Evian, France, with demonstrators rallying under a “No-G7” coalition of over 60 unions, associations, and left-wing groups opposing what they called fascism and imperialism.
- One protester’s framing is worth noting: “In a time when everyone’s reading depressing news on their phones, it’s an opportunity to see that the left is still alive — and maybe even making a resurgence.”
Swiss voters reject proposal to cap population at 10 million (Guardian)
- Swiss voters rejected a far-right proposal to cap the country’s population at 10 million by 54.79% to 45.21% — a closer margin than many expected, reflecting genuine public anxiety about population growth even as voters ultimately rejected the remedy.
- The proposal, pushed by the Swiss People’s Party, would have triggered tough restrictions on immigration, family reunification, and asylum once the population hit 9.5 million — and would have forced Switzerland to withdraw from its free movement agreement with the EU, effectively cutting off access to the single market.
- The Swiss government, business groups, and all four major parties opposed it, warning it would damage the economy and relations with Brussels — a polling analyst said voters ultimately feared the side effects more than the population growth itself, particularly losing access to health and care workers.
- Worth noting for context: about 27% of Swiss residents are not citizens, and the population has grown 23% since the EU free movement agreement took effect in 2002 — but economic output grew by roughly the same amount over that period.

Affordability

Road projects delayed as state’s gas tax holiday dries up local coffers (Mirror Indy)
- Braun’s gas tax holiday — saving Hoosiers about 62 cents/gallon since May — is costing the state roughly $140 million a month and local governments around $170 million total by July, money that normally funds road and bridge maintenance.
- Real consequences on the ground: Fulton County cut 15 miles of paving and halved its chip-and-seal projects anticipating 40% lost revenue; Miami County is holding off on replacing aging dump trucks; statewide, the Community Crossings matching grant program is expected to fund about 12 fewer projects per month.
- Braun has promised the state will “backfill” lost local revenue, but there’s no specific plan, statute, or guaranteed funding source — legislative approval likely wouldn’t come until early next year, well after this summer’s road season ends.
- The Association of Indiana Counties is instead pushing for an immediate funding transfer through the State Board of Finance at its June 30 meeting, since waiting on the legislature isn’t a realistic timeline for keeping summer projects on track.
Indiana takes on powerful hospitals by capping prices they charge employers (ICC)
- Republican Indiana is capping what its five largest nonprofit hospital systems — Ascension St. Vincent, Community Health Network, Franciscan Health, IU Health, and Parkview — can charge employer-based insurance plans, with hospitals that exceed the threshold by 2029 risking loss of their tax-exempt status.
- Gov. Braun’s framing: “Government has to intervene, because healthcare is run like an unregulated utility” — a striking position from a Republican governor muscling through price controls over the hospital industry’s objections.
- The cap is set at 260% of Medicare rates; Indiana hospital prices have consistently ranked among the highest in the nation in Rand Corporation research.
- A key methodological fight is already brewing: whether to include doctor fees in calculating the cap — hospitals want them included because Indiana doctors are among the lowest-paid in the nation, which would drag the average down and let hospitals keep prices high.
- The experiment is being watched nationally — Oregon’s similar cap on state employee plans saved over $100 million in its first two years, and legislation is pending in Colorado and New York.

Utilities

Indiana’s ratepayer advocate accuses Duke Energy Indiana of over-collecting $90 million from customers (FOX59)
- Indiana’s Office of Utility Consumer Counselor is accusing Duke Energy Indiana of over-collecting $86.5 million annually from customers — money the IURC never authorized when it finalized Duke’s rate order in early 2025 — and is appealing a ruling by the IURC’s own presiding officers who found Duke in compliance.
- The Citizens Action Coalition puts the scale in context: a “refinement” to a rate order typically means hundreds of thousands or low millions — not $90 million on a utility collecting over a billion dollars a year from customers in 69 of Indiana’s 92 counties.
- The structural problem: the two officials who ruled Duke was in compliance — IURC Chairman Andy Zay and the Chief Administrative Law Judge — were not the presiding officers when the original rate order was finalized. Zay only became IURC chair in January 2026 after stepping down as a state senator.
- The OUCC’s broader concern: only one or two officials are making decisions that should go to the full five-member commission — setting a precedent for how much money can be approved with minimal oversight.
IURC approves $70 million increase, electric rate hike for AES (FOX59)
- The IURC approved a $71 million annual rate increase for AES Indiana — about 37% of what AES originally requested — meaning most residential customers using 1,000 kilowatt-hours monthly will see less than $10 added to their bills, phased in starting July with a second phase in January 2027.
- Gov. Braun called himself “deeply disappointed” despite the IURC being made up of his own appointees — Indiana Senate Democrats were blunter, noting that in two days Braun’s commission delivered back-to-back wins for monopoly utilities, with Duke Energy also accused of over-collecting $90 million annually beyond what regulators originally approved.
- The Indiana Conservation Voters’ summary: “Despite objections from Gov. Braun’s newly appointed IURC and the Office of Utility Consumer Counselor, Indianapolis residents are going to see massive increases in their bills — with the exact same results for Indiana customers.”
Braun asks regulators to reconsider $71 million AES rate increase (IndyStar)
- Braun is asking IURC to reconsider the $71 million AES rate increase it approved June 17, directing Utility Consumer Counselor Abby Gray to formally petition for a rehearing.
- The approved increase was actually smaller than what AES requested ($192 million) or what was proposed in an October settlement — but the OUCC, which Gray leads, had pushed for a $21 million reduction instead, not any increase.
- Braun’s framing fits a pattern: he signed a law in February tying utility rate decisions to affordability metrics and has cast himself as a “new sheriff in town” taking on Indiana’s investor-owned utilities — useful context as Republicans face growing voter anger over costs.
HYPOCRITE IN CHIEF: Braun “Disappointed” After Appointing the Rate-Hike Crew - Millions of Hoosiers Disappointed by AES bill Increase (Hoosier Enquirer)
- Gov. Braun appointed the majority of the five-member IURC last year, including Chair Andy Zay, and publicly framed the overhaul as putting “rate-conscious” commissioners in place to protect ratepayers.
- Those same appointees voted 3-1 to approve a $71 million rate increase for AES Indiana — less than the $193 million AES requested, but still an increase the OUCC had argued against, having called for a $21 million reduction instead.
- Residential customers using 1,000 kWh/month will see phased increases of under $5 per phase in July and again in January 2027 — roughly a 3.7% overall increase.
- The core tension: Braun called the decision “deeply disappointing” despite having appointed the commissioners who made it, and despite having signed a law this year tying utility rate-setting to affordability — raising the question of why his own appointees aren’t aligned with his stated priorities, and whether his criticism amounts to accountability or political distancing.
- Consumer advocates, including CAC Indiana, separately criticized the decision for placing the cost burden on residential ratepayers while data centers — whose growing electricity demand Braun’s economic development policies have actively courted — aren’t subject to the same rate pressure.

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Data Centers

Indiana Angle:
- Parke County sets rules for potential data centers (WTWO)
  - Parke County commissioners proactively passed a data center ordinance Monday — before any proposal has even been filed — requiring any data center to bring its own water (closed-loop, non-evaporative, completely independent from the county water source) and its own electricity so as not to impact local availability or costs.
  - Meanwhile in neighboring Clay County, IDEM issued permits for a natural gas generating station between Brazil and Carbon without notifying local commissioners — who say they’re “very unhappy” and oppose a data center coming to their county.
  - A data center is already under construction in Sullivan County, and the ripple of concern is spreading across the Wabash Valley.
- Boone County adopts 1-year data center moratorium (IndyStar)
  - Boone County unanimously passed a one-year moratorium on new data centers Sunday, becoming the 12th Indiana county to hit pause — joining Dearborn, Franklin, Fulton, Huntington, Marshall, Pulaski, Putnam, Rush, Shelby, Starke, and White counties.
  - The moratorium doesn’t touch the $10 billion Meta campus already under construction in the LEAP district, which was annexed to Lebanon before construction began and sits outside unincorporated county land.
  - Marshall County went furthest of all — after an initial moratorium in February 2025, it banned data centers entirely this April.
  - The core community complaints driving the backlash: enormous electricity consumption driving up utility bills, constant noise from generators and cooling systems, minimal permanent jobs (Meta projects 4,000 construction jobs but only 300 permanent ones), and water usage straining local supplies.
  - Indianapolis City-County Council passed a nonbinding resolution calling for a pause in May — the statewide pattern is becoming hard to ignore.

AI executives gather at G7 as Europeans seek checks on American dominance (WaPo)
- AI took center stage on the G7’s final day in France, with OpenAI’s Altman, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei attending a working lunch on safe and effective AI deployment alongside heads of smaller European and Asian AI labs.
- The backdrop is growing European anxiety about American AI dominance — the EU unveiled a tech sovereignty package this month, and the Vatican recently called for robust AI regulation.
- The episode that crystallized European concerns: the Trump administration’s order last week forcing Anthropic to take down its most advanced models globally, barring all non-Americans from access and cutting off international customers without warning — a stark demonstration of how dependent other countries have become on US-controlled AI infrastructure.
- Canadian PM Carney put it plainly on his way to the summit: sovereignty requires “unhindered access to AI” — and Canada has already announced a plan to help allied nations develop alternatives to the major US AI players.
Bernie Sanders unveils plan to give the public direct ownership of AI companies (AP)
- Sanders unveiled legislation to create a $7 trillion sovereign wealth fund financed by a one-time 50% tax on the stock of AI companies with over $200 million in annual AI sales — making the American public a major shareholder in the largest AI firms rather than collecting cash taxes.
- “The benefits cannot simply go to the handful of wealthy corporations. They will be shared by the American people,” the independent Vermont senator said in an interview Wednesday.
- A seven-person independent commission would manage the fund’s voting shares to block corporate decisions that harm the public; a 5% annual dividend would provide direct payments of over $1,000 to every American, with additional gains directed to health care, education, and housing.
- Sanders drew a sharp line between his proposal and the softer versions: “I think people like Sam Altman and Trump (who) may be sympathetic to this are saying: ‘Okay, look, we’re making zillions of dollars so we’re going to be nice guys and maybe we’ll buy off the public. We will give 5% of our profits back into the government.’ That’s not what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about are two very different things.”
- The political context matters: about 70% of college students see AI as a threat to their job prospects, data center backlash is spreading nationally, and Sanders is making public AI ownership a centerpiece of his midterm campaign tour — alongside candidates like Michigan’s Mallory McMorrow and New York’s Alex Bores who are already running on it.

Rokita

Indiana attorney general targets abortion pill mifepristone as water risk. Health experts dispute the claim (WFYI)
- Rokita joined 13 other state AGs in petitioning the EPA to classify mifepristone as a water contaminant, claiming at-home medication abortions pose a risk to drinking water — particularly for other pregnant women.
- Medical experts are dismissive: an Indianapolis OBGYN noted there’s no data suggesting trace amounts of mifepristone in water could affect a pregnancy, and pointed out that of hundreds of thousands of FDA-approved medications, this is the only one anyone is trying to regulate as a water contaminant.
- The Indiana chapter of ACOG called the effort “frankly ridiculous,” describing mifepristone as “one of the most over-regulated medications on the market” with a repeatedly proven safety record.
- The subtext is plain: mifepristone is already illegal to prescribe in Indiana, the Supreme Court preserved telehealth access to it earlier this year, and the EPA’s own newly proposed contaminant list doesn’t include it — so Rokita is grasping for a new angle.

Pentagon

US strike on an alleged drug boat kills 3 in the eastern Pacific Ocean (Politico)
- A US military strike killed three more people in a boat off the eastern Pacific Thursday — bringing the total killed in these “narcoterrorist” strikes to at least 211 since September, with the administration still offering no evidence the vessels were carrying drugs.
- Senators are now demanding the Pentagon release unedited video of the strikes; the Pentagon’s inspector general is reviewing whether strikes followed proper targeting procedure, but explicitly not whether the strikes themselves were legal.
- Recall: two survivors clinging to wreckage after the very first of these strikes were hit again in a follow-up strike — the White House calls it self-defense under laws of armed conflict, but legal scholars say striking survivors would be illegal regardless of the conflict’s legal status.
- Critics note the strategic logic doesn’t hold up well either — most fentanyl reaching the US comes overland through Mexico, not by boat, undercutting the stated rationale for a campaign that has killed over 200 people with minimal public evidence.
Senate eyes Hegseth travel cuts without probes into Iran school bombing, boat strikes (Military Times)
- The Senate Armed Services Committee voted 18-9 to cut Hegseth’s travel funding 75% until he turns over the civilian harm probe into February’s strike on an Iranian girls’ school, which killed at least 165 people, mostly schoolgirls.
- The provision also demands unredacted reports on three 2025 Yemen strikes and unedited video of the Latin American boat strikes.
- A tougher amendment — blocking Iran war funding without congressional authorization — narrowly failed 13-14.
- Trump on accountability for the school strike: “Mistakes are made. War is nasty.” He punted further questions to Hegseth.
- Lawmakers also want the unredacted investigation into Operation Absolution Resolve, the January raid that captured Maduro.
Pentagon chief’s review appears out of step with what NATO allies are already doing (AP)
- Hegseth called NATO a “paper-tiger,” accused allies of “shameful” behavior over Iran basing access, and announced a 6-month Pentagon review tying US troop presence and NATO contributions to whether countries “pass” his performance test.
- The irony: European allies say they’re already doing what Hegseth demanded — NATO chief Rutte notes Europe and Canada increased defense spending by over $90 billion (nearly 20%) in 2025 alone, with European officers taking on more NATO command roles and allies funding Ukraine aid as the US has stepped back.
- A former top US NATO adviser pushed back hard on the framing: “It’s protection racket framing that undermines NATO solidarity, trust in the U.S. commitment to NATO, and ultimately U.S. security interests.” She added that force positioning should be based on military planning, not used as “reward, punishment or revenge.”
- Even Rutte couldn’t explain what the review actually entails — “there’s still no clarity on exactly what the outcome will be” — adding fresh uncertainty ahead of the next NATO summit in Turkey, July 7-8.
The billionaire hidden behind the curtain inside Trump’s Pentagon (Guardian)
- Stephen Feinberg, billionaire founder of Cerberus Capital Management, has been Deputy Defense Secretary since March 2025 — zero interviews, zero hearings, yet reportedly more powerful than Hegseth himself.
- He’s stacked the Pentagon with former Cerberus execs, including George Kollitides, who runs a new investment unit while still working for a private firm and a Trump-Media-linked company — legal under his “special government employee” status.
- That unit already steered a $620 million loan to a Trump Jr.-linked company. Warren calls it “the latest Trump Administration giveaway to Wall Street.”
- Cerberus’s history includes the Sandy Hook shooter’s rifle maker, a hospital chain that went bankrupt, and a rental company accused of excessive evictions. Feinberg’s early political ties included Dan Quayle on Cerberus’s board.
- The Pentagon says Feinberg fully divested and has no conflicts; critics say the Cerberus network around him makes that distinction meaningless.

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Epstein Class

Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel’s Secretive ‘Dialog’ Society (Wired)
- A leaked database exposed the membership of Dialog, Peter Thiel’s invitation-only secret society, revealing 222 registrants for its August retreat near Dublin — including NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Sen. Ted Cruz, Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, and the heads of major surveillance and data-broker companies.
- The conflict-of-interest picture is striking: Palantir’s Lonsdale — whose software runs ICE case management and Pentagon data fusion — appears alongside the Army secretary and the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee that oversees Palantir’s government contracts; meanwhile Cruz, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee overseeing FTC data-privacy authority, appears alongside the founder of location-data broker SafeGraph.
- All 222 registrants used personal or corporate email addresses — placing their attendance outside public records laws — and Dialog’s session agenda includes “Navigating WWIII,” “Battlefield Technologies,” “Build-a-Cult,” and “How’s Your Sex Life?”
- The data was left exposed in the site’s source code, accessible to anyone — and Dialog also operates a matchmaking app for members, with registrants asked if they’re “looking for love.” Their political leanings were also collected and leaked, despite Dialog’s promise never to share them.
What We Know About Billionaire Peter Thiel’s Secret ‘Dialog’ Society—Including Who’s Involved (Forbes)
- Forbes confirms the Wired reporting and adds detail: among the leaked membership are Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, Rep. Jim Himes, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, and political commentator Ezra Klein — alongside Republicans like Ted Cruz, Jared Kushner, and a slate of Trump administration officials.
- Also notable on the left-of-center side: Washington Post national security reporter Souad Mekhennet is listed as running a session — meaning a working journalist who’d presumably cover this administration is part of the same off-the-record network as the officials she reports on.
- The billionaire list spans the spectrum too — Democratic megadonors Eric Schmidt, Reid Hoffman, and Nicolas Berggruen are scheduled to attend, along with right-wing figures like Elon Musk, Henry Kravis, and Marcos Galperin
Previously: Epstein Files- Attendees Of Peter Thiel’s Secret ‘Tech-Era Bilderberg’ Meeting in 2014 Leaked (Dissident)
- The 2014 Dialog attendee list surfaced in the Epstein files earlier this year, revealing a roster that included Evan Bayh, Mitch Daniels, Henry Kravis, Robert Rubin, Gen. Stan McChrystal, Reid Hoffman, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, and the president of the Federalist Society — roughly 150 people invited to “implement the plans we develop.”
- The bipartisan roster is a feature, not a bug — spanning Democratic and Republican officials, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and defense establishment figures in ways that insulate the group from scrutiny by either side.
- Dialog has now been exposed twice in one year: once through the Epstein files and once through its own sloppy database security — a group that spent two decades avoiding any public footprint left its entire membership directory readable in plain site source code.
- For Indiana listeners: Evan Bayh attended the 2014 retreat — worth keeping in mind given that his son Beau Bayh just won the Democratic Secretary of State nomination and is positioning himself for higher office.

Indiana Secretary of State Race

Ballard campaign disavows ‘rogue’ volunteer accused of forging signatures (ICC)
- Indiana State Police are investigating a Greg Ballard volunteer who allegedly forged a page of 10 petition signatures for his independent secretary of state campaign — 9 of 10 addresses weren’t real, and the one legitimate address belonged to someone other than the name listed.
- Ballard’s campaign disavowed the volunteer, calling it the work of a “rogue individual” and ended their association, while noting the 10 signatures represent just 0.02% of the roughly 35,000 already submitted toward the nearly 37,000 needed.
- The Hamilton County GOP chair used the episode to attack Ballard directly: “If you cannot run an honest petition drive, you have no business running the office that safeguards our elections” — notable framing given Ballard would face a contested Republican field if he qualifies.
- If Ballard makes the ballot under the “Lincoln Party” label, he’d face Democrat Beau Bayh, a Libertarian, and the winner of Saturday’s contentious GOP convention.
Greg Ballard’s secretary of state campaign fined for filing donation reports late (Indystar)
- Ballard’s secretary of state campaign was fined $450 for filing two large contribution reports late — a $10,000 donation due May 28, submitted June 1, and a $78,000 contribution from Hoosiers for Competitive Elections due May 29, also submitted June 1. The campaign isn’t contesting the fine.
- Notable wrinkle: the office Ballard is running for oversees the Indiana Election Division — the same body that just fined his campaign.
Diego Morales’ wife traveled on the state’s dime. Years later, the state found it ‘improper’ (IndyStar)
- A state examiner found Morales’ office improperly billed taxpayers for his wife’s travel — three flights and three conference fees from 2023-2024 — repaid only in May 2026, one day after a credible primary challenger entered the race.
- Travel reports required by a 2025 transparency law never itemized that the costs included a non-employee spouse, hiding the issue for over a year.
- The state also paid $4,000 for a 4-night D.C. hotel even though Morales was only there 2 nights — his wife’s return flight matches the hotel checkout date, and the office won’t say who the unnamed “second guest” was.
- A former staffer was reimbursed for Ubers to the Heritage Foundation and several embassies, including Hungary’s — months before Morales’ wife became Hungary’s honorary consul in Indiana. A watchdog called it “an obvious misuse of public resources.”
- This adds to a pattern of travel controversies that’s already cost Morales top GOP support ahead of Saturday’s contested convention.
Max Engling wins GOP nod to replace Diego Morales (IndyStar)
- Max Engling won the GOP secretary of state nomination at Saturday’s convention with 867 votes after two rounds, beating Knox County Clerk David Shelton (627) and incumbent Diego Morales, who got just 134 votes — Morales is the second consecutive sitting secretary of state ousted at convention.
- Engling entered the race a day before the filing deadline but quickly drew support from Sen. Jim Banks and other establishment Republicans who’d previously backed Morales — delegates ultimately decided Morales’s scandals made him too risky to nominate, rejecting his attempt to cast Engling as the establishment pick.
- Republicans are visibly nervous about Beau Bayh: convention speakers attacked him as “a prep school kid” and “D.C. nepo baby,” and one Republican called this race Democrats’ best shot at statewide office “in a generation” — notable anxiety in a state Bayh’s father and grandfather once represented as Democratic senators.
- Engling’s framing leans hard into culture-war stakes, warning that a Democratic win would make Indiana’s elections “more like California” — though Bayh has positioned himself as nonpartisan and anti-corruption, making him a harder target to paint as a leftist than the rhetoric suggests.

Tuesday Elections

Georgia runoff results: Winners and matchups for November general election (FOX5 Atlanta)
- Georgia’s November ballot is set: Rep. Mike Collins (R) vs. Sen. Jon Ossoff in the Senate race that could determine chamber control; billionaire Rick Jackson (R) vs. former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms for governor; and a Secretary of State race pitting election-skeptic Tim Fleming (R) against former judge Penny Brown Reynolds (D).
- The biggest upset: Jackson defeated Lt. Gov. Burt Jones 53-47 despite Trump and Gov. Kemp both backing Jones — a self-funded outsider overcoming the full weight of the Georgia Republican establishment.
- Bottoms immediately went after Jackson, alleging he made over a billion dollars off a no-bid state contract — Jackson fired back calling her mayoral tenure a failure.
- The Senate race is critical for Democrats, who need a net four seats for a majority — Ossoff is the only Senate Democrat running in a Trump-won state, making his seat a must-hold.
- The Secretary of State race has national implications: Fleming previously cited “irregularities” in 2020 but stopped short of full denial, defeating outright election denier Vernon Jones — meaning Georgia’s top election post will be decided between a soft 2020 skeptic and a former Biden administration judge.
Who won Alabama’s statewide runoff elections? Statewide race results (Montgomery Advertiser)
- Trump-endorsed Rep. Barry Moore won the Alabama Republican Senate runoff 59-41 over political newcomer Jared Hudson, securing the GOP nomination to succeed Tommy Tuberville — who is leaving to run for governor.
- Moore will face Democrat Everett Wess in November in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since Doug Jones in 2017; Wess won his primary runoff 54-46.
- The more interesting down-ballot race: Trump-endorsed former state GOP chair John Wahl won the Republican lieutenant governor runoff over current Secretary of State Wes Allen, 57-43.
Who won and who’s heading to runoffs after Oklahoma primary elections (KOSU)
- Trump-endorsed Rep. Kevin Hern won the Republican Senate primary with 63.7% to replace Markwayne Mullin’s seat — he’ll face the winner of a Democratic runoff in November.
- The CD-1 race to replace Hern is worth watching: Trump-endorsed Jackson Lahmeyer, a self-described Christian nationalist pastor who founded Pastors for Trump, advanced to an August runoff against state Rep. Mark Tedford — Lahmeyer is also facing tabloid reports of infidelity he partially acknowledged on X.
  - Update: Oklahoma pastor who was backed by Trump exits GOP House runoff after reports of inappropriate texts (AP)
    - Lahmeyer dropped out of the CD-1 House runoff Wednesday — one day after advancing — following reports he exchanged thousands of romantic texts with a campaign fundraiser who is not his wife.
    - Trump immediately endorsed his runoff opponent, state Rep. Mark Tedford, calling him “Pro Trump and MAGA all the way” — having endorsed Lahmeyer just the day before.
    - Lahmeyer founded Pastors for Trump and his church’s upcoming speaker lineup includes Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about Russian contacts before being pardoned.
- Oklahoma voters rejected raising the minimum wage on Tuesday’s ballot — not surprising for the state but worth noting.
- The Superintendent of Public Instruction runoff sets up a telling contrast: one candidate is a 40-year veteran teacher endorsed by public education advocates; the other supported Ryan Walters’ Bible-in-schools push, was fired during COVID for defying mask mandates, and recently said “almost every single thing they told us about COVID was an absolute lie.”
- For the first time in a decade, independent voters were locked out of all primaries after the state Democratic Party missed a paperwork deadline — a significant voter access story that went largely unnoticed.
DC election results: Lewis George leads early DC mayor race primary returns (FOX5 DC)
- DC Councilmember Janeese Lewis George leads the Democratic mayoral primary with 52.79% of first-choice votes to Kenyan McDuffie’s 36.57% in early returns — DC’s first open mayoral race in two decades, with Mayor Muriel Bowser stepping down after three terms.
- Full ranked-choice results won’t post until June 21, and mail-in ballots postmarked by June 16 are accepted through June 26 — so this isn’t settled yet.
- Robert White Jr. has won the Democratic primary for DC’s delegate seat in Congress.
- McDuffie’s concession-adjacent speech carried a pointed message: “Donald Trump does not run Washington, D.C. We do. And we will fight for D.C.’s autonomy every single day of the week.”
California Special Election
- Democrat Aisha Wahab advances in California special election to replace former US Rep. Eric Swalwell (KCRA)
  - Democratic state Sen. Aisha Wahab advanced to the August 18 special election runoff for Eric Swalwell’s former California CD-14 seat — Swalwell resigned in April after the San Francisco Chronicle reported allegations he sexually assaulted a woman who worked for him, which he denies.
  - Wahab, the more progressive candidate focused on housing costs and corporate accountability, will face a second candidate still to be determined; the seat heavily favors Democrats.
  - The winner serves only through January — but both Wahab and runner-up Melissa Hernandez are also on the November ballot for the full term, making the special election partly a visibility contest heading into the fall.

Weaponization

Gavin Newsom says DOJ is investigating him and his wife and blames Trump (NBC)
- California Governor Gavin Newsom announced Monday that he and his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom are under DOJ investigation, with FBI and IRS agents contacting more than a dozen family friends and former employees — calling it politically motivated retaliation for his Trump criticism and presidential ambitions.
- His former chief of staff Dana Williamson pleaded guilty to federal charges last month in the same Eastern District of California; one source says Siebel Newsom is being investigated for “her taxes,” while the focus of the Newsom probe itself remains unclear.
- The investigation expanded after Todd Blanche — Trump’s former personal attorney — took over as acting AG, and fits a pattern: James Comey, Letitia James, and Adam Schiff have all faced similar politically charged federal scrutiny after Trump publicly called for their prosecution.
- Newsom: “If they can’t intimidate me, they’ll go after the mother of our children. Donald Trump picked the wrong target.”
FBI searches office of Ohio group that supports voter registration efforts (PBS)
- FBI agents raided the Cleveland office of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative — a voting rights and criminal justice reform group founded in 2007 — seizing documents and computers, questioning staff for hours, and visiting employees’ homes.
- The timing is pointed: Ohio has hotly contested governor and Senate races this fall, with Democrat Amy Acton challenging Vivek Ramaswamy and Sherrod Brown challenging Republican Jon Husted.
- This fits a broader pattern: the Trump DOJ has seized election records from Fulton County GA, Maricopa County AZ, and Wayne County MI, questioned election workers in Milwaukee, sued 30+ states for detailed voter data, and investigated ActBlue — all targeting Democratic-leaning jurisdictions and organizations ahead of the midterms.
- Acton: “Any attempts by federal law enforcement to intimidate eligible Ohioans from registering to vote are unacceptable.”
Frustrated by Courts, Trump Weighed Suspending a Constitutional Right (NYT)
- Secret memos obtained by the NYT reveal that the Trump White House actively debated suspending habeas corpus — the constitutional right to challenge detention before a judge — to accelerate deportations, with Stephen Miller as the chief instigator and Trump personally interested, asking advisers about Lincoln’s Civil War suspension.
- White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf, a hardcore Trump loyalist who helped win the Mar-a-Lago documents dismissal and the presidential immunity case, wrote a confidential memo to chief of staff Susie Wiles warning that suspension would almost certainly be found unconstitutional, noting habeas corpus has only been formally suspended four times in US history and always during actual armed conflict.
- Miller’s team ultimately achieved much of the same effect through bureaucratic sleight of hand — reclassifying immigrants arrested inside the country as if they’d just been stopped at the border, making them subject to mandatory detention without a bond hearing, a move many federal judges ruled against but the administration frequently ignored.
- On the Insurrection Act: Vance pushed to invoke it days after federal agents killed Minneapolis ICE protester Alex Pretti, arguing it would deter future resistance. Scharf again pushed back in a senior staff meeting; James Blair killed it with a political argument — nobody in the room could answer what the Insurrection Act would give them that they didn’t already have, or justify the PR cost.
- Wiles’s private assessment after the Minnesota killings, relayed to colleagues: the reason for sending agents to Minneapolis had been to arrest people wrongly receiving federal benefits, “and we are so far off that mission.”

ICE

Feds charge 15 Minnesotans with conspiracy for impeding ICE agents during Operation Metro Surge (Sahan Journal)
- Federal prosecutors charged 15 Minnesotans with conspiracy to impede federal immigration agents during Operation Metro Surge, alleging members of Direct Action Minnesota used Signal chats, a flipped trailer, homemade shields, and Czech hedgehog road barriers to blockade ICE access to the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building on January 23 and March 1.
- The 96-page indictment relies heavily on federal surveillance of encrypted Signal messages — raising significant questions about how easily investigators accessed communications activists believed were private.
- Notably, the indictment documents no injuries to federal agents from the accused; the two assault charges involve knocking papers from an agent’s hand and a vehicle sideswipe. Federal prosecutors previously charged 36 Minnesotans with similar offenses during Metro Surge — at least 15 of those cases have since been dismissed.
- The magistrate judge released all defendants with just two conditions — no contact with co-defendants and no protesting on federal property — calling a detention hearing “a bridge too far.”
- About 80 protesters converged on the St. Paul federal courthouse during Tuesday’s hearings in solidarity with the defendants — U.S. Marshals deployed chemical agents against the crowd as the confrontation escalated at the building’s entrance.
Judge upholds the conviction of former Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan for helping immigrant evade ICE (AP)
- A federal judge upheld the obstruction conviction of former Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, who helped an immigrant evade ICE agents who showed up at her courthouse in April 2025 — she resigned after conviction amid Republican impeachment threats and faces up to five years in prison, though sentencing guidelines point toward probation.
- The legal argument for overturning the conviction hinged on a recent federal appeals court ruling in a Virginia case finding that an ICE warrant doesn’t constitute a “pending proceeding” under federal obstruction law — the judge rejected that argument, ruling that ICE’s planned, targeted operation was sufficiently different from the Virginia case.
- The underlying immigrant, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, was deported in November — meaning the conviction stands but the entire confrontation ultimately changed nothing about his outcome.
- The case remains a flashpoint in the broader debate over ICE courthouse arrests, which critics argue undermine the justice system by deterring immigrants from appearing for proceedings — including as victims and witnesses.
Revolt in small Georgia town appears to ward off ICE detention center (Guardian)
- DHS canceled plans to convert a Social Circle, Georgia warehouse into a detention center for up to 10,000 people — one of seven similar cancellations nationally, apparently part of a broader pullback under new homeland security director Markwayne Mullin.
- The federal government had paid $128 million for the warehouse in February — nearly five times its $29 million assessed value — and the proposed facility would have tripled the town’s population, straining water, sewage, police, and ambulance services.
- This happened in a county where nearly 75% voted for Trump, but local mobilization was fierce: the city manager cut off the federal government’s water access to the site, enlisted Sen. Ossoff, Sen. Warnock, and Rep. Mike Collins, and the town became the first small municipality to sue the federal government over a detention center, using a novel legal strategy.
- Even now, DHS still hasn’t formally confirmed the cancellation in writing — the city manager learned through rumors and unofficial sources, saying “we’ve had to piecemeal what the situation is” throughout, and DHS didn’t respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
Indiana Angle
- Judge orders release of Muslim leader detained by ICE in Clay County (WFIU)
  - A federal judge ordered ICE to release Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, from Indiana’s Clay County Jail — ruling his detention was likely unconstitutional First Amendment retaliation for his Palestinian rights advocacy.
  - Sarsour, a lawful permanent US resident for over 30 years, was arrested in March; DHS branded him a “terrorist” and “illegal alien,” alleging he lied on his citizenship application and attacked Israeli forces’ homes while living in the West Bank — claims his lawyers say the government knew about and approved his application anyway.
  - Roughly 150 supporters, including a Jewish interfaith group called Jews for Salah, held a vigil outside the jail, citing reports of religious discrimination and medical neglect during his detention; advocates draw a parallel to the earlier arrest of activist Mahmoud Khalil as part of a broader pattern targeting Palestinian rights advocates.
  - The judge did not rule on Sarsour’s potential deportation — that fight continues — but ordered his immediate release; he’ll live in Wisconsin while the case proceeds.

Education

Moving Special Education and Civil Rights Out of Education Department Risks a Patchwork of Rights for Students With Disabilities (The Arc)
- The Education Department announced plans to move the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to HHS and the Office for Civil Rights to DOJ — splitting the two offices that together are supposed to enforce IDEA, the 50-year-old law guaranteeing a free appropriate public education for students with disabilities.
- The core concern: IDEA is an education law, not a medical one — moving it to HHS risks shifting the federal framework from classroom access and inclusion toward a medical model that treats disability as a diagnosis to manage, historically associated with more segregation and lower expectations.
- For families already fighting to get schools to follow the law, splitting enforcement across two agencies means more confusion about where to file complaints, longer delays, and less accountability — with no guarantee of consistent protection across states.
- The Arc notes federal special education capacity has already been hollowed out by staff cuts and office closures, with civil rights complaints taking longer and enforcement weakening — this move deepens that instability rather than addressing it.
Indiana Angle:
- U.S. Dept. of Ed OKs Indiana waiver to ‘streamline’ education spending (ICC)
  - The US Department of Education approved Indiana’s waiver from provisions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, consolidating $50 million in federal Title I, II, III and IV grants into a block grant-style arrangement — Indiana is only the third state approved, following Iowa and Louisiana.
  - The practical effect: schools no longer file separate compliance reports for each federal grant program, potentially freeing trained educators from administrative roles back into classrooms.
  - The ideological framing from McMahon: “President Trump told me I’d be successful when I fired myself” — this is explicitly a step toward dismantling federal education oversight and converting targeted federal grants into flexible state spending.
  - Worth watching: those targeted grants exist for specific reasons — supporting low-income students, English language learners, teacher training, and school safety. Consolidating them into a block grant removes the requirement that money actually reach those populations, a concern notably absent from Tuesday’s ceremony.
- Proposed child care rules would move Indiana backward, advocates say (Axios)
  - Indiana’s Office of Early Childhood and Out-of-School Learning proposed a massive overhaul of child care licensing rules — changing 90+ sections of code, including dropping education requirements so that lead caregivers would need only a high school diploma instead of any early childhood training or credential.
  - Advocates are blunt: “A high school diploma does not prepare anyone to teach young children. This says you don’t care about quality — you just care about making it affordable.”
  - The state says it’s aligning with national norms and that Indiana’s rules have been more burdensome than surrounding states; Braun has said quality must be protected alongside affordability — a position advocates say these rules contradict.
  - Public comment is open through July 6, with a hearing that morning at Indiana Government Center South.

Indiana child well-being rank declines in national report (WFYI)
- Indiana dropped to 29th in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2026 KIDS COUNT rankings — its worst position since 2021 and a four-spot decline — driven largely by a cratering economic well-being score that fell from 11th to 23rd as child poverty and housing cost burdens increased.
- 254,000 Hoosier children live in poverty; 369,000 live in households with high housing cost burdens; and 29,000 teens are neither working nor in school.
- Education remains a relative bright spot at 11th nationally, but the underlying numbers are sobering: 66% of fourth graders aren’t proficient in reading, and 69% of eighth graders aren’t proficient in math.
- Indiana ranks 36th in family and community health — near the bottom — despite improvements in teen birth rates and single-parent household rates.
Indiana receives an F for public education support (WFIU)
- Indiana received an F for public education support from the 2026 Network for Public Education report, scoring 25.5 out of 102 points — down sharply from 52 of 111 in 2024. Only Nebraska and Vermont earned A’s; Indiana was among 17 states that failed.
- The report’s framing is blunt: states earning F’s “made active, sustained choices to abandon their public schools while directing public money toward private alternatives with documented records of fraud, discrimination, and academic failure.”
- The Indiana Coalition for Public Education points to the Choice Scholarship voucher program — roughly half a billion dollars spent last year sending public money to private schools that face no obligation to disclose how it’s used or to accept all students.
- SEA 1’s property tax cuts will strip $744 million from public schools over three years, which advocates say will force a wave of local tax referenda — essentially making communities tax themselves twice to fund what the state was supposed to provide.
- Indiana also scored poorly on teacher pay, teacher-student ratios, and counselor-student ratios — directly affecting services for students with disabilities or those affected by poverty, according to the coalition’s president: “all of those kids are welcomed into the public school system, and all of those things cost money.”

Available for iOS and Android

Climate

Wed/Thu: Substantial damage from tornadoes in 7 Indiana counties (WISH)
- At least five more tornadoes confirmed across southern Indiana Wednesday night into Thursday — including two EF-2s (Owen/Monroe/Morgan counties, and Franklin County into Ohio) with winds up to 130 mph, and EF-1s in Vigo/Clay, Jackson, and Scott counties.
- One person suffered a broken ankle and possible dislocated hip when a tornado hit her mobile home in Monroe County; homes lost roofs, garages were destroyed, and a 100-year-old brick barn was partially leveled.
NWS: 21 tornadoes confirmed throughout Indiana last week (FOX59)

The NWS confirmed 21 tornadoes touched down in Indiana on June 11 alone — tying the state’s eighth-largest single-day outbreak on record, matching April 3, 1974.
That single outbreak pushed Indiana’s 2026 confirmed tornado count to 40 so far this year, and the NWS says additional damage surveys could push the number higher.
Indiana averages roughly 22 tornadoes per full year historically — the state has already nearly matched that in the first half of June alone.

…Finally This Week

Martinsville hosts first Juneteenth celebration (WTHR)
- Martinsville — a town long marked by its history as a sundown town and the 1968 murder of Carol Jenkins — held its first-ever Juneteenth celebration Friday to a standing-room-only crowd at the Martinsville Area Senior Center.
- Organizer Jeannine Lee Ferrer, who moved from Muncie where Juneteenth has been celebrated for decades, said friends initially questioned whether organizing the event in Martinsville was wise — “I’m proud to be from Martinsville,” she said.
- One attendee who drove in from Indianapolis offered a generational perspective: “I know I’ve changed from 30 years ago, it’s good to see that Martinsville is trying to change and trying to lead a new legacy.” Organizers are already planning a larger venue for next year.

HoosLeft Podcast #130: Live w/ guest Joseph Baughman

Scott Aaron Rogers — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 10:00:56 GMT

Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net

HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us

SUMMARY:

In this candid — and at times raw — conversation, Scott sits down with Joseph Baughman — Vincennes resident, democratic socialist, Christian, and recently withdrawn Democratic candidate for Indiana Senate District 39 — to examine what happens when a working-class candidate with no institutional support, no donor network, and very little money in the bank tries to run for office in one of Indiana’s most gerrymandered rural Senate districts. Baughman walks through the structural barriers that greet candidates who don’t come from money, the cold shoulder he received from roughly half the county Democratic parties in his six-county district, the advice from a party representative to take lobbyist money and vote however he wanted — an ethical line he couldn’t cross — and why he ultimately stepped aside. The conversation broadens into a wider diagnosis: the Democratic Party’s hollowing-out of its state and local infrastructure since the Obama era, its retreat from rural and religious voters, and how Trumpism filled that vacuum by speaking a language the party abandoned. Baughman closes with a call rooted in his prairie socialist faith: help somebody today.

WHAT’S INSIDE:

00:00:21 Introduction: The DLCC, Senate District 39, and Tonight’s Guest

- The DLCC announced investment in 11 Indiana state house races to break the GOP supermajority, but no comparable effort exists on the Senate side — where districts are even more gerrymandered.

- Republicans spent millions in the Indiana Senate primary alone; Trump-endorsed MAGA candidates ousted seven incumbents who voted against the congressional redistricting gambit, with two others retiring rather than face the primary.

- Eric Bassler’s retirement in SD-39 opened the seat; Jeff Ellington — former state rep, Trump-endorsed — won a three-way primary. Joseph Baughman, a democratic socialist from Vincennes, filed to run against him but has since withdrawn, leaving Democrats scrambling before the July 6th deadline.

00:02:29 Support the Show

- HoosLeft and Progressive Indiana Network don’t paywall content or charge candidates — listener support at progressiveindiana.net ($5/month or $50/year) is what sustains the project.

- Social handles: @hoosleft.us on Bluesky, Instagram, and Threads; @HoosLeft on Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube; PIN is @PINIndiana on Bluesky and TikTok.

00:04:09 Guest Introduction: Joseph Baughman

- Baughman was born in Sullivan, lived in Linton for a time, and recently moved to Vincennes — embedded in SW Indiana for generations, with children and grandchildren staying in the area.

- He describes himself simply as a common man — anybody you’d want to meet.

00:05:14 Why He Ran: Watching the Vulnerable Get Left Behind

- Baughman decided to run because of what he was seeing at both the federal and state level: neighbors being displaced, the homeless and those without healthcare being attacked on a daily basis.

- He concluded that something had to be done and that something required a top-down approach — and since nobody else was stepping up for the open seat, he decided it had to be him.

- He’d been considering a run for a year or two before filing, and when the moment felt right, he committed.

00:07:23 The Campaign Experience: Filing, Barriers, and the Cost of Running

- Senate candidates must file in person at the statehouse — for a Vincennes resident, that’s an all-day trip to Indianapolis, requiring time off work that not everyone can afford.

- Scott identifies this as one of many ways the system filters out a certain class of candidate — those without the financial cushion to absorb the hidden costs of running.

- Scott notes from his own experience running HoosLeft and working full-time that he can’t comprehend how candidates with small children juggle work, family, and a campaign simultaneously — the logistical burden alone is disqualifying for many people who could bring an invaluable perspective to government.

00:09:53 The Self-Selecting Nature of Electoral Politics

- A state legislator’s salary is $33,000 a year for a part-time job running roughly January through March or April — not a livable wage on its own, which means candidates need another income source regardless.

- The people who run for $33,000/year jobs, Baughman observes, are mostly people who already have institutional money, family money, or other financial backing — the system self-selects for the already-comfortable.

- Scott notes the parallel at the congressional level: Jefferson Shreve, approaching billionaire status, can treat a $174,000 congressional salary as an afterthought — the structural incentives push wealth upward through every level of government.

00:13:01 Technical Difficulties Interlude

- Brief audio dropout prompts Scott to reconnect — Joe’s cat also makes an cameo appearance.

00:14:11 Fundraising Reality: $687 Against a $30,000-$50,000 Target

- Baughman ran his entire campaign on $687. The standard guidance for a Senate candidate to be taken seriously is between $30,000 and $50,000 — a gap he had no realistic path to close.

- The Democratic Party provided no financial assistance — a stark contrast, Baughman says, from the party infrastructure he grew up with in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when the state party helped with flyers and basic organizing.

- In a six-county district, he describes the party structure as “six separate heads of a beast” — county parties operating independently with no coordinating role from the district chair to onboard or connect new candidates.

00:17:48 If You’re Not Wealthy, You Have to Know Wealthy People

- Scott frames the catch: if you can’t self-fund $30,000–$50,000, you tap your extended network — but that only works if your network includes people with money.

- Baughman’s network is working people. His neighbors are trying to keep food on the table, not fund campaigns — in a district where 38% of residents are struggling by any income measure, that’s not a personal failure, it’s math.

- Campaign contributions aren’t a basic necessity when people are cancelling subscriptions to keep up with utilities and food.

00:19:06 38% of Hoosiers Struggling: The Donor Class and the Utility Company Problem

- A United Way of Indiana study released that week found 38% of Hoosier households struggling with basic necessities — a statistic that matches what Baughman sees in his own neighborhood: people knocking on his door offering to mow his entire lawn for $10 to put a little extra food on the table for their kids.

- Scott connects the dots: utility companies are among the biggest campaign contributors in Indiana — to Republicans mostly, but Democrats too — and the self-reinforcing cycle of fundraising removes legislators from exactly the constituents they’re supposed to represent.

