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Glitter
“All journeys end when we reach our destination but the journeying remains a thing apart, unique unto itself. Most of us make life’s journeys without understanding that the journeying is a separate thing.”
Bob Hoover - The Grendel Saga
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On June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress resolved “[t]hat six companies of expert riflemen, be immediately raised in Pennsylvania,
June 14, 2026
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
JUN 15
READ IN APP
On June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress resolved “[t]hat six companies of expert riflemen, be immediately raised in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia; that each company consist of a captain, three lieutenants, four serjeants, four corporals, a drummer or trumpeter, and sixty-eight privates…[and that] each company, as soon as completed, shall march and join the army near Boston, to be there employed as light infantry, under the command of the chief Officer in that army.”
And thus Congress established the Continental Army.
The First Continental Congress, which met in 1774, refused to establish a standing army, afraid that a bad government could use an army against its people. The Congress met in response to the British Parliament’s closing of the port of Boston and imposition of martial law there, but its members hoped they could repair their relationship with King George III and simply sent entreaties to the king to end what were known as the “Intolerable Acts.”
The Battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775 changed the equation. On April 19, British soldiers opened fire on colonists just as Patriot leaders feared they might. In the aftermath of that deadly day, about 15,000 untrained Massachusetts militiamen converged on Boston and laid siege to the town, where they bottled up about 6,500 British Regulars.
The Battles of Lexington and Concord made it clear the British government endangered American liberties. The Second Continental Congress met in Independence Hall in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, to address the crisis in Boston. The delegates overcame their suspicions of a standing army to conclude they must bring the various state militias into a continental organization to stand against King George III.
With the establishment of the Continental Army, a British officer, General Charles Lee, resigned his commission in the British Army and published a public letter explaining that the king’s overreach had turned him away from service in His Majesty’s army and toward the Patriots:
“[W]henever it shall please his Majesty to call me forth to any honourable service against the natural hereditary enemies of our country, or in defence of his just rights and dignity, no man will obey the righteous summons with more zeal and alacrity than myself,” he wrote, “but the present measures seem to me so absolutely subversive of the rights and liberties of every individual subject, so destructive to the whole empire at large, and ultimately so ruinous to his Majesty’s own person, dignity and family, that I think myself obliged in conscience as a Citizen, Englishman, and Soldier of a free state, to exert my utmost to defeat them.”
After they established a Continental Army, the next thing Congress members did was to name a French and Indian War veteran, Virginia planter George Washington, commander-in-chief. To Washington fell the challenge of establishing an army to defend the nation without creating a military a tyrant could use to repress the people.
It was not an easy project. The Continental Army was made up of volunteers who were loyal primarily to the officers they had chosen, and because Congress still feared a standing army, their enlistments initially were short. Different units trained with different field manuals, making it hard to turn them into a unified fighting force. Women came to the camps with their men, often bringing their children. The women worked for the half-rations the government provided, washing, cooking, hauling water, and tending the wounded.
After an initial bout of enthusiasm at the start of the war, men stopped enlisting, and in 1777 Congress increased the times of enlistment to three years or “for the duration” of the conflict. That meant that the men in the army were more often poor than wealthy, enlisting for the bounties offered, and Congress found it easy to overlook those 12,000 people encamped about eighteen miles to the northwest of Philadelphia in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, for six months in the hard winter of 1777–1778. The Congress had no way to compel the states to provide money, food, or supplies for the army, and the army almost fell apart for lack of support.
Supply chains broke as the British captured food or it spoiled in transit to the soldiers, and wartime inflation meant Congress did not appropriate enough money for food. Hunger and disease stalked the camp, but even worse was the lack of clothing. More than 1,000 soldiers died, and about eight or ten deserted every day. Washington warned the president of the Continental Congress that the men were close to mutiny, even as a group of army officers were working with congressmen to replace Washington, complaining about how he was prosecuting the war.
