A Call to Arms

Jennifer Bendery at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON – It was just last week that Texas Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton was a big advocate of in vitro fertilization, or IVF. “Every child is a blessing, and every family hoping to welcome a child deserves support and compassion,” Paxton, who is currently the state’s attorney general, told HuffPost. “I am a strong supporter of IVF and pro-family policies that help Americans experience the wonders of parenthood.” His stance was somewhat surprising, considering the Texas GOP just added an IVF ban to its newly approved party platform. But suddenly, Paxton is walking back that support, saying he’d put “restrictions” on the fertility treatment that Americans used nearly 450,000 times in 2024, and that produced more than 100,000 babies nationwide. “We need to have restrictions, so that we don’t lose fertilized eggs, if that’s possible, and we need to just examine the issue,” Paxton told the Washington Examiner on Saturday. The attorney general’s curious change of heart puts him in line with his party, erasing a potential conflict that could have hurt his chances at victory in November in his race against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico.

Going further still, Paxton also told the news outlet he “would not commit” to supporting a bill for national protections for IVF — the complete opposite of what he told the Texas Tribune earlier this month, when he said he’d back pro-IVF legislation currently sponsored by Sens. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) if elected. “It’s easy to say I’d support a vote, but I would need to read the bill, find out exactly what it does, find out what protections are in there,” he said. “I want couples to be able to have babies, but I also want protection, so I can’t say blanketly I’d support any bill.”

Texas AG and US Senate nominee Ken Paxton (R)’s changing of his previous pro-IVF stance to a stance supportive of IVF restrictions will make fetal personhood fetishists happy, but not the majority of Texans.

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But less than twenty-four hours later, that post would mark one of Donald Trump’s most frantic social media spirals we have seen from him in a very long time. Over the course of the day, Trump posted or reposted more than 100 times, including 67 posts in just two hours.

He shared content with white nationalist language, attacked a federal judge, shared an image of himself arm-wrestling a celebrity, reposted a racist caricature of Barack and Michelle Obama, declared that a “RESTRAINING ORDER IS NEEDED” against an American ally, a foreign leader who was once considered one of Trump’s closest European partners, and flooded his feed with pictures of his family from the early 1900’s and of his father who he claimed was his mentor.

But perhaps the most disturbing image of all appeared without warning: an unmistakable piece of authoritarian propaganda depicting Trump as a towering, shadowed military figure, arm outstretched as if commanding a nation toward war, while fighter jets roared overhead against a sky consumed by fire, smoke, and explosions.

BTW. See the guy WITHOUT the mask? That is Thomas Rousseau. The FOUNDER of Patriot Front. This picture was taken Saturday, July 4, 2026 by Finn Gomez/Getty.

Emergency managers in central Kansas say a tornado that tore through their communities on April 13 caught them off guard for one reason: the forecast said clear skies, and they blame staffing cuts under President Donald Trump for gutting the data behind it, according to Politico.

From the article:

SenateDemocrats give Schumer and the DSCC credit for recruiting quality candidates in Ohio, North Carolina and Alaska, carving a path to winning a Senate majority next year. But some have chafed at his decisions in other states, arguing that establishment-backed candidates would fare poorly in an election cycle where many voters are rejecting the status quo — and Schumer himself.

“The DS is the official arm of our caucus and where Chuck Schumer decides to spend money,” Warren told NOTUS. “My view is let the candidates get out there, build their own campaigns, raise their own resources to do it, attract other support without the DS putting its heavy thumb on it. I think that’s a real mistake.”

Another Democratic senator, who requested anonymity to speak freely about caucus dynamics, said there is “a fundamental divergence in opinion” about what it’s going to take to win back the Senate.

Roque Planas at The Guardian:

Mallory McMorrow, a Michigan Democrat, has dropped out of a contentious US Senate primary campaign, setting up a straight fight between the party’s progressive and establishment wings – represented by Abdul El-Sayed, a former public health official, and Haley Stevens, a congresswoman. McMorrow’s retreat marks the end of a center-left bid to hold the seat being vacated this year by the Democrat Gary Peters. The three-way primary contest was a close one earlier in the campaign, but polls indicated that McMorrow’s support had plunged in recent weeks, as El-Sayed raced past her and Stevens to emerge as the frontrunner for the party’s nomination. “I may be suspending this campaign, but I am not leaving the fight,” McMorrow said in a video statement announcing her decision to drop out. “When regular people get in the fight, things can change,” she added.

With McMorrow’s exit, the August Democratic primary now evolves into what is becoming a familiar pattern of an establishment candidate facing an opponent from the left. El-Sayed, a supporter of Medicare for all who would be the first Muslim US senator, has drawn high-profile backing from leaders of the American left, including the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who endorsed him last week.

Stevens, a moderate Democrat, has the support of Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, and Super Pacs have spent more than $16m on her campaign, including pro-Israel groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) outraged by El-Sayed’s refusal to say that nation has a right to exist as a Jewish state. “Israel exists,” he told CNN last week. “The question is whether or not we want a politics where our money is sent over to Israel to do genocide and apartheid, instead of investing in our own kids.”

Schumer and other leaders of the Democratic establishment are betting that Stevens would have a better chance of staving off Republican Mike Rogers’s attempt in the November general election, despite the fact that Democratic voters have chosen leftwing challengers over incumbent lawmakers in a string of recent primaries, from New York to Colorado.

McMorrow first attracted national attention in 2022, with a viral speech denouncing Republican attempts to characterize her as a “groomer” for publicly defending LGBTQ+ rights. Her US Senate seat campaign had attracted support from prominent Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Chris Murphy of Connecticut.

But McMorrow’s political star fell in tandem with her public criticism of El-Sayed for campaigning in April with Hasan Piker, an influential leftwing streamer who has been accused of antisemitism for comments about Jews and once said that America “deserved” the September 11 attacks, a comment he later apologized for and cast as a bad joke. McMorrow told Jewish Insider in March, when Piker campaigned with El-Sayed, that the popular streamer was “somebody who says extremely offensive things in order to generate clicks and views”, likening him to Nick Fuentes, the prominent white nationalist. That criticism appeared to fall flat, with McMorrow dropping in public polls from roughly even with El-Sayed and Stevens in early April to a distant third in May and registering in single digits in four polls in June.

June 9, 2026 - The Bolivian government passed a law authorizing US-backed right-wing president, Rodrigo Paz, to deploy the military against protesters.

Police and military forces launched a joint operation to clear strike blockades in San Julián, Santa Cruz department, as a five-week general strike against neoliberalism continues to grip the country.

The crackdown came with full government backing; multiple government officials arrived for what was intended as a photo opportunity declaring victory over the movement.

Instead, entire communities mobilized, forcing security forces to retreat after more than four hours of sustained resistance on the highway.