- Scott argues the distance is structural, not incidental: once in Indianapolis, legislators mingle with elites and lobbyists who schmooze them into policies detrimental to the average working Hoosier — and the fundraising system ensures they arrived already removed from the people they’re supposed to represent.

00:22:13 Eat With Them, Take Their Money: The Advice That Broke the Camel’s Back

- A party representative told Baughman directly: eat with the lobbyists, take their money, laugh with them, and vote however you want.

- Baughman couldn’t reconcile that ethically — and points out the advice applies to citizens too: taking constituent money and voting however you want is the same logic, just with a different donor class.

- This was a significant factor in his decision to withdraw — he couldn’t campaign on integrity while being advised to perform it selectively.

00:24:29 The Beau Bayh Parallel: Donor Class Capture at Every Level

- Scott raises the Beau Bayh Secretary of State race as the statewide parallel: major contributions from school choice advocates and private equity firms with interests before the office, with the establishment defense being that you need money to win and can dine with donors without being beholden.

- Scott argues the data backs it up: the donor class gets their way consistently, and it’s systemic from the statehouse to Congress. Baughman agrees — it’s a systemic issue all the way to the top.

- Baughman says he simply couldn’t do it — and wishes someone had warned him about this dynamic before he filed.

00:26:20 Corporate Democrats, Coronations, and the Socialist Label

- Baughman argues that corporate Democrats are entrenched within the party, and that the Bayh SOS campaign was effectively a coronation — something that burned him and contributed to his decision to run in the first place.

- As an openly declared democratic socialist from day one, Baughman took a double hit: institutional resistance from party structures and personal resistance from lifelong neighbors who couldn’t pull the trigger for a socialist.

- Despite that, he’s proud of the votes he received — and notes the party has shown him more outreach since he withdrew than during his entire campaign.

00:28:08 County Party Cold Shoulders and the 50/50 Split

- About half the county parties in SD-39’s six-county footprint gave Baughman the cold shoulder; three reached out and made suggestions, including one Sullivan chair who has known him his whole life.

- Two county party leaders were genuinely supportive and progressive-minded — people he hopes to call friends. One county was just getting started and couldn’t offer much. One actively shunned him. One never reached out at all.

- The district chair, in Baughman’s view, should have played a coordinating role — giving candidates a contact list, making introductions, helping them navigate the county party structure — and that simply didn’t happen.

00:30:13 Don’t Come Around Here: How Party Gatekeeping Blocks Progressive Candidates

- Scott frames the systemic problem: candidates can’t build contacts in a district if local Democratic parties won’t tell them when meetings are happening or won’t let them speak.

- The ask isn’t money — it’s a neutral platform, a room, an introduction. When that’s withheld, the message is clear: we don’t like what you’re going to say, here’s someone more palatable instead.

- Baughman confirms this pattern directly — one individual in his district wasn’t actively against him but made clear he would not offer vocal support.

00:32:45 Tone It Down: Being Told to Hide the Democratic Socialist Label

- The same party representative who advised him to take lobbyist money also told Baughman he was too far left and needed to move toward the center — specifically because of his $19/hour minimum wage proposal.

- The Economic Policy Institute and MIT’s living wage calculator both support a $19/hour floor for Indiana as a bare minimum — a position Baughman describes as not even enough to really live in the rural areas, let alone urban ones.

- Scott’s frustration: Democrats habitually negotiate from the center, giving away half the farm before they start. The socialist brand may not fly in rural Indiana — but neither does the Democratic brand, so the timidity isn’t buying anything.

00:35:36 Ellington Uncontested and the Scramble for a Replacement Candidate

- With Baughman’s withdrawal, Jeff Ellington is currently uncontested in November. Scott describes him as a Trump-endorsed candidate who owns a horse farm outside Bloomington and is terrible on policy.

- The party had touted leaving no senate seat without a candidate this cycle — Baughman’s departure puts that commitment to the test with a July 6th filing deadline.

- Baughman has signed his withdrawal in front of a notary and sent it in; he expects the party has someone in the wings and says he will fully support whoever takes his spot — he’s not taking his ball and going home.

00:38:23 The Bombshell Candidate Question: Where Were They in January?

- The 8th district chair hinted at having a “bombshell candidate” ready to step in — which raises an obvious question: if they existed, why weren’t they recruited before the filing deadline?

- Baughman says he filed a week before the deadline and explicitly said in public remarks that he hoped someone else would step up so he didn’t have to.

- The episode illustrates a broader failure of candidate recruitment infrastructure: waiting until a vacancy is created rather than building a pipeline.

00:40:44 Indiana Rural Summit: The One Institution That Actually Helped

- Both Scott and Baughman praise Indiana Rural Summit — led by Michelle Higgs — as the one organization that provided meaningful, practical support to rural candidates.

- Getting connected to Indiana Rural Summit made a significant difference for Baughman, coming from a starting point of essentially nothing in terms of campaign infrastructure or guidance.

- The contrast with the formal party apparatus is stark: a nonprofit did more for candidate development than the official party structure.

00:42:03 Faith and Socialism: How They Inform Each Other

- Baughman’s faith and his socialism are inseparable — each informs the other. His faith says help the migrant, the widow, the poor; lift up your fellow man. Socialism says the same: no man is better than any other, every man’s worth is due.

- He’s not a Marxist — the red scare imagery of armies marching through Moscow is not what he is. He’s a Midwest prairie socialist in the tradition of Eugene Debs, Dorothy Day, and the Catholic Worker Movement.

- The message was hard to communicate in rural SW Indiana, where the word “socialist” carries a reflexive Cold War connotation that bears no resemblance to the tradition he’s actually drawing from.

00:44:13 Eugene Debs, Dorothy Day, and Midwest Prairie Socialism

- Baughman situates himself explicitly in the Debs tradition — Indiana’s own — and in the Catholic Worker Movement’s model of direct service and structural critique combined.

- This is not a cosmopolitan or academic socialism; it is rooted in the rural Midwest’s own history of labor organizing and social gospel Christianity.

- The challenge is that this tradition has been buried under decades of Cold War framing that the right still deploys effectively.

00:45:52 Christian Nationalism vs. the Gospels: What Jesus Actually Said

- Scott asks how Micah Beckwith and Christian nationalists arrive at their theology from a Gospel that is explicitly about caring for the least of these and the difficulty of the wealthy entering heaven.

- Baughman’s answer: it’s not Christianity. It’s the same nationalism that fascists taught in the 1930s — the idea that the greatest will win — which is the complete antithesis of anything Christ taught. In every sermon, the least of these are the greatest.

- Scott: Christian nationalists don’t quote the Gospels. They quote Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Revelation — they read the beginning, got bored, and skipped to the end.

00:47:44 Christianity as Brand Identity: The Bias Feedback Loop

- Baughman spent about 20 years ago as a lay minister in the United Methodist Church, working in ecumenical circles — which gave him insight into how many Christians have never actually read the Bible and rely entirely on what they’re told on Sunday.

- When the person delivering that message has bad intentions, the message has bad intentions — and the bias feedback loop means the more people hear it and believe it, the more it hardens. Stepping out of it destroys their reality.

- Scott’s formulation: for a lot of American Christians, Christianity has become a brand identity — something you call yourself, not something you do. Certainly not living the way Jesus described.

00:49:08 Is There a Place for Rural Christian Socialists in Indiana?

- Scott — a secular Democrat — argues the party has largely retreated from religious language at exactly the wrong time, ceding that ground to the right entirely.

- He names politicians who speak Christian fluently and effectively: Senator Warnock, Pete Buttigieg, James Talarico, Andy Beshear — none of them socialists, but all of them demonstrating that the Social Gospel is available to the left as a genuine political language.

- Baughman agrees the party has no coherent rural messaging strategy and is allowing someone else to co-opt messaging to a constituency they should easily hold. The Democratic Party was the working man’s party — and stopped acting like it.

00:51:49 How Democrats Lost the Rural Working Class — and Who Picked It Up

- Scott asks whether the Obama backlash and racism explain the rural shift — Baughman pushes back: Indiana went for Obama, and there was genuine excitement for him even in rural areas.

- Baughman’s diagnosis: somewhere along the line, both parties stopped talking to the working class and stopped speaking their language. The Republican Party and Trumpism picked up that mantle and captivated those voters by speaking it — however cynically.

- It wasn’t Obama personally. It was a longer drift by both parties away from working-class economic language, and the right filled the vacuum.

00:53:30 Bottom Up: The IndyStar Piece and the Hollowing of the Party

- An IndyStar piece arguing that winning at the top of the ticket lifts the rest of the party prompts Scott’s counter: it has to be bottom up, and Democrats lost that plot during the Obama era by focusing on the presidential race and letting the state and local apparatus hollow out.

- Baughman agrees — the lack of state-level infrastructure genuinely surprised him. He does credit Teresa Kendall as someone who gets it and operates bottom-up, pounding the pavement the way it should be done.

- The party needs to listen to more people like her.

00:55:04 What’s Next for Joseph Baughman

- Baughman isn’t done serving his community — he’s assessing where the need is greatest right now.

- He mentions the possibility of working with Saint Francis Xavier Parish in Vincennes to get neighbors the direct help they’re coming to his door to ask for.

- His closing statement, offered simply: help somebody today.

00:56:32 Outro

HoosLeft This Week - June 14, 2026

Scott Aaron Rogers — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 18:15:27 GMT

SUMMARY:

On this week’s edition of HoosLeft This Week, Scott Aaron Rogers is joined by Democratic State House District 81 candidate Sharon Wight and political commentator Reece Axel Adams for a two-hour tour through another week that rewrote itself daily. The panel opens on Iran — where a peace deal keeps being announced and immediately contradicted by new airstrikes, with Netanyahu’s government making clear it has no intention of being bound by any US-Iran agreement — before turning to the economy, where inflation hit a three-year high and Trump responded by saying “I love the inflation,” even as 38% of Hoosier households can’t afford basic necessities and Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire on the back of a wildly overvalued SpaceX IPO that will soon land in millions of Americans’ 401(k)s. The show then covers Musk’s role in stoking anti-immigrant riots in Northern Ireland, the administration’s exclusive six-month streak of admitting only white South African refugees, and the House’s $70 billion blank check to ICE — before pivoting to the intersection of politics and sports: a World Cup already disrupted by Trump’s travel ban and a UFC fight staged on the White House South Lawn to celebrate Trump’s 80th birthday. From there, the show addresses Trump pulling Bill Pulte’s DNI nomination in favor of Jay Clayton; Bill Gates’ House Oversight testimony on his Epstein relationship and the Haberman/Swan book detailing Situation Room panic over the files; Indiana’s school funding crisis, the IU Indianapolis lecturer fired for showing a white supremacy pyramid, and the state’s $8-billion-plus data center tax giveaway, with Madison County’s moratorium vote as a rare counter-example; Indiana’s proposed primary closure and the voter registration purge of naturalized citizens; primary results from Nevada, North Dakota, South Carolina, Maine (Graham Platner’s win), and updates from California (Nithya Raman comes from behind in LA and Becerra to face Hilton). We finish with a look at media consolidation, capitlal punishment, and climate — including the Alabama nitrogen gas death penalty case, Minnesota assassin Vance Boelter’s guilty plea , Indiana’s secret execution policy, another Hoosier tornado outbreak, Lake Mead drying up, and alarming new research on the collapse of an important ocean current.

IN DEPTH:

Iran War

Sun: Iran fires missiles at Israel after Beirut attack ‘crossed all red lines’ (Al Jazeera)
- Iran launched a ballistic missile barrage at Israel Sunday night, targeting the Ramat David airbase, after Israel struck Beirut’s southern suburbs killing at least two civilians — the IRGC called it “a warning” and threatened broader attacks on “all American-Zionist targets” if strikes continue.
- Israel’s military said it intercepted all missiles; Trump immediately called Netanyahu to tell him not to retaliate, saying “each of them had their fun” and warning that a counter-strike would blow up the Iran peace deal he says is nearly done.
- A senior US official told Israeli media “we’re not in this” regarding any new escalation — a significant signal that US backing for Israeli military action has limits.
- Iran’s top negotiator threatened to halt peace talks entirely and move to “direct confrontation” if ceasefire violations continue — putting the US-Iran deal in serious jeopardy over Israeli actions the US cannot fully control.
Mon: Israel and Iran step back from renewed conflict after Trump calls for halt (Guardian)
- Israel and Iran stepped back from full escalation Monday after Trump demanded they stop — but Netanyahu vowed to respond “with force” to any future attack, and Israel struck Iranian petrochemical and air defense sites across multiple cities.
- Trump warned Netanyahu: “Bibi, you better be careful, or you will be on your own very soon.”
- The Houthis fired missiles at Israel and threatened to block Red Sea shipping — potentially closing both major oil chokepoints simultaneously.
- Oil spiked 5% on the exchange before easing; Iran’s demands remain unchanged: Lebanon ceasefire, frozen assets, Hormuz management, delayed nuclear talks.
- One analyst’s read on Israel’s escalation: Netanyahu sent Washington a message that no Iran deal flies if it ignores Israeli interests — Israel can always “overturn the table.”
Tue: US and Iran launch airstrikes after Trump blames Tehran for downing Army helicopter (AP)
- An Army Apache helicopter went down near the Strait of Hormuz after colliding with an Iranian drone — both crew members were rescued uninjured in what the military says is the first-ever drone boat rescue at sea.
- Trump blamed Iran and launched airstrikes on air defense, radar, and ground control sites; Iran retaliated with attacks on Bahrain, Kuwait, and reportedly Jordan, further shredding the April ceasefire.
- Whether the collision was intentional or accidental remains under investigation — Iran called it a hazard of operating near their territory and told US forces to “leave our region if you want to be safe.”
- This escalation comes one day after Israel and Iran exchanged fire for the first time since the ceasefire, and as peace talks remain deadlocked over Iran’s refusal to surrender its enriched uranium and the US refusal to unfreeze assets pre-deal.
Wed: US launches new strikes on Iran, which fires back at Gulf states (AP)
- The US launched a second round of airstrikes on Iran overnight — the third exchange of fire this week — hitting surveillance, communications, and air defense sites across Tehran, Bandar Abbas, and southern Iran; Iran responded with strikes on Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan.
- Trump revealed a “secret mission” to sneak oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz at night, aided by destruction of Iranian radar — claiming over 100 million barrels have slipped through, though the military gave no confirmation of the figure.
- The US also disabled an eighth merchant vessel, the M/T Settebello, firing into its engine room as it attempted to breach the blockade — India says three of its sailors are missing.
- Oil hit $93 a barrel, up more than 25% since the war began; Iran’s UN envoy told the Security Council the country “has never negotiated under threats and will never submit to pressure.”
- A Qatari delegation arrived in Tehran for mediation talks even as the strikes continued — both sides appear to want a deal but can’t sell the necessary concessions at home.
Thu: Trump calls off latest threats to strike Iran, cites breakthrough in talks to end the war (AP)
- Trump announced a “great settlement of the war with Iran” Thursday afternoon — hours after threatening to hit Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT” and seize control of its oil industry — saying a ceasefire extension is nearly finalized “over the next few days.”
- Iran’s Foreign Ministry said mediators are active but “nothing has been finalized” and contradictions in the US position have caused turbulence — a notably cool response to Trump’s victory lap.
- Trump’s threat to seize Kharg Island, through which 90% of Iranian oil exports pass, lasted only hours before he told Fox News: “I don’t know that America has the stomach for it, to be honest.”
- The US disabled its ninth merchant vessel enforcing the blockade — and India confirmed three of its sailors were killed when the US struck the M/T Settebello Tuesday, drawing condemnation from the International Maritime Organization.
- Netanyahu’s office said explicitly that Israel is not a party to the emerging US-Iran agreement — a significant signal given that Iranian demands include an end to the Lebanon fighting Israel has no intention of stopping.
Fri: US and Iran have agreed to wording of a deal to end their war, Pakistan’s prime minister says (AP)
- Pakistan’s PM Sharif says the US and Iran have agreed to final text of a deal ending the war “on all fronts, including Lebanon” — Iran’s FM Araghchi called it the closest peace has ever been, and Trump shared Araghchi’s post approvingly.
- Key terms reportedly include: beginning removal/destruction of Iran’s enriched uranium (nuclear details finalized within 60 days after signing), reopening the Strait of Hormuz, phased sanctions relief, and unfreezing Iranian assets — though Iran wants to keep charging ships tolls to transit the strait, which the US calls illegal.
- Even as the deal was announced, US Central Command said it intercepted Iranian attack drones targeting ships in the strait late Friday — underscoring how fragile this remains. The deal is being brokered primarily by Pakistan with Saudi, Turkish, Egyptian, and Qatari backing; a signing ceremony is expected within days.
- Israel is explicitly not part of the deal — Netanyahu says he and Trump agree Iran can’t have nukes, but Israel’s defense minister warned Israel could act independently and won’t withdraw from Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, or West Bank refugee camp zones it occupies.
- Sun: Iran war live: Trump says deal to be signed today; Israel hits south Beirut (Al Jazeera)
  - US President Donald Trump says a deal to stop the war on Iran could be signed as early as Sunday. Tehran has disputed the timeline but says the signing could happen in the “coming days”.
  - Israel has renewed air attacks on the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, despite a “ceasefire”.
  - Latest Israeli attack on Beirut could be ‘huge setback’ for deal
- Israel Front
  - Amnesty accuses Israel’s government of ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Palestinians from the West Bank (AP)
    - Amnesty International released a 149-page report accusing Israel of carrying out state-sanctioned “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians from the West Bank, arguing the forced displacement is government policy — not just rogue settler violence.
    - The numbers are stark: over 100 West Bank villages fully or partially emptied since January 2023; 212 of at least 363 illegal settler outposts created since October 2023; settlers have taken control of roughly 12.5% of West Bank territory Palestinians can no longer safely access.
    - Netanyahu’s coalition is dominated by settler leaders actively pushing formal annexation — the Knesset recently made the death penalty the default punishment for West Bank Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis.
    - Israel did not immediately respond to the report; it has previously dismissed such accusations as reflecting bias against it.

Economy

Trump says ‘I love the inflation’ as annual rate jumps to a 3-year high (NBC)
- Annual inflation hit 4.2% in May — the highest since early 2023 — with real wages falling 0.7% year-over-year, the largest decline since February 2023. Inflation is now outpacing wage growth for the second consecutive month.
- Trump’s response: “You know what I really love? I love the inflation. You know why? Because as soon as this war is over, it’s going to come down like a rock.”
- He later claimed he was taken out of context — what he loved was that inflation wasn’t higher. His own speaker backed him up while acknowledging gas prices “are still a pain point.”
- The political damage is already done: 68% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of inflation, and Trump’s approval hit a second-term low in April with the economy as voters’ top concern.
Indiana Angle:
- Indiana farmers have lost $607M from China trade dispute, new report shows (FOX59)
  - A new North Dakota State University study finds Indiana farmers lost roughly $607 million in agricultural exports during the latest US-China trade dispute — the 9th-hardest-hit state nationally.
  - Soybeans took by far the largest national hit ($6.8 billion of the $14.9 billion total loss from March 2025 to February 2026), followed by beef ($1.3B), cotton ($1.3B), tree nuts ($964M), and corn ($333M).
  - Indiana’s soybean and corn farmers have been hit hardest in-state — consistent with earlier reporting on soybean losses last September — and researchers say the impact hasn’t let up.
- More than 1 million Hoosiers can’t afford basic necessities, United Way report finds (WFIE)
  - A new United Way of Indiana report finds 38% of Hoosier households — over 1 million — can’t afford basic necessities, with costs again outpacing inflation.
  - The 2024 ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained and Employed) Essentials Index puts the minimum cost to live in Indiana for a family of four (two adults, an infant, a preschooler) at $74,028 — more than double the federal poverty level of $31,200, which the report calls outdated since its 1960s methodology hasn’t been updated.
  - The racial disparity is stark: 55% of Black households and 43% of Hispanic and multicultural households fall below the ALICE threshold, compared to 36% of white households.
  - These are working families — United Way’s framing: “ALICE families are the backbone of our communities — the caregivers, delivery drivers and essential workers we rely on every day.”
What Elon Musk’s trillion means in real terms (AP)
- Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire Friday, with Forbes putting his net worth at $1.1 trillion after SpaceX’s market debut — up from $342 billion last year and $195 billion in 2024.
- For scale: $1 trillion divided among everyone on Earth would be about $122 per person; it’s more than double South Africa’s entire GDP; it would buy roughly 2.5 million median-priced US homes, or at Friday’s gas prices, over 243 billion gallons of fuel — more than the US used in all of last year.
- The combined net worth of the next four richest people on Earth — Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Bezos, and Larry Ellison — totals about $1.05 trillion, still less than Musk alone.
The SpaceX IPO Fraud: Truly Out of This World. (UNFTR)
- SpaceX lists on Nasdaq June 12 at $135/share, valuing the company at $1.77 trillion — the largest IPO in US history, raising roughly $74.4 billion.
- Morningstar put fair value at $780 billion, 56% below the IPO price. The space segment posted a $657 million operating loss in 2025; the connectivity segment (Starlink) is profitable – $11 billion in revenue with $4.4 billion to the bottom line, though the average revenue for a Nasdaq 100 listed company is somewhere between $30–$35 billion. The AI segment (Grok/xAI) spent $9.5 billion to generate $3.2 billion in revenue, with operating losses widening 307% year-over-year.
- The S-1 claims a $28.5 trillion total addressable market — comparable to total US GDP — with $22.7 trillion of that attributed to “enterprise AI applications” that don’t currently generate revenue.
- Musk secured a Nasdaq “fast entry rule” letting SpaceX join the Nasdaq 100 in 15 trading days instead of up to a year, meaning index funds (and many 401(k)s) will hold the stock passively. Early insiders — including a16z, a Saudi prince, and Jack Dorsey — can begin selling 20% of their stakes after the first earnings call.
- The risk factors section includes admissions that several of the claimed markets (lunar economy, Mars transport, orbital AI compute at scale) “do not exist today,” and that Grok faces an active FTC child-safety inquiry and a GDPR investigation in Ireland.

Not just the US: Elon Musk under fire for stoking anti-immigrant riots in Belfast (NBC)
- A second night of anti-immigrant riots in Belfast saw masked men torch houses and vehicles hunting for anyone they believed to be an immigrant — sparked by a brutal stabbing of a local man (now in a coma, having lost an eye) by a Sudanese national charged with attempted murder.
- Elon Musk repeatedly amplified the unrest on X, posting “Murderous migrants beheading innocent people in their home town is what’s making people angry, not ‘social media’!” and reposting claims that Starmer “hates white people” alongside an image of the Black suspect captioned “millions must go.”
- Northern Ireland’s first minister condemned “the Elon Musks of this world... sitting comfy in their homes, orchestrating hate and tension”; 12 officers were injured and 16 people arrested.
- The victim’s own family asked people not to exploit the attack for political violence, stressing migrants’ “valuable contribution” to society — and a migration researcher noted Northern Ireland’s minority population (3.4%) is far below the UK average (18.3%), undercutting the riots’ premise.
US Accepts Only White Refugees For Sixth Consecutive Month (Mother Jones)
- Since October 1, 2025, the US has admitted 6,668 refugees — 6,665 of them white South Africans, three from Afghanistan, zero from anywhere else — for six consecutive months.
- The annual refugee cap was cut to 7,500, down from Biden’s 125,000 limit, with a September presidential memo directing that admissions “shall primarily be among Afrikaners.”
- The administration is spending an estimated $100 million to resettle an additional 10,000 white South Africans, citing an “emergency refugee situation” — while simultaneously cutting aid to South Africa and blocking refugees from everywhere else on earth.
Tom Homan threatens to flood New York City with ICE agents: ‘More than you have ever seen’ (Independent)
- Homan threatened to flood NYC with more ICE agents “than you’ve ever seen” in retaliation for New York’s new sanctuary provisions — timing it as the city hosts the NBA Finals and World Cup.
- New York’s new law bars local police from cooperating with ICE, prohibits agents from entering state property without a warrant, and bans masked agents in public interactions.
- Hochul’s warning to the administration: “If they come here with a surge in ICE, there won’t be a Republican standing in this state.”
- Context: the White House pulled back from exactly this kind of surge earlier this year after ICE fatally shot two Minnesota protesters in January — Kristi Noem was fired shortly after.
House Republicans approve $70bn bill for Trump’s immigration crackdown (Guardian)
- The House passed the Secure America Act 214-212, sending Trump a $70 billion bill funding ICE, CBP, and DHS through September 2029 — ending a 75-day DHS shutdown that began after federal agents killed two US citizens in Minneapolis.
- Democrats unanimously opposed it; Jeffries called it “a blank check to ICE without any guardrails, any oversight, any accountability.”
- The bill was stripped of $1 billion for Trump’s White House ballroom after the Senate parliamentarian ruled it couldn’t be included under budget reconciliation — and Democrats’ attempt to block J6 rioters from receiving anti-weaponization fund payouts was voted down just before final passage.

Sports

A warm World Cup welcome? U.S. immigration policies have chilling effect (NPR)
- Trump’s immigration policies are already disrupting the World Cup: a decorated Somali referee was denied entry at Miami with no explanation, an Iraqi team photographer was turned away at O’Hare, Iran’s team was barred from staying overnight in the US and forced to base in Tijuana, and over 40 Moroccan fan association members with tickets and hotel bookings were denied visas.
- Four World Cup nations — Iran, Haiti, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal — are on the US travel ban list; 19 countries have had all visa issuances suspended entirely.
- FIFA’s response was essentially a shrug: “A host government ultimately determines who receives a visa.” One sports politics professor called it raising “the surrender flag.”
- The US opening match at SoFi Stadium this Friday still hasn’t sold out — a striking signal for the host nation’s flagship game.
Plaintiffs call UFC 250 event a ‘volcano of corruption’ in bid to halt White House fights (MSNOW)
- Plaintiffs suing to block this weekend’s UFC fights on the White House South Lawn called the event a “volcano of corruption,” citing million-dollar VIP packages, branding rights near the Lincoln Memorial, and an exclusive Paramount Plus streaming deal — Paramount Skydance being run by Trump allies Larry and David Ellison.
- The lawsuit notes Trump reportedly bought stock in UFC’s parent company this spring and stands to benefit directly from what would be the first private, for-profit sporting event ever held on White House grounds.
- The event coincides with Trump’s 80th birthday Sunday: a Friday press conference at the Lincoln Memorial, a Saturday weigh-in at the Ellipse with a Zac Brown Band concert, and seven UFC matches on the South Lawn Sunday in a structure built for the event called “the Claw.”
- The administration calls the suit meritless and the timing “inexcusable” given the event was announced nearly a year ago — arguing plaintiffs lack standing and are seeking out things to be offended by. A judge has not yet ruled.
Trump Family, UFC Selling $12,000 ‘Freedom 250’-Themed Coins Ahead Of White House Fight Night (HuffPost)
- The Trump Organization — run by sons Eric and Donald Jr. — is partnering with UFC to sell “Freedom 250” commemorative coins ranging from roughly $250 to $12,000, featuring Trump’s face and signature alongside Dana White’s portrait, timed to drop just before Sunday’s White House fight card.
- Trump Coins claims the Trump Organization doesn’t manufacture or sell the medallions, though how much the family financially benefits from the “partnership” remains unclear.
- This comes as Trump separately bought stock in UFC’s parent company ahead of an event airing on a streaming platform run by a Trump-aligned CEO — while gas prices climb and economic optimism craters amid the Iran war.

Trump Pulls Pulte

Trump nominates Jay Clayton as top US intelligence official after pushback on Bill Pulte (Guardian)
- Trump nominated Jay Clayton — former SEC chair turned Manhattan US attorney — as permanent DNI, after widespread bipartisan criticism of the Bill Pulte appointment. Like Pulte, Clayton has zero operational intelligence experience.
- The pressure was real: Section 702 of FISA, the post-9/11 warrantless surveillance authority, lapses Friday, and the House just failed to pass a short-term extension amid the Pulte controversy.
- Senate Intel vice-chair Mark Warner called Clayton “capable” but said the Senate won’t move on FISA until Pulte is guaranteed out of the acting DNI role entirely. Schumer was blunter: “Pulte has to go. He cannot be in the DNI role.”
- Worth a note for opposition research: Clayton’s SEC nomination drew scrutiny over his Wall Street conflicts, including defending Deutsche Bank in a Russian oligarch sanctions-evasion case settled for $425 million ten days into Trump’s first term.

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Epstein

Bill Gates appears for Jeffrey Epstein interview. Here’s what we know (PBS)
- Bill Gates testified before House Oversight Wednesday, appearing in DOJ Epstein documents more than 3,000 times — his name keeps surfacing alongside an even more startling figure: his friend and Gates Foundation adviser Boris Nikolic appears more than 14,000 times.
- Gates says he met Epstein in 2011 — after Epstein had already pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor — and maintains the relationship was purely about Epstein’s promised philanthropy connections, calling it a “grave error in judgment.”
- The files include Epstein emails referencing Gates’s affairs and an “std,” allegedly written to pressure Gates into staying engaged with him. Gates told staff the affairs were with two Russian women and unrelated to Epstein’s network; he says he cut Epstein off in December 2014 once he realized “Epstein would never deliver” on the philanthropy promises.
- Melinda French Gates has separately described meeting Epstein once: “He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. I had nightmares about it afterward.” The Gates Foundation has commissioned an external review of its past engagement with Epstein.
Inside Trump team’s Epstein files fumble: Situation room meetings, rushing out influencer binders and MAGA divided (Independent)
- A new Haberman/Swan book describes the chaos behind the February 2025 White House influencer briefing, where Bondi’s staff distributed unvetted Epstein files binders — and within pages, an official found Trump’s name. Aides reportedly rushed influencers out under an embargo, but they’d already been photographed leaving with the binders.
- The book describes a furious confrontation where then-FBI deputy director Dan Bongino told Bondi she’d “fucked this thing up from the start” over the DOJ’s “nothing to see here” memo — then stormed out of a Situation Room meeting after refusing to back the administration’s response plan, though he ultimately stayed on.
- Vance reportedly led a separate Situation Room meeting where he called the situation “a huge problem,” privately pushed for full document release, and worried about losing young male voters over it — while the WSJ’s bawdy Trump-Epstein birthday card story broke mid-meeting (Trump’s $10 billion defamation suit over that story was later dismissed).
- Trump personally called Charlie Kirk to scold him after a Turning Point event turned into an “Epstein grievance fest” — Kirk announced he was “done talking about Epstein” the next day.
- White House response: spokeswoman Abigail Jackson says Trump has been “totally exonerated” and has “done more for Epstein’s victims than anyone before him.”
Group of Epstein survivors announce opposition to Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination (CNN)
- 19 Epstein survivors publicly opposed Todd Blanche’s AG nomination, citing his participation in Situation Room meetings where the administration treated the files release as “a reputational problem, rather than an opportunity to pursue investigative leads.”
- Their statement was blunt: “Blanche failed to deliver transparency, and he has gravely failed survivors. This is failing upward, plain and simple.”
- DOJ has released about 3 million files compelled by Congress — but roughly 3 million more remain unreleased, and Bondi has been unable to fully explain why.
- House Oversight Chair Comer — a Republican — says he’ll ask Blanche to testify in July and met privately with about a dozen survivors this week, who told him some witness testimony has been inaccurate and pushed for sworn, recorded interviews going forward.
What the Epstein files say about Lesley Groff, his long time assistant (NewsNation)
- Lesley Groff — Epstein’s longtime executive assistant, mentioned over 130,000 times in the DOJ files and more than anyone else — testified before the House Oversight Committee Tuesday as part of its ongoing Epstein investigation.
- Groff worked for Epstein for nearly two decades, continuing even after his 2008 felony conviction for soliciting a minor; documents show she coordinated scheduling of “massages” and was described in a DOJ memo as helping facilitate meetings on Epstein’s behalf.
- Epstein survivor Danielle Bensky told NewsNation that Groff was the point of contact for most victims in the 2000s — scheduling calls and texts — and questions whether Groff could have been unaware of what she was arranging: “I sincerely don’t know how it would be possible to be that oblivious.”
- Groff has not been charged with any crime — her attorney says she cooperated fully with investigators and was never considered a co-conspirator; she was also named in Epstein’s 2007 non-prosecution agreement shielding potential co-conspirators from charges.
- The DOJ files show Groff arranged for girls to be picked up from high schools to give Epstein “massages” — victims ranged from approximately 14 to 17 years old, with most being 15 or 16 when recruited.

Education

Why Indiana school districts are rushing to put tax referendums on the November ballot (WFYI)
- Indiana voters could face 40-50 school tax referendums on the November ballot — far more than usual — driven by two 2025 state law changes: SEA 1’s property tax deduction increases that will drain an estimated $338 million from school districts by 2028, and a new rule limiting referendum votes to November general elections in even years only.
- Some districts face genuine cuts, not just slower growth — one school finance official says districts in some areas could receive less property tax revenue in 2029 than they got in 2025, “a real meaningful cut” in an inflationary environment.
- Carmel Clay Schools is staring down a $15 million annual gap starting 2027 and may need to cut 197 staff positions if voters don’t approve a new rate.
- A new complication: school board members can now declare party affiliation, and superintendents expect organized anti-referendum campaigns — Lt. Gov. Beckwith already campaigned against Avon’s referendum last year, and that playbook is likely to scale up this fall.
Indianapolis homeowners and educators split over new property tax plan for IPS, charter schools (WFYI)
- Indianapolis Public Schools faces a $40 million deficit as its 2018 operating referendum expires this year — the new mayor-appointed Indianapolis Public Education Corporation board must decide on a new property tax referendum rate for the November ballot, ranging from roughly the current rate up to nearly triple it.
- For a $200,000 home, that means a monthly tax increase of $3 to $25; one homeowner testified his IPS-area property taxes have gone from $4,000 to $13,500 over 23 years — “We are being taxed out of our homes.”
- A school principal offered the counterweight: “When resources are reduced, it isn’t the spreadsheet that feels the impact, it’s the child” — her school is already filling gaps in food security and mental health alongside academics.
- The IPEC board votes June 22; if approved by voters in November, the revenue would be shared between IPS and charter schools within the district boundary — a notable provision given the ongoing tension between traditional public schools and the charter sector.
IU East set to launch public charter school, local superintendent raises concerns (IPM)
- Indiana University East is launching a public charter “microschool” on its Richmond campus this fall, expecting 65 students in its first cohort — with freshmen taking traditional high school courses and juniors eventually earning college credit alongside IU East students.
- The local public school superintendent pushed back: losing even 50 students costs his district roughly $350,000 and means cutting teachers — and IU East never consulted local school corporations before announcing the plan.
- IU East acknowledged the communication failure but is moving forward anyway.
IU lecturer investigated for intellectual diversity won’t be reappointed (IPM)
- An IU Indianapolis social work lecturer investigated last year for showing a “pyramid of white supremacy” graphic in class — which lists “Make America Great Again” as a form of covert white supremacy — will not be reappointed after June 30.
- The investigation was triggered by an anonymous student complaint under Indiana’s intellectual diversity law; Adams was removed from her class, placed under observation when she returned, and put on a 30-day improvement plan she calls “absurd” given standard 90-day minimums.
- IU says the non-reappointment followed a performance review unrelated to the intellectual diversity sanction; Adams denies the specific conduct cited and says she was never given dates for the allegedly missed classes.
- The University Alliance for Racial Justice is calling on IU to “publicly account for the role outside political pressure played in this case.”

Data Centers

Indiana Discloses Massive Data Center Tax Break Costs, thanks to Watchdog Agitation (Good Jobs First)
- ‘Indiana just disclosed taxpayers are losing over $655 million through these exemptions, according to WTHR-TV. Most of that – $611 million combined for 2024 and 2025 – is going to one corporate giant: Amazon.’
Map: Which States Are Giving Biggest Tax Breaks for Data Centers (Newsweek)
- ‘Despite Washington and Texas leading in the number of subsidized data center projects, Indiana provided the largest known subsidy package, with an estimated $8.2 billion in incentives tied to Amazon Data Services, per Good Jobs First.’
This contaminated site is ground zero in data center fight. Would it help Irvington? (IndyStar)
- A $2 billion, three-building data center campus proposed for Indianapolis’s Irvington neighborhood — on a contaminated former Ford plant brownfield — is dividing the community ahead of a June 11 Metropolitan Development Commission hearing.
- The developer’s pitch: the contaminated site can’t be used for housing or parks anyway, it’ll generate five to seven times more tax revenue than other industrial uses, and construction will employ up to 600 union workers at peak — though only about three dozen permanent jobs at full buildout.
- The neighborhood’s objection: water consumption, diesel generator noise and pollution near an elementary school, grid strain, and a pattern of development that benefits investors while the community’s actual needs — a grocery store, the shuttered Ransburg YMCA, Irvington Plaza — go unaddressed.
- The split between the two councilors captures the broader Indiana data center debate in miniature
  - ‘Councilor Andy Nielsen, who represents Irvington, told IndyStar June 9 that he opposes the data center plan after feedback from neighbors and his own survey of 250 residents that showed about 80% of respondents in opposition.’
  - ‘Councilor Michael-Paul Hart, whose east-side District 20 narrowly includes the site in the Thunderbird Commerce Center, said he’s remaining neutral as he bargains for stronger community benefits from the developer.’
East Indy resident files ethics complaint against councilor (WTHR)
- An Indianapolis east side resident has filed an ethics complaint against City-County Councilor Michael-Paul Hart (R-District 20), alleging he failed to properly disclose his outside employment on required annual ethics forms.
- Hart listed tech company SHI International as his employer in 2025, but when asked how much the company received from the city, wrote “check with ISA” — and the following year answered “unknown.” City records show SHI held a $6 million contract with the city’s Information Services Agency running through 2027.
- The complaint comes amid a contentious hearing over a proposed DC Blox data center in Irvington, which Hart’s district would host — raising conflict-of-interest questions the councilor has declined to address, saying he needs to consult his caucus attorney.
- Hart has not been found in violation of any ethics rules; the complainant says she wouldn’t have filed if he’d simply filled out the disclosure forms correctly.
What Indy residents want in new Eagle Creek Reservoir water deal (Mirror Indy)
- Indianapolis residents are pushing back on the city’s planned one-year extension of its Eagle Creek Reservoir water withdrawal contract with Citizens Energy Group, which expires July 1 — the Board of Public Works votes June 24.
- The core fear: Citizens’ separate deal with Lebanon Utilities to supply the Boone County LEAP data center district could draw down the reservoir, leaving less drinking water for Indianapolis and harming the fish and bird populations that depend on stable water levels.
- The current 1971 agreement caps withdrawals at 19.8 million gallons per day, with DPW able to approve variances — Citizens says that’s happened only once, during a June 2012 drought – the city’s driest on record at just 0.09 inches of rain.
- The city hired an outside hydrologist to review the contract and LEAP’s potential impact before negotiating a new deal — but residents want enforceable protections now: an online withdrawal-tracking dashboard, extension of the drought ordinance to Lebanon, and guarantees that outside deals don’t override Indianapolis’s water priority.
Madison County Planning Commission voted to send a proposed moratorium on data centers to the County Council (IPR)
- In an 8-1 vote, the Madison County Planning Commission voted to send the data center moratorium to the County Council who will make the ultimate decision
- The proposed moratorium would halt the development of any data centers for 6 months
  - According to County Attorney Jeff Graham, there have not yet been any proposals for a data center in Madison County
- The meeting was standing room only, with most attendees supporting the moratorium and only a few opposed – including Rob Sparks, Executive Director of the Madison County Economic Development Corporation
- One of the people who spoke in favor of the moratorium was Luke Fields who said: “As somebody who is looking to purchase a home within the next two years and currently looking at Anderson for that, looking at Madison County for that, if we end up with these data centers, for us personally that’s going to change.”

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Elections

Indiana Angle
- Closed primaries are in vogue with Indiana Republicans. But what would they look like? (ICC)
  - The Copenhaver recount fight over three votes in SD-23 has reignited the push to close Indiana’s primaries — a bill is already being drafted for next session, and a new coalition claims nearly 3,000 signatures.
  - The irony: Gov. Braun himself repeatedly voted in Democratic primaries before running as a Republican, explaining he did so because Democrats dominated local races in Dubois County — exactly the behavior closed-primary advocates want to ban.
  - A political science professor put the real motivation plainly: “In today’s politics, these rules changes are intended to help the party proposing them win the next election.”
  - Crossover voting has a long history in Indiana — including a 2024 billboard campaign urging Democrats to pull Republican ballots — and research on Rush Limbaugh’s 2008 “Operation Chaos” found it had no measurable effect on outcomes anyway.
- Indiana rejects or cancels voter registration for 1,625 Hoosiers who are immigrants (WFYI)
  - Indiana has rejected or canceled voter registrations for more than 62% of immigrant Hoosiers flagged under a 2025 proof-of-citizenship law — 1,625 people purged out of 2,602 cases processed, including people whose notices were returned by the postal service as undeliverable.
  - The law flags anyone who used a temporary credential number on their registration application, then gives them 30 days to produce a birth certificate, passport, or naturalization papers — documents naturalized citizens have already attested to under penalty of perjury on their registration forms.
  - Voting rights groups have filed for a preliminary injunction; the state hasn’t even filed a response yet.
  - Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales — himself a naturalized citizen — has been an enthusiastic supporter, posting “we have ZERO problems showing proof of citizenship.”
Talarico lands endorsement from lawyer who defended Paxton in impeachment, securities fraud cases (Texas Tribune)
- Ken Paxton’s own impeachment defense lawyer, Dan Cogdell, endorsed Democrat James Talarico for the Texas Senate seat — saying Paxton “has lost sight of his core mission” representing Texans.
- The Paxton camp’s dismissal: Cogdell is a Democrat who voted in the 2024 Democratic primary — though he also donated $6,500 to Paxton’s Senate campaign before switching to Talarico.
- Polling shows Talarico with a narrow lead — a genuinely rare sight for a Democrat in a Texas statewide race.
Tuesday Primaries
- Nevada
  - Jim Hartman: Nevada primary results and analysis (Nevada Appeal)
    - Trump-endorsed David Flippo won the Nevada CD-2 Republican primary over former State Sen. James Settelmeyer — who had the endorsement of Gov. Joe Lombardo, setting up what Democrats see as their best-ever chance to flip the seat. Flippo is a carpetbagger who rented a Reno house to run in a district where he doesn’t live, lost two previous primaries in other districts, and ran on anti-immigrant and anti-transgender themes. His opponent, former Assembly Majority Leader Teresa Benitez-Thompson, is considered a long shot in a district with a significant Republican registration advantage, but Democrats are encouraged by the matchup.
- North Dakota
  - 6 incumbent North Dakota lawmakers ousted in GOP primary (ND Monitor)
    - Six Republican incumbents lost primary challenges in North Dakota Tuesday, including two of the legislature’s most prominent culture warriors — Rep. Jeff Hoverson, who sponsored a bill requiring Ten Commandments displays in schools, and Rep. Bill Tveit, who led efforts to ban all-gender bathrooms, push a book ban (vetoed by the governor), and urged the Supreme Court to overturn same-sex marriage.
    - Notably, Gov. Kelly Armstrong — who vetoed the book ban — donated to the campaigns of candidates who defeated Hoverson and Tveit, suggesting the establishment is quietly pushing back against the most extreme culture war legislation.
    - One Republican incumbent, Rep. Eric Murphy, lost after introducing a bill to soften North Dakota’s abortion ban — it failed 87-6, but was enough to draw a primary challenge from an anti-abortion group-backed candidate who beat him.
- South Carolina
  - Nancy Mace loses GOP primary for South Carolina governor (Politico)
    - Nancy Mace failed to make the South Carolina GOP gubernatorial runoff — ending her political career as she had given up her House seat to run and told Politico she won’t go back to Congress.
    - Trump’s late endorsement of Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, paired with millions in negative ads, was enough to sink her; Mace acknowledged she forfeited any chance at Trump’s support by helping force the Epstein files release.
    - Evette and AG Alan Wilson advance to a June 23 runoff; with her remaining months in the House unencumbered by reelection concerns, Mace could still cause problems for Trump’s legislative agenda on her way out the door.
  - US Sen. Lindsey Graham defeats 5 GOP challengers to face Dr. Annie Andrews in November (SC Daily Gazette)
    - Lindsey Graham crushed five GOP challengers with 58% of the vote, avoiding a runoff for the third time in his Senate career — he’ll face Democrat Annie Andrews in November in a state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate in 28 years.
    - Graham’s best-funded opponent tried to blame him personally for the Iran war, arguing Graham’s decade-long advocacy for striking Iran directly influenced Trump’s decision — a charge Graham’s alliance with Trump made difficult to fully deflect.
    - If re-elected, Graham could chair the Senate Judiciary Committee again — he thanked Trump for his endorsement, saying, “I’ll wake up every morning and go to bed every night working with President Trump to put judges on the court.”
- Maine
  - Graham Platner wins Democratic nomination to challenge Susan Collins in November (Maine Public)
    - Graham Platner won the Maine Democratic Senate primary Tuesday night despite a week of damaging revelations, earning the right to challenge Susan Collins in November in a race that could determine Senate control.
    - Platner addressed the controversies directly: “This is the state that raised me and this is the state that saved me. I’m still far from perfect, but every day I wake up and try to be a little bit better.”
    - Gov. Janet Mills finished second despite suspending her campaign in April — some of her surrogates have vowed not to vote for Platner, underscoring how fractured Maine Democrats remain heading into November.
    - Collins has beaten every Democratic challenger since 1996; her strategy this cycle — same as 2020 — is emphasizing federal funding deliverables over ideology, while Democrats try to shackle her to Trump.
California results trickle in
- How Nithya Raman went from last-minute candidate to the L.A. mayor runoff (LA Times)
  - City Councilmember Nithya Raman beat Spencer Pratt for the second LA mayoral runoff spot, closing a gap that had Pratt ahead on election night as late mail ballots — skewing younger and more progressive — came in.
  - Raman spent 115 days doing nearly 100 community events while Pratt chased Fox News, Joe Rogan, and Alex Jones appearances — the internet hype didn’t translate to actual LA voter rolls.
  - The November race is Bass vs. Raman: an incumbent mayor with a rough record on homelessness and the Palisades fire against a progressive council member running on basic competence — “A city that works.”
- Election update: Republican Steve Hilton to face Becerra in November (CalMatters)
  - Steve Hilton advances to face Becerra in November, ending Tom Steyer’s bid after he spent $215 million of his own money — Steyer’s concession statement: he didn’t blame Californians who “just couldn’t stomach voting for a billionaire.”
  - The race is now a traditional partisan matchup — Becerra is heavily favored in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2-to-1 and Trump’s approval is deeply underwater.
  - Hilton’s signature promise is eliminating income tax on the first $100,000 in earnings and cutting a third of state spending — without explaining how he’d get any of it through a Democratic legislative supermajority.