By February 1778 a delegation from the Continental Congress had visited Valley Forge and, understanding that the lack of supplies made the army, and thus the country, truly vulnerable, set out to reform the supply department. Then a newly arrived Prussian officer, Baron Friedrich von Steuben, drilled the soldiers into unity and better morale. And then, in May, the soldiers learned that France had signed a treaty with the American states in February, lending money, matériel, and men to the cause of American independence. The army survived.
By the end of 1778, the main theater of the war had shifted to the South, where British officers hoped to recruit Loyalists to their side. Instead, guerrilla bands helped General Nathanael Greene bait the British into a war of endurance that finally ended on October 19, 1781, at the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia, where British general Charles Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington and French commander Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau.
The Continental Army had defeated the army of the king and established a nation based on the principle that all men were created equal and had a right to have a say in the government under which they lived.
In September 1783, negotiators concluded the Treaty of Paris that formally ended the war, and Congress discharged most of the troops still in service. In his November 2 farewell address to his men, Washington noted that their victory against such a formidable power was “little short of a standing Miracle.” “[W]ho has before seen a disciplined Army formed at once from such raw materials?” Washington wrote. “Who that was not a witness could imagine, that the most violent local prejudices would cease so soon, and that Men who came from the different parts of the Continent, strongly disposed by the habits of education, to despise and quarrel with each other, would instantly become but one patriotic band of Brothers?”
With the army disbanded, General Washington himself stepped away from military leadership. On December 23, Washington addressed Congress, saying: “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.”
In 1817, given the choice of subjects to paint for the Rotunda in the U.S. Capitol, being rebuilt after the British had burned it during the War of 1812, fine artist John Trumbull picked the moment of Washington’s resignation from the army. As he discussed the project with President James Madison, Trumbull told the president: “I have thought that one of the highest moral lessons ever given to the world, was that presented by the conduct of the commander-in-chief, in resigning his power and commission as he did, when the army, perhaps, would have been unanimously with him, and few of the people disposed to resist his retaining the power which he had used with such happy success, and such irreproachable moderation.”
Madison agreed, and the painting of a man voluntarily walking away from the leadership of a powerful army rather than becoming a dictator hangs today in the Capitol Rotunda.
—
The Non-Victory https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-non-victory
Friends,
Trump again claims victory in Iran. He’s claimed victory before, but now he has a so-called “agreement” with Iran.
That agreement, which appears to be no more than a memo of understanding — that is, a set of principles to which Iran and the United States have agreed — stops the fighting and reopens the Strait of Hormuz but it does not deal with the issue that caused Trump to initiate the conflict: Iran’s nuclear program.
Keep that in mind as you hear various renditions of what’s been decided. Recall that the Strait of Hormuz was open before Trump began bombing Iran. At best, the agreement Trump is touting restores the status quo to where it was when he commenced hostilities. Remember also that Iran had agreed to limit its development of nuclear-grade materials in its treaty with the Obama administration, which Trump revoked in 2018.
So what has been accomplished? Iran now is under the control of a more extremist regime than when Trump started this war. Oil prices are far higher, and will take some time to return to where they were before it began (if they ever do). Meanwhile, Trump has caused the United States to be more dependent on fossil fuels than we were prior to his inauguration for a second time, and the high oil prices brought on by his war has enriched Vladimir Putin’s regime.
The war with Iran has cost the United States an estimated $90 billion, and that’s a conservative estimate. It has caused widespread suffering throughout the Middle East. It has put Israel in a more precarious situation than it was before — and much of that is due to Benjamin Netanyahu, who is not a party to, and has not approved, the agreement.
This doesn’t look like a victory. Compared to where the United States and the Middle East were on February 28, when Trump began this war, it’s a terrible failure.
Carousel
photo by @badgopher
I Know What I Was
I used to be the kind of person people warned each other about not loud enough to be obvious not quiet enough to be harmless
I left dents in people you couldn't see right away hairline cracks that spread later when I was already gone
I lied like it was breathing not always big lies just enough to keep things easy to keep myself from ever having to be honest about the mess I was
I hurt people and called it survival Called it "just how I am" Called it anything that kept me from saying I was wrong
And I was good at it good at walking away good at pretending I didn't notice the damage trailing behind me like smoke
There are names I still can't say out loud without feeling that old version of me stirring in my chest like it never really left just learned how to stay quiet
That's the worst part
Not that I was that person but that I remember exactly how easy it felt
Now I carry it differently Not as pride not even as shame just weight
A kind of gravity that keeps me careful with other people's hearts because I know how little it used to take for me to break them
I don't say I'm good now I don't think it works like that
I just know I'm not him anymore and every day I choose that on purpose
Resonates. In the echoes of my memory.