Media

Trump rejects idea that Iran betrays his ‘no new wars’ campaign message (NPR)
- Trump told Meet the Press he never “guaranteed” no new wars: “I didn’t promise anything. I don’t like endless wars. This is not an endless war. We’ve been doing this for three months.”
- He also contradicted himself — claiming US strikes “obliterated” Iranian nuclear sites while simultaneously saying stopping Iran’s nuclear program was why the war was necessary.
- On the anti-weaponization fund: Trump called it “a great idea” and said he’d be “disappointed” if it wasn’t approved — directly contradicting his own DOJ’s announcement that it was dead.
- On California: Trump grew increasingly agitated as Welker pressed him for actual evidence of fraud, eventually calling her “crooked,” ripping off his mic, and walking out — telling her “Thank you, darling” on the way.
Justice Department Approves Paramount’s Warner Bros. Discovery Takeover Without Any Strings Attached (Variety)
- The Justice Department approved the $111 billion Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger Friday with no conditions, no divestitures, and no concessions — clearing a major regulatory hurdle for the deal that would combine CBS, Paramount+, and Paramount Pictures with HBO, CNN, Warner Bros., and more.
- The combined entity would anticipate over $6 billion in cost savings — industry shorthand for massive layoffs — and has already drawn opposition from more than 5,500 Hollywood professionals including Robert De Niro, Pedro Pascal, Florence Pugh, and Joaquin Phoenix.
- The deal isn’t done yet: California AG Rob Bonta has signaled potential state-level antitrust litigation, the EU is investigating foreign investment by Saudi, Qatari, and Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds fronting $24 billion, and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority opened its own probe Tuesday.
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren: “This is terrible news for every American who doesn’t want Trump-aligned billionaires to control what they watch and how much they pay. This fight isn’t over.”

Crime & Punishment

Judge says she doesn’t believe ‘anti-weaponization’ fund is dead; extends order blocking it (CNN)
- A federal judge indefinitely blocked Trump’s $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization fund” Friday, saying she doesn’t believe it’s truly dead — citing the fact that neither Blanche nor anyone else has said so under oath, the settlement establishing it hasn’t been rescinded, and Trump himself has signaled he still wants it.
- The judge gave DOJ one week to submit a sworn, unambiguous statement from a top official that the fund is permanently dead — if she gets that, she may dismiss the case as moot.
- Her bottom line: “When the President of the United States says he wants something to happen, that’s a pretty good indicator there will be an incentive and motive to make it happen.”
- A DC judge took the opposite approach Wednesday, taking DOJ at its word that the fund is dead — but warned: “Don’t play possum with this court.
US federal judge blocks Alabama from executing man by nitrogen gas (Guardian)
- A federal judge permanently blocked Alabama from executing Jeffery Lee by nitrogen gas two days before his scheduled execution, ruling the method violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment — Alabama is appealing.
- The 11th Circuit had already reversed a lower court ruling that nitrogen gas was constitutional, finding it presents a “substantial risk of serious harm — severe pain over and above death itself.”
- The case has an additional troubling layer: Lee was originally sentenced to life without parole by a jury, but a judge overrode the jury and sentenced him to death — a practice Alabama later banned, but only for future cases.
- Context: the first US nitrogen gas execution in 2024 took 22 minutes, with a witness describing the condemned man thrashing in a way unlike anything seen in four previous executions.
Vance Boelter avoids death penalty by pleading guilty to murdering Minnesota Democrat and her husband (Independent)
- Vance Boelter pleaded guilty Thursday to assassinating Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and shooting state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette — avoiding the death penalty under a plea deal with federal prosecutors.
- He showed up disguised as a police officer in a fake squad car in the early hours of June 14, 2025; he confirmed under questioning that he pressed a gun to Hortman’s head and fired. The Hortmans’ dog was so badly injured it had to be euthanized.
- Prosecutors have called the attacks political but a handwritten confession letter to FBI Director Kash Patel referenced a vague “investigation,” sometimes tied to COVID vaccines — friends described Boelter as an evangelical conservative struggling to find work.
- John Hoffman’s lawsuit says he’ll likely never fully recover use of his arm and hand and has permanent digestive and urinary damage; Yvette has permanent physical weakness; their daughter, who witnessed the attack and called 911, suffered severe psychological trauma. Boelter still faces state charges.
Indiana Angle: Indiana remains one of two states not to allow media at executions (IndyStar)
- Indiana is one of only two states — along with Wyoming — that bar journalists from witnessing executions, a policy a federal appeals court upheld 2-1 last week after media outlets including the AP, Indiana Capital Chronicle, and IndyStar sued on First Amendment grounds.
- The state resumed executions in December 2024 after a 15-year pause and has since executed three men; journalists can only attend if personally invited by the condemned as one of five permitted guests.
- The dissent’s warning: “By shielding most executive branch proceedings from public oversight, our court grants officials a license to operate without accountability. This repudiates the First Amendment’s foundations.”
- Context worth noting: Indiana spent $1.175 million on lethal injection drugs for a single execution — and in neighboring Tennessee, a man recently subjected to a “botched” execution was described by his attorney as experiencing significant blood loss and pain, with an ACLU attorney calling it “torture.”

Climate

Indiana Angle:
- At least 9 tornadoes hit Indiana during nighttime storms; at least 4 injured (WRTV)
  - At least nine tornadoes touched down across Indiana Thursday night, injuring at least four people — from northwest Indiana’s Lake and Porter counties to Wabash, Elkhart, Jay County, and Randolph County.
  - The strongest tornado hit Wabash at 110 mph, traveling nearly five miles through the city, shifting a manufactured home off its foundation and destroying outbuildings; the Elkhart tornado peaked at 115 mph.
  - In Merrillville, at least one person was injured and roughly 200 buildings were damaged, including Andrean Catholic High School.
- Confirmed tornado count for Indiana is now up to 11 from the storms Thursday evening. (WISHTV FB)
- April 30: Indiana has had 19 tornadoes in 2026 so far. (Indiana Weather Network)
  - That brings us up to at least 30 so far this year
  - Annual average is 22 tornadoes
Lake Mead nearing ‘system crash’ as experts warn a ‘world of hurt’ could be coming for some states (Independent)
- Water experts are warning that Lake Mead and Lake Powell are approaching a “system crash” — levels at which they lose their ability to store water and instead just pass it through, eliminating any buffer during drought years.
- Lake Mead currently sits at 1,049 feet; the critical threshold is 975 feet — and a Trump administration decision to reduce releases from Lake Powell could drop Mead 28 feet below its previous record low by July 2027.
- A system crash wouldn’t immediately dry up taps in Las Vegas, Phoenix, or Southern California — those cities have backup supplies — but agricultural users and rural communities without alternatives “could be in a world of hurt.”
- One water law professor on the administration’s emergency measures already taken: “They’ve already shot that bullet, and you can’t unshoot it.”
The Atlantic’s ‘Cold Blob’ Could Change Weather Across America (Newsweek)
- New research in Geophysical Research Letters finds the North Atlantic “cold blob” — a persistent patch of unusually cool water south of Greenland — is most likely caused by a weakening Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, the ocean current system that regulates temperatures across the Atlantic region.
- For the US, a weakening AMOC could mean rising sea levels along the Northeast coast — one study estimated it may already account for 20-50% of increased flood days since 2005 — as well as shifts in storm tracks and rainfall patterns.
- The study does not predict imminent collapse, but adds to growing evidence the system is already changing as Greenland melt pours freshwater into the North Atlantic, disrupting the density differences that keep the circulation moving.
Background: Why Fears Are Growing Over the Fate of a Key Atlantic Current (Yale E360)
- A leading AMOC researcher who spent 35 years on the subject now puts the odds of collapse at “more likely than not” — up from 5% when he started. A new study constraining climate models with real-world data finds AMOC could weaken by 50% by 2100, which would “very likely” push us past the tipping point.
- The truly alarming detail: even if collapse doesn’t come until the 2200s, the tipping point beyond which it becomes inevitable could arrive within decades — and once the AMOC shuts down, it doesn’t restart. The Atlantic locks into a new stable “off” state for centuries.
- Iceland declared AMOC collapse a national security threat in November 2025.
- The consequences of full collapse: Europe faces catastrophic cooling and drought, global monsoons weaken, and the Southern Ocean releases stored carbon — accelerating warming everywhere else.

HoosLeft Podcast #129: Live w/ guest Kate-Lynn Holley

Scott Aaron Rogers — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 10:01:47 GMT

Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net

HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us

Kate-Lynn Holley Campaign Site: https://votekateforstate.com

SUMMARY:

In this wide-ranging conversation, Scott sits down with Kate-Lynn Holley — mom, small business owner, realtor, former professional wrestler, and Democratic candidate for Indiana’s 6th State Senate District — for a portrait of a candidate whose biography is as unconventional as her pitch. A Lake County native who spent time in foster care, graduated into the Great Recession, fought her way from a wrestling ring in a church gym up to WWE Monday Night RAW, and used that paycheck to fund real estate school, Holley brings a working-class authenticity to a district that stretches nearly two hours from suburban Crown Point down through Newton and Benton Counties. The conversation covers her three-part campaign platform — A Roof. A Table. A Future. We look into the housing crisis, amplified in her area by NIPSCO rate hikes and Illinois cash buyers; her case for medical cannabis as economic infrastructure for struggling family farmers; the data center tax abatement giveaway she calls out in plain terms; a mobile-clinic approach to rural healthcare deserts; and a nuanced examination of the role of school vouchers. It ends with Holley’s most direct argument: that Democrats have an authenticity problem, not a policy problem, and that the real fight has always been the top versus the bottom — not left versus right.

WHAT’S INSIDE:

00:00:21 Introduction and Support the Show

- Scott introduces Kate-Lynn Holley as a mom, small business owner, lifelong NW Indiana resident, and former professional wrestler who used WWE earnings to pay for real estate school.

- HoosLeft and Progressive Indiana Network don’t paywall content — listener support at progressiveindiana.net keeps the project going.

- Social handles: @hoosleft.us on Bluesky, Instagram, and Threads; @HoosLeft on Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube; PIN is @PINIndiana on Bluesky and TikTok — @progressiveindiananetwork everywhere else.

00:03:07 Guest Introduction: Kate-Lynn Holley

- Scott describes Holley’s background and notes he missed her speech at the Indiana Democratic Convention the prior Saturday — calls her a bright and charismatic presence on social media.

00:04:22 Who Is Kate-Lynn Holley? Lake County Origins and Foster Care

- Holley grew up in densely packed, low-income neighborhoods in Lake County and spent time in foster care, born into a conservative religious family she always felt different from.

- Her defining attitude: turn tragedies into triumphs, be scrappy, and never let circumstances define her psyche.

- After graduating in 2006 she started college for musical theater, then stepped directly into the Great Recession and minimum wage jobs.

00:06:35 From Steak ‘n Shake to the Ring: How Wrestling Found Her

- A high school friend from musical theater came into the Steak ‘n Shake where Holley was working overnight, mentioned a wrestling show, and offhandedly invited her to try out.

- She said yes, trained at a church with a wrestling ring, put in her dues, and worked simultaneously at NorthShore Health Centers — a federally funded clinic where she got her first look at how hard healthcare access was for working people in her area.

00:08:24 WWE Raw, Bayley and Sasha Banks, and Paying for Real Estate School

- WWE “extra talent” are local wrestlers brought in when needed; Holley had already worked security-guard bump spots when she was asked to job for Bayley and Sasha Banks in a tag team match during the launch of the women’s tag division.

- Her strategy with her partner (a stranger): keep it simple, just show you know how to take a bump — it worked, and they got on-screen time, which paid more.

- She used that money to enroll in real estate school — another example of taking every opportunity presented, recognizing her privilege in being able to do so.

00:10:33 Musical Theater, Wrestling, and the Intersection of Performance and Politics

- Holley’s musical theater background transferred directly: in wrestling a persona is called a gimmick; in theater it’s your character — she already knew how to build one and connect with a crowd.

- The physicality of wrestling is like choreography; “selling” a punch came naturally from acting training. She survived, she says, merely out of spite.

- When a skeptic early in her campaign said “what does a pro wrestler know about politics,” her response: if you don’t understand how wrestling and politics intersect, you understand neither.

00:12:37 Wrestling, Trump, and How to Actually Captivate a Crowd

- Scott recommends The Ringmaster by Josie Reisman and argues that Monday Night Raw is a better model for political speechmaking than Obama’s lofty oratory — the room-reading, the crowd energy, the improvisation.

- Holley agrees: she has an unquantifiable “it” — people have always been magnetized to her, strangers ask her for help in stores — and says the ability to read a room’s vibe and pull out what people actually care about is what makes her effective as a candidate.

- COVID ended her wrestling career ahead of schedule — she had trips to London, Texas, and Las Vegas booked when the pandemic hit. She had one final match last August because her daughter wanted to see her wrestle.

00:16:14 The Lemon Rice Realtor: How a TikTok Niche Was Born

- Trying to generate real estate leads organically on social media, Holley decided to showcase why she loves being a “Region Rat” — the affectionate local term for NW Indiana natives.

- She started reviewing lemon rice soup locations on TikTok, not expecting much; the first video got strong reception, she kept going, and some videos reached 26K views despite modest follower counts.

- The niche worked because NW Indiana people are passionate about their local restaurants and food culture — it also aligned with her commitment to promoting local and small business.

00:18:38 What Is Lemon Rice Soup? The Greek Steel Town Origin Story

- Lemon rice soup is a regional adaptation of avgolemono, the classic Greek egg-lemon soup, brought to NW Indiana by Greek immigrants who came to work the steel mills during the steel boom.

- When the mills slowed, those families opened restaurants and avgolemono became the soup of the day — over generations it evolved into the region’s own version, thickened with flour instead of eggs, like Tex-Mex is to Mexican food.

- It exists almost exclusively in NW Indiana and is a point of genuine local pride and passionate opinion.

00:20:39 The Lemon Rice Rankings: Crown Point, Merrillville, Highland, and Schererville

- Holley has developed a three-category rating system: most chickeny, most lemony, and most balanced.

- In Lake County: The Great Greek Mediterranean Grill in Crown Point for most chickeny; Cafe Stelios on Broadway in Merrillville for most balanced; Round the Clock in Highland for most lemony — the Highland location notably different from the Schererville location.

- Scott’s personal attachment: Sophia’s House of Pancakes in Highland. Holley’s verdict: great for breakfast, weak soup.

00:22:07 The District: Gerrymandering, South Lake County, and the Rural Stretch

- Indiana’s 6th Senate District is, in Holley’s words, “gerrymandered as hell” — South Lake County (Winfield, Crown Point, Cedar Lake, Dyer, Lowell, Leroy) plus West Jasper County (DeMotte, Fair Oaks, Rensselaer, Remington, Egypt), all of Newton County, and all of Benton County.

- Driving from the top of the district to the bottom takes nearly two hours and crosses a time zone.

- The design intentionally splits communities of interest — Dyer and Benton County have very little in common.

00:23:40 Hidden Gems: Goodland, Beaver Fest, and Firefighter BBQ

- Holley recently closed a deal in Goodland, Indiana and discovered it has charming local gems including The Harvest Hangout — a cafe with an attached enclosed sensory play area for kids.

- She ran a 5K at the Beaver Fest in Morocco, Indiana (named for historic Beaver Township), and attended a smoked meats festival where local firefighters ran the grill.

- Campaign life means constant food — she jokes her waistline may not survive fair season, with elephant ears at the top of her fried dough ranking.

00:25:39 Campaign Slogan: A Roof, A Table, A Future

- Scott introduces the three pillars of Holley’s campaign platform — housing, economic security, and education — and frames the conversation around the affordability crisis facing NW Indiana families.

00:26:35 The Housing Crisis: 2006 vs. 2026 and What’s Actually Different

- Holley graduated June 6, 2006 — exactly 20 years before Saturday’s Democratic convention — and walked into a housing crisis both times.

- The 2008 crisis was caused by fraudulent lending; the current one is driven by debt load (student loans, medical debt), stagnant wages, and utility costs — particularly NIPSCO’s rates, which have in some cases tripled.

- Safeguards against predatory lending now exist, but they can’t fix the math when workers can’t qualify for mortgages or afford monthly costs after they’ve closed.

00:28:45 NIPSCO, Illinois Cash Buyers, and How NW Indiana Got Priced Out

- NW Indiana’s proximity to Illinois — which has higher taxes — drove a COVID-era wave of Illinois buyers who sold their homes at a profit and threw cash overages at Indiana properties to win bids.

- A $500K house with $20K cash over asking comps at $520K; multiply that across an entire summer and prices compounded rapidly. In 2020-2021, NW Indiana housing prices jumped 8% when the historical norm is 2.5%; homes that sold for $350K became worth $700K.

- More buyers than inventory, combined with tariff-driven material cost increases, means NAR’s push to let builders build faster is a band-aid: townhomes at $350K are useless to families approved for $250K.

00:31:32 What the State Could Be Doing: Red Tape, Builder Accountability, and the Real Problem

- The Republican supermajority’s housing bill focused on reducing red tape and permitting speed — a “smidge of a start,” Holley says — but without holding builders accountable to pass savings on to consumers, it just becomes extra margin.

- The real issue isn’t units, it’s affordability: private equity is driving prices up, utilities are unmanageable, and the monthly payment is the barrier — not the down payment.

- Indiana already has a decent down payment assistance program (up to 6% of purchase price for qualifying buyers) but that doesn’t help when the monthly number doesn’t work.

00:33:25 Medical Cannabis as Economic Policy: Farming, Revenue, and Rate Buydowns

- Holley supports legalizing medical marijuana — not because she partakes, but as a businessperson watching Indiana hemorrhage revenue to Illinois, Michigan, and Kentucky.

- Her proposal: offer medical cannabis growing contracts to non-corporate family farmers first, giving struggling agricultural land a new cash crop and keeping that revenue in Indiana.

- A portion of cannabis tax revenue could fund mortgage rate buydowns — buying down interest rates for the life of a loan or 10 years would make monthly payments workable and get people into homes the current market is locking them out of.

00:35:13 Data Centers, Dying Farms, and Who Bears the Cost

- The data center land rush in rural Indiana isn’t happening in a vacuum: farmers whose land has been devalued by decades of bad agricultural policy are getting offers they can’t refuse, and Holley doesn’t blame them.

- The problem isn’t the farmers selling — it’s the legislation that made farming so unviable that selling to a data center is the rational choice.

- Fix the underlying agricultural economics and you remove the desperation that makes these land grabs so easy.

00:36:59 The Zillow Analogy: AI Isn’t Going Anywhere, So Make Indiana Get Paid

- Holley uses Zillow as an analogy: real estate agents who complain about Zillow now should have fought it 10-15 years ago when it was still buildable. Same with AI and data centers — the window to stop it has passed.

- Her position isn’t pro-data center or anti-data center — it’s that if they’re coming anyway, Indiana must stop giving away the one advantage it has (cheap land and cheap labor) through tax abatements that will outlive the legislators who passed them.

- At a Jasper County Amazon data center pitch, she told the presenter directly: Indiana already offers the cheapest labor and land in the region — we don’t need to throw in a tax abatement on top. The competitor-cities argument doesn’t hold up when you understand land economics.

00:39:01 Finland’s Underground Data Centers and the Energy Opportunity We’re Ignoring

- Finland has built underground data centers that use the earth’s natural cooling to reduce water consumption, and convert waste heat into energy for residents — a model that’s both environmentally sound and economically productive.

- Holley raised this at the Amazon pitch meeting and was told the technology is “four years off.” Her response: she’s fine waiting four years, and also, it already exists in Finland.

- The deeper point: allowing industry to drive the process means communities never get to ask these questions — that’s the cost of deregulation.

00:41:15 Healthcare: Not a Luxury Item — Personal Stakes and the Local 150 Clinic Model

- Holley grew up on Medicaid, WIC, and other programs now being cut — she didn’t choose her circumstances, and the least society can do is give people a fair shot at living a full and healthy life.

- Her husband’s Local 150 operating engineers union provides access to a free comprehensive health clinic — lab, mental health, chiropractic — and she describes the quality of care (30-minute appointments, root-cause medicine) as transformative.

- Medicare for All would require federal action; at the state level, Holley’s focus is on expanding access to the kinds of clinic models that actually work.

00:44:34 Rural Healthcare Deserts: No OB-GYN in Benton County and the Mobile Clinic Idea

- Benton County has no OB-GYN — and Indiana’s infant mortality rate is getting worse, not better, particularly in rural areas where preventive care is simply unavailable.

- NorthShore Health Centers (where Holley once worked) can’t easily expand to rural counties because Medicaid reimbursement cuts — and even private insurance underpayment — are already squeezing existing operations.

- Her near-term idea: redirect a portion of the medical budget to fund a scheduled mobile clinic circuit, getting federally qualified health center services into rural communities on a fixed weekly schedule as a bridge until permanent facilities can be established.

00:47:37 Education: Vouchers Have Their Place, But the Income Cap Has to Come Back

- Holley is a public education supporter and a product of it — but she’s not a reflexive voucher opponent. Her analogy: home births have their place for the right candidate; vouchers have their place for the right family.

- The voucher program was originally designed as a scholarship mechanism for gifted students from low-income backgrounds who needed access to enhanced private school options — a program Holley herself would have benefited from.

- The problem is the income cap was removed, turning the program from targeted scholarship into a broad subsidy for families already paying private school tuition — and eroding the public school funding base in the process.

00:51:22 The Real Voucher Problem: Who’s Actually Benefiting and What It Does to Public Schools

- Removing the income cap means a family paying $20K/year in private school tuition now gets $10K of public money — even if they could already afford it, and even as private school costs have risen while wages haven’t.

- Holley could see reinstating a realistic income cap that tracks actual wages and school pricing — not abolishing vouchers, but regulating them so they serve their original purpose.

- The Eric Andre meme, per Scott: Republicans kneecap public schools and then point at them and ask why they’re underperforming. Public school students would perform just as well as private school students with smaller class sizes and adequate funding.

00:54:06 Democrats’ Branding Problem and the Wrestling Parallel

- Scott frames the question through wrestling: nWo, WCW, Stone Cold vs. McMahon — is there a space for Democrats in rural areas to run against their own party brand as an effective connecting strategy?

- Holley’s answer: there’s nothing kayfabe about it — she genuinely is critical of the Democratic Party, and hasn’t always voted Democrat. The political spectrum shifted so far right that she found herself on the left by staying put.

- She argues it’s healthy to criticize something you love — and that the far right’s refusal to do so with Trump is the pathology, not a model.

00:56:31 Authenticity, Kayfabe, and Why Kate-Lynn Criticizes Her Own Party

- Democrats have an authenticity problem, not a policy problem. Trump caught on because people perceived him as saying what was on his mind — the same quality Holley says draws people to her.

- She goes into conversations with rural conservatives as a human being first — her liberal heart says everyone matters, let me hear what they have to say — and she thinks too many very-left Democrats have zero chill, which closes doors before conversations can start.

- People are beginning to leave the right as kitchen-table issues like gas prices hit home; demonizing them on the way out ensures they don’t land on the Democratic side. She invokes Jesus breaking bread with the Pharisees: you can disagree with someone and still show up.

00:59:24 It’s the Top vs. the Bottom, Not Left vs. Right

- Holley’s core argument: billionaires have figured out that pitting left against right keeps working people divided and unable to protect their rights. The real axis is top versus bottom.

- America is 250 years old — practically a teenager — and what we’re experiencing is the limit-testing, angsty phase of a young nation. Getting to 500 years requires learning to be stronger together.

- The path forward: find common ground, civilly debate disagreements, and keep the main focus on who actually benefits from our division.

01:02:35 Where to Find Kate-Lynn Holley and How to Help

- TikTok, Instagram, Facebook: @VoteKateForState; website: votekateforstate.com.

- Out-of-district supporters can phone bank from home (pants optional but recommended) or contribute whatever they can — she’s grassroots, and even small dollars help fund canvassing materials.

- Sharing, liking, and engaging with her content helps grow the movement even if you can’t give money.

ActBlue: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/votekateforstate

https://www.facebook.com/VoteKateForState

https://www.instagram.com/votekateforstate

https://www.tiktok.com/@votekateforstate

https://bsky.app/profile/davidsanderssci.bsky.social

https://www.threads.com/@theemoxiemollie

HoosLeft This Week - June 7, 2026

Scott Aaron Rogers — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 19:01:05 GMT

SUMMARY:

HOOSLEFT THIS WEEK — June 7, 2026

Show Notes

On this week’s edition of HoosLeft This Week, Scott Aaron Rogers is joined by Samantha Douglas (The Black Briefing) and Brandon Clark (Social Society) for a sprawling two-hour tour through a week that felt like a month. The panel opens on the Iran war — a ceasefire in name only, with U.S. and Iranian forces continuing to exchange fire across the region while Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared the conflict “over” and the House passed a war powers resolution — before drilling into the Indiana economic fallout, including Governor Mike Braun’s 30-day gas tax holiday costing the state $140 million a month it claims not to have for childcare. From there the show covers Braun’s Pride-baiting “Nuclear Family Month” proclamation and the Christian nationalist circus at the Pentagon under Pete Hegseth, including his Great Replacement-themed D-Day speech in France; the nomination of wholly unqualified Bill Pulte as DNI; and the Indiana Democratic state convention’s selection of Beau Bayh as Secretary of State nominee — a result the panel dissects at length, with both Douglas and Rogers signaling they may vote for Lincoln Party candidate Greg Ballard in protest. The back half of the show takes on Tuesday’s multi-state primaries and the hit-job rollout against Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner; the Epstein file saga, Pam Bondi’s non-sworn congressional testimony, and Trump’s appointment of Leon Black’s son to run the government’s largest overseas investment firm; the death of the anti-weaponization slush fund and the Stephen Buyer pardon; the privatized horror show of ICE detention at Delaney Hall; Indiana’s childcare crisis and a deep dive on trickle-down economic failure; public health threats from coal subsidies to Ebola to screwworms to Google’s mosquito-sterilization gambit; the data center fight in Shelbyville and Indianapolis; the firing of Scott Pelley from 60 Minutes by Bari Weiss; and the Chicago Bears’ advancing plans to relocate to Hammond, Indiana — a stadium deal Scott, a Bears fan, calls an unconscionable giveaway of public funds.

IN DEPTH:

Iran War

‘A shock to all Lebanese’: Israel sends a message as it takes ancient fort (Guardian)
- Israel seized Beaufort Castle on Sunday — a thousand-year-old hilltop fortress in south Lebanon — for the first time in 26 years, raising the Israeli flag and the Golani Brigade flag over a site that symbolizes Lebanese resistance and the memory of Israel’s 18-year occupation.
- Israeli soldiers used white phosphorus as a smoke screen for the advance, then shared footage of themselves walking the castle’s ramparts set to a Fairuz song — a deliberate psychological message to the Lebanese people.
- Defense Minister Israel Katz announced Monday that Israel would resume striking Beirut, sending residents who had just returned home six weeks ago fleeing again — highways choked with cars, WhatsApp chats full of “here we go again.”
- The city of Tyre was hammered with airstrikes Sunday, leaving smoking craters where residential buildings stood; civil defense was ordered to evacuate before the bombing began.
“You’re fucking crazy”: Trump fumes at Netanyahu in call on Lebanon (Axios)
- Trump exploded at Netanyahu in an expletive-laden phone call Monday, telling him “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”
- The blowup was driven by Netanyahu’s Lebanon escalation threatening to torpedo the Iran negotiations — Iran had already warned it would abandon talks over Israel’s actions in Lebanon.
- Trump also objected specifically to Israel knocking down entire buildings to take out a single Hezbollah commander and killing large numbers of civilians in the process.
- After being “steamrolled” according to US officials, Netanyahu publicly released a statement saying Israel’s position “remains the same” — but Israel quietly dropped its plans to strike Beirut.
- One of Trump’s worst calls with Netanyahu since returning to office, per US officials — though the two have had tense calls before while still coordinating closely on Iran.
Monday - US bombs Iranian military sites, then downs missiles Tehran fired at troops in Kuwait (AP)
- The US bombed radar and drone sites in Iran over the weekend after Tehran shot down an American MQ-1 drone; Iran responded by firing ballistic missiles at US troops in Kuwait, which the US shot down — no Americans hurt.
- Ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has collapsed to 36 ships in the past week, down from 130+ per day before the war; the closure is now threatening global food supplies, since the Gulf produces 30% of the world’s traded chemical fertilizers.
- Trump claimed Monday that Israel and Hezbollah had agreed to scale back their fighting — then moments later Israel warned its northern residents to take cover from incoming missile launches from Lebanon.
- Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson summed up the state of negotiations bluntly: “We are negotiating in an atmosphere of mistrust.”
Tue: U.S., Iran Trade Heavy Fire in Persian Gulf, Testing Fragile Ceasefire (WSJ)
- The US disabled an oil tanker called the Lexi with a Hellfire missile to its engine room as it attempted to breach the blockade and load Iranian crude at Kharg Island — triggering the most intense exchange of fire in months.
- Iran responded with drone attacks on civilian mariners in the Persian Gulf, then fired ballistic missiles at US bases in both Kuwait and Bahrain; all were intercepted or fell short, with no American casualties.
- Despite the exchanges, CENTCOM maintained the ceasefire is technically still “ongoing” — a designation that’s becoming increasingly difficult to defend with a straight face.
- Diplomacy remains completely stalled; the WSJ notes this is among the most intense fighting since the ceasefire began in April, with both sides continuing to skirmish while refraining from a full resumption of war.
Wed: Iran war is over, Rubio says, as strikes continue (France 24)
- Rubio told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the war with Iran is “over” — defining victory as destroying Iran’s defense industrial base, missile launchers, drone stockpiles, air force, and navy — even as Iran struck Kuwait’s airport the same day, killing one person and wounding 63.
- Rep. Sara Jacobs cut to it: “You can change the name of the operation. It doesn’t change the fact that the Strait’s still closed, and my service members are still in harm’s way.”
- On negotiations: Rubio said Iran’s highly enriched uranium is “clearly addressed” in papers exchanged between the two sides — but Iran still hasn’t given “final sign off” and is demanding $12 billion in unfrozen assets before engaging substantively on its nuclear program.
Wed: House passes war powers resolution directing Trump to end hostilities with Iran (NPR)
- The House passed a war powers resolution directing Trump to end hostilities with Iran 215-208, with four Republicans joining Democrats — the clearest congressional rebuke yet of the war, more than 90 days in.
- The four Republicans: Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Tom Barrett of Michigan, Warren Davidson of Ohio, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky. Fitzpatrick’s reasoning: “We’re past the 60 days. You either follow the law or you change the law. You can’t violate the law.”
- The vote is largely symbolic — the Senate hasn’t scheduled a final vote, and Trump would almost certainly veto it even if it passed — but signals his support is eroding even within his own party.
- Republican leaders had already tried to run out the clock by sending members home early two weeks ago when it looked like the resolution had the votes — it passed anyway.
- In a separate vote, six Republicans joined Democrats to advance Ukraine aid, setting up a final passage vote.
Fri: US strikes Iranian radar sites; Kuwait comes under attack (Al Jazeera)
- The latest Iran flare-up escalated to Kuwait and Bahrain simultaneously — air raid sirens activated in both countries, with Kuwait’s military actively intercepting missiles and drones and Bahrain residents urged to seek shelter.
- The US struck Iranian coastal surveillance radar sites on Qeshm Island and at Goruk, shot down four Iranian drones near the Strait, and disabled the oil tanker Lexi with a Hellfire missile — all within the same exchange.
- An Iran analyst put the strategic tension plainly: Tehran sees the Strait as its primary point of leverage and will not relinquish control — while the US needs it open to declare any kind of victory.
- A notable wrinkle for next week: Iran’s footballers have been issued US visas for the World Cup, with their opening match against New Zealand in Los Angeles on June 15 — while their country and the US are actively exchanging fire.
Sat: Iran accuses U.S. of violating ceasefire after both sides exchange strikes as stalemate continues in peace talks (CBS)
- Iran’s adviser to the supreme leader told CNN talks are “at a deadlock” and “the ball is in Trump’s court” — Iran wants billions in frozen assets unfrozen as a “test America must pass” before any further progress.
- Iran has formally suspended talks “through mediators,” though Pakistan’s interior minister flew to Tehran Saturday, suggesting back-channel contact continues.
- The Treasury Department plans to use frozen Iranian assets to help US Gulf allies — Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE — pay for damage caused by Iran during the war, a move that will further complicate any deal.
- Trump on why there’s no deal yet: Iran is “proud” and it’s “a very hard thing for them.” On the war’s end: “It’s either finished with a piece of paper, or finished a more difficult way.”
- Lebanon’s prime minister and president both publicly accused Iran of using Lebanon as a bargaining chip — the Lebanese president told Hezbollah directly: “The Lebanese people are not your people.”
- The UN World Food Programme confirmed that 45 million people are now falling into acute food insecurity as a result of the war and $100/barrel oil — a scenario it warned about in March that is now unfolding.
Indiana Angle: Braun continues gas tax suspension. How long can the state afford it? (IPM)
- Gov. Braun extended Indiana’s gas tax suspension for another 30 days, keeping a 62.5 cents-per-gallon break in place that’s given Indiana the lowest gas prices in the nation at $3.59 average — down from $4.26 nationally.
- The suspension is costing the state roughly $140 million per month, which INDOT says it can cover with reserves for now — but Braun acknowledged “long-term road funding is an issue the legislature is going to have to take up.”
- Braun previously said he could only extend 60 days; he’s now claiming the emergency statute allows up to 120 days without legislative action — after which a special session would be required, which he indicated is unlikely.
- Senate Minority Leader Shelli Yoder cut to the chase: “We should be asking why families are being put in this position in the first place. Effective leadership means addressing the root causes of rising costs, not just reacting after Hoosiers have already been left paying the bill.”

Christian Nationalism

Gov. Braun proclaims June ‘Nuclear Family Month’ (IndyStar)
- Gov. Braun declared June “Nuclear Family Month” in Indiana, defining the nuclear family as “one husband, one wife, and any biological, adopted, or fostered children” and calling it “God’s design for the family structure.”
- The proclamation’s second section then quietly drops adopted and fostered children, asserting that “children living with their married, biological parents have better physical and emotional well-being” — without citing any evidence.
- Though it doesn’t mention Pride Month, the timing was not subtle — social media response was overwhelmingly negative and awash in rainbow emojis.
- Indiana joins Tennessee, Arkansas, and Utah in offering Republican governors’ counter-programming to Pride Month, though notably Arkansas and Utah’s “Fidelity Month” proclamations didn’t explicitly limit the definition to heterosexual couples.
GOP Rep. Andy Ogles deletes homophobic social media post, blames staffer (NBC)
- Tennessee GOP Rep. Andy Ogles posted from his official congressional account: “Homosexuality has no place in America. Happy Nuclear Family Month.” — then deleted it and blamed a staffer.
- The blowback was bipartisan: Rep. Mike Lawler called it “idiotic,” House Majority Leader Scalise called it “reprehensible,” and even Ted Cruz told TMZ that “for all of recorded history, homosexuals have been part of humanity.”
- Worth the context: a 2026 Gallup poll found Republican support for same-sex marriage has dropped from 55% in 2021 to 37% — Ogles is out of step even with that trend by going this far.
- This is the same congressman who declared earlier this year that “Muslims don’t belong in American society” — also to bipartisan backlash.
Religious freedom org calls out teacher-led Bible study at Indiana school (IndyStar)
- The Freedom From Religion Foundation called out Mooresville High School after a choir teacher publicly announced he was leading a Friday morning Bible study program called BetterMan for about 40 male students — a clear First Amendment violation, as teachers must remain non-participatory in student religious clubs.
- The teacher’s own Facebook post made the problem plain: “God has opened several doors for me at the high school, and I am excited to be able to lead these young men.”
- The district met with the teacher and issued guidance on constitutional limits, but notably declined to say whether the club is still operating or has been transferred to student leadership.
- Ironic footnote: the Indiana State Teachers Association named the same teacher its Hoosier Educator of the Year last year.

DoD
- Pentagon drops 180 religions from its recognized faiths list (Independent)
  - The Pentagon is dropping roughly 180 faiths from its officially recognized list — cutting from 211 to 31 — eliminating recognition for Atheists, Pagans, Wiccans, Druids, Humanists, Unitarian Universalists, and dozens of other belief systems while retaining mainstream Christian denominations, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism.
  - A former Army chaplain called it “a tragedy and travesty” and a violation of the First Amendment: “The free exercise of religion for everybody — that’s what I was buying into.”
  - Hegseth’s justification: the old list had “ballooned” and was “impractical,” with most service members using only six codes. Critics note the 180 eliminated codes include many actively practiced faiths, not just obscure ones.
- Pentagon defends banning reporters from press office by turning it into a classified room: ‘Journalists no longer permitted’ (WaPo)
  - The Pentagon designated its press office a classified Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, banning journalists from a space that was previously an open room where reporters could walk up to public affairs officers’ desks without an escort.
  - The stated reason: Hegseth’s speechwriters were moved into the office and need access to classified networks — a bureaucratic shuffle that conveniently eliminates informal press access.
  - Notably, neither Hegseth nor his staff have continued the tradition of off-camera gaggles with reporters — in stark contrast to both Rubio at State and Trump at the White House, who maintain regular press access.
  - The move is the latest front in a months-long legal war: journalists mass-surrendered credentials in October over Hegseth’s press rules, a federal judge struck down key provisions in March, and the New York Times has now sued the Pentagon twice.
- Pete Hegseth blocks promotions of Black and women military officers in latest anti-DEI push (Independent)
  - Hegseth blocked at least eight Navy captains from promotion to one-star admiral, targeting two women, two Black men, and three white men — apparently based on past participation in diversity-related events, some dating back decades.
  - One officer was flagged because she served as a “diversity liaison officer” twenty years ago to help the Navy recruit and retain women and minorities — now apparently a career-ending offense.
  - The resulting promotion list contains only two nonwhite officers out of 22 nominees, despite minorities making up 38% of the Navy; zero women appear on the list despite women comprising 21% of the service.
  - Hegseth is simultaneously trying to elevate a Navy SEAL from his inner circle who has been repeatedly passed over for promotion through normal channels — the definition of the politicized promotions he claims to oppose.
- Hegseth attacks Europe over migration with beach ‘invasion’ D-Day speech (BBC)
  - Hegseth used a D-Day anniversary speech at the Normandy American Cemetery to attack European immigration policy, comparing migrant arrivals by boat to the Nazi-occupied beaches stormed by Allied forces in 1944 — “Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion?”
  - This follows JD Vance invoking a British stabbing victim the day before to call for “righteous anger” against migration — prompting Downing Street to condemn “people trying to interfere in our democracy.”
  - Worth noting: Channel crossings to the UK are actually down 38% compared to the same period last year — context the administration omitted.
- Appeals court panel rules that transgender troops were illegally barred from U.S. military service (PBS)
  - A divided DC Circuit appeals court panel ruled Monday that Trump’s transgender military ban illegally bars troops from service, largely upholding a lower court’s finding that the policy likely violates constitutional rights.
  - The majority wrote the policy “appears to be driven by the bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group” — strong language from a federal appeals court.
  - The ruling is narrowed to currently serving transgender troops, not those seeking to enlist, and won’t take effect immediately — the administration can seek full appeals court review.
  - The Supreme Court had already allowed the ban to take effect last year while litigation continues, so the legal fight is far from over.
ODNI
- Trump’s intel pick delights MAGA and shocks nation’s spies (Politico)
  - Trump named Bill Pulte — the Federal Housing Finance Agency director with zero known intelligence background — as acting Director of National Intelligence, replacing Tulsi Gabbard who announced she’s leaving at the end of June.
  - The Pulte DNI appointment is now threatening a separate priority: bipartisan FISA reauthorization talks, which must be completed before the law expires at the end of next week.
  - Steve Bannon’s summary: “It’s a middle finger to the Senate. A fuck you to the Deep State.” A retired 26-year CIA veteran called it a signal that the DNI will be “fully weaponized in support of going after Trump’s political enemies.”
  - Even Republicans were openly skeptical: Cornyn said he saw “no evidence of his qualifications,” Cassidy called him “not very qualified,” and Tillis said he didn’t know Pulte had any national security experience at all.
  - The CIA has already reduced its contributions to intelligence assessments produced by ODNI, including on the Iran war — a sign of how badly the relationship between the two agencies has deteriorated under Trump.
  - ODNI was created after 9/11 to coordinate intelligence across 18 agencies; putting a housing official in charge of it is, in the words of one former CIA executive, deepening concern that it is “shifting from an intelligence management organization toward a political instrument.”
- Trump claims Bill Pulte will investigate ‘rigged elections’ in temporary intelligence role (Guardian)
  - Trump confirmed Pulte’s DNI role is temporary — then immediately told reporters Pulte “may find out some things about the rigged elections, etc, etc” — openly stating the nation’s top intelligence post will be used to pursue Trump’s election fraud conspiracies.
  - Hours earlier, Trump alleged without evidence that Democrats were cheating in California’s primaries and claimed the LA US attorney’s office was investigating; that office declined to comment.
  - Mitch McConnell, without naming Pulte, made his position clear: “Anyone performing this role must have the extensive national security experience required by statute, and no nominee who falls short of this requirement will earn my vote.”
  - Senate Majority Leader Thune: “We don’t need a weaponized national intelligence director. We need professionals here.”

Elections

Indiana Angle:
- Can a social media post nullify your vote? Indiana recount tests obscure law (IndyStar)
  - A Trump-backed primary challenger who lost by three votes to Sen. Spencer Deery is trying to invalidate votes based on voters’ Facebook posts and newspaper interviews — arguing their public comments prove they voted illegally as crossover Democrats in the Republican primary.
  - The law she’s invoking is so obscure that election experts, advocates, and even the Secretary of State’s office say they’ve rarely or never seen it enforced — and the state’s own election division counsel says challenges must be made at the polls before a ballot is cast, not after.
  - Deery’s campaign called it “sore-loser syndrome” and “a fishing expedition”
  - MADVoters’ Amy Courtney flagged the broader implication: “The real question is whether we want a government spending time and energy monitoring our social media statements and inspecting our private votes.”

Indiana Senate’s No. 2 Republican steps down from post after split from Bray (ICC)
- Indiana Senate Majority Floor Leader Chris Garten resigned his leadership post Thursday, citing a lack of “unequivocal support” for the current strategic direction — setting up a potential challenge to Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray, whom Trump vowed to “take out” over his opposition to congressional redistricting.
- Garten was on Trump’s side of the redistricting fight; Bray was not — and six anti-redistricting Republican senators were defeated in the May primary, shifting the caucus’s center of gravity toward the Trump-aligned faction.
- Garten didn’t announce a Bray challenge directly, but his letter signaled he intends to “further advance the conservative principles that separate Indiana from the rest” — leadership code for “watch this space.”
- Republicans hold a 40-10 Senate supermajority but won’t formally select leadership until after November, with at least nine current GOP senators not returning for the 2027 session.
Beau Bayh defeats Blythe Potter for Democratic secretary of state nomination (ICC)
- Beau Bayh won the Indiana Democratic secretary of state nomination at Saturday’s state convention, defeating Iraq War veteran Blythe Potter 61%-39% — positioning the son and grandson of two US senators as Democrats’ best shot at a statewide office in more than a decade.
- Bayh entered with a massive fundraising advantage — $1.9 million on hand versus Potter’s $66,600 — and centered his campaign on an independent audit of an office he says has been damaged by Morales’s corruption and no-bid contracting scandals.
- Democrats also formally nominated Jessica Bailey for comptroller and Coumba Kebe for treasurer, both uncontested.
- Convention Chair Robin Winston emphasized that — regardless of the nominee — members of Indiana’s Democratic Party “are more alike than we are unalike.” He pointed, for example, to the party’s cohesion on civil liberties for immigrants, Hoosiers’ access to healthcare, better working conditions for teachers and support for union jobs. “Our job and our fight is not in this room,” he told delegates.

Later this summer:
- Supreme Court allows Alabama to use 2023 congressional map in August special primary (Alabama Reflector)
  - The Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority reversed the lower court Tuesday evening, allowing Alabama to use its intentionally racially discriminatory 2023 congressional map in the August special primary — overruling two separate federal court findings that the map was drawn to dilute Black votes.
  - Justice Sotomayor’s dissent was withering: “The majority chooses a chaotic election held under a never-before-used map that intentionally discriminates against Black Alabamians. I respectfully dissent.”
  - The NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s attorney called it “shameless,” warning it opens the door for states to “deliberately and openly discriminate against Black voters without fear of any consequence.”
  - The practical chaos: voter rolls locked Tuesday, giving election officials less than a day to reassign voters in 14 counties — implementing a map that had never been used before in any election.
- GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan draws an unusual opponent in Alaska’s primary — and he’s not happy about it (AP)
  - Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan is furious that another Republican named Dan Sullivan has qualified for Alaska’s August primary ballot — accusing Democrats and the Mary Peltola campaign of orchestrating a dirty trick to sow voter confusion. Both deny involvement.
  - In Alaska’s top-four primary system, the second Dan Sullivan doesn’t need to win — just siphon enough votes from the incumbent to potentially knock him out of the top four before ranked-choice voting even begins.
  - The challenger’s own website leans into the confusion, promising voters “a Sullivan that actually stands up for Alaska.”
  - The NRSC is threatening legal action; the incumbent senator, dropping an expletive for emphasis, called it “an insult” to Alaskans.
Tuesday Primaries
- California
  - Tech billionaires are spending unprecedented sums in California races. Experts say it’s the tip of the iceberg (Guardian)
    - Tech billionaires have poured hundreds of millions into California’s primary races, with Google co-founder Sergey Brin leading at $82 million — mostly to block a ballot measure that would tax billionaires to fund education, food assistance, and healthcare.
    - Google and Meta jointly funded a $10 million Super PAC targeting state legislature races; crypto mogul Chris Larsen spread $26 million across a dozen campaigns; the tech industry spent $39 million lobbying California alone in 2025 — more than oil and gas.
    - Their chosen gubernatorial candidate, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, raised nearly $50 million from Silicon Valley executives but is polling at just 4% — suggesting money can’t always manufacture a candidate.
    - A UC Berkeley public policy professor’s warning: “What we’re seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg” — sophisticated political donors use dark money entities that don’t show up in campaign finance filings.
    - Crypto mogul Larsen’s stated goal captures the strategy plainly: “We’re going to work on taking out those people who are not working for the people of California” — meaning organized labor’s allies in the legislature
  - US attorney opens investigations into California’s elections, sends prosecutor to LA vote center (AP)
    - Trump’s LA US Attorney opened “multiple election fraud investigations” into California’s primary and sent a prosecutor to the LA County ballot tabulation center — triggered by Trump’s baseless claims that Democrats are “rigging” the count as late mail ballots favor Democratic candidates.
    - AP makes the mechanics plain: Democrats vote by mail and held ballots late, so Republican totals peak on election night and shrink as counting continues — that’s math, not fraud.
    - Even Trump’s own preferred gubernatorial candidate, Steve Hilton, admitted his team has “seen nothing that seems illegal” and nothing that “would warrant legal action.”
    - The pattern is clear: Trump is using the DOJ to pressure a state whose vote-counting process he doesn’t like, having already sent observers to California during last fall’s special election.
  - Democrat Xavier Becerra advances to November race for California governor (CalMatters)
    - Former HHS Secretary and California AG Xavier Becerra has secured a spot in the November governor’s race, leading with ~27% — with Trump-backed Republican Steve Hilton close behind and Democrat Tom Steyer still potentially threatening to take the second slot as millions of mail ballots remain uncounted.
    - If it’s Becerra vs. Hilton in November, Becerra is heavily favored — California Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2-to-1 and Trump’s approval is deeply underwater in the state. A Becerra vs. Steyer finish would be a bruising intra-Democratic battle supercharged by Steyer’s personal fortune.
    - If elected, Becerra would be the first Latino to win the California governorship by election in more than a century.
    - Becerra’s rise was unexpected — he was polling in single digits until frontrunner Eric Swalwell imploded, and party chair Rusty Hicks was publicly pressuring him to drop out just weeks ago.
- New Jersey
  - Rebecca Bennett wins Dem primary, will challenge Rep. Tom Kean Jr. in November (NJ Monitor)
    - Former Navy helicopter pilot Rebecca Bennett won the Democratic primary in NJ-7, setting up a competitive fall race against GOP Rep. Tom Kean Jr. in a seat Democrats held for two terms before losing it in 2022.
    - The race is expected to be close, fueled by Democratic energy over the Iran war and economic downturn — but complicated by a wild card: Kean has been absent from Congress since early March due to an undisclosed illness and has not been seen in public since.
    - Kean was unopposed in the GOP primary and held no victory celebration Tuesday.
  - Adam Hamawy wins crowded Dem primary in 12th District (NJ Monitor)
    - Princeton plastic surgeon and Army combat veteran Adam Hamawy won a 12-candidate Democratic primary in NJ-12, succeeding retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman — the first Black woman to represent New Jersey in Congress.
    - Hamawy carried endorsements from Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Sen. Tammy Duckworth — who backed him in part because he helped save her life in Iraq in 2004 when both were serving.
    - The seat is considered safe Democratic — the district votes D by more than 2 to 1 — making Hamawy the likely next congressman from NJ-12.
- Iowa
  - Rep. Josh Turek wins U.S. Senate primary race against Sen. Zach Wahls, AP projects (Iowa Capital Dispatch)
    - Iowa state Rep. Josh Turek won the Democratic Senate primary over state Sen. Zach Wahls, setting up a fall race against Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson for the open seat vacated by Joni Ernst.
    - Turek ran as the more moderate candidate, touting a 2024 win in the reddest Democratic-held state legislative district and carrying the endorsement of former Sen. Tom Harkin, who held the seat before Ernst.
    - Most forecasters rate the seat as likely Republican — Hinson locked up Trump’s endorsement early and won her primary easily.
    - The general election framing is already set: Hinson’s campaign immediately tied Turek to Chuck Schumer, calling him “a rubber stamp for radical leftists.”
  - MAHA candidate beats Trump’s choice in Republican primary for Iowa governor (PBS)
    - MAHA-backed farmer and businessman Zach Lahn upset Trump’s chosen candidate, Rep. Randy Feenstra, in Iowa’s Republican gubernatorial primary — a rare electoral defeat for Trump and a breakthrough moment for RFK Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement.
    - Lahn campaigned on regenerative farming, opposing corporate agricultural consolidation, and banning pesticide liability shields — explicitly calling out Iowa’s “fastest growing cancer rate in the world” and tying it to chemical runoff and corporate ag dominance.
    - The MAHA movement had been growing frustrated with Trump’s EPA for defending glyphosate and shielding pesticide companies from lawsuits — Lahn’s win is their shot across the bow at the administration’s own base.
    - Democrats see an opening: State Auditor Rob Sand, the lone Democrat holding statewide office, is sitting on $18 million and has been honing a moderate message since running unopposed in his primary.
- New Mexico
  - Deb Haaland wins New Mexico Democratic race for governor (Source NM)
    - Former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland — the first Native American to serve in a presidential cabinet — easily won the New Mexico Democratic gubernatorial primary over Bernalillo County DA Sam Bregman, with the AP calling it within 30 minutes of polls closing.
    - She’ll face the winner of a three-way Republican primary, with former Rio Rancho Mayor Gregg Hull leading at 48% as results came in.
    - New Mexico is a blue-leaning state, and Haaland enters the general with strong national Democratic backing and significant name recognition from her time in Congress and the Biden cabinet.
- Montana
  - What we know about Montana’s 2026 primary election results (Montana Free Press)
    - In the Senate race, Kurt Alme (R) and Air Force veteran Alani Bankhead (D) won their primaries; independent Seth Bodnar, former University of Montana president, is collecting signatures to appear in November — making it a potential three-way race.
    - In MT-01, conservative radio host Aaron Flint won the Republican primary; former smokejumper Sam Forstag won the Democratic nod in what’s considered Democrats’ best pickup opportunity in the state.
    - The bigger story is the Montana GOP civil war: hard-right candidates backed by the state party crushed most moderate Republican incumbents in legislative primaries, with margins of 20-47 points — the faction that tried to work with Democrats on Medicaid expansion was largely wiped out.
    - Two exceptions: centrist Rep. Llew Jones survived by 6 points and Rep. George Nikolakakos won by nearly 40 — but they appear to be the outliers in a night that swung the 2027 Legislature sharply rightward.
Next Week: Maine
- Democrats fret Graham Platner could cost them — and not just in Maine (Politico)
  - Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner — all but certain to be Democrats’ nominee against Susan Collins — is facing a new scandal: reports that he exchanged sexual texts with women while married, adding to previous controversies over offensive Reddit posts and a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol.
  - Democratic strategists are increasingly nervous, with one calling him “an albatross” who “is going to lose” — noting that Collins has survived multiple strong challengers and that Maine’s swing voters decide in the final two weeks.
  - The stakes are enormous: Collins is the only Republican senator up for reelection in a state Harris won in 2024 — if Democrats can’t flip Maine, their Senate majority path runs through Iowa or Texas.
  - Despite the hand-wringing, Platner’s campaign says Saturday — the day the sexting story broke — was his highest digital fundraising day, and he’s polling at 76% in next Tuesday’s primary.
  - One person close to the suspended Mills campaign: “This is kind of where we thought this was all going. We tried to say something about it, but nobody wanted to listen.”
- New allegations against Graham Platner unnerve Democrats in key Maine Senate race (SAN)
  - The Platner situation has escalated further: the NYT published accounts from former girlfriends describing him as volatile, “toxic,” emotionally difficult, and at times physically threatening — with one source saying he knew what his Nazi-linked tattoo meant when he got it.
  - One of those women has since publicly accused the Times of “misleading” her and “betraying” her trust — muddying the water further days before the June 9 primary.
  - A Democratic Senate aide put the stakes plainly: “There is dramatically higher concern about losing Maine now across the caucus than there was before the stories broke. Everyone realizes that without Maine the path to taking back the Senate is impossible.”
  - Republican-aligned group One Nation has already pledged an additional $3 million for Collins, with a new ad targeting Platner’s veteran supporters — the exact constituency he’d need to flip.
  - DNC member Robert Zimmerman’s warning: “Democrats who defend him sound like Republicans defending Donald Trump after the Access Hollywood tape.”
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Epstein

Bondi punts blame for the Epstein files to Todd Blanche (Politico)
- Fired AG Pam Bondi told Congress that Todd Blanche — now Trump’s pick to permanently lead DOJ — “supervised the entire process” of releasing the Epstein files, repeatedly deflecting responsibility for the botched, delayed, and incomplete redactions onto her likely successor.
- The timing is brutal: Bondi’s transcript dropped the day after Trump announced Blanche’s nomination, giving Senate Democrats and some Republicans fresh ammunition to demand Blanche testify before his confirmation.
- Bondi refused to discuss any conversations she had with Trump — including reports that she told him he was mentioned in the Epstein files — with DOJ’s Harmeet Dhillon shutting down those questions as privileged executive communications.
- Bondi’s appearance wasn’t even under oath — House Oversight Chair James Comer downgraded it from a deposition to a voluntary transcribed interview after she was fired, meaning she faced no legal consequences for incomplete answers.
Bondi invoked privilege, declined to answer questions about interactions with Trump about Epstein files (ABC)
- Bondi refused to say whether Trump directed any DOJ actions on the Epstein files, or whether she informed him his name appeared in them before Congress mandated their release — invoking privilege on all conversations with the president.
- Bondi acknowledged the DOJ improperly released victim names and identifying information, while defending the overall process as a “Herculean task” managed with “very little error.”
- Bondi said she had no role in the July 2025 FBI-DOJ memo that declared there was no “client list” and no further disclosures were warranted — pinning that entirely on Blanche, then walking it back by calling him “one of the most highly ethical individuals I know.”
- On Maxwell: “She should die in prison. She was a monster, just like Jeffrey Epstein.”
- Blanche has said the DOJ is not investigating Epstein or his associates — while more than a dozen survivors say neither he nor Bondi has ever contacted them.
House committee refers duo for criminal prosecution after hearing from Epstein survivors (Independent)
- The Trump administration’s posture throughout: Acting AG Blanche has told Fox News the Epstein files “should not be part of anything going forward” at DOJ — while more than a dozen survivors say neither Blanche nor Bondi has ever reached out to them, contradicting Blanche’s congressional testimony.
- The House Oversight Committee referred former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine and celebrity hairstylist Frédéric Fekkai to the DOJ for criminal prosecution after Epstein’s former assistant Sarah Kellen accused both men of sexually assaulting her in separate incidents.
- Kellen’s testimony described Epstein as having groomed, abused, and psychologically dominated her for nearly 20 years — and Maxwell as “mean and belittling,” calling Kellen “her slave” and “piglet” while facilitating Epstein’s crimes.
- Kellen said she met Trump once for “maybe five minutes” at Mar-a-Lago in 2002 or 2003 and made no accusations against him; she also recalled meeting Clinton, Gates, Prince Andrew, and Leon Black without accusing any of them of wrongdoing.
Trump appointee leading $205bn US agency had personal ties to Epstein, emails show (Guardian)
- Trump appointed Ben Black — son of Apollo Global Management founder Leon Black, Epstein’s highest-paying client at $170 million — to lead the Development Finance Corporation, the US government’s largest overseas investment arm, now with a $205 billion lending cap after Congress tripled it.
- DOJ records from Epstein’s correspondence show Ben Black invested in the same company as Epstein, Epstein attended his 30th birthday, advised him on an $11.5 million townhouse purchase, and helped a woman in his network compose messages to Black — who she said kissed her the following day.
- Black’s lawyers deny any personal relationship with Epstein; DFC staff described discovering their boss in the Epstein files and said morale collapsed: “This is such a joke.”
- Trump has now appointed at least four men with known Epstein ties to federal office, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick — who sits on DFC’s board alongside Black.

Corruption

“Totally unacceptable”: Pence calls slush fund for Jan. 6 rioters “deeply offensive” (Salon)
- Mike Pence — who was inside the Capitol as the mob tried to hunt him down — called the anti-weaponization fund “totally unacceptable” and “deeply offensive,” demanding Trump “drop the idea entirely.” Trump, for the record, previously shrugged off threats to Pence’s life on January 6 with “so what?”
Trump administration is scrapping $1.8B fund meant to compensate president’s allies, Blanche says (AP)
- The anti-weaponization fund is dead. Acting AG Blanche told a House hearing Tuesday: “We are not moving forward with the fund, period.” When asked if that meant ever: “Correct.”
- The rare Trump administration capitulation came after Senate Republicans held the Homeland Security spending bill hostage over the fund, refusing to pass immigration enforcement funding until the White House backed down.
- The $1.776 billion fund — created two weeks ago as part of Trump’s IRS lawsuit settlement — was frozen by a federal judge, lambasted by both parties, and became a legislative grenade that threatened to blow up key White House priorities.
- Still unresolved: whether scrapping the fund also means walking back the IRS settlement provision permanently shielding Trump and his family from future tax audits.
Senate begins voting on funding immigration enforcement after Trump’s settlement fund is dropped (AP)
- The Senate voted 53-46 to begin debate on the $70 billion ICE and Border Patrol funding bill — but hours after Acting AG Blanche declared the anti-weaponization fund dead “period,” Trump told reporters at the White House “I love it. I think it’s so important” and wouldn’t say whether it was dead or just on hold.
- That created an immediate problem: Democrats announced they’d force amendment votes to ban the fund permanently, and even Sen. Thom Tillis is offering a Republican amendment to put Blanche’s promise in writing.
- The $1 billion in White House security funding — including for Trump’s ballroom — was stripped from the bill to help it move forward.
- Bottom line on GOP unity: Thune was asked if Republicans would hold together on the immigration bill. His answer: “We’ll find out.”
Indiana Angle:
- Trump issues pardon to former Republican congressman convicted of insider trading (AP)
  - Trump pardoned former Indiana Republican Congressman Stephen Buyer, who served nearly two years in prison for insider trading on a $26.5 billion T-Mobile/Sprint merger and a separate acquisition deal — convicted of crimes he committed as a lobbyist after leaving office.
  - The pardon was justified by more than 40 former Republican members of Congress claiming Buyer was “targeted by the deep state” because of his role as a House prosecutor at Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial — a stretch that strains credulity given the convictions were secured under Trump’s own first term DOJ appointees.
  - The Supreme Court had rejected Buyer’s appeal without comment just weeks before the pardon was issued.
  - Buyer served Indiana’s 5th, then 4th District, over an 18 year career in Congress
- Background - President Trump’s Pardons: An Embarrassment of Riches (Cato)
  - In his first year back, Trump issued 166 individual pardons plus the mass J6 pardon — eight times Biden’s rate — forgiving more than $1.5 billion in criminal debts owed to victims and government treasuries, compared to roughly $680,000 under Biden.
  - Cato’s analysis identifies a pattern of apparent pay-to-play: Trevor Milton donated $1.8 million to Trump’s campaign before getting a pardon that wiped out $660 million in restitution; Changpeng Zhao brokered a $2 billion crypto investment with Trump’s sons before his pardon; Paul Walczak’s mother paid $1 million to dine at Mar-a-Lago before his tax fraud pardon.
  - Trump also made history by issuing the nation’s first-ever pardon to a corporation.
  - The Buyer pardon fits squarely into the piece’s fifth category: pardons for campaign supporters and political allies who “stretched or broke the law.”
- New records spotlight $90K restitution fund payment to donor, nearly $500K in raises under Morales (ICC)
  - Morales’ office paid $90,000 from Indiana’s Securities Restitution Fund — meant to compensate fraud victims — to Maverick Quantum, a Texas AI software company whose CEO has donated $55,000 to Morales’ campaign and $20,000 to Braun’s; the contract was awarded without competitive bidding.
  - The payment appears to be the only vendor disbursement from the restitution fund since at least 2020 — every other payment during that period went to actual fraud victims.
  - Two months after Morales pledged “fiscal restraint” and “virtually flat staffing” to the State Budget Committee, his office quietly approved $493,000 in raises for 79 employees — while other state employees received no raises two years running.
  - The raises included 27-28% bumps for two senior staffers: Morales’ 2022 campaign manager and the chief of staff who later became the center of the noncitizen voter registration controversy.

Immigration -> Incarceration

Indiana Angle:
- Indiana attorney general readies new immigration biz enforcement powers (ICC)
  - Indiana AG Todd Rokita is gearing up to enforce a new state law — effective July 1 — that bans employers from knowingly hiring unauthorized workers and gives his office power to seek court-ordered suspension or permanent revocation of a business’s operating license.
  - Rokita says he’ll prioritize tips from ICE, the federal Department of Labor, and local law enforcement — but will also screen out complaints that appear to be competitors ratting each other out for business reasons.
  - Businesses that can show they used e-Verify or industry best practices will have some protection; Rokita’s office is also finalizing a data-sharing agreement with the US Department of Labor to track compliance.
- Following more devastating fires at Indiana’s oldest prison, IDOC commissioner says ‘It’s obvious something else should have been done’ (WTHR)
  - Following WTHR’s “Burned Alive” investigation, Indiana’s oldest prison has seen two more catastrophic fires: Adam Schafer lost both arms and a leg to fourth-degree burns covering 65% of his body; Cameron Sifrer suffered third-degree burns over 80% of his body and lost the tips of all his fingers.
  - IDOC Commissioner Lloyd Arnold admitted bluntly: “It’s obvious something else should have been done” — then outlined nearly $1 million in emergency fixes including cutting power to D-cellhouse cells, adding fire watches, repainting with non-combustible paint, and replacing flammable mattresses.
  - Live fire testing showed why the fires are so deadly: current prison mattresses are fully consumed in 13 minutes, raising cell temperatures to 345 degrees. A fire-resistant foam mattress under identical conditions barely charred — IDOC is now ordering 3,000 for the prison and plans to replace all 27,000+ inmate mattresses statewide at a cost of $4.6 million.
  - Indiana State Prison, built in 1860, has no fire sprinklers and is exempt from modern fire codes — and Arnold says it’s staying open because the state needs the beds.
The Delaney Hall Strikers Are Hitting GEO Group Where It Hurts (Mother Jones)
- The Delaney Hall labor strike is now nearly two weeks old and near-unanimous — detained people have stopped cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, and cutting hair, causing the facility to become “really dirty” and “smell like feces” as GEO Group lacks actual paid staff to do those jobs.
- GEO Group’s own detainee handbook makes the economics plain: kitchen workers earn $4/day, laundry and barbershop workers $3, everyone else $1 — wages unchanged since 1950, when they were pegged to the Geneva Convention standard for prisoners of war. A pair of shoes at the commissary costs $24.28 — several weeks’ wages.
- The handbook also lists “encouraging others to participate in a work stoppage” as a “high offense” punishable by disciplinary transfer, isolation, or criminal proceedings — meaning the strike itself is technically punishable under facility rules.
- Members of at least 12 unions — including the Teamsters and American Federation of Teachers — picketed outside this week; Gov. Sherrill announced $12 million in new legal aid funding for detainees on day 13 of the strike.
‘Hey, Mikie, WTF?’: New Jersey governor facing outrage over attacks on Delaney Hall protesters (Guardian)
- Gov. Sherrill is now facing outrage from her own supporters over Delaney Hall — state police she deployed in riot gear arrested dozens of protesters, hospitalized some, pulled a news crew from their vehicle exposing them to teargas, and held journalists for a full day.
- Inside the facility, ICE pepper-sprayed hunger strikers, sending some to the hospital; GEO Group confirmed “chemical agents” were used.
- Some wins: all pregnant detainees released, visitation resuming, Newark lifted the curfew, and Sherrill announced $12 million in legal aid — but organizers say none of it addresses the core demands, and at least one progressive group that backed Sherrill is now calling for her resignation.
ICE will stop reporting deaths of newly released detainees (ABC)
- ICE quietly ended its policy of reporting deaths of former detainees that occur within 30 days of release — calling it “common sense” since the person is no longer in custody.
- The timing is notable: 49 people have died in ICE custody since Trump’s second term began, making the first 14 months of this administration the deadliest period for the federal detention system in recent years outside of the COVID pandemic.
- Under the Biden policy, post-release deaths within 30 days were still tracked and reported. That limited window of accountability is now gone entirely.
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Childcare

Report: 80% of eligible low-income children not served by state’s subsidized childcare programs (ICC)
- Even after a $200 million state infusion, Indiana’s subsidized childcare programs will serve less than 20% of eligible low-income children by year’s end — leaving roughly 250,000+ kids whose families qualify without access.
- The programs had been closed to new enrollees since December 2024 after a cash flow crisis where enrollment costs exceeded sustainable funding by $225 million; only 43,000 of 300,000 eligible children were enrolled as of February.
- Even hitting the target enrollment of 57,000 by end of 2026 still leaves 20,000+ children on the waitlist — and the $200 million doesn’t cover the full cost of the new vouchers over their average 2.5-year lifespan.
- Indiana’s total childcare spending ranked 38th among states in 2025 — but its per-child spending ranked 9th, suggesting the problem is scale, not efficiency.
State drafts childcare regulations governor says will boost affordability (ICC)
- Indiana is proposing to lower childcare qualification requirements in the name of affordability — center directors would no longer need bachelor’s degrees, lead caregivers would only need a high school diploma, and lower-level caregivers wouldn’t need to have completed high school at all.
- Other proposed rollbacks: eliminating required lists of learning activities like art, literacy, math, and science; loosening rules on sleeping surfaces and diaper-changing tables; dropping several required safety postings; and allowing parents to request vaccine exemptions.
- The state frames it as reducing “administrative burdens” — critics would note Indiana already serves less than 20% of eligible low-income children and ranks 38th in total childcare spending, so the answer to the affordability crisis is being proposed as lower standards, not more investment.

Public Health

Trump taps defense funding for Indiana coal upgrades (ICC)
- Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to direct $700 million in defense and energy funding to coal plants nationwide, including Indiana’s Merom Generating Station in Sullivan County — framed as an affordability measure despite having no impact on the oil prices driving current energy costs.
- The article notes flatly: “The coal-focused changes won’t impact oil prices that have surged since Trump launched war with Iran.”
- Trump’s DOE has already been forcing NIPSCO and CenterPoint to keep aging Indiana coal plants running past their planned retirement dates — moves the utilities say are costing them, and ultimately Indiana ratepayers, hundreds of millions of dollars.
Background: How Uneconomic Coal Plants Hurt our Health — and Drive Up Healthcare Costs (RMI)
- RMI research found that uneconomic coal plants — those running when cheaper energy sources are available — cost US communities $13-$26 billion annually in health costs, roughly 13 times what ratepayers pay for the electricity itself.
- Between 2015 and 2023, those emissions are estimated to have caused 16,661 premature deaths, 19,565 emergency room visits, over 50,000 new asthma cases, and more than 3 billion lost school days nationwide.
- The Midwest — Indiana’s region — has among the highest health impacts in the country, due to coal plants located near densely populated areas.
Ebola outbreak spreading in Africa is ‘likely far worse’ than official figures suggest: IRC (ABC)
- The IRC warns the DRC Ebola outbreak is “likely far worse” than official figures suggest — only 20% of contacts are being traced, meaning health authorities are largely flying blind on new transmission chains.
- The outbreak may have been spreading undetected since before March — up to three months before it was officially confirmed in mid-May — with diagnostic shortages and testing backlogs further obscuring the true scale.
- At least nine travel-related cases have already reached Uganda, with one death; the IRC fears spread to Burundi and South Sudan.
- A critical complication: there is no approved vaccine for this strain — the Bundibugyo virus — though CEPI has urgently activated development of three candidates from IAVI, Moderna, and Oxford.
Scientists charged with smuggling deactivated mpox virus into US (USA Today)
- Two NIH researchers at Montana’s Rocky Mountain Biosafety Level 4 laboratory were charged with smuggling 113 vials — 17 containing deactivated mpox virus — from Congo on a packed commercial Delta flight, then lying to customs agents who asked what was in the large black case they were carrying.
- The researchers, Vincent Munster and Claude Kwe, were stopped in January at Detroit Metro Airport after a flight originating in Brazzaville, Congo, where an mpox outbreak was actively occurring.
- The deactivated virus poses no infection risk, but the method of transport — a commercial airliner with no biosafety precautions — is what prompted charges; both face up to five years in prison.

Tech

The US Has a Plan to Combat Screwworm. It Involves a Lot More Flies (Wired)
- Flesh-eating New World screwworm has been confirmed in a Texas calf — the first US case since the pest was eradicated here in 1966, after breaking through the Darién Gap barrier that had kept it contained to Central America.
- Before eradication, screwworms killed hundreds of thousands of US cattle annually — and with the US herd already at a 75-year low, a new outbreak could devastate beef prices and the broader agricultural economy.
- The USDA needs 400 million sterile flies per week to beat it back; they can currently only produce 100 million per week, with a Mexican facility coming online this summer and a $750 million Texas facility not ready until November 2027.
- Since 2023, there have been at least 2,070 human cases in Mexico and Central America — it can infect people, not just livestock.
Debugging: Google requests permission to release 32m mosquitoes in California and Florida (Guardian)
- Google has asked the EPA for permission to release up to 32 million sterile male mosquitoes in California and Florida over two years, as part of its “Debug” program to suppress disease-spreading mosquito populations.
- The method: male mosquitoes infected with a naturally occurring bacteria called wolbachia can’t produce viable offspring with wild females — shrinking the population each generation without pesticides.
- It’s already working: Singapore achieved 80-90% suppression of the target mosquito species and a 70%+ reduction in dengue cases after 6-12 months of releases.
- The public comment period ends June 5; the EPA will then decide whether to approve the experimental use permit.
Indiana Tech:
- Caught on camera: Shelbyville mayor insinuates citizens opposing data centers are poor renters in ‘sh***y houses’ (FOX59)
  - Shelbyville Mayor Scott Furgeson was caught on camera telling a group of women that “No Data Centers” yard signs only appear in “sh***y houses” — and when corrected that they’re working-class homes, doubled down: “Most of them are rentals so… very, very unkempt.”
  - His non-apology statement said he “regrets that his choice of words may have caused offense” and claimed he was only referring to property maintenance, not people’s character.
  - The city council approved a plan to turn 429 acres of Shelbyville farmland into an 11-building data center complex in April — over the objections of more than 2,000 petition signers and a room full of angry constituents.
  - The contempt on display fits a pattern across central Indiana: community leaders approving billion-dollar data center projects while dismissing or ignoring the public opposition to them.
- Indianapolis City-County Council adopts proposal to remove councilors’ home addresses from public disclosure statements (FOX59)
  - The Indianapolis City-County Council voted to remove councilors’ home addresses from required public ethics disclosure forms, one month after shots were fired into the home of Councilor Ron Gibson — who had supported the controversial Martindale-Brightwood data center — with a “no data centers” note left on his doorstep.

Media

60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley accuses Bari Weiss of ‘murdering’ show (Guardian)
- Veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley confronted CBS management in a staff meeting Monday, saying of Bari Weiss: “She’s murdering 60 Minutes. She was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.” The assembled staff gave him a standing ovation.
- Fired correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi — whose El Salvador prison segment Weiss shelved — said “the wall between editorial independence and corporate interest at CBS is being methodically torn down.”
- Fired correspondent Cecilia Vega went further, alleging “efforts to insert political bias into our stories” and calling it “censorship, both imposed and self-driven — dangerous for the show and dangerous for democracy.”
- Pelley’s future at the show is now in question, though the network is reportedly making overtures to keep him
Scott Pelley Fired From ‘60 Minutes’ Following Explosive Showdown With New Boss (HuffPost)
- Scott Pelley was fired from 60 Minutes on Tuesday, the day after he publicly called Bari Weiss a murderer of the show — summoned into a meeting with Weiss, new EP Nick Bilton, CBS News president Tom Cibrowski, and an HR rep.
- Bilton’s termination email called Monday’s all-hands confrontation “an ambush” and “a performative display of hostility,” saying Pelley had “hijacked” his first staff meeting to “disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions.”
- Pelley told the Times before being fired that he’d been pressured to insert bias into his stories, calling “the collapse of values at the top” untenable — and afterward: “I have been in combat in Afghanistan. I have been in combat in Iraq. I have been in the war zone in Ukraine multiple times, risking my life because of my devotion to the broadcast.”
- Current and former CBS staffers sent a letter to Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison warning that the firings “put the legacy of 60 Minutes in jeopardy”; former EP Bill Owens, who left over editorial independence concerns, said he “couldn’t be prouder” of Pelley.

Sports

It’s Indiana: Bears’ board of directors votes to push stadium to Hammond (Sun-Times)
- The Chicago Bears’ board of directors voted to advance their stadium development project in Hammond, Indiana — the most concrete step yet toward the team leaving Illinois after a five-year stadium saga.
- Indiana lured them with a sweetheart deal: the Bears keep all stadium revenue, contribute $2 billion, and can buy the stadium back for $1 after 40 years when Indiana taxpayers have paid off the bonds.
- Gov. Braun celebrated with a reference to the ‘85 Bears defense; Illinois officials insist it’s not over, noting the Bears don’t even have a final Hammond site yet — but the clock is ticking if construction is to start next spring for a 2031 opening.
- A league source said there is “still a lot of ballgame left to play” for Illinois — if the state can find a way to give the Bears property tax certainty on their 326-acre Arlington Heights site, that option stays alive. The Bears’ statement pointedly did not say Illinois was off the table, and Bears officials told Illinois lawmakers they looked forward to continuing to work together.

HoosLeft Podcast #128: Live w/ guest Dr. David Sanders

Scott Aaron Rogers — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 10:00:56 GMT

Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net

HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us

Sanders Campaign Site: https://davidsandersindiana.com/

SUMMARY:

In this return visit to the HoosLeft Podcast, Scott welcomes Dr. David Sanders — Purdue University biology professor, 10-year West Lafayette City Councilor, and Democratic candidate for Indiana State Senate District 23 -- to cover two interconnected crises: the ongoing retreat from global public health infrastructure under an anti-science federal administration, and the accelerating threat to Indiana’s water supply posed by the IEDC’s water-hungry economic development agenda. Sanders draws on his decades of Ebola research and bioweapons nonproliferation work to argue for scientific literacy in government, then walks through the successful Stop the Water Steal campaign that beat back the IEDC’s plan to drain Wabash River aquifers for the LEAP Innovation District — and explains why that fight is far from over, with Eagle Creek Reservoir now in the crosshairs, SK Hynix eyeing those same aquifers for its new West Lafayette packaging plant, and the IEDC’s corruption — documented in the IndyStar’s “Three Kings” reporting — making the case for abolishing the agency outright.

WHAT’S INSIDE:

00:00:00 Introduction and Support the Show

- Scott introduces tonight’s episode as a return visit from one of his earliest guests, framing the conversation around a problem that has only grown since they last spoke.

- HoosLeft and Progressive Indiana Network don’t paywall content or charge candidates — listener support at progressiveindiana.net is what keeps the project going.

- Social handles: @hoosleft.us on Bluesky, Instagram, and Threads; @HoosLeft on Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube; PIN is @PINIndiana on Bluesky and TikTok, @progressiveindiananetwork everywhere else.

00:03:33 Guest Introduction: Dr. David Sanders

- Scott welcomes Sanders back as a long-time ally and early guest, flagging that a full candidate policy interview with Derrick Holder is coming later in the campaign season.

00:04:10 Sanders Bio Part 1: Purdue, Ebola Research, and Bioweapons Nonproliferation

- Sanders has taught in Purdue’s Department of Biological Sciences for 30 years, specializing in how viruses enter cells; he holds patents on gene therapy vectors and has done significant Ebola research.

- He worked with the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s Biological Weapons Proliferation Prevention Program, including a visit to the formerly secret Soviet bioweapons lab Vector in Siberia — one of only two places on earth that still holds live smallpox virus.

- The program’s goal was to keep former Soviet scientists gainfully employed so they wouldn’t sell their expertise to what the State Department called “Third Nations” (Iraq, Iran, North Korea) or terrorist organizations — a Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction outgrowth that Putin eventually killed as he consolidated power.

00:06:09 Sanders Bio Part 2: City Council and Community Work

- Sanders has served on West Lafayette City Council for 10 years, working on issues including government surveillance, environmental protection, and making the city welcoming to its large international community.

- He’s also worked on quality-of-life issues like trails and bike infrastructure — trying to make West Lafayette a well-rounded community that serves all of its people.

00:08:19 Should We Be Worried About Ebola? Individual Risk and Hospital Preparedness

- Sanders’ direct answer: the individual risk of acquiring Ebola in the U.S. is extremely low; the real danger is to hospital workers treating an exposed patient, as seen in Dallas in 2014.

- Sanders was researching Ebola before 9/11, when almost no one else in the country was; that expertise led to a 6 a.m. CNN call after the Dallas nurses’ infection.

- His position, which differed from the CDC’s at the time: every hospital should be able to recognize an Ebola case, but treatment should happen at specialized regional centers — because proper use of personal protective equipment requires intensive, specialized training.

00:10:43 The CNN Story: How Sanders Pushed the Regional Treatment Center Model

- Sanders recounts being put on CNN opposite a physician who initially took the opposite position — every hospital should be able to treat Ebola — only to reverse course on the 7 a.m. segment.

- The regional treatment center model was subsequently adopted as U.S. policy, and Sanders credits the willingness of officials to listen to a well-reasoned argument as the reason it worked.

- He uses the story as an illustration of what scientific knowledge in a legislator can actually accomplish: not just commentary, but durable policy change.

00:12:48 RFK, Anti-Science Governance, and the Case for Global Public Health Engagement

- With RFK Jr. leading HHS, Sanders argues the U.S. has become an anti-science administration at exactly the wrong moment — and that pulling back from international Ebola engagement leaves us less prepared for the next outbreak.

- After the 2014 outbreak, Sanders called for building healthcare infrastructure in affected African countries so hospital workers wouldn’t be endangered; that investment never happened at the scale needed.

- The larger lesson: public health is a societal, not individual, issue — and with global travel and rising population density, every outbreak should be treated as a training exercise for the next pandemic.

00:15:58 Transition: From Global Health Crisis to Indiana’s Water Crisis

- Scott bridges from infectious disease to water: both are public health issues, both are being mismanaged, and both are being made worse by the current political environment.

00:16:43 The LEAP Pipeline Plan: How It Started and Why It Was Wrong

- The LEAP Innovation District was sited in Boone County near Lebanon with essentially no local water supply -- IEDC either didn’t know or didn’t care, planning to solve the water problem later.

- The proposed solution: a multi-billion dollar pipeline to pump water from Wabash River aquifers in Tippecanoe County, roughly 25 miles, to supply the development’s water-intensive manufacturers including Lilly’s pharmaceutical plant.

- Sanders’ scientific objection: those aquifers are near a toxic waste dump; pumping water out would draw toxins into the aquifer system and potentially into the Wabash River itself.

00:18:30 The IEDC’s Mission Creep and the Secrecy Behind the Pipeline

- The IEDC was created by Mitch Daniels to replace the Department of Commerce and recruit businesses to Indiana — a reasonable starting point that metastasized into a real estate corporation, tax abatement authority, and tax-collecting entity by 2022.

- All of the LEAP planning — land acquisition, pipeline routing, annexation to Lebanon -- was done in complete secrecy, with no public transparency or community notice.

- The state legislature enabled all of it; when Sanders first raised the alarm, every advisor told him it was a done deal and a city councilor couldn’t do anything about it.

00:20:01 Stop the Water Steal: How Sanders Organized the Community Response

- Sanders rejected the “done deal” framing, spoke out publicly at a meeting, and was immediately flooded with calls and texts from concerned residents — confirming this was not just his concern.

- He drafted a resolution opposing the pipeline, found a co-sponsor, passed it unanimously, and it became the template for roughly 18 similar resolutions across Indiana — mostly from Wabash River communities.

- The effort was bipartisan from the start, even in counties with all-Republican commissioners: the water issue united people across the political spectrum in a way nothing had in Tippecanoe County for decades.

00:22:25 What Stopped the Pipeline — and What It Proved About Grassroots Power

- It wasn’t the legislature that stopped the pipeline — legislation didn’t do it. It was the political pressure and media attention generated by Stop the Water Steal and allied organizations.

- The scale of the threatened draw was enormous: semiconductor manufacturing plants can use up to 100 million gallons per day — dwarfing even the water demands of data centers or Lilly.

- After Tippecanoe County organized effectively, IEDC pivoted to Eagle Creek Reservoir in Indianapolis — and Sanders has been in contact with Eagle Creek advocates who want to replicate the model.

00:24:04 Home Rule, State Preemption, and the IEDC’s War on Local Communities

- Sanders argues that home rule — the right of communities to make their own laws — is a unifying issue across the political spectrum, and that the state legislature’s repeated preemption of local authority (on environmental rules, puppy mills, and more) is the core problem.

- The IEDC functions as the mechanism of state imposition: it overrides community objections, hands out tax abatements, and operates with no meaningful accountability to affected residents.

- Sanders calls for abolishing the IEDC entirely — not reforming it — citing the IndyStar’s “Three Kings” reporting, which revealed that IEDC figures directed roughly $180 million to corporations they were personally connected to.

00:27:11 The Tax Abatement Contradiction and the Burden on Working People

- Scott lays out the contradiction: Indiana recruits companies to pay taxes here, then gives them tax abatements so they don’t — shifting the fiscal burden onto workers and residents rather than the corporations themselves.

- The abatements are presented as economic development but function as corporate welfare, often given to companies that were going to come anyway.

00:28:33 Eagle Creek Reservoir: The IEDC’s Next Target and Lessons for Indianapolis

- The IEDC, LEAP, Lebanon Utilities, and Citizens Energy were secretly negotiating a water deal for Eagle Creek before any Indianapolis residents knew about it — the same pattern of secrecy used in Tippecanoe County.

- Scott notes that 21 of 25 Indianapolis City-County Councilors signed a letter opposing the plan — a strong bipartisan rebuke that echoes the Tippecanoe resolution campaign.

- Sanders’ intelligence: at least one semiconductor company that had been eyeing the LEAP District has already walked away because the water supply issue remains unresolved.

00:30:19 Advice to Eagle Creek Organizers: See the IEDC as the Common Enemy

- Don’t let anyone convince you it’s a done deal. Stop the Water Steal didn’t guarantee a win — they just refused to accept defeat — and they succeeded.

- Organize broadly: write to all legislators and all candidates, not just your own representatives, and unite with groups across the state facing similar IEDC-driven disruptions.

- The key insight: data centers, carbon sequestration pipelines, water diversions, and semiconductor plants are all the same fight — the IEDC is the common thread, and that’s where pressure must be directed.

00:32:33 Whack-a-Mole: How the IEDC Targets Black Neighborhoods and Rural Communities

- Scott observes that IEDC projects consistently land in predominantly Black Indianapolis neighborhoods and rural communities — the least organized, most vulnerable areas — because that’s what happens when you play defense project-by-project.

- Sanders adds that both groups are being treated with contempt by the Republican supermajority: rural areas that vote Republican aren’t getting broadband, healthcare, or economic investment — just corporate playgrounds.

- The urban-rural divide that defines so much of American politics is actually a potential bridge here: both communities are being exploited by the same actors.

00:35:05 Devil’s Advocate: Governor Braun’s Water Reassurances and Sanders’ Rebuttal

- Scott presents Braun’s argument: the water is treated and returned, so the concern is overblown.

- Sanders’ response: wastewater treatment was built for microbiological threats, not the chemical challenges posed by modern manufacturing — PFAS, microplastics, and the proprietary chemicals used in semiconductor processes that we don’t even have full disclosure on.

- Data centers technically could recycle their water in closed systems, but there’s no requirement that they do, and many don’t.

00:37:21 Water Treatment, PFAS, and the Unknown Chemicals of Semiconductor Manufacturing

- The IEDC assured Tippecanoe County residents that transferring water from one watershed to another was fine — but there is no ecologist or scientist who would endorse cross-watershed diversion as safe practice.

- The semiconductor industry uses proprietary chemical processes that aren’t publicly disclosed; treating that return water is genuinely complex and unresolved science.

- Sanders’ broader objection isn’t alarmism — it’s that the lack of transparency from both corporations and government agencies makes informed evaluation impossible.

00:39:19 Arrogant Planning, the Great Lakes Gaffe, and the Return of the Bald Eagle

- The head of the IEDC during the pipeline fight told critics that as long as there’s water in the Great Lakes, there’s no problem — apparently unaware that the Great Lakes are not connected to the Wabash River watershed.