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This was the second week of videos from the 250 to 250 Project that we’re producing to honor the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Ind
Week Three in 250 to 250
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON AND 250 TO 250
JUN 14
READ IN APP
This was the third week of videos from the 250 to 250 Project that we’re producing to honor the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
We designed the videos to emphasize the agency of Americans—mostly everyday Americans—to change the country. Each falls into a category that defines what it means to be an American, including community, democracy, innovation, mobility, civil rights, education, conservation, and creativity.
This week had some surprises— for me, anyway— which has been part of the fun of doing these. I knew who An Wang was, but not his story, and confess that while I had heard of the New Madrid earthquakes, I had no idea how important they were.
I hope you enjoy this week’s videos.
You can follow the project at the sites listed below, or under “videos” at my own YouTube page: Heather Cox Richardson. Or just wait until I send out the week’s roundup.
Follow Along | #WeAreAmerica250 Substack | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok | Bluesky | Threads
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, Narrated by Tom Perez
Tom Perez is a civil rights attorney, former Chair of the Democratic National Committee, and served as U.S. Labor Secretary under President Barack Obama. Perez tells us about the tragic 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the workplace reforms that it inspired.
New Madrid Earthquakes, Narrated by Conevery Bolton Valencius
Dr. Conevery Bolton Valencius is a Professor of History at Boston College, and author of The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes and The Health of the Country: How American Settlers Understood Themselves and Their Land. Dr. Valencius recounts the New Madrid earthquakes that reshaped the landscape, displaced Indigenous Americans, and prompted America's first disaster relief legislation.
Samuel Adams, Narrated by Stacy Schiff
Stacy Schiff is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer whose works include the New York Times bestsellers Cleopatra, The Witches: Salem, 1692, and The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams. Here, Schiff chronicles the life of Samuel Adams, the relentless agitator who shaped public opinion and pushed the colonies toward independence.
An Wang, Narrated by Representative Lori Trahan
United States Representative Lori Trahan of Massachusetts is the granddaughter of immigrants who became the first in her family to graduate from college before embarking on a distinguished career that culminated in her election to Congress in 2018. Representative Trahan recounts the life of An Wang, the Chinese American computer engineer who invented magnetic core memory and embraced an ethic of philanthropy.
Everglades, Narrated by Jack E. Davis
Pulitzer Prize-winner Jack E. Davis is a historian, longtime Florida resident, and Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Florida. In addition to other works, he is the author of An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century. Here Dr. Davis honors the Everglades, the Florida wetland known for its astounding beauty, and highlights the conservationism that ensured its protection.
1969 Volkswagen Type 2 T1 Microbus Motor Caravan by slinkmizotha on DeviantArt
Art Car
Union Maid · Pete Seeger
“I’m proud to say I was present when ‘Union Maid’ was written in June, 1940, in the plain little office of the Oklahoma City Communist Party. Bob Wood, local organizer, had asked Woody Guthrie and me to sing there the night before for a small group of striking oil workers. Early next morning, Woody got to the typewriter and hammered out the first two verses of ‘Union Maid’ set to a European tune that Robert Schumann arranged for piano (‘The Merry Farmer’) back in the early 1800s. Of course, it’s the chorus that really makes it - its tune, ‘Red Wing,’ was copyrighted early in the 1900s.” ~ Pete Seeger
Songs of my youth.
Sunday Thought: The Horrifying Truth About Trump's Cage Match https://robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-thought-trumps-cage-match
Friends,
Tonight, Trump is throwing an 80th birthday bash for himself (he says it’s in honor of the 250th birthday of the United States) with a “Freedom250” Ultimate Fighting Championship cage match on the South Lawn of the White House at 8 p.m. ET.