- Sanders contrasts that ignorance with a hopeful environmental story: bald eagles have returned to perch over the Wabash River near West Lafayette, something he hadn’t seen in his 30 years there — evidence that the river’s recovery from DDT and industrial contamination is real.

- The DDT lesson: corporations assured the public those chemicals were safe too, and it took community organizing and public scientific pressure to change course — the same dynamic playing out now.

00:41:52 Why the Legislature Needs a Scientist: Sanders Makes the Case

- Sanders argues that most issues facing society today — agriculture, genetic engineering, infectious disease, child mortality, healthcare infrastructure — have a scientific or technological basis that legislators need to understand firsthand, even if the solutions are political.

- He doesn’t claim the legislature needs to be all scientists; he argues it needs at least one person who can evaluate what government agencies and corporations are actually generating in terms of data.

- One of Stop the Water Steal’s underappreciated assets was its network of scientific experts — contacts Sanders still maintains and can deploy in the legislature.

00:44:10 Move Fast and Break Things: Corporate Hubris and the DDT Lesson

- Scott names the underlying attitude: Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” ethos applied to industrial development, with investors demanding returns now and consequences to be dealt with later — by someone else.

- The DDT contamination of the Wabash took decades to partially remediate; the corporations responsible were long gone.

- The parallel to current IEDC-driven development is direct: no long-term environmental planning, no accountability, no clawback provisions.

00:45:38 SK Hynix in West Lafayette: The Packaging Plant, the Rezoning Fight, and PRF’s Role

- SK Hynix’s West Lafayette facility is a chip packaging plant — less water-intensive than full semiconductor fabrication, but still using more water than all residential customers in West Lafayette combined; it’s eyeing the same Wabash aquifers.

- The city council rezoning fight lasted past 1 a.m., with overwhelming community opposition — and when asked what chemicals would be used, SK Hynix’s representatives said only “copper and alcohol,” an answer Sanders calls completely inadequate.

- The facility was sited in a residential neighborhood rather than the abundant open land in Tippecanoe County because the Purdue Research Foundation — which owned that specific land — wanted the financial proceeds; the Area Plan Commission had already voted against the rezoning, making the council’s approval an unprecedented override.

00:49:37 The Three Kings: IEDC Corruption, Chad Pittman, and the PRF Revolving Door

- The IndyStar’s “Three Kings” investigation documented that IEDC insiders directed approximately $180 million to corporations they were personally connected to — including one king writing a funding request letter from his own outside organization to himself at the IEDC.

- Chad Pittman, named as one of the Three Kings, is now the head of the Purdue Research Foundation — connecting the IEDC corruption story directly to the SK Hynix siting decision.

- Sanders calls it a revolving door of public money serving private interests, and says the fact that PRF continues to be run by someone implicated in that reporting is indefensible.

00:52:47 The Military-Industrial Angle: CHIPS Act, Crane, and PRF’s Defense Contractor Focus

- Scott notes the CHIPS and Science Act’s national security rationale — reshoring semiconductor manufacturing away from China and Taiwan — and flags Purdue’s position within that ecosystem alongside the Applied Research Institute and the Crane Naval Warfare Center.

- Sanders confirms: PRF has recruited almost exclusively military contractors — Rolls-Royce and Saab, which both exited the consumer vehicle business long ago and now primarily make aircraft engines and military equipment.

- Sanders isn’t opposed to national defense, but argues that a university conducting all its industrial recruitment in secret and focusing almost entirely on military contractors represents a lack of balance and a betrayal of the public-good mission.

00:54:51 Rolls-Royce, Saab, Tax Abatements, and Corporate Welfare Without Clawbacks

- Rolls-Royce was involved in the largest corporate bribery scandal in UK history, with U.S. involvement as well — not exactly a vetted partner for a public university.

- These corporations received tax abatements at levels out of proportion to the rest of the country, despite the fact that they were going to come to Purdue anyway — meaning the abatements were pure corporate welfare.

- The lack of clawback provisions is the tell: without them, corporations can pull up stakes before their tax abatement periods expire, as has happened repeatedly. Sanders points to Foxconn in Wisconsin as the cautionary tale, and argues that investing in existing Indiana businesses and entrepreneurs would produce better economic returns.

00:59:22 How to Support Dr. David Sanders and Follow-Up Campaign Notes

- The Republican primary for this seat saw $3 million spent on negative ads that Sanders says contained outright falsehoods about both candidates — meaning whoever emerges will have enormous resources.

- Follow the money: Sanders says donors supporting his opponents include corporations promoting carbon sequestration in Indiana; he’s running on small-dollar, citizen fundraising only.

Thanks again to Dr. Sanders for joining us. You can find out more about his campaign for State Senate at his campaign website https://davidsandersindiana.com. You can donate using his ActBlue page here: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/david-sanders-for-indiana-1 and follow him on social media at the following:

https://www.facebook.com/SandersforIndianaSenate

https://www.instagram.com/davidfordistrict23/

https://x.com/davidsandersrep

https://bsky.app/profile/davidsanderssci.bsky.social

HoosLeft This Week - May 31, 2026

Scott Aaron Rogers — Sun, 31 May 2026 18:01:53 GMT

SUMMARY:

On this week’s episode, host Scott Aaron Rogers is joined by Democratic Secretary of State candidate Blythe Potter and Hancock County Democratic Party vice chair Chuck Gill for a wide-ranging conversation covering a month’s worth of compounding crises. The panel works through the whiplash of the Iran ceasefire negotiations — from the prospect of a 60-day memorandum of understanding to Trump’s weekend backpedaling — alongside Israel’s expanding military operations in Lebanon and Gaza, a Russian drone strike on Romanian soil that tested NATO’s resolve, and the mounting economic fallout of the Iran war, including 3.8% inflation, diesel topping six dollars a gallon, and an AI-inflated stock market Andrew Ross Sorkin says is headed for a crash. From there the show turns to Pope Leo XIV’s landmark encyclical *Magnifica Humanitas* and its call to subject artificial intelligence to human and moral limits, before pivoting to Indiana Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith’s declaration that Islam is a “demonic death cult” and the disgust it produced even within his own party. The back half of the show covers the hunger strike and protests at Delaney Hall ICE detention facility in Newark, the Trump DOJ’s subpoenas of Reddit and X users who criticized ICE, the administration’s $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund for January 6th defendants, the gutting of *60 Minutes* under CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, Ken Paxton’s Republican Senate primary win in Texas and what it means for Democrat James Talarico’s chances in November, and a raft of Indiana stories: the Martindale-Brightwood clergy demanding Mayor Hogsett halt the MetroBlox data center project, the LEAP District water conflict of interest, the Cummins AI theft verdict, Diego Morales’s implosion ahead of the Republican SOS convention, the naming of Jessica Bailey and Coumba Kebe as Democratic candidates for comptroller and treasurer, the Gary gun lawsuit dying after 27 years, and criminal charges against the New Chicago police chief.

IN DEPTH:

War on Multiple Fronts

This Week in Iran
- Monday
  - Trump says ‘mandatory’ for Muslim nations involved in Iran deal to join Abraham Accords (Times of Israel)
    - Trump is demanding six Muslim-majority nations — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan — sign the Abraham Accords as a condition of any Iran nuclear deal.
    - Saudi Arabia’s response: normalization with Israel only happens with an “irreversible pathway” to Palestinian statehood — a flat no for now.
    - When Trump pitched the idea to those leaders on a call, the response was dead silence. Trump literally asked if they were still on the line.
    - Israeli officials are alarmed by the emerging deal, warning it doesn’t address Iran’s nukes, missiles, or proxies — just a 60-day ceasefire extension that gives Tehran time to recover.
    - Trump is floating the idea of Iran itself eventually joining the Abraham Accords — a nation sworn to Israel’s destruction.
  - US military launches strikes on southern Iran amid talks in Qatar (Al Jazeera)
    - The US launched “self-defense” strikes on southern Iran — missile launch sites and boats attempting to lay mines — even as Iranian negotiators were sitting down in Doha for peace talks.
    - Several IRGC personnel were killed; Iranian sources say the IRGC had targeted a vessel at sea before the US struck.
    - A ceasefire has technically been in place since April 8, but skirmishes have continued throughout — Trump has previously declined to call them ceasefire violations.
    - Iran’s top negotiators, including Foreign Minister Araghchi, were in Qatar for talks Trump called “proceeding nicely” — the strikes may derail them.
    - Iran’s foreign ministry says progress has been made but no deal is imminent, and notably says nuclear program discussions are not even on the table yet — just ending the war.
- Tuesday
  - Iran accuses U.S. of violating ceasefire and threatens retaliation after new strikes (NBC)
    - Iran formally accused the US of a “clear ceasefire violation” and threatened retaliation, while the IRGC claimed to have shot down an MQ-9 drone and driven off an F-35.
    - US officials say the strikes were a direct response to 24 hours of Iranian missile, drone, and small boat activity near the Strait of Hormuz — including surface-to-air missile launches while US aircraft were in the area.
    - Despite the flareup, Secretary of State Rubio told reporters in India a deal could be done in “a couple of days” — down to “disagreements over a word, a sentence.”
    - The framework on the table: a memorandum of understanding ending the war and reopening Hormuz, followed by 60 days to negotiate a full peace deal — with unfreezing Iranian assets in Qatar as a key Iranian demand.
- Wednesday
  - US military conducts another strike against Iran after Trump says Iran is ‘negotiating on fumes’ (AP)
    - US forces shot down four Iranian attack drones near Hormuz on Wednesday and struck a ground control station in Bandar Abbas that was about to launch a fifth.
    - Trump called Iran “negotiating on fumes” while insisting the midterms won’t rush him — “I don’t care about the midterms” — though the political pressure is clearly there.
  - U.S. military accuses Iran of ceasefire violation after Kuwait comes under missile attack (PBS)
    - Iran fired missiles at Kuwait — home to US Army Central’s forward HQ — in retaliation for the Wednesday drone strikes, with the US calling it an “egregious ceasefire violation.”
    - Kuwait’s air defenses intercepted the incoming missiles and drones; Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry condemned Iran for “blatant aggression.”
    - Both sides keep accusing each other of ceasefire violations and trading strikes all week — but neither has returned to full-scale war and negotiations continue.
  - Trump threatens to ‘blow up’ Oman amid talks over strait of Hormuz (Guardian)
    - Trump threatened to “blow up” Oman — a US ally and key war mediator — if it doesn’t “behave,” in a casual aside at his Cabinet meeting.
    - The threat came after reports that Iran is pushing Oman to jointly charge tolls on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has blockaded since late February.
    - Trump was unequivocal: no one controls the strait — “Nobody’s going to control it. We’re going to watch over it.”
- Thursday
  - Scoop: U.S. and Iran reach deal but need Trump’s final approval, officials say (Axios)
    - US and Iranian negotiators have agreed on terms for a 60-day MOU to extend the ceasefire and launch nuclear talks — but Trump hasn’t signed off yet, and Iran hasn’t formally confirmed acceptance.
    - Key terms: unrestricted Strait of Hormuz shipping, Iran removes all mines within 30 days, US lifts its naval blockade proportionally, some sanctions waivers allowing Iran to sell oil, and an Iranian commitment not to pursue a nuclear weapon.
    - The thorniest issues — how to dispose of Iran’s highly enriched uranium and what enrichment Iran can keep — are punted to negotiations during the 60-day window, along with sanctions relief and frozen assets.
    - The MOU also states the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon would end — a provision that has already caused “at least one tense discussion” between Trump and Netanyahu.
- Friday
  - Guess What Jared Kushner Tried to Include in Iran Peace Deal? (TNR)
    - Iran demanded reparations for war destruction, putting the price tag at $300 billion — and Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, both real estate investors, apparently pitched promoting real estate projects and an investment fund for Tehran as part of any peace deal.
    - The optics are brutal: Kushner is already under investigation for cashing in on foreign investment funds, and the right spent years screaming about Obama unfreezing $1.7 billion for Iran — Trump’s guys are now floating a check nearly 200 times that size.
- Deal or no Deal?
  - Iran official says Trump is stalling talks with ‘excessive demands’ as wait for breakthrough continues (NBC)
    - Trump held a Situation Room meeting Friday to make a “final determination” on the deal — and walked out saying nothing.
    - A senior Arab mediator told NBC the deal was actually closed in Doha three days ago: “now everyone is playing a game of chicken and egg.”
    - Iran is calling US demands “excessive” and accusing Trump of “betraying diplomacy for the third time.”
    - Iran’s foreign ministry reiterated Friday that nuclear issues aren’t even being discussed yet — just ending the war.
  - Trump tightens terms on Iran war deal, US media say (Al Jazeera)
    - Trump sent the Iran deal framework back with toughened terms — particularly around nuclear material — and US officials say it could take up to a week for Iran to respond, with one official saying, “They’re literally in caves, and they’re not using email.”
    - Iran’s chief negotiator Ghalibaf was blunt on Sunday: “There is no trust in the enemy’s words and promises. Our only criterion is to achieve tangible results before we fulfill our commitments.”
    - Meanwhile, Iran’s military reasserted control over the Strait of Hormuz, warning foreign vessels they would be targeted if they didn’t comply with Iranian regulations — hardly the posture of a side ready to sign.
  - Republican lawmakers warn of ‘disastrous mistake’ as Trump nears deal with Iran (Guardian)
    - Republican hawks — Wicker, Graham, Cruz, Cotton, and Pompeo — are openly panning the emerging deal, with Cruz warning that an Iran still enriching uranium, receiving billions, and controlling Hormuz would be a “disastrous mistake.”
    - Lindsey Graham asked the quiet part loud: if Iran can still terrorize the strait and threaten Gulf oil infrastructure after all this, “it makes one wonder why the war started to begin with.”
    - Pompeo called the terms “not remotely America First” and compared them directly to Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal — the one Trump spent years trashing.
    - Trump tried to walk back his own “largely negotiated” claim after the blowback, insisting nobody had seen the deal and it “isn’t even fully negotiated yet” — then told critics not to listen to “losers.”
    - Graham then did a full 180 within hours, calling Trump’s Abraham Accords pitch “brilliant” — a reminder of how fast MAGA spines straighten when the boss pushes back.
  - Ro Khanna Urges Fellow Democrats to Stop Trying to Out Hawk Trump on Iran War (Common Dreams)
    - Rep. Ro Khanna is calling out fellow Democrats for attacking Trump from the right on Iran, accusing colleagues of essentially telling Trump to “go blow up more things” rather than supporting a negotiated end to a war that has killed over 3,400 Iranians.
    - Sens. Booker and Murphy and Rep. Wasserman Schultz have all condemned the emerging deal for being too soft — echoing Republican hawk talking points about unfreezing Iranian assets and leaving the nuclear program unresolved.
    - Worth noting: Booker has taken over $800,000 from pro-Israel groups including AIPAC; Wasserman Schultz over $1.4 million.
    - A March Pew poll found nearly 90% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said Trump was wrong to go to war with Iran — making the hawk caucus badly out of step with its own base.
    - Khanna’s counter-argument: Democrats should be the anti-war party, support the negotiation, and stop goading Trump into more conflict — a position historian Stephen Wertheim called what “the vast majority of Democrats believe, but too few of their leaders say.”
The Israeli Angle
- Monday
  - Israel pounds Lebanon with fresh air strikes, vows to ‘crush’ Hezbollah (France 24)
    - Netanyahu ordered a major escalation in Lebanon, vowing to “crush” Hezbollah despite the April ceasefire — Israeli strikes hit southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and suburbs of Beirut.
    - Far-right Finance Minister Smotrich called for 10 Beirut buildings to fall for every drone strike; Ben Gvir demanded “intensive warfare” and pushing north beyond the Litani River.
    - Lebanon and Israel are still at the negotiating table in Washington, but Hezbollah leader Qassem refuses direct talks and won’t disarm — Rubio accused him of trying to “plunge Lebanon back into chaos.”
- Tuesday
  - Israeli Strikes in Southern Lebanon Kill at Least 31 People (Democracy Now)
    - Israeli strikes killed at least 31 people and wounded 40 in southern Lebanon on Tuesday alone — over 120 airstrikes in a single day, one of the heaviest bombardments in weeks.
    - Israeli troops have begun operating beyond the “Yellow Line,” pushing deeper into Lebanese territory despite the April ceasefire.
    - Over a million Lebanese have been displaced since March 2; more than 3,100 have been killed in Israeli attacks.
- Thursday
  - Netanyahu says he told IDF to seize 70% of Gaza, well beyond terms of truce (Times of Israel)
    - Netanyahu ordered the IDF to seize 70% of Gaza — already beyond the 53% permitted under the October ceasefire — and when an audience member shouted that Israel should take “100%,” Netanyahu replied: “First 70%. We’ll start with that.”
    - Israeli-backed militias are functioning as shock troops along the yellow line, forcing Palestinian civilians out at gunpoint — and are now being equipped with heavy military drones, likely supplied by Israel.
    - Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed the endgame: “voluntary migration” — what human rights groups call ethnic cleansing by making Gaza uninhabitable.
    - One analyst’s assessment: ceasefire negotiations with Hamas are effectively over, and the US fallback plan is to let Israel “deal with” anyone remaining in the Hamas zone “as they want.”
- Friday
  - Netanyahu confirms troops crossed Litani, as Pentagon hosts Israeli-Lebanon security talks (Times of Israel)
    - Netanyahu confirmed Israeli troops crossed the Litani River — long considered the benchmark for pushing Hezbollah north — while also striking Beirut and the Bekaa Valley simultaneously.
    - Since the April 16 Lebanon “ceasefire,” 55 children have been killed and 212 wounded; UNICEF called last week’s toll of 15 dead children “staggering.”
    - WHO reports 608 deaths and 1,774 injuries in Lebanon from April 17 to May 22 alone, with 16 hospitals and 13 primary healthcare centers damaged and three hospitals closed entirely.
    - Israeli strikes have hit or come dangerously close to multiple UNESCO World Heritage sites, including the ruins of Tyre and Beaufort Castle — Lebanon’s culture minister says they constitute potential violations of the 1954 Hague Convention.
Russia-Ukraine
- Russia uses hypersonic Oreshnik missile in mass attack on Kyiv (AP)
  - Russia hit Kyiv with a mass attack Sunday — 600 drones and 90 missiles — killing at least 2 and wounding 83, damaging residential buildings, schools, and areas near government offices.
  - For only the third time in the war, Russia deployed the Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile, striking the city of Bila Tserkva in the Kyiv region — a weapon capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
  - Russia framed it as retaliation for a Ukrainian drone strike on a college dormitory in Russian-occupied Luhansk that killed 21 people.
  - Ukraine’s air defenses intercepted 549 of 600 drones and 55 of 90 missiles — a strong performance, but the sheer volume of the attack overwhelmed full coverage.
- Russia warns foreign nationals to leave Kyiv after large attack (The Hill)
  - Russia followed up the Kyiv attack by warning all foreign nationals — including diplomatic personnel — to leave the city immediately, threatening further strikes on “decision-making centres and command posts.”
  - Zelenskyy said the US has made no progress on expanding anti-ballistic missile production, and Ukraine is now trying to accelerate development of its own capabilities in Europe.
  - Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov held a call Monday covering both Ukraine and Iran — no details on substance.
- Russian drone targeting Ukraine hits apartment building in Romania, injuring 2, officials say (AP)
  - A Russian Geran-2 drone targeting Ukraine went astray and struck an apartment building in Galați, Romania Friday — a NATO member — injuring two people and sparking a fire.
  - Romania expelled the Russian consul and closed the consulate in response; Romanian President Dan confirmed the drone’s trajectory through Ukraine into Romanian airspace.
  - Putin, asked about it in Kazakhstan, claimed no one can determine the drone’s origin — Romanian officials identified it as Russian with full trajectory data.
  - NATO expressed “absolute solidarity” but took no formal action; the EU is drafting a 21st sanctions package against Moscow.
- Putin adviser warns EU after drone hits Romania: ‘The peaceful sleep is over’ (The Hill)
  - Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council and former Russian president, responded to the Romania drone strike with a direct threat to EU citizens: “Your authorities have unilaterally entered into a war with Russia. The peaceful sleep is over. But you know who to ask why.”
  - Earlier in the week, Medvedev had mocked the EU’s decision to keep diplomats in Kyiv despite Russia’s evacuation warnings: “Apparently they’ve got diplomats to spare and need to trim the headcount.”
  - NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte called Russia’s behavior “reckless” and reaffirmed the alliance’s commitment to defend every inch of allied territory — but again, no formal action beyond condemnation.

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Economic Fallout

US munitions depleted by Iran war will take years to restore (CSIS)
- The Iran war burned through US munitions at a staggering rate — over 1,000 Tomahawks, 1,100+ JASSMs, and up to 1,430 Patriot interceptors — creating a multi-year window of vulnerability, particularly for a potential Western Pacific conflict with China.
- Tomahawks won’t be back to prewar levels until late 2030; THAAD and Patriot until mid-2029 — and that’s assuming production ramps up as planned.
- The problem isn’t money — it’s time. Complex missile systems take years to build, and no amount of emergency funding fixes a 34-month production lead time.
- Allied orders from Japan, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and others are now competing with US restocking needs, already creating “bilateral friction” that will persist for years.
US inflation rose at fastest pace in three years in April as Iran war hikes up prices (Guardian)
- US inflation hit 3.8% in April — fastest pace in three years — driven by energy prices from the Iran war; gasoline is up more than 50% since the war started in late February.
- Real household income fell for the third straight month, consumer spending growth is slowing, and the personal savings rate dropped to 2.6% — lowest since June 2022 — as Americans drain savings to cover costs.
- The Fed is now eyeing rate hikes, not cuts — the opposite of what Trump has been demanding, and a direct collision course with his newly installed Fed chair Kevin Warsh.
- GDP growth for Q1 was revised down to 1.6%; economists expect consumers to pull back further as tax refund cushions run out and war uncertainty persists.
Why a peace deal with Iran won’t save the economy from energy-market chaos this summer (Business Insider)
- Even if a peace deal is signed tomorrow, energy experts say oil markets won’t normalize for at least three months minimum — shippers and insurers need to regain confidence the Strait is safe before reconfiguring traffic.
- The US is drawing on reserves, not experiencing true shortages yet — but one analyst estimates US buffer crude stores run out around July 4, at which point actual fuel shortages begin.
- Jet fuel goes first: Goldman Sachs warns European commercial jet fuel inventories could fall below critical levels by June, with flight cancellations likely through the summer travel season.
- Diesel is already at $6+ per gallon nationally, working its way into the cost of virtually every consumer product; one firm predicts oil could surpass its 2008 peak of $150 a barrel.
CNBC Host Tells ’60 Minutes’ Top CEOs Are ‘Very Scared’ to Criticize Donald Trump (Yahoo Finance)
- CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin told 60 Minutes that most American CEOs are “very scared” to criticize Trump — worried about regulatory retaliation, blocked mergers, and agency interference.
- Sorkin, who was promoting a book about the 1929 crash, was blunt: “We will have a crash. I just can’t tell you when, and I can’t tell you how deep.”
Indiana Angle
- Braun pitches more property tax relief for older Hoosiers (Axios)
  - Gov. Braun signed HEA 1210, giving totally disabled veterans a 100% property tax deduction on their primary residence, returning an estimated $46.2 million annually to veterans statewide.
  - Braun signaled this is just the start, floating additional relief for Hoosiers over 65 and homeowners who’ve paid off their mortgages — “Once you paid your mortgage off, why should you then have a fixed cost?”
  - Worth watching: last year’s property tax reform is already projected to cost cities, towns, and school districts up to $1.8 billion over three years, with cuts to services and staffing already underway.
- Rokita wants to block federal marijuana shift (ICC)
  - Indiana AG Todd Rokita joined Nebraska and Louisiana in a federal lawsuit to block the DEA’s move to reclassify marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III, calling the rulemaking “arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion.”
  - Indiana is one of only 10 states with no medical or recreational marijuana — but the political winds may be shifting: GOP state Sen. Mike Bohacek is drafting 2027 medical marijuana legislation, and Gov. Braun has signaled openness to broader discussions.
  - Rokita is fighting his own governor’s direction on this one.

Religion

Trump lashes out at Pope Leo again over Iran (Independent)
- Donald Trump criticized Pope Leo XIV regarding Iran’s nuclear program, asserting that the country must be nuclear-free.
- Trump reshared a social media post from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who had attended a prayer with Pope Leo at the Vatican.
- In his comment, Trump suggested someone should inform the Pope that the Chicago Mayor is “useless” and that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons.
- This marks another instance of disagreement between Trump and Pope Leo concerning Iran, following Trump’s earlier accusation that the pontiff was “endangering Catholics” by supporting Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
- Pope Leo responded by emphasizing the Church’s mission to preach peace and its long-standing, clear opposition to all nuclear weapons.
Pope Leo’s ‘Magnifica humanitas’: AI must serve humanity not concentrate power (Vatican News)
- Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, on the 135th anniversary of Rerum novarum — framing AI as the defining social justice challenge of our time.
- Core argument: AI is not inherently evil, but “technology is never neutral” — it takes on the character of those who build, fund, and control it, and must not be concentrated in the hands of a few.
- The Pope called for AI to be “disarmed” — stripped of military, economic, and cognitive dominance — and warned that “there is no algorithm that can make war morally acceptable.”
- On migration: how a society treats migrants is a “litmus test” for whether its sense of justice is driven by fear or fraternity — a direct implicit rebuke of current US and European policy.
- On work: AI must not force workers to adapt to machines — machines must serve workers, not the reverse — and technology-driven unemployment in the name of profit is unacceptable.
- On war: the “just war” theory must be overcome entirely in favor of dialogue and diplomacy, and any leader using armed conflict to distract from domestic problems is engaging in “irresponsible Realpolitik.”
Pope Leo XIV makes historic apology for Vatican’s role in legitimizing slavery (AP)
- Pope Leo XIV made a historic apology in the encyclical for the Vatican’s direct role in legitimizing slavery — not just Christians’ participation, but specific 15th-century papal bulls that gave European sovereigns explicit authority to conquer, subjugate, and enslave “infidels.”
- This is a first: previous popes apologized for Christian involvement in the slave trade generally, but no pope had ever acknowledged the institutional Vatican role or apologized for it specifically.
- Leo’s own family history makes this personal — genealogical research by Henry Louis Gates Jr. found 17 of Leo’s American ancestors were Black, and his family tree includes both enslaved people and slaveholders.
- Leo framed the apology as inseparable from the encyclical’s AI theme: the Church must condemn digital-age trafficking and exploitation now, “if we want to avoid the need to ask for pardon again in the future.”
Idolatry:
- Treasury Department prepares $250 bill with Trump’s face on it (NPR)
  - The Treasury Department is preparing a $250 bill featuring Trump’s face, contingent on Congress changing a law that currently prohibits living presidents from appearing on currency — which hasn’t happened since 1866.
  - Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent held up a draft mockup at the White House briefing room, insisting they’d “stick to the law” — while making clear they’re ready to print the moment Congress acts.
  - It’s part of a broader self-branding blitz: Trump’s signature on all new currency, his face on commemorative passports and coins, his name on the Kennedy Center and the US Institute of Peace, and a banner over the Justice Department.
Religion in Indiana
- Lt. Gov. Beckwith: “I hate Islam.” (WFYI)
- National Muslim group condemns Micah Beckwith after he calls Islam ‘demonic’ (IndyStar)
  - Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith declared “I hate Islam, it’s a demonic death cult” on a Christian streaming show, adding that people need “permission to hate again”
  - His FlashPoint appearance was on televangelist Kenneth Copeland’s network, where he argued some hatred is “necessary” because “God hates certain things in the Bible” — and claimed jihadists are working with Marxists to tear down society, without elaborating.
  - CAIR warned Beckwith is using his office to legitimize violence against Muslims, noting the comments came on the heels of a recent attack on a San Diego mosque; CAIR recorded a record number of anti-Muslim bias complaints in 2025.
  - Even Republican state Sen. Spencer Deery pushed back, saying rhetoric like this from Indiana’s second-highest official “makes the first impossible” when it comes to religious freedom.
  - Beckwith’s office declined to apologize, framing it as a defense of “one nation under God” — this is the same Lt. Gov. who last year called the three-fifths compromise a “great move.”
  - Beckwith’s “apology” on the close of Eid: “I hope you all become Christian.” With a heart emoji.

Immigration

ICE agents pepper-spray protesters, N.J. senator in clash outside Delaney Hall in Newark (NJ.com)
- ICE agents pepper-sprayed protesters — and US Sen. Andy Kim — outside Delaney Hall detention center in Newark on Memorial Day, as demonstrators protested inhumane conditions during a detainee hunger strike.
- Kim, who had physically positioned himself between protesters and agents, described detainees telling him about a pregnant woman denied OB-GYN care, a woman who miscarried with no medical support, and an 18-year-old high school senior separated from her mother.
- DHS called it a “political stunt,” denied any hunger strike or poor conditions, and blamed Kim for getting pepper-sprayed — while ICE described the US senator and protesters as “rioters.”
- Members of Congress have explicit legal authority to conduct oversight visits of detention facilities; Kim said he had to personally call DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin just to get inside.
‘We are not criminals’: protests erupt as hunger strike rocks New Jersey ICE jail (Guardian)
- Between 300 and 400 detainees are participating in the strike, demanding edible food — detainees reported finding worms in their meals — plus working ventilation, medical care, and movement on their immigration cases.
- The facility has a grim track record: a Haitian man died there in December, detainees pushed down a wall and four escaped last June, and Newark’s mayor was arrested outside it last May.
- A released detainee told the Guardian: “If they freed us, we wouldn’t generate profit for this business.”
- At least seven journalists were pepper-sprayed by ICE agents during Tuesday night’s clashes; one protester was tased in the back while fleeing, went rigid, and was carried into the facility.
- Delaney Hall is run by GEO Group, one of the largest private prison companies in the US, on a 15-year ICE contract. Detainees performing cooking, cleaning, and laundry work are paid as little as $1 an hour.
Newark mayor orders curfew around Delaney Hall as protesters, police clash (The Hill)
- Newark Mayor Ras Baraka imposed a nightly curfew in a half-mile radius around Delaney Hall after protesters lit tires on fire, threw projectiles, and used barriers as weapons against Newark and New Jersey State Police.
- Gov. Sherrill and DHS Secretary Mullin found rare common ground — Sherrill deployed state police to maintain order, and DHS celebrated the crackdown on social media with all-caps triumphalism: “WE WON’T BACK DOWN.”
- The situation has significantly escalated from where it started — what began as a hunger strike over inhumane conditions has now resulted by Sunday in a government-imposed curfew, street closures, and DHS celebrating “securing” the area around a detention facility on American soil.
Elizabeth Warren Has Some Questions for the Private Prison Executive Running ICE (Mother Jones)
- Trump’s new acting ICE director, David Venturella, appointed May 12, spent more than a decade as a GEO Group executive — the same private prison company running Delaney Hall — where he made at least $6 million and negotiated major federal contracts.
- GEO Group is having its best year ever: $520 million in new annual revenues from ICE contracts in 2025, “the largest amount of new business” in company history — and Venturella now sits on the other side of the table negotiating those contracts.
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren is demanding Venturella recuse himself from all matters that could benefit GEO Group and make his ethics disclosures public, writing: “Americans should not have to wonder whether ICE enforcement priorities are being driven by the financial interests of politically connected detention contractors.”
‘Dire’ conditions at ICE facility severely violate human rights, lawsuit claims (Guardian)
- The ACLU, ACLU of Texas, and Human Rights Watch filed the first lawsuit against Camp East Montana — the largest immigration detention facility in the US, a sprawling desert tent camp on Fort Bliss — alleging beatings by guards, sexual harassment during pat-downs, solitary confinement, rotten food, measles and tuberculosis outbreaks, and three deaths in less than a year.
- Only 20% of those detained have any criminal background — the lawsuit argues the cruelty is “by design,” meant to terrorize immigrants into abandoning their legal claims.
- A Cameroonian plaintiff who said he had survived torture in Africa stated: “I never thought I would experience such severely violent treatment by guards here in the United States of America.”
- ICE has simultaneously gutted the watchdog agencies meant to monitor detention conditions and is blocking members of Congress from conducting legally authorized oversight visits.
Trump’s DoJ sues four states for denying ICE agents undercover license plates (Guardian)
- The Trump DOJ sued Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Washington state for refusing to issue undercover license plates to ICE agents, arguing the states discriminate against federal law enforcement.
- Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey’s response was blunt: “We are not going to use state resources to help ICE operate in secret, and without accountability.”
Trump team is ‘drawing up’ plans to stop international flights to some Democratic cities (Independent)
- DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened to halt processing of international flights into sanctuary cities — including Newark, Boston, Chicago, LA, New York, Seattle, and San Francisco — as retaliation for local non-cooperation with ICE.
- The timing is particularly reckless: tens of millions of tourists are expected to flood into the US next month for the FIFA World Cup, with games at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey — one of the targeted cities.
- The US Travel Association warned the move would have “devastating consequences” for the travel industry and communities dependent on international visitors.
New USCIS Memo May Force Most Green Card Applicants to Apply from Abroad, Causing Chaos and Confusion (American Immigration Council)
- A new USCIS memo quietly reframes green card applications filed inside the US as “extraordinary discretionary relief” — effectively forcing hundreds of thousands of legal applicants to leave the country and apply from abroad.
- The catch: leaving the US triggers multi-year re-entry bars for many applicants, meaning complying with the new policy could permanently destroy their cases and separate them from their US citizen family members.
- Some applicants — including abuse survivors on Special Immigrant Juvenile Status — have no consular processing option at all; others are nationals of 75 countries where the State Department has indefinitely paused immigrant visa processing.
- USCIS has issued conflicting guidance and hasn’t clarified whether the new standard applies to already-pending applications — attorneys are already reporting clients being asked to demonstrate “extraordinary circumstances” mid-process.
- Bottom line: this isn’t about undocumented immigrants — in FY2023, over 600,000 people adjusted status from inside the US legally. This memo puts all of them at risk.

Actual Weaponization
- Trump DOJ Seeks Names of Social Media Users Critical of ICE (Mediaite)
  - Trump DOJ, via US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, subpoenaed Reddit and X for the names, addresses, and bank information of users who posted criticism of ICE — part of a criminal investigation, though neither user was told what crime they’re suspected of.
  - The users only found out about the probe from the social media companies, not the DOJ; their attorneys call it “a bad faith attempt to unmask” dissenters rather than a legitimate criminal investigation.
  - The DOJ’s pattern: start with an administrative summons, then escalate to a grand jury subpoena — both signed by the same prosecutor, both directing records delivered to an ICE office.
  - Reddit is fighting back; X did not respond to comment requests.
- Tracking retaliatory use of arrests, prosecutions, and investigations by the Trump administration (Protect Democracy)
  - The tracker documents 22 cases of alleged retaliatory DOJ investigations, arrests, or prosecutions since January 2025, targeting figures including James Comey, John Bolton, Adam Schiff, NY AG Letitia James, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Sen. Mark Kelly, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and others — often preceded by direct public threats from Trump himself.
  - Several cases have already collapsed: the grand jury refused to indict the former military lawmakers, Jeanine Pirro dropped the Powell investigation, charges against Kat Abughazaleh were fully dismissed, and the Letitia James indictment was thrown out for unlawful appointment of the prosecutor.
  - Comey was indicted a second time — this time for allegedly threatening the president via a social media post featuring seashells arranged in the pattern “8647.” His lead prosecutor has since stepped down.
- Justice Department launches a criminal investigation into Trump accuser E. Jean Carroll (CNN)
  - The DOJ launched a criminal perjury investigation into E. Jean Carroll, 82 — the woman who won $88 million in judgments against Trump for sexual abuse and defamation — focused on a 2022 deposition statement that she received no outside funding for her lawsuit, before it emerged that billionaire Reid Hoffman had covered some legal fees.
  - The probe was referred to federal prosecutors in Chicago — notably not New York where the deposition occurred — apparently because Hoffman has a nonprofit based there.
  - Acting AG Todd Blanche had to recuse himself because he was one of Trump’s personal attorneys on the Carroll appeals.
  - One day after CNN published the story, the US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois said his office had “never opened” such an investigation — sources then reaffirmed it to CNN anyway, suggesting internal DOJ confusion or deliberate misdirection.
  - Carroll’s jury awards — $5 million for sexual abuse, $83 million for defamation — are both under appeal, with the Supreme Court having deferred its decision on whether to take up the case twelve times.
- Federal inquiry into E Jean Carroll part of investigation into Reid Hoffman non-profit (Guardian)
  - The real target appears to be Reid Hoffman’s nonprofit, American Future Republic, with the investigation involving potential money-laundering conspiracy and obstruction — Carroll herself is reportedly not the subject.
  - This fits a clear pattern: the DOJ filed similar money-laundering conspiracy charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center in April — charges legal experts called flimsy — and has also pushed prosecutors to crack down on a George Soros-backed nonprofit. The DOJ is systematically targeting major Democratic donors’ organizations.
- Trump says judge who ruled against him on Kennedy Center ‘should be brought up on charges’ (Independent)
  - A federal judge blocked Trump’s Kennedy Center renaming and renovation plans, ruling that only Congress — not Trump’s hand-picked board — can change the name of the Kennedy Center.
  - Trump responded with a 700-word Truth Social screed demanding the judge be “IMPEACHED,” accusing him of ruling against Trump because “his wife probably told him to do so,” and threatening that the Kennedy Center “will soon be closed, probably never to open again.”
  - Worth noting who’s on that “distinguished board” that unanimously voted to add Trump’s name: White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scovino, JD Vance’s wife, Howard Lutnick’s wife, and Trump himself.
  - More than a dozen major acts have already canceled Kennedy Center performances since the renaming.
What They Call ‘Weaponization’
- Capitol rioters clamor for payouts from Trump’s new ‘anti-weaponization’ fund despite backlash (AP)
  - Trump created a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund — originally tied to an IRS lawsuit over the leak of his tax returns — and January 6 rioters who pleaded guilty under oath to storming the Capitol are now lining up to claim taxpayer money from it.
  - Nearly 1,600 people were charged with Capitol riot-related crimes; over 1,200 were convicted before Trump issued mass pardons, including members of far-right extremist groups who plotted to violently keep Trump in power.
  - Acting AG Todd Blanche refused to rule out payments to violent J6 defendants, punting all decisions to five commissioners — none of whom have been named yet — while a federal judge has already frozen the fund and at least three lawsuits are challenging it.
  - One pardoned J6 attorney is already charging fellow rioters a 10% cut to file claims on their behalf — even though no application process exists. A Michigan fake elector declared “I want vengeance and I want retribution.” A Texas man sentenced to seven years for storming the Capitol with a metal tomahawk called it “payback.”
  - One rioter who rejected both the pardon and the payout said it best: “We weren’t innocently persecuted just because of who we are. We were persecuted for committing criminal behavior in the Capitol of the United States.”
- Judge pauses Trump administration’s ‘anti-weaponization’ fund (Politico)
  - A federal judge has frozen the anti-weaponization fund, blocking any payments until at least a June 12 hearing — ruling urgently because she feared cash could start flowing before the legal challenge played out.
  - Even Senate Republicans are furious: Sen. Ted Cruz said colleagues were yelling at Acting AG Blanche in a closed-door meeting, calling the fund “foolish” and politically toxic ahead of the midterms.
  - The DOJ responded by accusing the judge of acting on “policy preferences” rather than law — the same playbook Trump uses every time a court rules against him.
- Judge reopens Trump’s IRS suit to examine $1.8bn settlement with justice department (Guardian)
  - Different judge — this is Miami Judge Kathleen Williams, an Obama appointee, who reopened Trump’s original IRS lawsuit. The freeze we just covered was from Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia. Two separate courts, two separate legal challenges.
  - A bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges urged Judge Williams to reopen Trump’s IRS case, arguing the settlement “is a product of collusion and is itself a fraud on the court.”
  - The core allegation: Trump used his own lawsuit against his own government to obtain unlawful private benefits — including a provision permanently shielding the Trump family from future IRS audits, signed only by Acting AG Blanche.
  - Williams could ultimately compel DOJ officials, including Blanche, to testify about how the settlement was reached and who it actually benefits.
  - Bonus irony: former Trump attorney Michael Cohen says he’ll apply for the anti-weaponization fund, arguing he suffered “identical” persecution to those who inspired it.

Media/Tech

US Law Enforcement Warns of ‘Anti-Tech Extremism’ as AI Hatred Grows (Wired)
- DHS, the FBI, and 80 fusion centers are now surveilling a new domestic threat category: “anti-tech violent extremism” — a term that doesn’t exist in any public DHS or FBI threat guide and is broad enough to sweep in peaceful data center protesters and AI skeptics.
- Trump’s National Security Presidential Memo 7 instructs DOJ to target anyone holding “anti-American,” “anti-Christian,” and “anti-capitalism” beliefs — the surveillance apparatus is being explicitly directed by White House ideology.
- Fusion centers are monitoring Tesla Takedown protests, town hall meetings where residents oppose local data centers, and a progressive nonprofit video about data center impacts — none involving any violence.
- A private intelligence contractor flagged a More Perfect Union video about data center harms to residents as a potential threat — the video contained no advocacy for violence whatsoever.
- The expert whose work is circulating in fusion centers warns: “Anti-technology violence is unacceptable, but it should not be used as an excuse to securitize AI and silence those critical of its current trajectory.”
New Intel Bureau Eyes AI Data Center Critics (Ken Klippenstein)
- Congress now has its own intelligence agency — the Capitol Police Intelligence Services Bureau, created after January 6 — and it’s producing threat reports about data center critics and distributing them to fusion centers nationwide, despite admitting in the same report that “the US Capitol Police is not investigating any data center-motivated threats to Members of Congress.”
- The trigger for the report appears to be a shooting at the home of an Indianapolis city councilman who supported a local data center project — a real incident, but one without an arrest or confirmed motive.
- A Gallup poll this month found seven in ten Americans oppose local data center construction — making “anti-tech extremism” a surveillance category that potentially covers the majority of the US public.
Shake Up at ‘60 Minutes’ as CBS News Ousts Executive Producer Tanya Simon, Correspondents Cecilia Vega, Sharyn Alfonsi; Taps Nick Bilton to Run Newsmagazine (Variety)
- CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss ousted 60 Minutes’ two senior executive producers and two veteran correspondents, replacing them with Nick Bilton — a former NYT tech columnist with no TV production experience — as only the fifth leader in the show’s nearly 60-season history.
- The shake-up follows Paramount’s $16 million settlement with Trump to end a lawsuit over the Kamala Harris interview — a deal made while seeking regulatory approval for its Skydance sale, which drove out two senior CBS executives who said they could no longer resist corporate pressure to placate the White House.
- Weiss previously held a completed 60 Minutes segment about migrants sent to El Salvador — after it had already been publicly promoted — demanding additional Trump administration comment in what staffers saw as an attempt to soften a story unfavorable to the administration.
- Under Weiss, both CBS Mornings and the revamped CBS Evening News have lost viewers; staffers fear a 60 Minutes overhaul will alienate the loyal Sunday audience that generates over $200 million in annual ad revenue.
Indiana Tech
- ‘It’s going to be an eyesore’ | Clergy take stand against Metrobloks data center, call on Mayor Hogsett to stop project (WTHR)
  - Clergy from Martindale-Brightwood — a historically Black neighborhood on Indianapolis’s near northeast side — are demanding Mayor Hogsett stop the Metrobloks data center project, a 70-foot-tall, 150,000-square-foot facility at 25th and Sherman.
  - Their concerns: rising utility costs for residents and churches, noise, and the sheer size of the structure in their neighborhood — plus public incentive dollars going to a project the community never wanted.
  - Hogsett has repeatedly refused to meet with the clergy, passing them off to lower-level city staff; the city is now hiding behind pending litigation as its reason for silence.
  - Opponents have filed a civil complaint for judicial review of the zoning approval process — the project has cleared all legislative hurdles but the legal fight isn’t over.
- Cummins to pay $23M to California AI company for misappropriating trade secrets (WFYI)
  - A Delaware jury ordered Columbus, Indiana-based Cummins Inc. to pay $23 million to California AI firm C3 AI after finding Cummins secretly hired a team in India to replicate C3’s proprietary fuel-efficiency AI application.
  - Cummins was caught when a staffer was accidentally copied on an internal email revealing the plan — and when confronted, was forced to admit it.
  - C3 had originally sought between $500 million and $1 billion; Cummins says it “disagrees with the outcome” but respects the process.
- Data centers need a lot of energy. Some turn to fossil fuels for power (IndyStar)
  - Indiana is in the middle of a hyperscale data center gold rush — Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are building massive facilities across the state, with single data centers requiring as much electricity as the entire city of Indianapolis.
  - The energy answer so far is largely fossil fuels: NIPSCO is building two new natural gas plants totaling 2,600 megawatts and just cut a deal to purchase power from the Merom coal plant in Sullivan County — a facility that was supposed to retire in 2023.
  - Utility plans are often buried in regulatory filings or kept secret entirely: in Lebanon, Meta is building a $10 billion, 1,000 megawatt facility already under construction, and the local cooperative has provided virtually no information about how it will be powered.
  - One exception: AES Indiana is partially powering a Google facility with solar and battery storage, and Meta’s Duke Energy data center in Jeffersonville runs on carbon-free power.
- City may delay Eagle Creek reservoir negotiations to study LEAP impact (IndyStar)
  - Indianapolis is likely to extend its water use agreement with Citizens Energy Group by one year rather than renegotiate now, giving the city time to study how the LEAP district’s water demands may impact Eagle Creek Reservoir.
  - The concern: Citizens plans to transport up to 25 million gallons of water a day to Lebanon’s LEAP district, and treated wastewater from LEAP would be discharged back into the reservoir — with the current contract containing no limits on pollutant levels from that discharge.
  - Environmental advocates are worried about impacts on Eagle Creek Park’s migrating bird habitat, which depends on the reservoir’s mudflats — and a $108,000 study has been commissioned to examine the full consequences before any long-term contract is signed.
- Indianapolis hired hydrologist with LEAP district ties (Mirror Indy)
  - Indianapolis hired hydrologist Jack Wittman to study Eagle Creek Reservoir’s water capacity for the new Citizens Energy contract — but Wittman previously worked for the firm that conducted the 2023 study concluding there was enough water to establish the LEAP district in the first place.
  - The Board of Public Works approved the $108,000 contract on a narrow 4-3 vote over conflict-of-interest objections from residents and board members.
  - DPW’s defense: it’s hard to find a water expert in Indiana who hasn’t worked with Citizens Energy or the LEAP district — which is either a reasonable explanation or a damning indictment of how incestuous Indiana’s water policy world is, depending on your perspective.
  - Residents won’t get a chance to comment on Wittman’s findings before the city uses them to negotiate a new 50-year contract.

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Elections

Texas Run-offs
- Ken Paxton defeats John Cornyn for U.S. Senate GOP nomination (Texas Tribune)
  - Ken Paxton — indicted for felony securities fraud and impeached by his own party for corruption — just defeated four-term incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Texas GOP primary runoff, becoming the first challenger to unseat a sitting Texas senator from his own party since 1970.
  - Trump’s last-minute endorsement sealed it; Cornyn outspent Paxton nearly nine to one and still lost — a stark demonstration that MAGA loyalty now outweighs money, incumbency, and institutional support.
  - Cook Political Report immediately shifted Texas from “likely” to “lean” Republican — Democrats’ preferred opponent is now the nominee, and Talarico has significantly outraised Paxton.
  - Cornyn’s two cardinal sins in Trump’s eyes: casting doubt on Trump’s electability in 2023 and voting for a bipartisan gun safety bill after Uvalde.
  - The GOP establishment’s own attacks on Paxton — tens of millions spent calling his behavior “repulsive and disgusting” — now become opposition research for Talarico’s general election campaign.
- Menefee ousts Al Green
  - Procrypto super PAC lauds Green’s loss (The Hill)
    - Pro-crypto super PAC Fairshake spent $6.5 million to oust Rep. Al Green in the Texas Democratic primary runoff — and succeeded, with Green losing to Rep. Christian Menefee by a 70-30 margin.
    - Green had voted against both major crypto bills this session, including the GENIUS Act stablecoin bill Trump signed into law; Fairshake called him “the first Democratic incumbent this cycle to lose his seat” due to “anti-crypto hostility.”
    - Fairshake initially pledged $1.5 million and ended up spending more than four times that — a preview of how aggressively the crypto industry intends to shape Congress.
  - AIPAC Celebrates ‘Anti-Israel’ Al Green Losing Primary (Newsweek)
    - AIPAC also celebrated Green’s defeat, posting congratulations to Menefee while describing Green as “one of the most outspoken anti-Israel voices in Congress” — a post seen over 400,000 times on X.
    - Green had opposed certain military aid measures to Israel and supported Palestinian statehood efforts, making him a target for both the crypto and pro-Israel lobbying industries simultaneously.
    - Bottom line: a 20-year incumbent was taken out by a combination of Republican redistricting, $6.5 million in crypto PAC money, and AIPAC opposition — a case study in how outside money and foreign policy litmus tests are reshaping Democratic primaries.
Federal judges block Alabama’s use of 2023 congressional map (AL Reflector)
- A federal three-judge panel blocked Alabama from using its 2023 congressional map, ruling it was deliberately drawn to dilute Black voters — even after the Supreme Court’s recent Callais decision weakened the Voting Rights Act.
- The judges called out Alabama’s own contradiction: the state argued partisan intent in 2026, but the record contained zero evidence of partisan motive and lawmakers were explicitly warned the map would dilute Black votes before passing it anyway.
- Alabama immediately appealed to the Supreme Court; Gov. Ivey, AG Marshall, and the Secretary of State all vowed to fight — while the House Speaker called the judges “activists handing Democrats victories in the courtroom.”
- Ballots already cast in four congressional districts will be voided under Alabama law, adding chaos to an election cycle the state itself scrambled by calling a special primary for August.
Effort to redraw SC voting lines fails amid record start to early voting (SC Daily Gazette)
- South Carolina Republicans killed their own Trump-backed redistricting bill after record early voting turnout made it politically untenable — 26,000 people voted by noon on the first day, more than the entire first day of 2024 early voting.
- The map, drawn by the National Republican Redistricting Trust in Washington and handed to the legislature with just 7 minutes and 40 seconds of testimony, would have redrawn Rep. Jim Clyburn out of the district he’s represented since 1992.
- A conservative Republican senator delivered the killing blow: “Neither my conscience nor my common sense will allow me to stop an election underway. The deadline is past. Voting has begun.”
- Senate Majority Leader Massey — who opposed the effort throughout — warned his colleagues plainly: “People will vote when they’re angry, and I think what we’re seeing today is that we’ve made some people mad.”

Indiana Elections
- Morales lashes back over loss of Indiana secretary of state race support (ICC)
  - Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales is in freefall ahead of the June 20 Republican state convention — Sen. Jim Banks and AG Todd Rokita pulled their endorsements, State Treasurer Daniel Elliott called for his resignation, and his campaign spokesman quit.
  - The trigger: a late entry into the race by Max Engling, a Banks Senate staffer, the day before the filing deadline — widely seen as a party establishment move to push Morales out.
  - Morales is blaming his troubles on supporting Trump’s Indiana redistricting push — conveniently ignoring that Banks and Rokita were among the loudest supporters of that same push. Morales called Elliott a “close ally” of Senate President Pro Tem Rod Bray.
  - The underlying controversy involves Morales hiring a chief of staff who had been registered to vote as a noncitizen years before joining his office — she never voted, the registration was canceled in 2013, and she has since left.
- Indiana Dems announce treasurer, comptroller candidates (ICC)
  - Indiana Democrats will nominate Porter County Clerk Jessica Bailey for comptroller and Noblesville consultant Coumba Kebe for treasurer at their June 6 convention in Indianapolis — both running unopposed.
  - Bailey is a two-term clerk with national election administration awards; Kebe is a first-generation American and healthcare advocate who just lost a primary bid for HD-29.
  - Both frame their candidacies around the same theme: after years of one-party Republican control, Hoosiers deserve independent financial oversight.
  - The Secretary of State race remains contested on the Democratic side between Beau Bayh and Blythe Potter.
- Chair of Indiana’s Libertarian Party to lead national party (WFYI)
  - Indianapolis’s Evan McMahon, who has chaired Indiana’s Libertarian Party since 2021, was elected national chair of the Libertarian Party at a convention in Grand Rapids last weekend — a notable rise for Indiana’s third party, which has maintained automatic ballot access in the state since 1994.

NWI

Gary’s 27-year lawsuit against gun industry dies with Indiana Supreme Court decision (IPM)
- The Indiana Supreme Court voted 4-1 to let die Gary’s 27-year lawsuit against gun manufacturers — effectively ending the case after Republican legislators passed five separate laws over 25 years specifically designed to kill it.
- The 2024 law that finished it off stripped cities of the right to sue gun makers, handing that authority exclusively to AG Todd Rokita — who used it to seek the lawsuit’s dismissal and then celebrated the result.
- Brady President Kris Brown put it plainly: “The gun industry defendants got the legislators whose campaigns they fund to pass five separate laws over 25 years to end legitimate lawsuits like Gary’s.”
Details revealed after New Chicago police chief arrested, charged with multiple felonies (NBC5)
- New Chicago Police Chief Earl Mayo faces eight felony charges after allegedly stealing a gun seized as evidence in a criminal case, altering its tracing information, and selling it to a pawn shop in Hobart — then asking a fellow officer to buy it back and retrieve suppressed firearms from his home.
- A second person, Tanika Roshawn Borders of Merrillville, faces charges for allegedly trying to buy back the gun from the pawn shop and attempting to destroy vials of veterinary-grade anabolic steroids belonging to Mayo.
- New Chicago — a town of about 1,900 — has placed Mayo on administrative leave, with Lake County police taking over policing duties.
- Mayo’s father, Indiana State Police Major Jerry Williams, is currently running for Lake County Sheriff.

HoosLeft Podcast #127: Live w/ Blythe Potter for Secretary of State

Scott Aaron Rogers — Wed, 27 May 2026 10:01:20 GMT

Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net

HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us

Blythe Potter Campaign Site: https://www.blythepotter.com/

SUMMARY:

Scott sits down with Blythe Potter, the progressive grassroots candidate running for Indiana Secretary of State at the 2026 Democratic State Convention. With the June 6th convention less than two weeks away, Potter makes the case for why her background — as a rural small business owner, Army veteran, Johnson County precinct chair, and Democratic Party organizer — uniquely qualifies her for an office she says has been badly neglected. The conversation covers the full sweep of her platform: modernizing the state’s outdated business registration and campaign finance systems, creating a comprehensive voter ballot guide, reaching disenfranchised and non-voting Hoosiers, and building the kind of authentic grassroots infrastructure that top-down, big-money Democratic campaigns have failed to create. Potter also addresses the criticisms that have dogged her campaign — the “influencer” label, questions about her political history, her upside-down flag protest photo, and the online behavior of her supporters — while making a pointed argument that she is the more electable candidate in a crowded general election field, not despite running differently, but because of it.

WHAT’S INSIDE:

0:00 — Intro and Support Ask

- Scott frames the Secretary of State race: Beau Bayh (name recognition, donor network tied to right-wing money) vs. Blythe Potter (grassroots, progressive, all-92-county campaign).

3:45 — Check-In: How’s the Campaign Feeling Heading Into the Convention?

- Potter says she’s ready — describes the past year-plus as a long haul and says she’s excited for June 6th.

- Scott opens with a provocation: Indiana’s credential-heavy political class (Rokita, Pence, Spartz, Donnelly, Young, Banks — all attorneys) has consistently failed the state; maybe it’s time to try something different.

- Potter: an MBA in conscious capitalism is directly applicable to this office — it’s about serving stakeholders, not just shareholders.

- She argues lived experience in Indiana communities is an undervalued and uncredentialed form of expertise.

6:40 — The Business Side of the Secretary of State’s Office

- Scott notes the office’s dual mandate: voting administration and business services.

- Potter confirms the INBiz and campaign finance systems are nearly 30 years old; they’re not mobile-friendly and create real barriers for young entrepreneurs.

- She calls out the contradiction of Indiana’s “business-friendly” reputation: the state consistently delivers for large corporations (TIF districts, abatements, PPP windfalls) while leaving small business owners behind.

- As a Bargersville small business owner, she’s been an end user of these broken systems — she had to go to SCORE, SBA, and ISBDC resources that INBiz buries.

11:28 — Are You a Serious Candidate? Do You Have a Plan?

- Scott raises the “influencer, no plan” criticism circulating online.

- Potter answers by cataloguing her commitment: hired a babysitter to be here, missing her daughter’s recital for the convention, invested her own money.

- She’s run for municipal office twice, won her 2024 Johnson County town council primary as a Democrat in a red county with no elected Democrats.

- She’s a two-time elected precinct chair, state delegate in ‘24 and ‘26, and a national delegate — the only candidate in this race who can say that.

- She distinguishes between when she became active in party politics (2023) vs. how long she’s held progressive values; debunks the “only been a Democrat for three years” rumor as originating from an estranged ex-sister-in-law.

16:36 — Rural Communities and the Non-Voter Problem

- Potter has worked with the Indiana Rural Summit and studied rural organizing models from Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Montana.

- She describes the condescension rural communities face from the political class

- Scott raises the VAN problem: canvassing tools only target known past voters, creating a self-reinforcing loop that never reaches the disaffected.

- Potter’s largest untapped voter bloc: non-voters. Her campaign has a ground game ready for them starting June 7th.

- She talks about the real economic barriers to voting: can’t get off work, can’t afford childcare, standing in line at 5 a.m. isn’t an option. She’s lived these realities.

21:24 — The Ballot Book: Potter’s Signature Policy Proposal

- Scott credits Potter as an early proponent of the voter ballot guide concept — other states have these, Indiana doesn’t.

- The ballot book would be comprehensive: when and where to vote, how to register, what every office does, county party social media handles, and space for candidates to submit brief statements.

- Both digital and physical versions, funded through HAVA grants or other mechanisms — Potter rejects the “no money for that” excuse from officials who’ve funded trips to Hungary and luxury SUVs.

- She wants the Secretary of State to be a democracy cheerleader — visible, proactive, drawing people into the process — not just an administrator.

- Indiana’s metrics are bad across the board; the state desperately needs someone to advocate for it.

26:33 — The Copycats: Ballard and the Republican Field

- Scott notes that Greg Ballard’s new Lincoln Party has essentially adopted Potter’s platform without attribution.

- Potter says that’s “pretty rich” — to watch a veteran politician arrive without a platform and lift hers — while acknowledging other states already do this.

- Scott maps the crowded Republican field: Morales (staying in despite GOP revolt), Jim Banks staffer Max Engling (Banks/Rokita-endorsed), Dave Shelton (Knox County moderate), Jamie Reitenour (perennial Christian nationalist candidate); plus a Libertarian and potentially a Socialist on the ballot — setting up what could be a five-way race.

- Potter’s response: every Republican in this race is complicit in getting Indiana here — including Ballard, who was a Republican himself until a few weeks ago.

- She’ll take any of them: “I know my platform is better.”

32:25 — The Upside-Down Flag Photo

- Scott raises the criticism: Potter has been photographed at No Kings protests in military uniform, holding an inverted flag — Republicans will use this to paint her as a radical.

- Potter says it was intentional. She went to a war she didn’t want to fight, and some Democratic representatives (ahem, Evan Bayh)voted to send her.

- The inverted flag is a recognized signal of national distress. She wanted people — especially other veterans — to see it and reckon with how bad things actually are.

- She describes herself as an introvert who overcame that to run statewide, because she believes the stakes are that serious.

- Scott draws the contrast: Democrats who won’t stand for anything vs. a candidate who takes visible stands and accepts the consequences.

34:45 — Electability, Values, and the “Electable” Trap

- Scott’s argument: Indiana Democrats have been psyching themselves out for 20 years — voting for who they think can win rather than who reflects their values — and losing anyway.

- Potter cites Glenda Ritz and Ballard’s outfunded Indianapolis mayoral win as evidence grassroots campaigns can compete.

- She tried the “moderate centrist kumbaya” approach in smaller municipal races — it didn’t work. Authenticity does.

- She argues the party needs to campaign differently: talk to people, listen, pivot when necessary, and build sustainable infrastructure that down-ballot candidates can replicate.

36:59 — The Halloween Photos and “Former Republican” Attacks

- Potter’s ex-sister-in-law has been spreading the “only a Democrat for three years” story; the Halloween photos in question are five years old — and include a Ruth Bader Ginsburg costume and a COVID mask.

- She grew up Republican in a rural red community — that’s just what you were — and it took coming home from Iraq in 2006, getting divorced, losing her insurance, and moving back in with her mom to become the lightbulb moment.

- Realizing she was the kind of person her former self dismissed as “living off the government” shifted her worldview.

- She welcomes the critique: knowing both sides makes her more electable and gives her credibility with voters who’ve never considered a Democrat.

42:43 — Donors, Labels, and the Internal Democratic Divide

- Scott: calling yourself a Democrat while taking money from Republican mega-donors and working for Republican mega-donors renders the label meaningless.

- Potter: stating publicly available factual information isn’t a campaign attack — it’s accountability, and the expectation that we don’t do that is exactly what’s not working.

- She defends her largest donor, Kathleen: a Hoosier who managed a Chuck E. Cheese, pulled a Republican ballot in 2024 because there were no down-ballot Democrats in her rural primary — not a MAGA donor.

- Potter’s total from her largest donor is still less than her opponent’s largest single donor.

- She calls on supporters to tone down the online heat: she wants to win on her merits — trustworthy, good plan, showing up — not because someone else is bad.

46:15 — Money, Kamala, and Why This Could Go National

- Scott: Kamala Harris spent $1.5 billion and lost because she didn’t stand for something that inspired people. Couch-sitters, not Republicans, are the real opposition.

- Potter: she was a Kamala delegate and hated her refusal to call Gaza a genocide — and that kind of moral ambiguity costs you the youth vote.

- She argues a genuine grassroots win in Indiana could have national resonance and unlock national fundraising. Post-convention, the money will come.

- Her team has already financially supported the Indiana House and Senate Caucus, county parties, and down-ballot candidates — with very little money.

48:14 — Online Passion, Party Resistance, and What’s Been Most Rewarding

- Scott asks about supporters’ sometimes-pointed online behavior — Potter threads the needle: she fought for free speech in the Army, and people are scared and angry. That’s real. But she’s asked people to dial it back.

- On frustrations: she expected systemic barriers (women in politics always face them), but she didn’t expect her own party’s organizational resistance — leadership diverting visibility and support, not all 92 county parties letting her in the door.

- She’s lost friends over this race.

- The most gratifying part: this all started as a party-building project — visit every county party, spotlight them on social media, give people a list of all 92 county parties and Young Dems handles. The campaign grew organically out of that.

55:53 — Closing Message to Delegates

- Potter: if you haven’t heard from her, that’s not intentional — as of this evening, she will have called or left voicemails for every delegate she has a number for.

- She’s in this for the long haul regardless of the outcome — she needs a state her daughter and stepdaughters can grow old in.

- She has a paid team, a strategy, and a different kind of campaign — one that honors where voters actually are, not where consultants think they should be.

- Outro: HoosLeft This Week returns Sunday with Potter as a panelist, joined by Hancock County Democratic Party Vice Chair Chuck Gill — an Army vet and a Navy vet.

HoosLeft This Week - May 24, 2026

Scott Aaron Rogers — Sun, 24 May 2026 19:37:13 GMT

SUMMARY:

Scott is joined by singer-songwriter and Porter County Recorder candidate Leslie Nuss Bamesberger and Bloomington activist and graduate student Bryce Greene for a packed two-hour episode covering a week that had almost everything. The national segment moves through the white supremacist attack on the Islamic Center of San Diego, the sputtering Iran war and its chaotic Israel dimension, the Trump administration’s escalating pressure on Cuba, a week of staggering domestic corruption, the Ebola outbreak in the Congo, and the week’s primary results across six states — including Thomas Massie’s AIPAC-funded ouster in Kentucky and Chris Rabb’s progressive triumph in Philadelphia. The panel also digs into the DNC’s botched autopsy release, the stolen election theory circulating around Elon Musk and Starlink, and the Epstein files — including Sarah Kellen’s House testimony and new reporting on the Zorro Ranch communications infrastructure. The final 35 minutes turns to Indiana: Republican implosion in the Secretary of State’s race, Todd Rokita’s latest shenanigans, Indiana’s mixed education numbers, and a growing backlash against data center development in Indianapolis.

IN DEPTH:

San Diego Mosque Shooting

What to know about a deadly attack by teen gunmen on a San Diego mosque (AP)
San Diego mosque shooters met online and left writings expressing hate, FBI says (AP)
- Two white supremacist teens attacked the Islamic Center of San Diego, killing three men before dying by suicide
- The suspects — aged 17 and 18 — met online, called themselves “Sons of Tarrant,” a reference to the 2019 Christchurch mosque shooter who killed 51
- Writings included calls to “exterminate” Muslims, Nazi symbols, and broad hatred toward Jews, LGBTQ+, Black people, and both political parties
- 30+ guns, ammunition, and a crossbow recovered from two residences; investigators still probing whether broader plans existed
- Security guard Amin Abdullah shot back and triggered lockdown before being killed — likely saved 140 children steps away
- Other victims Mansour Kaziha and Nadir Awad drew the gunmen away from the building before being killed in the parking lot
- Imam noted the mosque was accustomed to hate mail and drive-by harassment — but nothing like this
San Diego mosque attack follows surge in public anti-Islam rhetoric (WaPo)
- Attack follows a documented surge in public anti-Islam rhetoric from elected officials
- Rep. Andrew Ogles (TN): “Muslims don’t belong in American society” — posted on X in March
- Rep. Randy Fine (FL): compared Muslims unfavorably to dogs — February
- Sen. Tommy Tuberville (AL): “radical Muslims” are coming to “destroy the West” — January, on the Senate floor
- Muslim leaders said the attack “did not occur in a vacuum” — directly linking congressional rhetoric to the shooting
- The day before the attack, Trump headlined a White House-backed Christian nationalist prayer festival on the National Mall
- String of recent attacks on houses of worship: Detroit synagogue (truck ram + fire), Michigan LDS church (4 killed), Minneapolis Catholic church (2 children killed)
- Jewish Federations lobbying Congress for $1 billion in security funding for faith institutions nationwide
Male Supremacism and Misogyny Was Central to the San Diego Mosque Shooting. Why Did So Much Coverage Miss It? (Ms)
- Mainstream coverage largely missed the central role of male supremacism and misogyny in the shooters’ manifestos
- Both cite the 2014 Santa Barbara sorority attack, the 1989 Montreal Polytechnique massacre, and the 2011 Norway youth camp attack as inspirations
- One manifesto coins the term “MisanthropistCEL” and glorifies mass killers as “incel saints”; one shooter self-identified as a misogynist and had been active in incel online communities since 2022
- Manifesto progression: starts with antisemitism → moves to misogyny (”after the Jew, the most evil creature is the woman”) → then Islamophobia, anti-immigrant, anti-Black, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric
- Shooters also identified as accelerationists — seeking to hasten societal collapse through violence
- Pattern mirrors 2011 Norway massacre coverage, which similarly underreported the antifeminist ideology driving the attack
- Analysts warn: misogyny isn’t a side note — it’s structurally intertwined with white supremacist and other extremist violence

Monday: Trump says he’s postponing ‘scheduled attack of Iran tomorrow’ at Middle East leaders’ request (CNBC)
- Trump announced via Truth Social he was calling off a “scheduled attack on Iran” set for Tuesday, May 19
- Leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE personally asked him to hold off, saying a deal was close
- Military still on standby — Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine ordered to be ready for “full, large scale assault on a moment’s notice”
- Trump’s stated red line: no nuclear weapons for Iran
- The U.S. and Iran remain in a military and economic stalemate over the Strait of Hormuz, with dueling blockades choking global oil shipping
- A ceasefire technically remains in effect but has been repeatedly violated — Trump called it “on life support” last week
- Notable: Hegseth was in Kentucky attending a campaign rally against Rep. Thomas Massie while all this was unfolding
Tuesday: US Senate votes to advance resolution to curb Trump’s Iran war powers (Guardian)
- Senate voted 50-47 to advance a war powers resolution requiring Trump to get congressional authorization to continue the Iran war
- First time the chamber has advanced the bill — eighth attempt since the conflict began in February
- Four Republicans broke ranks: Bill Cassidy (fresh off a Trump-endorsed primary loss), Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, and Susan Collins
- Cassidy’s statement: Congress has been “left in the dark” on Operation Epic Fury — no authorization can be justified without clarity
- John Fetterman was the sole Democrat to vote against it
- Still just the first step — Trump would almost certainly veto even if it passes both chambers
- Democrats framing it as a pressure campaign: “Republicans are starting to crack” — Schumer
Thursday: GOP leaders abruptly cancel House vote on Iran war powers, shielding Trump from rebuke (CNN)
- House GOP leaders abruptly canceled a scheduled war powers resolution vote Thursday when it became clear they were about to lose due to absences
- Resolution introduced by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) would have required Trump to end the Iran conflict without congressional authorization
- Democratic leaders: House Republicans are “a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Trump administration”
- Meeks: “They knew it was going to pass, and as a result they cheated” — vote now pushed to early June after Memorial Day recess
- Trump meanwhile claims the Iran war is “very popular” — a CNN poll shows 77% of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, say his policies have increased their cost of living
Friday: Congressional report tallies 42 US aircraft lost or damaged in Operation Epic Fury (Military Times)
- Congressional Research Service tallied 42 U.S. aircraft lost or damaged in Operation Epic Fury — the most complete public accounting yet, since the Pentagon hasn’t done its own
- Six crew members killed when a KC-135 tanker went down over western Iraq March 12 — the only confirmed U.S. fatalities on the list
- Drones took the hardest hit: 25 of 42 losses were unmanned aircraft, mostly MQ-9 Reapers (each of which cost over $30M)
- Cost of the war has climbed to $29 billion — up from $25 billion just two weeks earlier — and doesn’t include base repair costs
- Notable gaps: the report likely undercounts helicopter losses, and omits several Army special operations aircraft deliberately destroyed on the ground inside Iran
Saturday: Trump says peace deal with Iran is imminent (Politico)
- Trump announced Saturday a peace deal is “largely negotiated” — would include reopening the Strait of Hormuz; details still being finalized
- Key terms remain unresolved: no confirmation the deal includes limits on Iran’s nuclear program, missiles, or proxy activity
- Trump also confirmed a call with Netanyahu that “went very well” — notable given their reported tensions all week
- Hard-line GOP pushback immediate: Graham, Wicker, and conservative media figures warned a deal that lets Iran survive would undo everything Operation Epic Fury accomplished
Israel Front
- The Trump Administration’s Iran Plan Is Even Crazier Than We Thought (TNR)
  - NYT reported that the U.S. and Israel attempted to install Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — Holocaust denier, called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” — as Iran’s post-war leader
  - Plan: an airstrike was meant to kill Ahmadinejad’s guards and “free” him; he was injured instead and “became disillusioned with the regime change plan”
  - Ahmadinejad had met with Israeli representatives in Guatemala and Hungary between 2023 and 2025
  - Operation was primarily Mossad-driven; U.S. signed off shortly before execution — and apparently saw him as analogous to how they handled Maduro in Venezuela
  - Bottom line: the U.S. and Israel went to war with no clear idea what government they’d accept in Tehran — and their best answer was a guy who spent years calling for their destruction
- Wednesday: Trump says Netanyahu will ‘do whatever I want’ on Iran after pair said to hold tense call (Times of Israel)
  - Trump claimed Netanyahu “will do whatever I want” — one day after a reportedly tense call where the two disagreed on Iran diplomacy
  - Netanyahu wanted continued military pressure to destroy Iran’s infrastructure; Trump was pursuing a Qatar/Pakistan-brokered framework for a ceasefire and 30-day negotiation window
  - IRGC warned that if strikes resume, the conflict “will spread far beyond the region” — and claimed Iran hasn’t yet deployed its full capabilities
  - Pakistan’s interior minister made a second trip to Tehran in one week as mediator; China’s Xi called resumed hostilities “inadvisable”
- Wednesday: Outrage over Israel’s Ben-Gvir flotilla abuse video (Al Jazeera)
  - Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir posted a video of himself taunting zip-tied flotilla activists on their knees in “stress positions” as Israel’s national anthem played
  - 430+ activists from 46 countries were seized in international waters when Israel intercepted the latest Gaza-bound aid flotilla
  - Global backlash: Italy, France, Netherlands, and Canada summoned Israeli ambassadors; even Netanyahu and U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee rebuked Ben-Gvir
  - Ben-Gvir is a convicted racist with ties to the outlawed Kach terrorist organization — and he controls Israel’s Border Police
- Freed Gaza Flotilla Activists Report Sexual Abuse, Rape in Israeli Custody (Haaretz)
  - Released flotilla activists report beatings, tasing, sleep deprivation, and at least 15 documented cases of sexual abuse — including allegations of rape and forcible penetration with a firearm
  - Abuse allegedly concentrated on one Israeli naval vessel converted into a makeshift prison with shipping containers and barbed wire; activists held without water, blankets, or basic conditions for two days
  - Israel’s prison service flatly denied all allegations; Reuters could not independently verify them
  - Rome prosecutors opened investigations into kidnapping, torture, and sexual assault; Germany and France reported activists returned with injuries requiring medical attention

Cuba

US charges Raúl Castro with murder as Trump escalates pressure on Cuba (Reuters)
- U.S. charged 94-year-old Raúl Castro with murder over the 1996 shootdown of two Cuban exile planes over international waters — four counts of murder, conspiracy, and aircraft destruction
- No extradition expected; acting AG Blanche suggested Castro would face charges “by his own will or by another way”
- Follows the January capture of Venezuelan President Maduro — part of a broader Trump/Rubio push for regime change across Latin America
- Rubio simultaneously offered Cuba $100 million in aid while the U.S. maintains a de facto fuel blockade causing power outages across the island — Cuban foreign minister called it cynical
Cubans outraged at US charges against Raúl Castro as fears of military strikes grow (Guardian)
- Cubans across the political spectrum are outraged — even those who’d lost faith in their own government are showing up to protest the indictment
- Military strike fears are real on the ground: Havana residents are nervously asking who their neighbors are, knowing proximity to government officials makes them a target
- The buildup has been weeks in the making: surveillance flights, an aircraft carrier group entering the Caribbean, CIA director landing in Havana, and intelligence reports (of disputed credibility) claiming Cuba possesses drones
- Context the indictment omits: Brothers to the Rescue had been deliberately provoking Cuba for years — buzzing Havana, dropping leaflets — and Fidel Castro had repeatedly warned Washington to rein them in before the shootdown
- Rubio’s $100M aid offer widely seen as sophisticated regime-change bait — targeting Cuban resentment of military elites who have generators while civilians endure 22-hour blackouts
- A Canadian nickel mining company with major Cuban holdings is reportedly in talks to hand control to a former Trump adviser — a preview, one European businessman said, of “the barefaced corruption that would accompany any US control over Cuba”
Cuba Girds for Invasion as Trump Launches Raúl Castro Indictment Amid Punishing Blockade (Drop Site)
- The “intelligence” that Cuba had 300 Iranian drones was leaked to Axios — buried in the article was that any attack plans were purely defensive, contingent on a U.S. strike first
- Cuba’s military is badly degraded — fewer than two dozen serviceable aircraft, outdated navy — but its asymmetric “People’s War” doctrine assigns wartime roles to every able-bodied adult
- The $100M aid offer is largely contingent on accepting Starlink devices — the same destabilization tool used ahead of the Iran war
- Cuba’s infant mortality rate has nearly doubled since 2018; surgeries postponed for 100,000 patients including 12,000 children — researchers attribute it directly to U.S. sanctions
- Previous U.S. aid shipments via the Catholic Church — meant for Hurricane Melissa victims — still haven’t been fully delivered

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Corruption

The smoking guns in Trump’s new financial disclosure (Popular Information)
- Last week, Trump filed a 113-page document cataloging his stock purchases in 2026.
- Missed required 45-day disclosure deadlines on many trades; fined $200
- Trump bought up to $215K in Thermo Fisher stock in the weeks before — then he toured their facility and publicly praised them
- Bought up to $5M in Apple stock before he lauded Tim Cook in a Kentucky speech; up to $7.2M in Apple total during March alone
- Bought Micron stock, then called it “one of the hottest companies” on Fox News the next day
- Told a Georgia crowd to “go out and buy a Dell computer” nine days after buying at least $1M in Dell stock
- Multiple trades marked “UNSOLICITED” — undermining the White House claim that an independent advisor controls everything
US government agrees to drop tax claims against Trump in broadening of IRS lawsuit settlement (AP)
- U.S. permanently dropped all existing tax claims against Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization as part of the IRS lawsuit settlement
- Addendum signed by acting AG Blanche declares the government “forever barred and precluded” from examining Trump, his family, and affiliates — DOJ claims it only covers existing audits, not future ones
- A former IRS commissioner said he’d never seen the government agree in advance to permanently forgo examination of previously filed returns for a specific person
Trump Just Gave Himself a $1.8 Billion Slush Fund to Reward His Friends (Mother Jones)
- Trump dropped his $10B IRS lawsuit in exchange for a settlement that created the $1.776B “Anti-Weaponization Fund” — paid for by taxpayers
- Fund is controlled by a five-member commission appointed by the AG; Trump can remove any member — effectively no independent oversight
- Quarterly reports go only to the AG, not Congress or the public — who gets paid and how much may never be fully disclosed
- House Democrats called it a “collusive lawsuit” settled collusively to produce a slush fund — noting no sitting president has ever sued the government he leads for taxpayer money
Leaked IRS Memo Proves How Blatant Trump’s Slush Fund Theft Really Is (TNR)
- IRS’s own lawyers wanted to fight Trump’s lawsuit — their memo noted it was filed two years past the legal deadline, and that the leaker was a Booz Allen contractor, not an IRS employee
- DOJ, run by Trump’s former personal lawyer Todd Blanche, ignored the memo and settled anyway
- At a Senate hearing, Blanche couldn’t commit to barring Jan. 6 rioters from the fund — including one pardoned Jan. 6er who was subsequently convicted of child molestation and allegedly tried to bribe his victims with anticipated fund payouts
- Blanche also couldn’t name the commissioners, couldn’t say who would choose them, and claimed Trump had no influence over the process — senators weren’t buying it
‘Incredibly hostile’ GOP senators hammer Todd Blanche in closed-door meeting: report (Raw Story)
- Blanche’s closed-door meeting with Senate Republicans on the fund lasted nearly two hours and was described as a “s---show”
- Sen. Thom Tillis called it “stupid on stilts” and “tyranny”
- Per CNN’s Raju: “all” GOP senators voiced opposition — “hardly any came to its defense”
- Republicans also warned the fund could derail their priority immigration/reconciliation bill
Controversy over Trump ballroom and $1.8B ‘slush fund’ sends Senate running from the Hill in GOP revolt (Independent)
- Senate Republicans fled DC without voting on ICE funding — the slush fund demand was the primary holdup
- Mitch McConnell: “The nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops? Utterly stupid, morally wrong”
- Leadership didn’t have 51 votes; even Tuberville called it a “curveball”
- Trump’s $1 billion ballroom security ask — stripped from the bill by the Senate parliamentarian — added to the dysfunction
- House canceled its own Friday votes minutes after the Senate punted
Fascists use corrupt, clientelist relationships to consolidate power, enforce ideological conformity, and control the economy
- State-sanctioned monopolies: think of Trump’s relationships with the business elite
- Party-state fusion: see DOGE and the large-scale purging of non-MAGA government employees
- Quid Pro Quo Privilege: members of the public and lower-tier civil servants receive tangible benefits for loyalty. We are here.
- Co-opting the culture: think of MAGA aligned media, UFC, Indycar; Kennedy Center takeover

Ebola Outbreak

What to know about the Bundibugyo virus, a species of Ebola causing an outbreak in Congo (AP)
Residents burn an Ebola treatment center in Congo as anger grows over the outbreak (AP)
- Bundibugyo virus — a rare Ebola strain with no vaccine or treatment — has killed 160+ suspected dead, 671 suspected cases in Congo; WHO says real numbers are almost certainly higher
- Outbreak likely began months ago but spread undetected because health authorities were testing for the wrong Ebola strain
- Now spread across three provinces and into Uganda — covering a 500km range
- Mortality rate estimated at 30%+; healthcare workers and family caregivers are highest risk
- Public health response falls back to basics: contact tracing, isolation, protective equipment, safe burial practices
- Locals burned an Ebola treatment center after being blocked from retrieving a friend’s body for burial — safe burial protocols clash directly with local funeral customs
- Response severely hampered: weak health infrastructure further degraded by international aid cuts, 920,000 internally-displaced people in the epicenter, with active ISIS-linked militant attacks in the same area
- No vaccine or treatment available; earliest candidate is 6-9 months out
- U.S. restricting travelers from Congo, Uganda, and South Sudan; Americans must route through Dulles for screening
This Ebola outbreak raises questions about when it all began — and the U.S. response (NPR)
- CDC only learned of the outbreak on May 14 — one day before it was officially announced — after hundreds of cases had already accumulated; a former CDC official called that “weird”
- U.S. humanitarian funding in Congo dropped ~80% under Trump — from $900M+ to $179M — gutting the informal disease surveillance networks that aid workers provided in conflict zones
- USAID’s Congo mission was shuttered entirely last year, eliminating on-the-ground disease intel capacity
- U.S. withdrawal from WHO has shrunk WHO’s international emergency division — compounding the detection gap
- At least one American aid worker infected; six more high-risk exposures — being transferred to Germany for treatment
- State Department denied aid cuts affected the response; CDC’s incident manager deflected when asked directly whether funding cuts caused the delay
Meanwhile, these are the kind of people leading US public health agencies:
- Feds Blame Ebola as They Refuse to Bring Back Wrongly Deported Woman (TNR)
  - DHS deported Colombian immigrant Adriana Zapata, 55, to Congo — a country she has no ties to — a 2024 court order barred her return to Colombia due to documented torture by an abusive ex-partner with police connections
  - She has serious untreated medical conditions including severe vascular disease; Congolese officials said at the time of deportation they couldn’t care for her
  - A federal judge ordered her return; DHS responded by claiming they couldn’t find her — despite her address appearing in prior court filings and being shared in court the day before
  - When that failed, DHS cited the Ebola outbreak as justification for ignoring the court order — even though she’s in Kinshasa, which has no cases, and was deported before the outbreak was announced
- RFK Jr fires leaders of group that sets guidelines for preventive healthcare (Guardian)
  - RFK Jr. fired the two chairs of the US Preventive Services Task Force — the panel that determines what preventive care insurance must cover for free, including mammograms and colonoscopies
  - No reason given in the termination letters; Kennedy told Congress last month he was reforming the “lackadaisical” panel
  - HHS had already largely sidelined the taskforce over the past year — postponing meetings and leaving cervical cancer screening updates and maternal depression guidelines in limbo
  - Health advocates fear Kennedy will replace expert members with political appointees, as he did with the vaccine advisory committee
- MAHA’s latest conspiracy? Blaming Bill Gates for spike in tick bites (Independent)
  - Tick-related ER visits have hit their highest level in nearly a decade — the real cause is warmer winters, habitat changes, and reduced wildlife diversity
  - MAHA Moms Coalition is promoting a debunked conspiracy that Bill Gates bred and released ticks carrying alpha-gal syndrome to drive consumers toward plant-based meat — a theory fact-checked and disproven in 2023
  - A separate conspiracy blames Pfizer for planting ticks to create demand for their Lyme disease vaccine — which was actually announced before the tick surge and targets a bacterial protein, not mRNA
  - RFK Jr. himself previously said he “probably” promoted the Plum Island bioweapons origin theory for Lyme disease

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Tuesday Primaries

Big wins, surprises and signals from Georgia’s primary night (AJC)
- J6er Chuck Hand wins SD15 primary
  - Sentenced to 20 days in jail and 6 months probation for illegally demonstrating at Capitol
  - Ran for US House in ‘24
- Another Trump enemy falls as Brad Raffensperger loses Georgia primary (Politico)
  - Brad Raffensperger — who defended Georgia’s 2020 results against Trump’s pressure — finished 3rd in the GOP gubernatorial primary
  - MAGA billionaire Rick Jackson ($65M self-funded) and Trump-endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones ($28M) advanced to a runoff with 32.5% and 38.4% respectively
  - Both are courting the same MAGA base — runoff will test Trump’s endorsement power against Jackson’s cash
  - Georgia AG Chris Carr, another anti-overturn Republican, also failed to advance — old-school Georgia GOP is effectively finished
- Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms wins Democratic nomination for Georgia governor (GA Recorder)
  - Keisha Lance Bottoms won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination outright — no runoff needed
  - No Black person, no woman, and no former Atlanta mayor has ever been elected Georgia governor; Democrats haven’t won the office since 1998
  - She’ll face either Jones or Jackson in the general, with Republicans having already outspent Democrats by roughly $100 million to almost nothing
- Bethel, Warren hang on to Georgia Supreme Court seats (GA Recorder)
  - Two Republican-appointed Georgia Supreme Court justices survived Democratic-backed challengers — Sarah Warren won comfortably; Charlie Bethel barely held on with 51.1%
  - Challengers Fmr. State Sen. Jen Jordan and personal injury attorney Miracle Rankin were backed by Planned Parenthood and reproductive rights groups; incumbents had Kemp and evangelical organizations behind them
  - Bethel’s near-loss signals real vulnerability on the court despite the nonpartisan ballot
- Mike Collins and Derek Dooley head to runoff in Georgia Senate GOP race (Politico)
  - Trump-endorsed Congressman Collins led with 40.5%
  - Kemp-endorsed former football coach Dooley finished 2nd with 30%
  - Sets up a proxy fight between Trump and Gov. Kemp; Trump’s endorsement in the runoff could be decisive
  - Meanwhile Ossoff sits on $31 million and counting, watching Republicans burn through resources fighting each other
Alabama
- Tuberville, Jones advance to November face off for Alabama governor (Montgomery Advertiser)
  - Tuberville wins the GOP primary easily, setting up a November rematch against former Democratic Sen. Doug Jones — who lost to Tuberville by 20 points in 2020
  - Kay Ivey is term-limited out, making this the first open governor’s race in years — and Tuberville enters as a heavy favorite in deep-red Alabama
  - Jones won the Democratic nomination with 73%; his platform centers on Medicaid expansion, early voting, a state lottery, and IVF protections
- Steve Marshall concedes in U.S. Senate race; Barry Moore, Jared Hudson go to GOP runoff (AL Reflector)
  - Trump-endorsed Rep. Barry Moore led with 40% but fell short of 50%; former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson edged out AG Steve Marshall for second — Moore and Hudson head to a June 16 runoff
  - Marshall conceded Wednesday after finishing ~5,000 votes behind Hudson despite raising $1.4 million
  - Moore had Trump’s endorsement and Club for Growth backing; Hudson ran strong in Jefferson and Tuscaloosa counties
- Alabama’s ‘ghost’ congressional primary: What you need to know about the special election (AL.com)
  - Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais reinstated Alabama’s previously invalidated maps, gutting VRA Section 2 protections across the South
  - Alabama voided its May 19 congressional primaries in four districts (AL-1, AL-2, AL-6, AL-7) before results were even released — first time since the 1800s; special elections set for August 11 with no runoff, plurality wins
  - All other May 19 races — governor, U.S. Senate, statewide offices — count normally; congressional runoffs go June 17
  - The new maps convert AL-2 from a majority-Black Democratic seat (currently held by Rep. Shomari Figures) to a majority-white Republican-leaning district
Kentucky
- Trump picks off Massie in Kentucky (Politico)
  - Trump ousted seven-term Rep. Thomas Massie in Kentucky’s 4th District — defeated by Trump-endorsed former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein in what became the most expensive intraparty House primary on record ($33M+ in ad spending)
  - Massie’s sins: voted against Trump’s tax-and-spending package, supported Iran war powers limits, and helped lead the bipartisan push to release the Epstein files
  - AIPAC-linked super PACs spent $9M+ against Massie; a Trump operative PAC spent nearly $7M more — outside money proved decisive
  - Defeat silences Trump’s loudest remaining Republican congressional critic and sends a clear warning to any remaining dissenters
- Trump-backed Andy Barr wins GOP nomination for Mitch McConnell’s Senate seat in Kentucky (NBC)
  - Trump-endorsed Rep. Andy Barr won the GOP nomination for Mitch McConnell’s retiring Senate seat, defeating former state AG Daniel Cameron
  - Trump cleared the field by endorsing Barr and convincing businessman Nate Morris — who had Vance’s backing and strong MAGA ties — to drop out in exchange for an ambassadorship
  - Barr is a heavy favorite in November; Kentucky hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1992
  - Democratic nominee is Charles Booker, a two-time Senate candidate
Idaho
- Nine Idaho Republican lawmakers lose primary election, including some who pushed for budget cuts (Idaho Capital Sun)
  - Nine Republican incumbent legislators lost their primaries in Idaho — five of them members of the “Gang of Eight,” a conservative bloc that pushed steep spending cuts during a session marked by a budget shortfall
  - The budget committee vice chair also lost his seat — voters appear to be punishing the austerity caucus
  - Gov. Brad Little survived an eight-way primary; incumbent congressional Republicans all held on
  - Idaho Democrats fielded candidates in all 35 legislative districts and all statewide and federal races — double their 2022 numbers and up significantly from 2024
Next Week: Texas
- Trump’s endorsement of Ken Paxton over John Cornyn roils Texas Senate race (The Hill)
  - Trump endorsed scandal-plagued AG Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the May 26 Texas GOP runoff — catching Senate leadership off guard and putting the seat in play
  - Cornyn has a massive money advantage ($20M vs. $5M in runoff spending) but Trump’s endorsement may be decisive; polls show Paxton tied with Democrat James Talarico vs. Cornyn’s slim lead
  - Murkowski warned the Senate majority is now in “jeopardy”; a Republican strategist told The Hill Trump’s leverage over Senate leadership “is now pretty much gone”
Oregon
- Oregon voters decisive as they reject gas tax, renominate Drazan (OPB)
  - Christine Drazan won the GOP gubernatorial nomination, setting up a rematch against Democratic incumbent Gov. Tina Kotek — who beat her by 4 points in 2022
  - Oregon voters rejected a gas tax measure 80-20 — the Iran war has driven Oregon gas prices up 35% in the past year, making any new fuel taxes a non-starter
  - Drazan is notably avoiding any public mention of Trump; Kotek is making him the centerpiece of her general election argument
Pennsylvania
- Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Shapiro wins his primary, as do his endorsed candidates (PBS)
  - Shapiro ran uncontested, went 3-for-3 with his endorsed candidates in three key swing congressional districts — targeting seats held by Reps. Scott Perry, Brian Fitzpatrick, and Ryan Mackenzie
  - Shapiro is framing his reelection around flipping the state legislature Democratic for the first time in 30+ years — promising to fund mass transit, build housing, and codify abortion rights if he gets a Democratic majority
  - He’s positioning himself as a national accountability figure against Trump, with 2028 White House talk already swirling around him
- Progressive Rabb wins 3rd District race with boosts from ‘the squad’ and local grassroots activism (WHYY)
  - State Rep. Chris Rabb upset early favorite Sharif Street in Philadelphia’s 3rd Congressional District, winning ~45% to Street’s under 30% — backed by AOC, the Squad, Philly DSA, and the Working Families Party
  - Rabb was the only candidate calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel and the only one willing to use the word “genocide” — a key differentiator in the race
  - Street’s concession framed it as a wake-up call: “There was a movement called ‘Reclaim’ — they wanted to reclaim their party”
  - The win is a direct rebuke of the Democratic establishment — 3rd-place Ala Stanford was hand-picked by incumbent Dwight Evans to succeed him, and Street had the most institutional support
- Primary results spell the end for four PA House incumbents (City & State PA)
  - Four Pennsylvania House incumbents lost their primaries — three Democrats, one Republican
  - Most notable: Greg Vitali, a 33-year Democratic incumbent and environmental policy veteran, lost 62-38 to Haverford Township Commissioner Judy Trombetta
  - Republican Bud Cook lost by double digits to a pro-DOGE challenger; freshman Democratic Rep. Ana Tiburcio, just months into her first term, lost 56-44 to an Allentown city councilmember

DNC Autopsy

Facing intense internal pressure, DNC releases postelection autopsy that criticizes Kamala Harris (AP)
- DNC released a 192-page 2024 autopsy — concluding Harris “wrote off rural America,” failed to hit Trump with sufficient negative firepower, and that Democrats’ messaging is too focused on reason and winning arguments “even in cycles when the electorate is defined by rage”
- Report notably omits Biden’s decision to seek reelection, the rushed Harris substitution, and the Gaza divide — AOC called the Gaza omission “notable” and declined to back Martin’s leadership when asked directly
- Martin sat on the report for months, released it with annotations calling its own findings “incomplete and unsubstantiated,” and then disowned it: “I am not proud of this product; it does not meet my standards”
- The report’s primary author -– Paul Rivera, a friend of Martin’s — was quietly fired the same day it was released
- Democratic operatives furious — not just at the findings, but at the timing: the party spent a day relitigating 2024 instead of hammering Trump on Iran, prices, and the ballroom slush fund
- Dan Pfeiffer: “It’s hard to imagine anyone handling anything worse. He is not the right person to lead the DNC at this time”
Why the DNC autopsy report matters (Amanda Litman)
- Litman’s bottom line: the report is garbage — Rivera never gathered all relevant data, didn’t record interviews, couldn’t be fact-checked, and omitted Biden’s age, Gaza, Tim Walz, TikTok, and YouTube entirely
- Martin’s real failure wasn’t the bad report — it was getting a bad report back and not fixing it, not holding the author accountable, and then spending five months gaslighting people who asked about it
- The DNC currently has negative $3 million cash on hand — Martin is failing at the most basic function of the job before the autopsy scandal even started
- Litman’s core argument: the rules governing how the 2028 primary gets run are being written right now — and after this, no one will trust Martin to oversee that process fairly
- “We should not settle for mediocre men enabling other mediocre men to fail to the top” — Martin needs to go

Stolen Election?