It will be a bloody gladiator fight taking place inside a 600-ton, 154-feet-tall skeletal structure called “the Claw,” painted red, white and blue. Opponents will punch, kick, wrestle, choke, and use jiu-jitsu on each other until one of them is unconscious or verbally concedes, or a referee stops the fight because one is judged too damaged to absorb any more violence.
This is a money-making operation for the UFC (which is offering special-access VIP packages for $1.5 million), for Trump buddy David Ellison’s Paramount (which will livestream it to you if you buy a subscription for $8.99 a month — see here), for Crypto.com and Ram (which are sponsoring it), and for Trump (who’s deciding which of his billionaire friends and CEO buddies will be invited ringside. Last night, Trump held a $1 million-a-person dinner at the Trump National Golf Club at Potomac, Virginia, to benefit his Super PAC, Maga Inc.).
Beyond the usual Trumpian issues of self-dealing and pay-to-play corruption, today’s fight also raises the question: What does a cage match on the White House lawn have to do with America’s 250th anniversary?
Just this: Trump and his regime are seeking to project an America that’s like the winner of a cage match.
Trump sees everything and everyone in terms of dominance or submission, and he’s hellbent on dominance. “You’ll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong,” he told his supporters on January 6, 2021, before urging them to go the Capitol.
He views America as locked in a zero-sum match with the rest of the world, and there’s no limit to our violence. Unless Iran opened the Strait of Hormuz, he memorably said, “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
Trump’s entire “manosphere” is obsessed with force and violence. His secretary of “war,” Pete Hegseth, threatens “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies” and “maximum violence to the enemy.” When told some fishermen survived the American bombing of their boat, Hegseth reportedly ordered his commander to “kill them all.”
Trump’s secretary of health and human services frequently posts shirtless workout videos in which he’s lifting weights alongside figures like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kid Rock. He claims Trump has “the highest testosterone level” ever seen in an individual over 70 years old.
Trump’s whole circle — including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and JD Vance — glorify male prowess and power. (In a Twitter exchange a few years ago, Musk said he was “up for a cage fight” with Zuckerberg, who replied: “Send me location,” eliciting from Musk: “Vegas Octagon,” and the suggestion that podcaster Joe Rogan referee.) Musk and Vance champion pronatalism— the belief that the single greatest threat to Western civilization is collapsing birth rates — and argue that Western women must have more children.
Much of the Republican Party is likewise focusing on male virility. Texas Republican senatorial candidate Ken Paxton calls the Democratic candidate “low-T Talarico.”
Part of this comes directly from the fascist playbook, organized around a “strongman” touting male dominance. In that playbook, war and violence are thought means of strengthening society by culling the weak and extolling heroic warriors.
I suspect many Americans find Trump’s neofascist “strongman” attractive because they feel powerless in a society that’s left them behind. The cage match and similar public displays of aggression enable them to feel vicariously powerful.
Young men in particular — who make up a disproportionate share of Trump’s base — have been economically emasculated. Most lack college degrees at a time when such a degree is necessary (although hardly sufficient) for a decent job, and when some 60 percent of university undergraduates and 67 percent of graduate students are female.
In this way, cage matches darkly echo “The Full Monty,” the 1997 British comedy about unemployed steelworkers in Sheffield, England, who form a male striptease act to make quick cash.
But the cage match today on the White House lawn is no laughing matter. It’s deadly serious and deeply troubling.
When so many Americans are struggling to make ends meet, Trump’s gladiator fight suggests that the essence of the nation on its 250th birthday isn’t the democratic ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, nor is it the pull-yourself-up-from-the-bootstraps ambition that’s driven our economy, but zero-sum violence and male aggression.
What do you think?
Those of you celebrating the Knicks’ victory in the NBA Championship should enjoy yourselves and leave this one for later.
June 13, 2026
HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
JUN 14
READ IN APP
Those of you celebrating the Knicks’ victory in the NBA Championship should enjoy yourselves and leave this one for later.
Before noon on Saturday, June 13, Charles M. Floca, whom Trump installed at the head of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, certified to the court that “the Center and its Board have complied with the Court’s order.” They had, he wrote, “[r]emoved all physical signage on the Kennedy Center building and grounds, including the front portico, that purports to rename the Kennedy Center after President Trump or any other individual besides President Kennedy,” updated the website, removed references to Trump from letterhead, promotional materials, and so on, and “[w]ithdrawn any trademark application officially referring to the Kennedy Center as the ‘Trump Kennedy Center’…or any similar formulation.”
What they did not do was take down the tarp workers installed last night around the scaffolding they erected yesterday, hiding the portico wall. Through a crack between the tarp and the wall, photographers caught a few images of letters coming down shortly after 3:00 AM—Cliff Owen of the Associated Press got an iconic shot of a worker loosening the P from the wall—but so far the public has not seen the restored facade. The portico remained shrouded all day.
In a statement, Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Daravi said that the center was “fully compliant with the court’s directive” and that the board was evaluating “legal options.” Tonight workers were back at the Kennedy Center, where they created passageways in the tarp to make the center’s doors accessible while keeping the wall where Trump had put his name covered.
Last night, while workers were putting up scaffolding at the Kennedy Center, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fighters held a press conference at the Lincoln Memorial in advance of the UFC cage matches to be held at the White House on Trump’s 80th birthday on Sunday. Trump sent the United States Army Herald Trumpets, the U.S. Army ensemble chiefly responsible for playing the entrance and exit fanfares for the President of the United States, to open the event.
The fighters walked from Lincoln’s statue down the steps of the memorial through the Armed Forces Full Honor Cordon, a pathway formed between two groups made up of sixteen service members in dress uniforms. This is the U.S. military’s highest ceremonial formation, usually reserved for heads of state, foreign dignitaries, senior officials, and funerals for military heroes.
This morning the weigh-in for the UFC fights at the White House also took place at the Lincoln Memorial. Heavyweight fighter Josh Hokit seemed to pretend to throw up, dribbling colored liquid from his mouth. “So what? Maybe I was drinking last night,” Hokit told the media there. “Who wouldn’t be? I’ve got a giant man who wants to knock me out,” he said, referring to his scheduled opponent Derrick Lewis, whom Alex Pattle of Yahoo! Sports identifies as Trump’s favorite fighter. “He has the most knockouts in UFC history.”
Today stunt performer Travis Pastrana performed a backflip on his dirt bike over the UFC octagon fight arena on the South Lawn of the White House. Other riders performed stunts as well. They were filmed on their bikes, flying across the facade of the White House.
On the eve of his 80th birthday, the president posted an image of the Obama Presidential Center as a garbage can surrounded by a homeless encampment. Then he posted an image of himself leaving his trial in Manhattan Criminal Court in 2024, when a jury found him guilty of 34 felony counts, under the caption “Only Trump.” Then he posted an image from 2018 of himself walking with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Then he posted a picture of himself speaking at a lectern in front of Air Force One while he was campaigning for reelection in August 2020.
Then he posted an AI image of himself on a ship looking out at battleships from different eras, including a wooden sailing vessel, flying the American flag, with fighter jets in formation overhead; the back of his jacket is emblazoned with “COMMANDER IN CHIEF,” and the caption reads: “YOU’RE GETTING DISCOMBOBULATED.”
Then he posted an image of himself on the cover of Fortune magazine from December 8, 1986. And then he posted a black and white image of himself as a younger man in the same era, looking pensive, seated in a chair on an ice rink, with the caption: “Years ago after saving the Wollman Skating Rink in Central Park—Long before I fixed The Reflecting Pool, and everything else in Washington, D.C. including, most importantly, CRIME! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
Tomorrow night, the fighters will enter the ring from the Oval Office. The fight will be carried live on Paramount Plus, for a fee of $8.99 and up.
—
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Imagine losing a game you rigged
Assignment - Compare and contrast
Coco - A Pixar Film
Loving Vincent - An Independent Production
Context - Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film
Conclusion - The Academy knows where the money is. Art has nothing to do with it.