Ex-MAGA influencer shares election conspiracy theory involving Elon Musk (Raw Story)
- Caveat: Ashley St. Clair is a motivated source — she’s had a bitter public falling out with Musk, alleges he cut her child support for “disobedience” and spent fewer than four hours with their child in its first year
- She claims Musk told her personally that he knew Trump won hours before the AP called the race at 5:34 a.m. on November 6
- She alleges Musk possessed “real-time data” on elections through secretive satellite technology
- She says Musk shared internal America PAC data with her that raised questions about how he obtained election information not available through standard door-knocking operations
The Gap in How America Detects Election Fraud I Found in the Epstein Files (Downwind of Truth)
- What’s documented: Musk texted a confidant on October 5, 2024 about unleashing “the anomaly in the matrix” through “lasers from space” that was “not something on the chessboard” — the NYT verified those texts; St. Clair says he told her the same thing in person
- What’s documented: Epstein’s recovered files show him recruiting NSA-trained mathematicians specializing in wavelet analysis — the exact mathematical technique whose output is literally called “an anomaly in a matrix” — while simultaneously advising on the satellite project that became Starlink and maintaining direct contact with Musk
- What’s documented: Tripp Lite — whose battery backup units are physically connected to vote tabulation servers across the country — was transferred to Eaton Corporation through Leonard Leo’s dark money network; Eaton then partnered with Peter Thiel’s Palantir; Starlink’s Direct-to-Cell satellites were emergency-authorized in swing states six days before the election and 265 new DTC-capable satellites were activated October 30
- What’s alleged but unproven: that this infrastructure was used to push unaudited firmware updates through battery backup devices into vote counting servers, shifting presidential totals without touching down-ballot races
- What the data shows — but doesn’t prove: precinct-level analysis in North Carolina found Trump outperformed other Republicans by 5.5% while Harris underperformed other Democrats by 1.8%, with the gap larger in Election Day counts than early votes — exactly the pattern the theory would predict, though researchers like Mebane caution most anomalies may be ticket-splitters
- What Justice says would prove or disprove it: a paper ballot hand count, an independent wavelet analysis of precinct data, forensic examination of battery backup firmware, and Starlink’s DTC connection logs from the election window — none of which has been done

Epstein

Former Epstein assistant Sarah Kellen testified before the House committee. Here’s what we know (PBS)
- Epstein’s former personal assistant Sarah Kellen testified in a closed-door House Oversight deposition — describing herself as a survivor, not an accomplice: “I was a literal indentured slave. I had zero power or authority”
- Kellen says the federal government branded her a criminal in the 2007 non-prosecution agreement without ever once contacting her — she didn’t know her name was in the document until it became public two years later
- Committee chair Comer said members of both parties were split on whether to view Kellen as survivor or accomplice — but noted DOJ treated her as an aid to prosecution, not a co-conspirator
- She reportedly named three previously unnamed men who had sexually abused her during the testimony.
Here is who Epstein’s longtime assistant accused of sexual abuse (CNN)
- Frédéric Fekkai: celebrity hairstylist with a long documented relationship with Epstein — used his apartments, asked him for business help, was described by Maxwell as “friendly, very friendly” with Epstein; Kellen alleges he assaulted her in a Hawaii hotel room in the early 2000s before she even met Epstein; his rep flatly denies it
- Philip Levine: former Miami Beach mayor and failed 2018 gubernatorial candidate; Epstein files show years of contact with both Epstein and Maxwell — Levine wrote Epstein after his release from jail saying “you are a great guy”; Maxwell says Levine introduced her to Bill Clinton and called them “very good friends”; Kellen alleges he assaulted her at an Epstein/Maxwell rental in St. Tropez; Levine previously said he only met Epstein “a few times” and regrets it
- Patrick Demarchelier: French fashion photographer, died 2022; Kellen testified he introduced her to Epstein — characterizing him as a scout for Victoria’s Secret models; she alleges he exposed himself to her; no direct connection to Epstein appears in the DOJ files, and he cannot respond to the allegations
- None of the three have been charged; Comer called Kellen’s testimony “by far the most substantive and productive interview” the committee has conducted
Jeffrey Epstein Was CIA. The Communications Network at Zorro Ranch Proves It. (The Pugilist)
- What’s documented:
  - Epstein rejected cheap gigabit fiber for Zorro Ranch and instead chose a 27-mile encrypted military-grade microwave link to Sandia Crest — dismissing bandwidth twice because, Valdes-Rodriguez argues, he wasn’t moving large files, he was transmitting something specific and covert
  - The contractor who built it — Future Technologies Venture — specializes in “mission-critical connectivity” for government and military environments, and now holds a $151B Missile Defense Agency contract under the Golden Dome initiative
  - The system connected to a satellite earth station with direct-to-orbit uplink capability, authorized under an active FCC license — creating an untraceable data path from Zorro Ranch to anywhere on Earth
  - Donald Barr — father of AG William Barr, who oversaw Epstein’s custody and death — served in the OSS and hired the teenage, degree-less Epstein to teach math at Dalton School in 1973
  - Henry Singleton, OSS veteran and defense contractor who built missile guidance systems, owned the neighboring ranch and was Epstein’s first-choice relay point; his son appears in Epstein’s black book
  - The FCC licenses for Epstein’s encrypted microwave network are still active under new ownership — Donald and Mary Catherine Huffines, who secretly met with Russian officials in 2018 to help deliver a Trump letter to Putin and negotiate the release of Russian spy Maria Butina; Huffines is currently running for Texas comptroller with Trump’s endorsement
- What she concludes but hasn’t proven:
  - Epstein was a multigenerational CIA asset, identified and cultivated by Barr Sr. possibly as young as age ten
  - The network running through Epstein had simultaneous American, Israeli, and Russian intelligence components — and protected itself across administrations through the children of its founders
  - The full Epstein files have never been released precisely because they would expose this network, not merely the abuse

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Indiana Elections

Dems Get a Boost
- National Democratic group aims to help break GOP’s Indiana House supermajority (IndyStar)
  - The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee — the national party arm dedicated to flipping state legislative chambers — is targeting 11 Indiana House races, including five in central Indiana, marking the first time national Democrats have invested at this level in the statehouse
  - Democrats need to flip just four seats to break the Republican supermajority, which would give them the ability to deny quorum on controversial bills
  - Most competitive races: HD-25 (R-Cash vs. D-Stoner — separated by 60 votes in 2024), HD-62 (R-Hall defended by just 2 points), HD-71 (D-Dant Chesser defended by 3 points)
  - Hamilton County seats HD-24 (R-Hunter Smith vs. D-Rachael Bleicher) and HD-39 (R-Danny Lopez vs. D-Lindsay Gramlich) are among the targets — reflecting continued Democratic hopes in Indianapolis suburbs going purple
  - Democrats are playing both offense and defense — some targets are seats they already hold by razor-thin margins, others are pickup opportunities in districts that trended close last cycle
Republican Recounts
- Trump-backed candidate seeks recount in Indiana Senate race with 3-vote margin (ICC)
  - Trump-backed Paula Copenhaver — a staffer to Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith — has filed for a recount after losing to Sen. Spencer Deery by just three votes in the SD-23 Republican primary
  - Copenhaver claims 14 Democrats or self-identified progressives crossed over to vote in the open Republican primary for Deery, who was targeted by Trump for voting against the congressional redistricting plan
  - Deery’s response: “Our state and country are ill-served anytime a candidate refuses to accept the will of the voters” — a notable line coming from a Republican
  - Recount could drag into July given the six-county district; Copenhaver’s attorneys want to depose the 14 identified voters, arguing they waived ballot secrecy by publicly disclosing their votes on social media
- Challenger seeks recount of 15-vote loss to Republican Sen. Liz Brown (ICC)
  - Sen. Liz Brown’s challenger Darren Vogt — a Jim Banks staffer also backed by AG Todd Rokita — filed for a recount after losing SD-15 by just 15 votes; technical glitches in Allen County left preliminary tallies incomplete until the day after the primary
  - Brown, who is Trump-endorsed and voted FOR the redistricting bill, turned it around on her opponents: “Is Jim Banks funding this, or is Rokita trying one final tactic to rid the Senate of its most independent conservative voice?”
GOP Secretary of State’s Race
- GOP secretary of state race scrambled as US Sen. Banks’ staffer enters (ICC)
  - Jim Banks’ senior staffer Max Engling entered the Republican secretary of state race just one month before the June 20 convention — despite Banks having endorsed incumbent Diego Morales just two months earlier
  - David Shelton — Knox County Clerk and year-long candidate who has criticized Morales’ conduct in office — called Engling “just another amateur wanting a job he has no qualifications for” and said Banks is clearly abandoning Morales: “They’re cutting bait on Diego”
  - Engling previously ran for Indiana’s 5th Congressional District in 2024, finishing third with under 10% — before that he was an aide to Kevin McCarthy
- Morales refuses to drop out after Banks, Rokita withdraw support in GOP secretary of state race (ICC)
  - Banks and Rokita jointly withdrew their endorsements of Morales and backed Engling — Banks citing a specific scandal: a former Morales staffer, allegedly a non-citizen, was registered to vote using a temporary driver’s license
  - Rokita personally called Morales and asked him to drop out; Morales refused — “The decision belongs in the hands and only the hands of Republican convention delegates”
  - Morales has faced a string of controversies: a taxpayer-funded vehicle, unexplained international travel, and no-bid contracts for donors
  - Most of Indiana’s Republican congressional delegation lined up behind Engling; Shelton — who has been running for a year — called it “political scrambling and backroom pressure campaigns”
- Braun says he’s neutral in turbulent GOP Indiana secretary of state race (ICC)
  - State Treasurer Daniel Elliott became the latest Republican to break with Morales — calling on him to resign as secretary of state entirely, not just drop out of the race
  - Braun stayed neutral, noting he never endorsed Morales to begin with — pointedly adding “whenever you try to intervene and say this or that, I don’t like that”
  - Full November field shaping up: Republican convention (June 20) features Morales, Engling, Shelton, and Reitenour; Democratic convention (June 6) is Beau Bayh vs. Army veteran Blythe Potter; former GOP Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard running as Lincoln Party; Libertarian Lauri Shillings also on the ballot

Rokita Fuckery

30 major fuel retailers under investigation for price gouging in Indiana (ICC)
- Rokita’s office is formally investigating 30 major fuel retailers for price gouging following Gov. Braun’s April energy emergency, which suspended both the 7% gasoline sales tax and the 36-cents-a-gallon excise tax through June 7
- 170+ consumer complaints received; investigators are comparing retail prices to wholesale costs seven days before and after the April 8 executive order
- AG’s office built a public dashboard tracking prices at 4,600 Indiana gas stations — INFuelWatch.com — so consumers can check prices and file complaints directly
SHADES OF COMEY CASE: ACLU says Indiana man did not threaten state officials by posting ‘86’ on social media (Indiana Citizen)
- Rokita’s office sent an investigator to a Monroe County man’s home to warn him he could be indicted — for posting “86” on the Facebook pages of Rokita, Lt. Gov. Beckwith, and Sen. Banks
- The ACLU filed suit, arguing “86” is standard slang for “remove” or “get rid of” — not a threat — and that the door-step visit by a badge-carrying investigator is textbook First Amendment intimidation
- The visit was recorded by a door camera; the investigator explicitly invoked the indictment (by Trump’s DOJ) of former FBI Director James Comey: “If Comey was indicted, we could easily indict you over this today”
- Rokita’s response: called the ACLU “anti-American,” “deranged,” and running a “communist” mission — and vowed to drain their bank account in court
Indiana is trying to undo court-approved birth record changes for transgender people (WFYI)
- Rokita’s office has been intervening in closed, sometimes sealed court cases — cases the state was never a party to — to reverse judge-approved gender marker changes on birth certificates for transgender Hoosiers
- At least nine cases confirmed; in one instance Rokita intervened a full year after the judge ruled; his office won’t say how many interventions it has pursued or how many it has reversed
- Indianapolis resident Rhye Carroll had her case sealed and closed in October 2025, updated all her documents, and booked an overseas trip — then learned in April that Rokita had reopened her case and is seeking to reverse the order
- The legal hook: Braun’s March 2025 executive order directing state agencies to enforce a “biological binary” — which prompted the health department to stop processing gender marker changes entirely and forward all requests to Rokita’s office instead
Rokita wants ‘teeth’ for Indiana ban on human sexuality content (ICC)
- After the ACLU dropped its challenge to Indiana’s “Don’t Say Gay” law — which bans human sexuality instruction for preschool through third grade — Rokita declared victory and immediately called for expanding the ban to every grade
- Rokita now says he doesn’t trust the Department of Education to enforce the law and wants lawmakers to give it more “teeth” — his benchmark for comparison: the 14 teachers who lost licenses this year after criminal convictions
- ACLU: “Vague censorship laws chill speech and leave educators questioning how to serve their students” — the organization dropped the suit after losing at the Seventh Circuit but says its concerns remain

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Education

Indiana’s reading recovery ranks sixth in national report (ICC)
- Indiana ranked 6th in reading recovery — but the average Hoosier student is still 0.31 grade equivalents behind 2019 levels; the 6th place ranking just means we’re losing less badly than most states
- Math is worse: Indiana ranked 29th, still half a grade level below 2019, with researchers citing constantly shifting state standards, eroding teacher licensing requirements, and mass mid-year teacher departures
- The “learning recession” started nationally in 2013 — seven years before the pandemic; Across the US, eighth graders are now at their lowest scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress since 1990
- Harvard researcher: “The pandemic was the mudslide that followed seven years of erosion”
Indiana charters edged traditional public schools in academic gains after COVID, study says (Chalkbeat)
- A Brown University study found Indiana charter school students posted greater academic gains post-COVID than traditional public school peers — with the gap growing each year from 2021-22 through 2023-24
- Gains were most pronounced for Black and Hispanic students and the lowest-performing and economically disadvantaged — groups that charter advocates will tout heavily
- Key caveat: the study is still undergoing peer review, researchers haven’t yet determined why charters outperformed, and the analysis excluded rural students almost entirely due to the lack of charters there
- Important questions about methodology and context (Wildstyle Paschall)
  - The innovation charter schools are NOT performing better, the study doesn’t seem to mention it
  - Even Chalkbeat doesn’t calculate White students data because of data suppression
  - Many schools changed grade levels and charter schools opened and closed making direct comparisons complicated
  - Award winning Indy charter schools have been caught TARGETING students using incredibly high discipline to push out special needs children
  - BOTH IPS, innovation charters and independent charters as a whole are NOT meeting the state average and the “success” gap between any of them is SMALL
Allissa Impink gave up her IPS board seat so voters could fill it. Majority of spots now on November ballot (WFYI)
- IPS board member Allissa Impink resigned effective June 15 — timing it deliberately before the June 18 filing deadline so voters, not the board, choose her replacement through 2028
- Combined with three expiring seats and another vacancy, five of seven IPS board seats will be on the November ballot — the first under Indiana’s new partisan school board election law
- The stakes couldn’t be higher: IPS faces a $40 million cash deficit, an expiring operating referendum, and a state-created body (IPEC) that has already stripped the elected board of control over buildings, transportation, and property tax levying

Quality of Life

Carmel, Fishers named top 2 places to live in country by U.S. News & World Report (WTHR)
- U.S. News & World Report ranked Carmel #1 and Fishers #2 on its 2026-27 “Best Places to Live in the U.S.” list — with Noblesville at #18 and Greenwood at #26
- The rankings evaluate value, desirability, job market, and quality of life across 850+ cities
- Worth noting: these are among the wealthiest, whitest, most politically homogeneous suburbs in the state — the rankings measure amenities, not equity
- So yeah, top places to live…
  - Unless you’re a trans person who wants to live their life openly
  - Unless you’re a woman who needs access to abortion care
  - Unless you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want to live in a…

Militarized Police State

National Guard says first members of new military police force ready for deployment (WRTV)
- Braun signed a law creating a designated military police response force within the Indiana National Guard — the governor alone can deploy it anytime he believes civilian agencies are “overwhelmed,” with no requirement that local officials request it
- The first 40 National Guard MPs have completed a supplemental Indiana law enforcement training course — but critics note it’s a workshop, not the full academy curriculum required of civilian officers
- Rep. Matt Pierce’s warning: this opens the door for a governor who doesn’t like a particular mayor or local officials to deploy military police into urban communities without their consent — a dynamic already playing out at the federal level under Trump in D.C.
- Braun and the bill’s author say coordination with local law enforcement would happen “as a matter of course” — but that coordination is not legally required

Data Centers

Here’s how Indy plans to regulate data centers (Mirror Indy)
- Indianapolis City-County Council on May 4 unanimously passed a resolution calling for a pause on new data center approvals until the city can adopt new zoning regulations — but it’s purely symbolic, the Metropolitan Development Commission doesn’t have to comply, and a Republican councilor called it “political theater”
- Proposed zoning regulations are expected to be discussed over the coming months and would cap noise at 65 decibels and require developers to submit water management, electrical capacity, and noise mitigation plans — but critics say it doesn’t touch health and environmental concerns
- Two data centers already approved this year: a $500M complex in the Martindale-Brightwood neighborhood and an 18-football-field-sized facility in Decatur Township; about a dozen Indiana counties have issued moratoriums, with Marshall County going further with a permanent ban
Residents push back on a $2 billion data center proposal on Indy’s east side (WFYI)
- Georgia-based DC Blox wants to build a $2 billion, three-building data center campus on Indy’s east side — a former Ford factory brownfield — using up to 78 megawatts of electricity (about as much as a city the size of Muncie or Anderson) and 56 backup generators
- Dozens of residents showed up with “Block DC Blox” signs, raising concerns about noise, water use, power grid strain, and the health risks of digging up contaminated soil on a brownfield site
- Critical procedural detail: because DC Blox filed for a variance rather than a rezoning, the City-County Council has no veto — opponents must convince the Metropolitan Development Commission directly at the June 11 hearing or the project moves forward

HoosLeft Podcast #126: Live w/ Indiana Organizing Project's Stuart Mora

Scott Aaron Rogers — Wed, 20 May 2026 02:01:03 GMT

Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net

HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us

Indiana Organizing Project: https://indianaorganizing.org/

SUMMARY:

Scott sits down with Stuart Mora — immigrants’ rights advocate, veteran UNITE HERE organizer, and former immigration law firm staffer — to discuss the Indiana Organizing Project’s campaign to end ICE detention at Miami Correctional Facility near Kokomo, where approximately 600 detainees are being held in conditions Mora describes as approaching the definition of a concentration camp. Fresh off a 27-event statewide day of action, Mora walks through the human toll on Hoosier families — parents detained for traffic stops, U.S. citizen children left behind, irreversible trauma — alongside the financial toll on Indiana taxpayers, with the state $16 million into a facility upgrade and the federal government four months behind on payments. Scott and Mora examine how Indiana’s 287(g) agreement and Senate Enrolled Act 76 have made local law enforcement a de facto arm of ICE, why the detention bed count is actually falling in response to organized resistance, and what the Indiana Organizing Project’s mutual aid network is doing in the meantime to support affected families. Mora closes with a call to action for the movement’s August 29–30 statewide weekend of action, with a goal of more than 50 events.

WHAT’S INSIDE:

00:00:23 — Introduction & Context: The Statewide Day of Action

Scott sets the scene: Hoosiers at nearly 30 events across Indiana protested ICE’s use of Miami Correctional Facility to house detainees.
At least 31 people have died in ICE custody since Trump’s second term began, including two at Miami.
Scott introduces Stuart Mora of the Indiana Organizing Project as one of the key organizers of Saturday’s day of action.
Scott makes his fundraising ask and rattles off social media handles for HoosLeft and Progressive Indiana Network before welcoming Mora.

00:04:10 — The Campaign: From February Launch to 27 Actions

The campaign launched February 22nd with a 500-person rally at the governor’s mansion in the snow.
Congressman André Carson conducted a congressional oversight visit to Miami Correctional on April 9th and joined the call to end ICE detention there.
Saturday’s day of action drew 27 events across Indiana, including in small towns like Fowler and Pearson — a deliberate choice to build a statewide, not just Indianapolis- or Bloomington-based, campaign.
The movement is building to a statewide weekend of action on August 29–30, with a goal of more than 50 events.

00:06:39 — The Bottleneck: Detention Beds as the Choke Point

Mora spent five years at Muñoz Legal in Indianapolis working with detained immigrants, giving him firsthand knowledge of the ICE system before the current administration.
ICE itself told immigration lawyers that detention space is the bottleneck in their operations: “We are being told to arrest X number of people. We don’t know where to put them.”
When Trump took office in January 2025, ICE had 41,000 detention beds; that peaked at 73,000 in January 2026 and has since fallen — partly due to pushback, including Marion County removing 128 detention beds from ICE access.
Mora’s core argument: every detention bed represents a family in crisis, and the people being detained in Indiana are largely not violent criminals but people pulled over for traffic stops.

00:09:16 — “Worst First” Was a Lie: Real Families Torn Apart

Governor Braun promised “the worst first,” but the reality is families with no criminal history being separated.
Mora describes visiting a family in southern Indiana: dad detained for three months after a speeding stop, four U.S. citizen children at home, mom sobbing for two hours saying “my kids don’t deserve any of this.”
Scott notes that 70% of ICE detainees nationally have no criminal record whatsoever; the remainder are largely nonviolent offenders.
Scott and Mora agree the harm ripples outward — to neighbors, to schoolmates, to entire communities — regardless of immigration status.

00:11:40 — Reaching Across the Divide: Making the Case to Trump Voters

Mora deliberately rejects the framing of this as a partisan issue; he has organized extensively in rural, conservative Indiana.
His core pitch to Trump-voting Hoosiers: they believe in family, and when they hear specific stories, they want to help — because Hoosiers are family-oriented.
Three families the Indiana Organizing Project is currently supporting all have U.S. citizen wives, with pending marriage petitions — people going through the legal process — nonetheless detained or facing deportation.
A six-year-old’s comment — telling his four-year-old brother to buckle up “or they’ll come get mommy too” — illustrates the irreversible psychological trauma being inflicted on U.S. citizen children.

00:15:45 — The Long-Term Damage: Trauma, Healthcare Costs, and the Economic Lie

Mora, the son of a pediatrician, emphasizes that the trauma done to children can’t be reversed — it stays with them their whole lives.
Scott connects this to downstream costs on an already underfunded mental health system.
Indiana spent $16 million upgrading Miami Correctional to house ICE detainees, expecting premium payments from the federal government — but the feds are four months behind on payments, and the state has lost money.
Mora draws a parallel to Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz,” which is being closed — he suspects the real reason is also unpaid federal bills.

00:18:11 — Trump Stiffs His Contractors (Again) and the Concentration Camp Question

Scott jokes that Trump’s history of stiffing contractors is well-established, and Mora agrees the financial reality will move the political middle.
Mora says he uses the phrase “concentration camp” with great care, but Miami Correctional is “very, very close” to meeting the exact definition: people held illegally, with the Northern District of Indiana’s habeas petition backlog now exceeding three months.
Detainees report no medical care, no responsiveness — prescription medications withheld, Tylenol arriving weeks late — and two deaths in three months.
A guard-corroborated detail: during one of the deaths, detainees trying to alert guards were dismissed as joking.

00:23:33 — Inside Miami: Conditions, Staffing, and What Detainees Say

People bounced between facilities universally call Miami Correctional the worst — not one dissenting voice among detainees, who have comparative experience.
The facility is 34% short of the staff needed to house the detainees it’s currently holding — confirmed by staff themselves.
Detainees report: two pairs of underwear, two pairs of socks, laundry broken for two months, living in filth, constant lockdowns, lawyers and family nearly impossible to reach.
Scott offers a darkly hopeful observation: the staffing shortage at least suggests Hoosiers aren’t lining up to do this work to their neighbors.

00:25:36 — Senate Enrolled Act 76: Indiana Mandates Cooperation with ICE

Indiana passed Senate Enrolled Act 76 this spring, mandating that all state governmental entities — schools, hospitals, jails, universities — cooperate with ICE by law, effective July 1.
Indiana is the opposite end of the spectrum from Minnesota, where local authorities resisted federal enforcement; Indiana’s state police already have a 287(g) agreement and function essentially as ICE agents.
Mora details a state police encounter in Indianapolis: two men changing a tire were both put into ICE detention after a routine welfare stop.
The federal government has also made it harder to renew work permits, which causes people to lose driver’s licenses, which then triggers the arrests that feed the detention pipeline.

00:30:08 — The Spectrum of Law Enforcement Response

Mora says not every officer is arresting every person without a license — driving without a license is the lowest-level misdemeanor, and a summons or infraction is an option.
He cannot document a formal policy, but says there is clearly a “spectrum” of how officers are handling these encounters.
Scott pivots to Senate Enrolled Act 76’s July 1 effective date — schools especially are facing real confusion about what they’re required to do and where they can draw lines.
Community leaders working with schools and hospitals report concern but also genuine uncertainty about how the law will play out in practice.

00:33:20 — How Detention Policy Changed: Bonds, Habeas, and the DUI Example

In prior administrations, ICE exercised discretion: a traffic stop wouldn’t warrant pickup, and even a DUI could result in a bond negotiated and paid the same day.
The current administration eliminated ICE officers’ ability to negotiate bonds and stripped immigration judges of bond-setting authority — the only exit now is a federal habeas petition.
Mora asks: what are we accomplishing by caging a DUI defendant for months, destroying their family financially, traumatizing their children?
The plan to turn warehouses into detention centers — including a potential 8,500-person facility in Indianapolis — has largely stalled due to community pushback and logistical failures (the Social Circle, Georgia example: a town of 5,000 can’t handle a facility that size).

00:37:05 — The Pushback Is Working: From 73,000 to 60,000 Detainees

National ICE detainee count fell from 73,000 in January 2026 to 60,000 by April 4th — evidence the resistance is having an effect.
Mora frames the campaign goals in two steps: first, prevent the expansion of Miami from 600 to 1,000 detainees; second, begin rolling numbers back incrementally.
Indiana is being used as a detention hub for detainees from other states — particularly New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
He also raises a broader civil liberties warning: detention infrastructure built for immigrants will eventually be used for political opponents, and Trump has said as much on the record.

00:40:27 — The Mutual Aid Network: Community in Action

Indiana Organizing Project has built a network of several hundred volunteers who mobilize immediately when a family comes into contact with them.
First message to every family: “You’re not alone. You have a community of people here who care about you.”
Support includes food, diapers, toiletries, rent and utility assistance, and a growing pro bono legal program staffed by volunteer attorneys, retired lawyers, and paralegals.
The mom with four U.S. citizen children, approached about sharing her story publicly while still crying, said: “If I can do anything to prevent other families from having to suffer what we’ve suffered, I want to do it.”

00:44:42 — Stuart’s Story: Notre Dame, UNITE HERE, and the Road to Organizing

Mora traveled Mexico for seven months at age 20, informally interviewing people — a formative experience in listening and building connection.
A one-credit Notre Dame seminar taught by Jay Caponigro, including four days meeting organizers in Chicago, convinced Mora this was a real career path.
He was recruited by UNITE HERE (food service, hotel, and casino workers’ union) after college, spent 13 years with them including serving as Indiana chapter president, and “salted” a hotel in Indianapolis to build the union.
The pandemic devastated the hospitality industry and triggered a serious mental health crisis for Mora; he moved to immigration law and then back to organizing, where he now says he has never felt greater moral clarity about any campaign.

00:49:59 — Maintaining Hope for the Long Haul

Mora has won long campaigns before — the experience helps him resist the American impulse for instant gratification.
He finds sustenance in watching people become leaders who never saw themselves as such — first-time action leaders from Saturday’s events already talking about what they’ve learned and who they’ll teach next.
Community is the antidote to the isolation and paralysis that the current political moment produces — and that Mora believes predates even the pandemic.
Joy, art, music, and hope are not accessories to organizing, they are essential to it; channeling anger into something constructive is the only sustainable path forward.

00:54:52 — Call to Action & Outro

Three ways to get involved: join the public campaign team (goal: 50+ actions August 29–30), join the mutual aid network, or donate to the family assistance program.
Contact: stuart@indianaorganizing.org.
Scott thanks Mora and plugs upcoming PIN programming: HoosLeft This Week Sunday at 10:30 a.m. with Leslie Nuss and Bryce Green; Hold ‘Em Accountable Friday with Derrick Holder on convention process; Brianna the Recovered Republican hosting a Blythe Potter town hall Friday evening (delegates especially encouraged to submit questions).

HoosLeft This Week May 17, 2026

Scott Aaron Rogers — Sun, 17 May 2026 17:59:10 GMT

Thank you , , , and many others for tuning into our live video! Join us for our next live video in the app.

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SUMMARY:

On this week’s HoosLeft This Week, Scott is joined by Indianapolis attorney and community advocate Karla Lopez Owens and Reece Axel-Adams — who opens the show with a personal announcement about withdrawing from his Statehouse District 53 race to focus on his health — for a wide-ranging two hours that moves from Trump’s embarrassing performance in Beijing and the economic fallout of the ongoing Iran war, through a corruption double-header featuring the Trump IRS slush fund and Sean Duffy’s corporate-sponsored road trip, to the continuing demolition of federal public health infrastructure under RFK Jr. The second half turns squarely to Indiana: Karla breaks down the statewide ICE detention protests and the federal government’s failure to pay its tab at Miami Correctional Facility, before Scott and Reece work through the Indiana Supreme Court’s abortion ban ruling, the Braun administration’s Medicaid overhaul, the OPHS audit scandal in Indianapolis, Indiana’s stubborn holdout status on medical marijuana, the razor-thin Deery recount situation and Diego Morales’s conflict-of-interest problem, property tax cuts gutting school budgets and teacher pay, the new bell-to-bell cell phone ban, the Marion County youth curfew, and a pair of environmental stories — the Martindale-Brightwood and Madison County data center fights — capped off with the Mirror Indy headline of the year about Speedway’s water treatment problem.

In Depth

Trump in China: The Thucydides Trap & The Efficiency Moat

‘I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation,’ says Trump amid Iran talks (Guardian)
- Trump, asked if American financial pain is motivating Iran peace talks: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”
- US inflation hit 3.8% in April — fastest pace since 2023 — driven by energy costs since the US/Israel attack on Iran in late February
- Gas averaging $4.50/gallon (4-year high); food up ~4%; airline fares up 20%+
- His own officials can’t get their story straight on when relief comes — Wright, Hassett, and Rubio have all given contradictory timelines
- Rubio’s take: Americans should feel “very fortunate” because other countries have it worse
Billionaires, Wall Street CEOs join Trump China trip. What it signals. (Palm Beach Post)
- Trump arrived in Beijing Wednesday with a delegation of corporate elites — Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Jensen Huang, and CEOs from Goldman Sachs, Boeing, Cargill, and more — greeted by 300 schoolchildren waving flags, singing songs, and jumping up and down in excitement.
- Eric Trump also on the trip — the Trump Organization has a seat at the table
- Brennan Center (March 2026): Trump has pocketed an estimated $3B from business ventures since January 2025; much of it from foreign governments seeking favor
- Treasury’s Bessent, not Rubio, led summit planning — economics over diplomacy, by design
- What’s likely getting ignored: Taiwan, China’s nuclear buildup, AI security, North Korea, China backing Russia in Ukraine
Takeaways from Trump’s trip to China: Taiwan, a new framework for relationship and flattery for Xi (AP)
- Xi opened by warning that mishandling Taiwan could lead to open conflict; Trump said nothing publicly about Taiwan the entire trip — then on Air Force One home, suggested he might reconsider the approved $11B arms sale to Taipei after “hearing Xi out”
- Trump couldn’t recall Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s name; on military intervention if China attacks Taiwan: “The last thing we need right now is a war that’s 9,500 miles away”
- Trump left Beijing without a single concrete trade deal announced — possible Boeing order of 200 planes, possible soybean/beef purchases, possible “Board of Trade”
- China’s framing of the summit — “constructive, strategic, stable relationship” — went unchallenged by Trump and will now anchor Beijing’s messaging for the rest of his term
Trump Surrenders To China In The Most Embarrassing Diplomatic Display In US History. (Dean Blundell)
- Trump described the CEOs of Apple, Tesla, Nvidia, and Boeing as coming “to pay respects to you, China” — on the official broadcast, in the Great Hall of the People
- Xi: “Currently, a transformation not seen in a century is accelerating across the globe, and the international situation is fluid and turbulent. The world has come to a new crossroads.”
  - “Can China and the United States overcome the Thucydides Trap and create a new paradigm of major country relations?”
  - “Cooperation benefits both sides, while confrontation harms both.”
  - “We should be partners, not rivals, achieve success for one another, prosper together and forge a correct way for major countries of the new era to get along with each other.”
- Trump: ““It’s an honor to be with you. It’s an honor to be your friend.”
  - “You’re a great leader. Sometimes people don’t like me saying it, but I say it anyway, because it’s true.”
  - “The relationship between China and the USA is going to be better than ever before.”
  - “I was particularly impressed by those children. They were happy. They were beautiful. Those children were amazing.”
Trump blames Biden for US ‘declining’ after Xi comments on ‘Thucydides Trap’ (The Hill)
- Xi referenced the “Thucydides Trap” — the theory that a rising power displacing an established one leads to war — and Trump’s response was to post on Truth Social that Xi was talking about Biden, not him
- Trump: “When President Xi very elegantly referred to the United States as perhaps being a declining nation, he was referring to the tremendous damage we suffered during the four years of Sleepy Joe Biden”
The Efficiency Moat: Why China Is Beating the U.S. on AI… And Everything Else (BIG)
- China’s consumption rate is ~40% of GDP vs. 55-65% for most countries — the difference goes to state-directed investment in domestic industry, the equivalent of $7 trillion/year in manufacturing subsidies; no one can compete with that
- Result: China is monopolizing global industrial production across EVs, drones, batteries, solar, pharmaceuticals, machine tooling — and is now targeting AI
- The US compute advantage in AI is real (3 years ahead in chips) but increasingly irrelevant — Chinese labs are extracting 4-7x more intelligence per unit of compute, and their models run at a fraction of the cost (DeepSeek vs. Claude Opus: 11x cheaper on input, 28x cheaper on output)
- Why China is winning on AI efficiency: a thousand competing labs publishing open-source research vs. five closed US hyperscalers that profit from inefficiency — they sell tokens, not performance
- Why the US fell behind everywhere else: China is running the same competition and IP policies the US used from the 1930s through the 1970s; we abandoned them in the 1980s in favor of financialization and monopoly
- The CEOs on Trump’s plane have no incentive to fix this — Wall Street profits from Chinese manufacturing suppressing US labor costs while boosting stock valuations
- Stoller’s bottom line: the status quo works great for American oligarchs and Chinese leadership alike; it’s everyone else who’s getting wrecked

Live Updates (CBS)
- Help from China?
  - Trump says Xi told him China would not give Iran military equipment: “That’s a big statement”
    - ‘According to Mr. Trump, Xi told him that he’s “not going to give [Iran] military equipment. That’s a big statement. He said that today. That’s a big statement. He said that strongly.”’
  - Trump says he and China’s Xi “feel very similar on Iran”
    - ‘Mr. Trump noted that both countries want the Strait of Hormuz — a key chokepoint that 20% of the world’s oil usually travels through — to be reopened -- and both want to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.’
- UAE Actively Involved
  - Araghchi accuses UAE of being “active partner” in US-Israeli war against Iran (MEMo)
    - Iranian FM Abbas Araghchi, speaking at the BRICS summit in India, accused the UAE of being an “active partner” in the US-Israeli war against Iran — may have “acted directly” against the country
    - Araghchi pointed to an alleged secret meeting between Netanyahu and UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed — which Abu Dhabi denied
    - Relations between Iran and the UAE have cratered since the war began February 28; ceasefire announced April 8 hasn’t stopped the accusations
  - The U.A.E. Has Been Secretly Carrying Out Attacks on Iran (WSJ)
    - WSJ confirmed the UAE has been secretly conducting military strikes on Iran — including an April hit on an oil refinery on Lavan Island that knocked it offline for months
    - Iran responded to that strike with over 2,800 missiles and drones targeting the UAE — more than any other country, including Israel
    - The UAE never wanted this war, but Iranian strikes on its airports, tourism, and property market forced a strategic shift — it now sees Iran as an existential threat to its economic model
    - The US quietly welcomed UAE participation; after US/Israel destroyed Iran’s air defenses, the risk of flying combat missions over Iran dropped sharply
    - Evidence of UAE involvement has been hiding in plain sight — open-source researchers spotted French Mirage fighters and Chinese Wing Loong drones (both UAE assets) photographed over Iran since mid-March
  - UAE tried to coordinate with Saudi Arabia, Qatar to strike Iran during recent war (Jerusalem Post)
    - UAE’s MBZ tried to convince Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Gulf states to coordinate military strikes against Iran — neighbors said it wasn’t their war, frustrating Abu Dhabi
    - Trump administration backed UAE’s push and tried to pressure Saudi Arabia and Qatar to join — they refused
    - Saudi Arabia then struck Iran on its own in March without coordinating with the UAE, then pivoted to helping Pakistan mediate
    - Qatar considered striking Iran after Iran hit Ras Laffan — the world’s largest LNG plant — but chose de-escalation instead
    - The snub helps explain UAE’s subsequent moves: withdrawal from OPEC/OPEC+ in late April and deepening ties with Israel
- Israel-Lebanon
  - Lebanon-Israel talks produce new ceasefire, hope future meetings will “advance lasting peace”
    - Lebanon-Israel talks produced a 45-day ceasefire extension; military talks at the Pentagon May 29, political track June 2-3
    - The existing ceasefire has been ceasefire in name only — both sides conducting daily small-scale attacks; Israel killed an alleged Hezbollah leader in Beirut on May 7, killing at least a dozen
    - Hezbollah wasn’t at the table — and they’re the ones doing the attacking
  - Israel launches new strikes on Lebanon after ceasefire extension
    - Less than 24 hours after agreeing to a 45-day ceasefire extension, Israel launched airstrikes on at least five villages in southern Lebanon — Hezbollah has been attacking throughout regardless, and opposes the negotiations entirely
- Dueling Blockades
  - 78 ships have been turned back by U.S. blockade, Central Command says
    - ‘The ongoing U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has now turned back 78 ships either exiting or entering Iranian ports, the U.S. Central Command said on Saturday.’
    - ‘The blockade has been one of the main snags in the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over a lasting ceasefire. President Trump has said the blockade will remain in place as a condition for further talks, while Iran says the blockade itself is a violation of the ceasefire’
  - Iran has prepared plan to “manage traffic” in strait, official says
    - ‘The head of the Iranian parliament’s national security commission said Saturday that Iran has prepared a plan to “manage traffic” along a designated route in the Strait of Hormuz.’
    - ‘”In this process, only commercial vessels and parties cooperating with Iran will benefit,” Ebrahim Azizi said on social media. He said that “necessary fees” will be collected.’
    - ‘The route will remain closed “to the operators of the so‑called ‘freedom project,’” Azizi wrote, appearing to refer to the United States’ operation in the Strait of Hormuz, which has been termed “Project Freedom.”’