State AGs must stop the Paramount-Warner Bros Deal, to protect CNN from Trump https://robertreich.substack.com/p/state-ags-must-stop-the-paramount
Friends,
State Attorneys General are our last best hope for stopping Trump cronies Larry and David Ellison from buying Warner Bros — and with it, CNN. They’ve already nearly destroyed and neutered CBS News. We cannot allow them to destroy CNN’s ability to tell the American people the truth about Trump.
Crónicas Mexicanas
He wasn't Mexican. But he fought harder for Mexican food — and Mexican people — than most.
His name was Anthony Bourdain — a New York chef, author, and one of the most celebrated food & travel voices in history. He traveled the world for decades. And of all the cultures he encountered, few moved him as deeply as Mexico's.
But Bourdain didn't just enjoy Mexican food. He fought for it to be taken seriously.
——
He defended Mexican cuisine when the world looked down on it.
Long before Mexican cuisine was celebrated in global food media, Bourdain was calling it one of the greatest and most sophisticated culinary traditions on Earth. He pointed to mole sauces that take days to prepare, handmade tortillas rooted in ancient agriculture — a food culture older than French or Italian cuisine, stretching back to the very beginning of agriculture itself.
"Mexican food is not simple, my friends. Those are, in many cases, some deeply complex and nuanced sauces — and incredibly labor intensive ones. Mexican food should be considered just as sophisticated and celebrated as French or Italian or any other cuisine. It's old, it goes back to the beginning of agriculture." — Bourdain
He pushed back openly against the stereotype that Mexican food was "cheap" or "basic." He said it deserved the same global respect and recognition as any great world cuisine — and he said it loudly, repeatedly, and without apology.
——
He honored the people behind the food.
Throughout his travels from Oaxaca to Mexico City, Bourdain spent time with home cooks, street vendors, Indigenous communities, and families preserving recipes passed down for hundreds of years. He openly said some of the greatest cooks he had ever met in his life were Mexican women working quietly in kitchens with almost no recognition outside their communities.
He wasn't a tourist passing through. He sat down, he listened, he learned — and he gave credit where it was long overdue.
——
He defended Mexican workers when it was politically risky.
Bourdain spent most of his career as a professional chef, and he never forgot who built those kitchens alongside him. He said nearly every kitchen he worked in was held together by Mexican cooks, dishwashers, and prep workers. When anti-immigrant rhetoric dominated headlines, he didn't stay silent.
"I spent most of my life as a cook and chef working with Mexicans. My loyalties are a matter of record. In almost every kitchen I ever stumbled into, clueless and fearful, it was a Mexican who looked after me, took me under his wing, showed me how to do things... So I ask that whatever your opinion on immigration policy — let us at least acknowledge who is working and living here NOW, and look in our hearts. Ask ourselves what we would do — who we would be — without them." — Bourdain
He also stated plainly that the entire American restaurant industry would collapse overnight without Mexican workers. He said it when it cost something to say it.
——
What made Bourdain rare?
He used his enormous platform — millions of viewers across CNN's Parts Unknown, No Reservations, and beyond — to humanize Mexican culture at a time when mainstream media was doing the opposite. He wasn't performing allyship. He was speaking from decades of lived experience standing side by side with Mexican people in real kitchens.
For many in the Mexican community, he became one of the few outsiders who genuinely listened, genuinely learned, and genuinely gave credit where it was deserved.
Anthony Bourdain passed away in June 2018. But his words about Mexico — about its food, its people, its dignity — remain as powerful as ever.
My favorite cuisine.. Goto for evaluating a new to me restaurant: Chili Colorado, por favor. Just a couple corn tortillas.
The Midterms in a Nutshell, as of June 13 https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-midterms-in-a-nutshell
Friends,
A number of you have asked me for a simple overview of where things stand in the race to control Congress, so here’s some information you may find useful. It suggests where we need to focus our energies over the next four and a half months.
1. What’s needed for control of each chamber
In the Senate now: 53 Republicans - 47 Democrats (or independents who caucus with Dems). Democrats need to gain a net 4 seats to gain control of the Senate.
In the House now: 219 Republicans (or independents who caucus with GOP) - 212 Democrats. There are 4 vacancies (1 in a largely Republican district, 3 in largely Democratic districts). Assuming that none of the current vacancies flip party control in special elections before November, Democrats need to gain a net 3 seats to gain control of the House.
2. Vulnerable incumbent Republicans
Senate Republicans in competitive reelection races, who are considered vulnerable
Maine: Republican Senator Susan Collins is being challenged by Democratic oysterman Graham Platner.
Ohio: Republican Senator Jon Husted is being challenged by former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown.
Alaska: Republican Senator Dan Sullivan is being challenged by former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola (and potentially another candidate named Dan Sullivan)
Nebraska: Pete Ricketts is being challenged by independent populist Dan Osborn (who came close to defeating Nebraska’s other GOP Senator in 2024). House Republicans in competitive reelection races, who are considered vulnerable
Juan Ciscomani (AZ-06)
Eli Crane (AZ-02)
David Valadao (CA-22)
Kevin Kiley (CA-06).(Kiley switched his party affiliation to “independent” after California’s Proposition 50 redrew him into a bluer district, but he still caucuses and votes with the GOP majority.)
Jeff Hurd (CO-03)
Jeff Crank (CO-05)
Gabe Evans (CO-08)
Marianette Miller-Meeks (IA-01)
Zach Nunn (IA-03)
Bill Huizenga (MI-04)
Tom Barrett (MI-08)
Brad Finstad (MN-01)
Chuck Edwards (NC-11)
Tom Kean Jr. (NJ-07)(Kean has not been seen in public or voted in the House since March 2026 due to an unspecified medical issue.)
Nick LaLota (NY-01)
Mike Lawler (NY-17)
Max Miller (OH-07)
Rob Bresnahan (PA-08)
Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-01)
Ryan Mackenzie (PA-07)
Scott Perry (PA-10)
Rob Wittman (VA-01)
Jen Kiggans (VA-02)
John McGuire (VA-05)
Derrick Van Orden (WI-03)PS: Republican incumbents who lost their primaries to Trump-backed candidates (and could turn on Trump)
Sen. John Cornyn (TX)
Sen. Bill Cassidy (LA)
Rep. Thomas Massie (KY-04)
3. Vulnerable incumbent Democrats
Senate Democrats in competitive reelection races, who are considered vulnerable
Georgia: Democratic incumbent Jon Ossoff will face either Rep. Mike Collins or former football coach Derek Dooley after a June 16 GOP primary runoff. House Democrats in competitive reelection races, who are considered vulnerable
Derek Tran (CA-45)
Kathy Castor (FL-14)
Nellie Pou (NJ-09)
Josh Riley (NY-19)
Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
4. Competitive Open Seats
Competitive open seats for the Senate
Texas: Scandal-plagued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will face Democratic state Rep. James Talarico for Republican John Cornyn’s seat.
Michigan: Republican Mike Rogers will face a to-be-decided Democratic opponent for retiring Democrat Gary Peters’ seat.
The frontrunners for the August Democratic primary are Abdul El-Sayed, a Bernie Sanders-endorsed doctor who supports Medicare for All and getting Big Money out of politics, and Rep. Haley Stevens, a so-called “moderate” Democrat who is receiving major financial support from AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby.
North Carolina: Former RNC Chair Michael Whatley will face former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper for retiring Republican Thom Tillis’ seat.
Iowa: Republican Congresswoman Ashley Hinson will face Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek for retiring Republican Joni Ernst’s seat.
Competitive open seats for the House
AZ-01 (currently GOP-held)
ME-02 (currently Dem-held)
MI-10 (currently GOP-held)
These are the down-ballot races I’m paying attention to, but let me know if I’ve missed any (and what key midterm races you’re focused on) in the comments below.
Tina Turner
Private Dancer (1984)
I miss my MTV.
The music is good. The production is GREAT.
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by Nikolett Emmert
For Karl because Savita asked.
Say her name:
Diana Savita Wagner, hero.
OLIVER KORNETZKE
Happy Birthday America 🎂
250 years. Two hundred and fifty years of the most powerful, most resourced, most theoretically capable nation in the history of human civilization and here is what we have to show for it.