Corruption

Trump’s $10 Billion Shakedown of IRS Takes Unnervingly Corrupt Turn (TNR)
- Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion over the leak of his tax returns; his own DOJ — which he controls — is now negotiating a “settlement” with him using taxpayer money
- The proposed settlement creates a $1.7 billion fund drawn from the Treasury’s Judgment Fund, overseen by a commission Trump can fire at will, with no required transparency on who gets paid
- Potential recipients include January 6 insurrectionists and “entities associated with President Trump himself”
- Rep. Jamie Raskin: the 14th Amendment prohibits using federal money to compensate people who participated in insurrection — this may do exactly that
- Raskin’s bottom line: “Congress never would have passed a $1.7 billion slush fund for his friends — this is completely outside of our constitutional framework”
Following the Money on Sean Duffy’s Road Trip (American Prospect)
- Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy filmed a five-part family road trip TV series while overseeing a department dealing with an air traffic controller shortage and multiple deadly airline crashes
- The trip was funded by a 501(c)(4) nonprofit also called The Great American Roadtrip — no donor disclosure required — sponsored by Boeing, Toyota, Shell, United Airlines, Google, Royal Caribbean, and others, each paying between $100K and $1 million; larger donors got VIP access to Duffy and his team
- Since taking over DOT, Duffy has stalled airline consumer protection rules, issued zero fines to airlines in 2025 (first time since records began in 1996), and forgiven outstanding penalties — all staunchly opposed by the same industry sponsoring his vacation
- Boeing — the top sponsor at up to $1 million — has since seen the FAA lift its 737 MAX production cap and had its ability to self-certify aircraft restored, despite a safety record that includes crashes killing over 300 people
- CREW filed an ethics complaint; no congressional hearings scheduled

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Patel Grilled by Congress

Previously: Under Kash Patel, “FBI” Means Foolish, Belligerent, and Incompetent (TNR)
- Patel uses the FBI’s government Gulfstream for personal travel — repeated trips to watch his singer girlfriend Alexis Wilkins perform and socialize with friends
- SWAT teams have been deployed to Wilkins’s events under the guise of security; in one instance, agents were reportedly forced to drive one of Wilkins’s friends home after a night of partying in Nashville
- The FBI’s public corruption squad has been disbanded; an investigation into immigration czar Tom Homan — reportedly caught on tape accepting bribes — was shut down
- Patel appears to be stalling the release of Epstein files to limit political damage to Trump
- FBI director invites fresh scrutiny over travels with appearance at US men’s hockey team celebration (NPR)
Kash Patel lashes out as lawmakers question ‘excessive drinking’ (WaPo)
- Patel appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee Tuesday ostensibly to defend the FBI’s $12.53 billion budget request — it quickly became something else entirely
- Sen. Van Hollen opened by citing Atlantic reporting that Patel’s excessive drinking has impaired his ability to lead the bureau; Patel called it “a total farce,” then accused Van Hollen of “slinging margaritas” with Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador and running up a $7,000 bar tab — Van Hollen: “You don’t know what you’re talking about”
- While that exchange was still happening, Patel’s official FBI account on X was live-posting Van Hollen’s campaign finance records as opposition research — from a government account
- Sen. Patty Murray referenced a viral video of Patel drinking beer in the US Olympic hockey team’s locker room after their gold medal win in Italy: “If you really want to pop bottles in a locker room, stick to podcasting”
- Patel denied the FBI is investigating journalists or ordering polygraph tests to identify leakers to the press — both claims have been reported
Van Hollen posts alcohol use test results after challenging Patel to take survey (The Hill)
- ‘Democrats have called on Patel to take the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) in the wake of reporting from The Atlantic claiming the director was drinking excessively and at times was difficult to reach.’
- Van Hollen called Patel’s bluff the next day — publicly posted his own AUDIT alcohol screening results after Patel agreed at the hearing to take the test “side by side”
- Van Hollen’s results: drinks two to three times a week, answered “never” to all problem-drinking questions; Patel has not responded
- Van Hollen on the $7,000 bar tab Patel used as a gotcha: “You got me, I catered a holiday reception for my staff with campaign — not taxpayer — dollars! Now let’s see your receipts. #ReleaseTheTab”

Elections

Re-litigating 2020
- Colorado governor cuts Tina Peters’ prison sentence in half, will release her on parole June 1 (Colorado Sun)
  - Peters was the Mesa County Clerk who orchestrated a 2021 breach of her county’s election system — arranged for a conspiracy theorist to use a staffer’s credentials to access a sensitive software update, photos leaked online, county had to scrap all its voting equipment; convicted on multiple felony counts in 2024, sentenced to nine years
  - Colorado Gov. Polis cut her sentence in half Friday, ordering her released on parole June 1 — drawing condemnation from Democrats, the Republican prosecutor who tried her, and county clerks statewide
  - Polis’s rationale: the appeals court already found her sentence was partly based on her speech, not just her conduct; he called it “unduly harsh” for a first-time nonviolent offender — but no pardon: “She’s a convicted felon. She deserves to be a convicted felon.”
  - The decision likely ends Polis’s future in Democratic politics — all 66 Colorado Democratic legislators signed a letter urging him not to do it; Trump immediately posted “FREE TINA!”
  - Context: Trump has been retaliating against Colorado over Peters’ conviction — yanking disaster aid, canceling $109M in transportation grants, dismantling NCAR, relocating Space Command to Alabama
VRA Fallout
- What Is the Purcell Principle? Supreme Court Called Out Over Alabama Order (Newsweek)
  - SCOTUS cleared Alabama to use a map a lower court twice blocked as intentional racial discrimination — less than a week before primary voting was set to begin
  - The move invoked the Purcell principle debate: Purcell says courts shouldn’t create election chaos close to voting day — critics note SCOTUS itself created the chaos here, not the lower courts
  - NBC’s Lawrence Hurley: “The aim of the Purcell principle is to avoid ‘judicially created confusion.’ To the extent there is confusion now, it has been created by the Supreme Court itself”
  - The backstory: SCOTUS ruled against Alabama’s maps in 2023, Alabama defied the ruling with a new map that a lower court found was still intentional discrimination — then SCOTUS stepped in to bail them out anyway
  - Bottom line: a court that spent years telling Alabama its maps were illegally diluting Black voting strength just handed Alabama those same maps back, days before an election, with no explanation
- Supreme Court rejects bid to revive Democrats’ Virginia redistricting plan (Politico)
  - SCOTUS rejected Virginia Democrats’ emergency appeal Friday, letting stand a state Supreme Court ruling that nullified a voter-approved redistricting referendum — no dissents noted, no explanation given
  - The Virginia Supreme Court had thrown out the referendum 4-3, ruling it was passed after early voting had already begun, violating the state constitution — federal courts rarely override state courts on state constitutional questions, making this always a longshot
  - The practical result: Virginia’s elections go forward under the existing map — 6 Democrats, 5 Republicans — killing Democrats’ bid to eliminate all but one GOP seat
  - Gov. Spanberger: SCOTUS chose to “nullify an election and the votes of more than three million Virginians”
  - Taken together with the Alabama ruling earlier this week, SCOTUS has now handed Republicans two redistricting wins in five days heading into the midterms — with zero explanation in either case
Louisiana
- Sen. Cassidy says changes to Louisiana’s May 16 election have caused confusion, disenfranchisement (WWNO)
  - Louisiana’s primary was thrown into chaos by Gov. Landry’s last-minute suspension of congressional races — ballots didn’t match sample ballots, some voters got the suspended congressional race, others didn’t, and 40,000+ absentee ballots for that race won’t be counted
  - Sen. Bill Cassidy, facing a Trump-loyal primary electorate that never forgave his impeachment vote, made the extraordinary move of urging Democrats to re-register as No Party so they could vote for him in the closed Republican primary — LSU’s Robert Mann: “You don’t call somebody like me if you’re not really worried you’re going to miss the runoff”
  - Projected turnout around 20-25%, down from ~50% in the last contested Senate race; multiple voters reported believing the election had been canceled entirely
  - Mann’s summary: “The legislature and Gov. Landry have created a system that is almost designed in a lab to discourage people from participating in the electoral process”
- Cassidy loses reelection bid (NBC)
  - Sen. Bill Cassidy is out — the Louisiana Republican who voted to convict Trump after January 6 lost his primary tonight, with Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow and state Treasurer John Fleming advancing to a June 27 runoff
  - Cassidy wasn’t just targeted for the impeachment vote — as chair of the Senate HELP Committee, he was vocally critical of RFK Jr. and wavered on his confirmation; Trump also blamed him personally when surgeon general nominee Casey Means stalled in committee, calling him “a very disloyal person”
  - Trump on Cassidy’s loss: “His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now a part of legend, and it’s nice to see that his political career is OVER!”
  - The result cements Trump’s grip on the GOP — Cassidy is now another impeachment voter who won’t be returning to Congress; Letlow goes into the runoff as the heavy favorite with Trump’s full backing
  - Worth noting: Cassidy’s desperate pre-election strategy of recruiting Democrats and independents to cross over and vote for him in the closed primary clearly didn’t move the needle
West Virginia
- West Virginia election results: Who won primaries for US Senate, House? (USA Today)
  - Sen. Shelley Moore Capito won her primary 66.5%, House incumbents Rep. Carol Miller and Rep. Riley Moore held their nominations easily — no surprises
  - The real story is procedural: first statewide election under both a new strict photo ID law and a newly closed Republican primary simultaneously — political scientists flagging it as a test case for how dual access restrictions affect turnout
Nebraska
- Scott Petersen wins GOP primary race for Nebraska secretary of state against incumbent Bob Evnen (Nebraska Examiner)
  - Nebraska’s biggest primary upset: Scott Petersen knocked off incumbent Secretary of State Bob Evnen 55-45, running on election conspiracy theory platforms — hand counts, restricting mail voting, questioning whether ballot machines can be hacked
  - Petersen consolidates the election denier vote that split against Evnen in 2022; Rep. Don Bacon called him “President of the TinFoil Hat Club”
  - Elsewhere: Gov. Jim Pillen and Democrat Lynne Walz advanced easily in the gubernatorial primary; AG, Treasurer, and Auditor races were largely uncontested
- Denise Powell wins Democratic primary for Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district (NPR)
  - Political organizer Denise Powell defeated State Sen. John Cavanaugh by ~2 points in the Democratic primary for Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District — the Omaha-area “blue dot” that voted for Biden and Harris and is now an open seat with Republican Don Bacon retiring
  - Powell faces Trump-endorsed Republican Brinker Harding in November; with the House majority on the line, over $5.6 million in outside money flooded the primary
  - Cavanaugh’s loss avoided a Democratic nightmare: had he won and vacated his state senate seat, the Republican governor would have appointed his replacement, potentially giving the GOP enough leverage to change how Nebraska awards its Electoral College votes
- Cindy Burbank — who plans to drop out of general election — defeats alleged GOP ‘plant’ in bizarre Nebraska Democratic Senate primary (NY Post)
  - Nebraska’s Democratic Senate primary was a deliberate placeholder operation: pharmacy technician Cindy Burbank won 90-9% over pastor William Forbes — then immediately plans to drop out to clear the way for independent Dan Osborn, the union leader and Navy veteran the Nebraska Democratic Party actually wants facing Sen. Pete Ricketts
  - Both candidates accused the other of being a GOP plant; Forbes has ties to the conservative Leadership Institute and previously voted for Trump; Osborn is not a registered Democrat but leads Ricketts by 5 points in a Democratic-aligned poll while both actual Democrats lose to Ricketts by double digits
  - Ricketts’s read: “The Democrat brand is so damaged in the Midwest that they know they can’t win statewide by running a Democrat”

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Public Health

Nationally
- FDA Chief Pushed Out in Latest Sign of Public Health Chaos Under RFK Jr. (Democracy Now)
  - FDA Commissioner Dr. Martin Makary resigned after 13 months — pushed out for trying to block fruit-flavored vapes (angering Trump) and failing to restrict mifepristone access fast enough (angering anti-abortion groups); Trump on his way out: “He was having some difficulty”
  - Replacing him in an acting capacity: Kyle Diamantas, a Florida attorney, former Abbott Laboratories rep, and personal friend of Donald Trump Jr. — no medical background whatsoever
  - The US now has no confirmed FDA commissioner, no confirmed CDC director, and no Senate-approved surgeon general — all while RFK Jr. runs HHS
  - Harvard professor of medicine Dr. Aaron Kesselheim: “Nobody was happy with what he did” — Makary tried to please everyone and satisfied no one; the acting replacement is unlikely to inspire more confidence
  - Public Citizen’s Health Research Group Director Dr. Robert Steinbrook on the broader damage: “When you pick [health agencies] apart for particular theories and the idiosyncrasies of the HHS secretary, you destroy things which take years, if not decades, to rebuild”
- FDA shakeup continues with departure of top drug regulator, just days after agency chief resigns (NBC)
  - Days after Makary’s resignation, the head of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research — the division that regulates all prescription and OTC drugs — also walked out; Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg was the fifth person to hold that post under Trump 2.0
  - Høeg’s brief tenure included challenging already-approved RSV treatments, pushing back on a fast-tracked diabetes drug, and co-writing the scientific justification for gutting the childhood vaccine schedule — arguing, against nearly a century of evidence, that aluminum in vaccines is a concern
  - The FDA now has an acting commissioner with no medical background and an acting drug division head replacing someone who was herself already acting — with HHS saying it’s “actively searching” for permanent leadership
- A “Scheme” Against Dobbs: SCOTUS Dissent Hints at Next Phase of Abortion Rights Fight (Intercept)
  - SCOTUS ruled Thursday that telehealth access to mifepristone can continue while the underlying case plays out in lower courts — blocking a 5th Circuit ruling that would have required in-person dispensing, a critical blow to abortion access especially in ban states
  - Thomas and Alito dissented, with Thomas arguing the 1873 Comstock Act — an unenforced anti-obscenity law — prohibits mailing abortion medication; Alito called telehealth abortion a “scheme” to get around Dobbs, lamenting that abortions have actually increased since the ruling
  - The new acting FDA commissioner, Kyle Diamantas, was reportedly on the phone with anti-abortion advocates within hours of his appointment, promising mifepristone review would be a “top priority” and that he is “pro-life”
  - Advocates warn the administration may be slow-walking action on mifepristone until after the midterms to avoid electoral backlash — then move; roughly two-thirds of all US abortions are now medication abortions
In Indiana
- Indiana abortion ban law stands as state Supreme Court rejects challenge (ICC)
  - Indiana’s Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the state’s near-total abortion ban 4-1 — no oral arguments, no explanation, one page
  - The challenge argued the ban’s health exceptions were too narrow to comply with the state constitution’s life and liberty protections; the court let stand a lower court ruling that the “reasonable medical judgment” standard is constitutional
  - The lone dissenter, Justice Goff, noted the exceptions don’t cover psychological conditions — including cases where a woman shows signs she intends to hurt herself
  - The numbers tell the story: reported abortions in Indiana dropped 99% from 9,529 in 2022 to 126 in 2025
  - A separate challenge arguing the ban violates Indiana’s religious freedom law is still alive — oral arguments scheduled September 10
- Indiana unveils Medicaid overhaul aimed at pressuring hospitals to lower prices (ICC)
  - Indiana unveiled a first-in-the-nation Medicaid overhaul that ties reimbursement increases to hospitals’ commercial pricing — lower commercial rates get bigger Medicaid bumps, higher-priced systems get smaller ones; the goal is to use Medicaid as leverage to drive down commercial prices
  - Indiana’s commercial hospital prices are among the highest in the country; Medicaid costs are growing at 9.5% annually — FSSA Secretary Roob: “You’re cannibalizing teacher pay, higher ed — all the stuff the general fund pays for”
  - Rural and critical access hospitals are insulated from the pricing pressure and get the largest reimbursement increases — up to 158% of current fee schedules — plus an additional $177 million in rural support
  - One flag worth noting on air: this is a Braun administration initiative, and the framing is genuinely populist — but the mechanism still flows through a Medicaid system that the federal government is simultaneously trying to gut
  - Make that all make sense:
    - Medicare rates are the baseline — the federal government sets what it pays for any given procedure, and everyone in the industry treats that number as the reference point. So when they say a hospital charges “252% of Medicare rates” commercially, they mean if Medicare pays $1,000 for a procedure, that hospital charges private insurers $2,520.
    - Medicaid reimbursements are separate and almost always lower than Medicare — often much lower. Indiana is now using those Medicaid reimbursements as a carrot/stick: hospitals that keep their commercial prices lower get bigger Medicaid payment increases, hospitals that gouge commercially get smaller ones.
    - The 155% figure isn’t 155% of Medicare rates — it’s 155% of the hospital’s current Medicaid fee schedule. So if a hospital currently gets $500 from Medicaid for that same procedure, they’d now get $775. That’s still way below the $2,520 they charge commercially, but the gap between Medicaid reimbursement and actual cost of care is a chronic industry complaint — hospitals have always argued Medicaid underpays and they make it up on commercial patients.
    - The theory here is: if we reward you more through Medicaid for keeping commercial prices down, you have less incentive to gouge commercial payers. Whether that pressure is strong enough to actually move commercial prices is the real question — and the article doesn’t answer it.
- Indianapolis Office of Public Health and Safety under the microscope following internal audit (Mirror Indy)
  - The Indianapolis Office of Public Health and Safety is under state audit after an internal review found contracts went to individuals and organizations with ties to OPHS employees — potential conflicts of interest referred to the State Board of Accounts in March
  - The internal audit also found poor oversight, unclear policies, high turnover, and loose grant reporting across a review period covering 2020-2025 — hundreds of millions in federal pandemic funds flowed through the agency with minimal documentation
  - Democrat Councilor Dan Boots: “Where did it all go?” — Republican councilors want to pause future OPHS funding; OPHS Director Merkley says corrective measures are in place and the city is in compliance with federal requirements
  - Former OPHS employee Shonna Majors: “There were no SOPs in place when I was there, and I begged leadership to put those into place because I knew something like this could happen”
- Will Indiana legalize medical marijuana? One lawmaker is writing a plan after federal moves (WFYI)
  - Indiana Sen. Mike Bohacek (R) is drafting a medical marijuana bill ahead of the 2027 session, citing federal reclassification of cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III
  - Gov. Mike Braun has signaled willingness to consider legislation — a notable shift for a state with some of the most stringent marijuana laws in the country
  - Indiana is the last holdout in the region — every surrounding state has legalized cannabis in some form — and Hoosiers are already spending $1.2 to $2.6 billion annually on cannabis products, mostly out of state
  - Advocates have seen roughly 15 bills die in the legislature over 10 years; the most common excuse was “wait for federal rescheduling” — Jeff Staker of Hoosier Veterans for Medical Cannabis: “Now they can’t kick the can down the road because the road doesn’t exist anymore”
Immigration / DOC
- Statewide Day of Action
  - Indiana Protests Call for Changes to Immigration System (WIBC)
  - Statewide protests target ICE detention at Miami Correctional Facility (WANE)
  - Protesters in Mishawaka demonstrate against ICE, Indiana’s involvement (WVPE)
    - 28 protests took place across Indiana Saturday as part of the Indiana Statewide Day of Action, targeting ICE detention at Miami Correctional Facility and broader immigration enforcement under Trump and Gov. Braun — Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Mishawaka and dozens of other cities participated
    - Organizers cite that 70% of those arrested by ICE have no criminal history; a current Miami Correctional officer reportedly told organizers the facility lacks adequate staffing to manage both state inmates and ICE detainees
    - Key demand beyond ending detention: funded immigration courts — organizer Elizabeth Marvin: “A large chunk of them are going through it the right way and are being detained as they leave their court hearings”
    - Sandra Garza of Fuerza Unida: “The original concept was to get people back to their home countries in a humane way. We have now lost that humanity.”
- Feds owe Indiana millions for immigration detention at state prison (ICC)
  - Indiana has spent $12.5 million housing ICE detainees at Miami Correctional since the contract began in October — but has received less than $5.1 million back from the federal government, a gap of over $7 million
  - The contract pays Indiana $291.24 per bed per day — about four times the normal $75 daily per-inmate cost — for up to 1,000 detainees at a time, but the feds are four months behind on payments
  - The state prepaid nearly $15.8 million in upfront infrastructure costs to prepare the facility Trump officials dubbed the “Speedway Slammer” — Indiana is now waiting on reimbursement for that too
  - Monthly reporting on the contract exists only because Democrats successfully amended SB76 to require it — and even then, the March and April reports were “mistakenly left off” the Budget Committee agenda
  - Karla wrote all about SB76 in March (KLO on Substack)
- Previously: Indiana Sheriff Sues Over Law Requiring Immigrant Detention (Bloomberg)
  - Monroe County Sheriff Ruben Marté sued the state in April to block Indiana Senate Enrolled Act 76 — the same immigration enforcement law requiring the Miami Correctional ICE contract reporting — arguing it would force his deputies to hold people on ICE detainer requests without a judicial warrant or probable cause, violating the Fourth Amendment
  - Marté currently refuses to honor ICE detainers without a judicial warrant and is already in a separate lawsuit over that policy; SEA 76 would make his current practice illegal starting July 1
  - The core constitutional problem: ICE detainer requests don’t require evidence of probable cause or review by a magistrate — they simply ask local authorities to hold someone up to 48 hours past when they should have been released, which Marté argues constitutes an unlawful new seizure
Indiana Elections
- Indiana’s Senate District 23 race could come down to a single vote (WFYI)
  - Incumbent state Sen. Spencer Deery (R-West Lafayette) leads Trump-backed challenger Paula Copenhaver by three votes in Senate District 23 — the race came down to provisional ballots counted county by county this week
  - Deery drew a primary challenge after refusing to support Trump’s mid-decade redistricting push; of the eight Senate Republicans primaried this cycle, only Deery and one other survived their Trump-backed challengers
  - No automatic recount in Indiana — one would have to be requested by a candidate or party chair; a related headline suggests Deery ultimately held on by three votes
  - Possible recounts of tight state Senate races could extend into July (ICC)
    - Final tallies confirm Deery leads Copenhaver 6,337 to 6,334 — three votes; Sen. Liz Brown of Fort Wayne also survived her Trump-backed challenger Darren Vogt, but by only 14 votes
    - Recount filing window is open — Copenhaver has until Tuesday noon, any Republican county chair in the district until May 22; neither Copenhaver nor Vogt has responded to press inquiries
    - If a recount is sought in the six-county Deery-Copenhaver race, expect it to run into July — the 2024 House recounts weren’t finalized until August
- SOS Morales asked to step aside if recount occurs, criticized for D.C. trip (Indiana Citizen)
  - State Rep. Ed DeLaney (D-Indianapolis) is calling on Secretary of State Diego Morales to recuse himself from any Deery-Copenhaver recount — Morales chairs the Recount Commission, is affiliated with Turning Point USA (which endorsed Copenhaver), and publicly backed the redistricting plan Deery voted against
  - Morales’s office: he has “no intention of stepping away from the Constitutional and statutory duties of his office”
  - DeLaney’s call for recusal came a day after Morales drew criticism from voting-rights advocates over his trip to Washington, DC, where he met with “federal officials and national leaders to discuss continued efforts to strengthen Indiana elections.” Morales’ office also highlighted the “continued collaboration with state and federal partners to ensure Hoosiers can have confidence in the electoral process.”
  - Common Cause Indiana’s Julia Vaughn noted Morales handed Indiana’s voter rolls to USCIS and DOJ — “I’d suggest that, instead of chasing photo ops, Secretary Morales commit himself to not sharing sensitive Hoosier data with the federal government”
  - Morales Says He Will Chair Any Recount, Rejecting Calls to Step Aside (IndyPolitics)
    - Morales didn’t just reject the recusal call — he’s also in political trouble of his own making; seeking renomination at the state Republican convention, he failed to qualify as a delegate in his own home district in Marion County, finishing 12th out of 18 candidates with 3.55% of the vote
    - Also: the Marion County Election Board voted unanimously in March to refer Morales to the State Inspector General over a campaign video allegedly shot at the county election center, and banned him from non-public areas of the facility
- Open primaries for Indiana, an old idea worth dusting off (Statehouse File)
  - Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, editor of IndyPolitics.org, is proposing Indiana adopt open primaries — all registered voters on one ballot regardless of party, top two advance to November; if any candidate clears 60%, they win outright with no runoff
  - His core argument: closed primaries hand meaningful decisions to 8-12% of the most ideologically committed voters; in most Indiana districts the primary IS the general election, leaving 88% of voters as spectators by design
  - The 60% threshold is the twist — it spares taxpayers a pointless November contest in lopsided districts, which in Indiana is most of them
  - His honest assessment of the proposal’s chances: zero — no citizen initiative process in Indiana means it would have to pass through the same legislature full of people who got there under the current system: “Asking them to change those rules is like asking the house to vote on whether the casino should keep its license”
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For the Kids
- Property tax cuts hurting Indiana public schools (WFIE)
  - Indiana’s Senate Enrolled Act 1 property tax cuts are projected to cost public schools statewide over $700 million across three years
  - East Gibson School Corporation expects to lose $400K — already leaving custodial positions unfilled, considering raiding the education budget, and not replacing two of four retirees; Superintendent Galvin: “It’s not if you’re gonna have a referendum, it’s when”
  - Larger districts are hit harder — EVSC alone projects losses of over $10 million; statewide, 30-45 school corporations are eyeing November referendums to ask voters to raise taxes to offset the cuts
    - Previously: ICPE predicts up to 100 districts will consider referendums (WTHR)
      - The Indiana Coalition for Public Education puts the number of districts considering November referendums at up to 100 — nearly double earlier estimates — after surveying schools statewide; 99% of respondents said the property tax cuts are already hurting them
- Education group: Inflation still outpacing Indiana teacher pay (PNS)
  - The property tax cuts driving the school funding crisis also directly undercut any path to teacher raises — SEA 1 will cost Indiana school districts $744 million by 2028, and collective bargaining rights that could help teachers advocate for themselves remain off the table in Indiana
  - Indiana teachers earn roughly 77 cents for every dollar earned by similarly educated professionals — average starting salary $45,000, experienced teachers $59,000, both below the estimated living wage for a single adult in Indiana
  - NEA President Becky Pringle: educators earn less today in real terms than they did 10 years ago; Indianapolis Public Schools, Noblesville, Rush County, and Hamilton Southeastern have all announced staffing reductions for next year
- Indiana schools face stricter cellphone rules under new ‘bell-to-bell’ law starting July 1 (ICC)
  - Indiana’s new “bell-to-bell” cellphone ban takes effect July 1 — no personal wireless devices during the school day, including smart watches and gaming devices; exceptions for emergencies, medical needs, and IEP/504 accommodations
  - The law shifts enforcement from teachers to administrators — guidance from the Indiana Department of Education on implementation has not yet been published, with six weeks to go
  - Schools can opt for locking pouch systems like Yondr at $15-30 per unit, but aren’t required to purchase them
  - Braun and lawmakers signaled this may just be the start — conversations are already underway about school-issued Chromebooks and tablets and their effects on developing brains; Braun: “There’s always next year”
- Indiana House forms committee to study NIL for high school athletes (21 Alive)
  - The Indiana House formed a summer study committee on NIL for high school athletes — several states have already implemented high school NIL, and the IHSAA is already set to allow athletes to be paid for their personal brand starting next year
  - The committee’s primary concern is guardrails — specifically preventing school transfers driven by money; it will include parents, coaches, athletic directors and superintendents
  - Rep. Alex Burton (D-Evansville) helped establish the committee: “This puts Indiana in a position to really lead in this space — prioritizing high school diplomas, college readiness, and making sure our athletes are not transferring schools for athletic purposes”
- IMPD chief issues video message as youth curfew takes effect (FOX59)
  - Marion County’s summer youth curfew is now in effect — 17-year-olds must be home by 1 a.m. weekends and 11 p.m. weekdays; 15-16 year olds by 11 p.m. weekends and 9 p.m. weekdays; 14 and under by 9 p.m. seven days a week
  - IMPD Chief Tanya Terry sent a video message directly to Marion County students on the last day of school urging families to stay engaged; IMPD reports that while overall violent crime is down, the number of teenagers involved in shootings or homicides is up
  - Rev. Malachi Walker of Young Men Inc., a 33-year-old youth empowerment program serving boys 8-17, summed up the stakes simply: “We’re living in a time in our city where we need to do something, and we need to do something fast and drastic”
Environment
- New data center proposed in Madison County; public hearing scheduled for June 9 to consider a 6 month moratorium (Herald Bulletin)
  - Madison County’s Plan Commission voted to start the petition process for a six-month moratorium on data centers in unincorporated areas of the county — public hearing June 9, commissioners could act June 16
  - The trigger: residents say Vantage is proposing a 650-acre data center near a juvenile detention center; more than 50 people showed up to oppose it — notably, no application has even been filed yet
  - The Madison County Economic Development Corp. has already come out against the moratorium — the familiar tension between economic development interests and community pushback is already in play
- Martindale-Brightwood residents take data center fight to court, citing environmental racism (WFYI)
  - Martindale-Brightwood residents and the Hoosier Environmental Council have filed a legal challenge to block a Metrobloks data center approved for a 14-acre site on North Sherman Ave. — asking Marion County Superior Court to invalidate the rezoning and halt construction
  - The site has a documented history of industrial pollution; residents argue the project threatens groundwater and continues a “legacy of environmental racism” — the Protect Martindale-Brightwood coalition: “We will not allow our neighborhood to be treated as a sacrifice zone”
  - This is part of a broader Indianapolis pattern — Decatur Township residents filed a similar suit to block a $4 billion Sabey Corp. data center on the southwest side; Indianapolis proposed its first data center zoning rules but critics say they don’t go far enough
  - The underlying driver: Indiana passed data center tax abatements in 2019, making the state a magnet for these developments — cheap land, tax breaks, and communities with less political power to push back
- IDEM to Speedway: Urine trouble (Mirror Indy)
  - The town of Speedway’s population explodes from 14,000 to 350,000 on race day — and all that beer they drink eventually ends up at the Speedway Wastewater Treatment Plant, which has violated its state discharge permit in seven of the last ten years, primarily due to ammonia from urine
  - The plant can handle the volume — it’s the chemistry that’s the problem; the plant is only 1.3 miles from IMS, meaning it receives urine at maximum concentration before it has any chance to dilute
  - IDEM cited Speedway for permit violations from 2022-2025 and the town signed a settlement — the fix is a $14 million plant upgrade starting in June, paid for by an $8/month sewer fee increase for residents over the next 20 years

HoosLeft Podcast #125: Live w/ guest Samantha Douglas

Scott Aaron Rogers — Wed, 13 May 2026 10:02:59 GMT

Progressive Indiana Network: https://progressiveindiana.net

HoosLeft: https://hoosleft.us

The Black Briefing: https://www.youtube.com/@theblackbriefing

SUMMARY:

Scott sits down with Samantha Douglas — community organizer, president of the Far East Side Community Council, communications and programs director for IDAAC State, MADVoters board member, two-time elected precinct committee person, and co-host of the Black Briefing podcast — for a wide-ranging conversation about the state of Indianapolis Democratic politics one week out from Indiana’s May 5 primary. They dig into why a heavily Democratic Marion County consistently fails to deliver the turnout needed to drive statewide outcomes, and trace the structural reasons through a series of concrete primary results: Karla Lopez Owens’s narrow loss in the clerk’s race, the Kelvis Williams sheriff’s race mailer controversy, the SD-29 and SD-31 dynamics, and André Carson’s closer-than-usual congressional primary. The conversation then zooms out to cover Trump’s targeted purge of Indiana Senate Republicans who blocked redistricting, the Supreme Court VRA ruling, and the Kamala Harris 2024 postmortem — with Douglas arguing plainly that the failure belongs to party leadership, not to progressive voters who withheld their support. The episode closes with Douglas making a passionate case for precinct-level grassroots organizing as the only real path forward, and looking ahead to the 2027 Indianapolis mayoral race and Senator Andrea Hunley’s campaign as the next big test of whether Marion County Democrats can channel their latent power.

WHAT’S INSIDE:

00:00:00 — Introduction & Support the Show

- Scott sets up the episode one week after the May 5 Indiana primary

- Mixed results: progressives won IN-4 and IN-9 congressional races; establishment won its share

- Marion County framed as the critical variable in Indiana statewide politics

00:03:00 — Guest Introduction: Samantha Douglas

- Samantha Douglas introduced: Far East Side Community Council president, IDAAC State communications and programs director, two-time elected PC, MADVoters board member, Black Briefing co-host

- Scott previews the topics ahead

00:04:00 — The Marion County Democratic Machine: Complacency & Competition

- Marion County is 70%+ Democrat in many districts — but low turnout, not low registration, is the problem

- Lack of Republican competition breeds Democratic complacency; turnout suffers as a result

- Marion County and Lake County together have the population to control statewide seats — but can’t yet deliver

- Douglas: “We’re building something different”

00:06:00 — Money vs. People Power in Indianapolis

- Scott’s theory: in safe Democratic supermajority cities, money captures the party machine rather than pushing it left

- Douglas: supermajority status collapses party-loyalty as a meaningful distinction — voters have to be picky about which Democrat

- Examples where people power beat money: Jesse Brown’s city council win over an establishment incumbent in District 13; Andy Nielsen over union-backed David Ray

- The Hogsett-vs.-Shreve mayoral race as a case study — Shreve spent millions, but Hogsett still won

- Big picture: Marion County’s ~850-900K residents exceed an average congressional district; the power is there, unused

00:11:00 — The Clerk’s Race: Karla Lopez Owens vs. Kate Sweeney Bell

- Karla Lopez Owens, progressive challenger; Kate Sweeney Bell, incumbent clerk and former county party chair

- Douglas: Sweeney Bell’s office has a history of using procedural rules to block new, young — often Black — candidates from qualifying

- Karla represented not just a progressive but a structural reform of the clerk’s office itself

- Karla lost by ~2,200 votes; deceased third-place candidate Bob Kern pulled ~4,500 votes

- Douglas: Sweeney Bell’s office was obligated — morally if not legally — to post notices at polling locations that a candidate on the ballot had died; the failure to do so is emblematic of the system protecting itself

00:15:00 — “Well, Technically”: The Democrats’ Procedural Excuse Problem

- Scott draws the parallel to national Democrats hiding behind parliamentary rules and Supreme Court deference

- Douglas uses the analogy: Trump is finding out how many slaps he can get in before the courts catch up

- The rules allow for waivers for young Democratic candidates with thin primary voting history — the establishment simply won’t use them

- Douglas: intentionally creating barriers is not a technical oversight, it’s a choice

00:19:00 — The Sheriff’s Race and the Fake Slate Mailer

- Kelvis Williams won the Democratic primary for Marion County Sheriff

- One to two weeks before the primary, Williams sent a mailer implying an official party endorsement “team” — listing Sweeney Bell, Ryan Mears, Myla Eldridge, and other unopposed incumbents

- Douglas: was leaning toward Williams until she saw the mailer — presenting unopposed candidates as a “team” felt like a shadow endorsement piece

- The back of the mailer paired Williams with Sweeney Bell — that was the final straw

- Background on the sheriff’s race stakes: deaths in custody at the new criminal justice campus; inadequate staffing during violent offender transport

- Brief tangent on why elected sheriffs are structurally odd — Douglas’s counterpoint: at least they’re accountable to voters, unlike appointees

00:24:00 — Kerry Forestal, SD-31, and the “A Job, a Better Job, a Career” Theory

- Current Marion County Sheriff Kerry Forestal won the SD-31 Democratic primary (term-limited out of sheriff)

- Controversy: Forestal cooperated with ICE, then put out a flyer claiming he stood up to ICE — Douglas calls it a lie

- Douglas: personally disappointed Forestal won, but argues SD-31 needs to flip blue even if that means supporting him now

- Strategic framework: a Democrat → a better Democrat → the Democrat you want

- Redistricting context: Republicans are coming back for another attempt; every blue Senate seat matters as a firewall

- Five of seven targeted Trump-backed challengers won their Senate primaries (one race still pending recount — margin: 3 votes)

00:28:00 — SD-29: The Kristina Moorehead Primary & the Split-Vote Problem

- JD Ford vacating SD-29 to run for IN-5 congressional seat

- Three-way Democratic primary: Kristina Moorehead won with ~51%; Demetris Hicks and Pastor David Green split the remaining vote

- Moorehead claimed on a PIN Network interview (with Derek Holder) that she hadn’t voted Republican since high school; Douglas checked the record — Moorehead voted Republican in 2023

- District shape matters: SD-29 is a funky L-shape — more population-dense in the Marion County strip than the northern section; vote split hurt both Hicks and Green

- Douglas: still needs that seat to stay blue, especially for redistricting — the fight that stopped the remap happened in the Senate, not the House

00:32:00 — André Carson and the IN-7 Congressional Primary

- Carson won re-election comfortably, but faced his most competitive primary in years

- Volunteers harassed at polling places; Douglas stayed largely neutral publicly

- Douglas’s position: she supported Carson — personally, he has mentored young Black leaders including her since before she was “proven” — but thought the criticism of him was fair and hopes he felt the pressure

- “That seat is not his birthright” — Scott

- On the “vote Black no matter what” question: Douglas says she’s not that, but she is “Black first” before Democrat; there are lines (e.g., a state senator with sexual harassment allegations she calls “Nasty G”)

- Double-layer of social pressure on Black Democratic women challenging incumbents: the party norm of “don’t challenge a Democrat,” plus the community norm of “don’t challenge a Black Democrat”

- Conclusion: in districts where you can be picky, be picky

00:40:00 — The Republican State Senate Purge & Redistricting Round Two

- Trump and allies poured money into eight targeted state Senate races; six incumbents lost (one race going to recount — margin: 3 votes)

- Reason for targeting: those senators voted to kill the congressional redistricting scheme last session

- The scheme: redraw Indiana’s 9 congressional districts to eliminate André Carson’s IN-7 and Frank Mrvan’s IN-1; divide Marion County along 38th Street — precision surgical racial cracking

- Recent Supreme Court ruling gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965; Scott: “Gee, thanks, John Roberts”

- Pattern echoed in Louisiana, South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee

- Douglas’s argument: the real reason the redistricting failed wasn’t Republican altruism — it was math: the gerrymander could very well have backfired.

00:46:00 — The “Dummymander” and National Democratic Momentum

- Scott explains the “dummymander” concept: Republicans pack Democrats, but assume static turnout; if turnout shifts, they’ve created competitive districts they didn’t intend to create

- National context: Democrats running ~13 points ahead of 2024 on generic ballot; flipping 20-25% Republican seats in special elections in NJ and Virginia

- Douglas: Republicans here have been banking on Democratic non-turnout for years — that’s a fragile foundation

- Douglas: the MAGA senators who come in may not care about the math and may just go ahead with redistricting — and then “we’re up to bat”

- Lee Atwater legacy: Douglas traces the modern party-based gerrymandering argument to Atwater’s famous strategy of proxy oppression — if 80%+ of Black voters are Democrats, party-based redistricting IS race-based redistricting

- Scott reads the Atwater quote (without using the slur); Douglas: “the system has worked so well they can do the same job with different language”

00:53:00 — The Kamala Harris 2024 Postmortem: Who Bears Blame?

- Scott raises the argument from some Democrats that progressive abstention gave Trump a second term

- Both Scott and Douglas voted for Harris; Scott frames this as a warning to the party, not a defense of abstention

- Douglas’s analogy: blaming progressive non-voters is like beating up “the other person” when your spouse cheated — your spouse made the commitment to you

- Douglas’s core argument: the party knew Harris would struggle with progressive voters and ran her anyway, hoping to ride “first Black woman, first South Asian woman” momentum — that’s a lazy strategy

- Harris’s authenticity problem: the “if you break into my house you will be shot” moment felt scripted and strange — not genuine

- Counterexample: Zohran Mamdani (NYC Mayor) — genuine, connects with voters, can do the job well — that’s the combination Democrats need

- The failure belongs to the party and the campaign, not the voters at the ballot box

00:59:00 — Clinton, Obama, and 30 Years of the Wrong Lesson

- Democrats have been running Clinton ‘92’s playbook — but Clinton “backed into” a three-way race win during a recession; the lesson was always fragile

- Scott: Indiana Democrats are still “Clinton-era” in their triangulation — we’ve “triangulated ourselves into fascism by not standing for anything.”

- Douglas: nobody looks at Obama 2008 and says “that’s the model” — which turned Indiana blue — because it required unapologetic grassroots progressive organizing

- Obama ran as a progressive; the failure was not governing that way, not going big

- Douglas: if we had stuck with the Obama organizing model since 2008, Marion County and the state would look unrecognizable today

01:03:00 — The Beau Bayh / Blythe Potter Dilemma & Fixing the Pipeline

- Douglas: the conundrum at the ballot box is a symptom, not the root cause — the root cause is internal party culture producing bad candidates

- She’s wrestling with the Beau Bayh / Blythe Potter secretary of state question: is it worth giving establishment Democrats a statewide win for the sake of having a Democrat in that seat at all?

- Scott’s diagnosis: Democrats vote for who they think can win rather than who they actually want — and after 30 years, the “electability” candidate still hasn’t peeled off Republican voters

- Coming full circle: the Joe Hogsett dynamic — when candidates are funded by questionable donors, a win for them isn’t necessarily a win for the people

01:07:00 — Grassroots Is the Only Way: The PC Model and Andrea Hunley

- Douglas: the solution isn’t at the ballot box, it’s in the party infrastructure — better leadership, better accountability, better standards, and organizing

- The PC model: Marion County went from ~260 PC candidates in 2022 to 440 in this cycle — a 64% increase

- Personal example: when Douglas ran for PC in 2022, her father voted for the first time in 40 years — nobody else could have turned him out

- Each PC can turn out people in their precinct that no campaign can — if all 600+ Marion County precincts have an active, competing PC, turnout goes up structurally

- The 2027 Indianapolis mayoral race and Andrea Hunley’s campaign as the next concrete test: Marion County is “raw” and Hunley feels like a “balm”; losing that race to low turnout after everything would be devastating

- Getting Hogsett out isn’t just about replacing one person — it removes a key pillar of the problematic establishment apparatus

- Closing: organize, or give up; Douglas’s answer is organize

01:12:00 — Where to Find Samantha Douglas & the Black Briefing

- Black Briefing Podcast: YouTube at @theBlackBriefing; also available on most podcast platforms

- Co-host: Wildstyle Paschall; produced with husband Jared Douglas behind the camera

- Recent guests: Andrea Hunley, Tamara Winfrey Harris (Women’s Foundation of Indiana)

- Social: Facebook (Samantha Douglas); Instagram (@lhl_sam); podcast Facebook page (@theBlackBriefing)

- HoosLeft This Week plug: upcoming Sunday guests — HD-53 candidate Reece Axel Adams and Karla Lopez Owens

Progressive Indiana Network: HoosLeft

HoosLeft This Week - July 19, 2026

SUMMARY:

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

IN DEPTH:

State Violence

Middle East

International Relations

Wildfires

Election Security

Confirmation Hearings

Epstein

AI-Data Centers

State Contracts

State Funding Priorities

…and Finally This Week

HoosLeft Podcast #134 - Disability Pride Month w/ Sharon Wight & Tabitha Zeigler

SUMMARY:

WHAT’S INSIDE:

RESOURCES:

HoosLeft This Week - July 12, 2026

SUMMARY:

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

IN DEPTH:

Iran

Israel

Trump’s NATO Trip

…and MORE White House Destruction

Sports

Beckwith

State Violence

Elections

Healthcare

AI/Data Centers

HoosLeft Podcast #133 - Live w/ Katie Robins

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WHAT’S INSIDE:

HoosLeft This Week - July 5, 2026

SUMMARY:

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

IN DEPTH:

Climate

Braun

Iran War

Immigration

Indiana Prisons

Supreme Court

Elections

Corruption

USA at 250

HoosLeft Podcast #132: Independents Day

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WHAT’S INSIDE:

HoosLeft This Week - June 28, 2026

SUMMARY:

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

IN DEPTH:

US/World News

Death of Neoliberalism

International Elections

US Elections

Iran War

Housing

Voting

Immigration

Weaponization

Media

The Crossroads - Disability Rights

Indiana News

AI/Data Centers

Corruption

Education

GOP Platform

Utilities

…and Finally This Week

HoosLeft Podcast #131: UK Author Metin Pekin

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WHAT’S INSIDE:

HoosLeft This Week - June 21, 2026

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