Forty million people on food stamps, thirty million without health insurance, the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world, the highest incarceration rate on earth, an opioid crisis that has killed over half a million people and counting, a housing market so broken that working people cannot afford to live in the cities they work in, an education system that buries young people in debt before they earn their first dollar, infrastructure that is literally collapsing, a life expectancy that is going backwards, a political system so thoroughly purchased by concentrated wealth that the laws it produces bear almost no relationship to what the public actually wants or needs, a working class that has not seen meaningful real wage growth in thirty years, a mental health crisis so severe we normalized it, a gun violence epidemic so routine we don’t even act when preschoolers are slaughtered, and a climate hurtling toward catastrophe while the people paid to address it collect checks from the industry causing it.
Two hundred and fifty years of that. And to celebrate, we built a wrestling arena on the White House lawn.
Not a hospital, or a school, or a housing development. Not a single thing that addresses a single goddamn item on the list above. A wrestling arena. With cranes and pyrotechnics and a steel arch that probably cost more than the annual budget of three rural counties combined, erected in front of the building where Lincoln and Roosevelt and every president who ever tried to make any of this mean something once lived and worked and in some cases died trying.
Truthfully, this is not a departure from American values. This is the fullest possible expression of them. Because this is what we chose. Every single time the choice was presented.
We built a culture where a football coach makes forty times what a physics professor makes and then express genuine bewilderment at the outcomes. Where a reality television star becomes president and a school district cuts its art program in the same fiscal year. Where children know every statistic of every player on their favorite sport team and cannot locate their own country on a map. Where scientific consensus on vaccines, climate, evolution, and basic nutrition gets weighed against a Facebook post and the Facebook post wins at the dinner table. Where the school that wins the state championship gets a parade and the school that produces a Nobel laureate gets a budget cut.
We chose the bomber over the teacher. The tank over the clinic. The aircraft carrier over the water treatment plant. We spend more on military than the next ten countries combined, including our allies, while veterans sleep on the streets of the cities they came back to. We built the most expensive killing apparatus in human history and then told the nurse she made too much money. We sent young men to die in wars that made defense contractors rich and called it freedom and put a yellow ribbon magnet on the back of the car and called that support. We made the soldier and the police officer into sacred untouchable symbols of national identity and then cut their benefits, denied their PTSD claims, let them die waiting for VA appointments, and sent them back for third and fourth tours because it was cheaper than taking care of them when they came home. We worshipped the uniform and neglected the human inside it because the uniform is a symbol and symbols are cheaper than healthcare and housing and the therapy that would actually help. We built bases in a hundred and fifty countries and could not build enough affordable housing in fifty states. We funded a military budget that could have ended homelessness and medical debt and student debt several times over and we did it with bipartisan enthusiasm and called the people who questioned it unserious.
We chose entertainment over education so many times and for so long and at every available level of society that we forgot there was a distinction worth making. Spectacle over substance, performance over policy, the aesthetics of greatness in place of the actual thing, and the feeling of winning instead of asking what was being won and who was paying for it and what it would cost the people who came next.
Rome had bread and circuses. We Americans have food stamps and a wrestling ring outside the Oval Office.
250 years. This is what we built. This is what we chose. This is what we are celebrating. And the most perfectly, catastrophically, irreducibly American thing about all of it is that anyone pointing at this image and asking what it means will be called unpatriotic by people watching it on a television they bought on credit they cannot afford to pay back, rooting for a sport they cannot explain, in a country they cannot describe, celebrating a birthday they cannot contextualize, for a nation that has spent two and a half centuries confusing the noise it makes with the work it never did, all while claiming to be the greatest country on Earth.
Happy Birthday America! You have never looked more like yourself!
This is a brutal assessment. Of course we have done many wonderful things for the world and for our country. Unfortunately, everything mentioned in this essay is accurate. Where do we go from here?
Make America Great Finally?
Make America Great It’s About Time?
We will need to trade in some of our silliness for seriousness. And some of our simplistic certitude for open mindedness. And some of our greed for benevolence.
