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this is the Phoenix zoo, she's got plenty of outdoor space 👍

1 - the geese in the background show that the fake coyote doesn't deter geese

Kevin Robillard at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON – Abdul El-Sayed is very confident he can beat Republican Mike Rogers and win Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat in November. “He generally has the charisma of a doorknob,” El-Sayed told HuffPost in a 45-minute interview last week. “He carries all the MAGA baggage, but he also has the aesthetic of the guy at a country club who sneers at you from his Lincoln. He’s not really hard to beat.” “By the time I’m done with him, his golf buddies down in Florida are going to be calling him the names I call him,” he continued, referencing Rogers’ time living in the Sunshine State following his departure from Congress in 2015. “I hope that 20 years from now, he still thinks of me.”

But his bravado is still not shared by the party establishment in D.C. or in Michigan, who fear his progressive positions ― he’s a longtime ally of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and backs Medicare-for-All, abolishing ICE and cutting off aid to Israel ― could cost the party support from moderate voters and ultimately hand the state’s Senate seat, which has been in Democratic hands since 1978, over to Rogers and the GOP. Party leaders, however, don’t seem to be making much headway with their assertions that establishment-oriented Rep. Haley Stevens is actually the most electable pick for the Aug. 4 primary: El-Sayed has led the last seven publicly released polls of the race.

In the past, worries about electability have sunk many progressive candidacies before they could even begin. Before this cycle, the last time a progressive candidate defeated the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s pick in a primary was 2010. Although Democratic voters are still hardwired to care far more about electability than their GOP counterparts, both progressive and moderate party strategists say primary voters no longer trust the party leaders’ judgment on who can win — not after establishment candidates lost to President Donald Trump in 2016, narrowly beat him in 2020 and lost again in 2024. “The last people who have any right to lecture us about electability are the establishment who lost to Donald Trump twice,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said while campaigning for El-Sayed last month. “If you were part of those campaigns, please sit down or exit stage left.”

The stakes for the race are high: Democrats’ relatively narrow path to winning the Senate essentially evaporates if Rogers wins in Michigan. A primary victory for El-Sayed, a Rhodes Scholar and former leader of Detroit’s public health department, would mean the party is counting on left-wing candidates to win in both Michigan and Maine in November. Failing to do so would dramatically undercut the progressive movement, which has gained momentum throughout this primary season. If the Democratic establishment can’t make the case El-Sayed would be a general election loser, they hope GOP interference can do it for them. The National Republican Senatorial Committee recently began running digital ads that attack El-Sayed in ways designed to make him sound more appealing to Democratic primary voters.

[...]

El-Sayed said his campaign would balance trying to win over voters who backed Trump and turning out Democratic voters who might otherwise stay at home, rather than copy past progressive efforts, which have narrowly focused on driving up turnout. He argues voters are ready for a campaign focused on how the proliferation of money in politics is “rigging the system against us.”

[...] Indeed, many parts of the Democratic establishment agree the old model of an electable candidate no longer applies, even if they aren’t quite sold on the full-fledged progressivism of a candidate like El-Sayed. “It’s not a binary choice between overcautious, under-imaginative old guard types on the one hand, and folks who seem to think that any society could exist without law enforcement and borders on the other,” said Andrew Bates, who was a spokesperson for Biden’s 2020 campaign. “The people who win majority-making races create their own big tent that’s both true to themselves and fits their community; they don’t force themselves into a prepackaged box.”

Jacob Knutson at Democracy Docket:

Caving to MAGA hardliners, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the U.S. House will pass the SAVE America Act, President Donald Trump’s massive voter suppression bill, “one more time” through a budget reconciliation process. “The big urgency is to get SAVE America passed,” Johnson told Fox News Sunday. “The president has that as a top priority, and so do I.” His announcement came a day after Trump used his Independence Day speech to again call for the bill’s passage, presenting it as a means to end nonexistent election fraud. But the bill has repeatedly stalled in the U.S. Senate — and still appears to lack the votes to pass. Johnson’s approach would attempt to overcome that problem by including the SAVE America Act in a budget reconciliation bill. That “will be the way to get it through the Senate and finally to the president’s desk,” he said. 

But despite the speaker’s confidence, the reconciliation push would almost certainly fail in the Senate because the chamber has strict rules about what can be included in budget bills. It wouldn’t be the first unsuccessful attempt to ram the bill through. In recent weeks, far-right lawmakers have paralyzed the House floor through a legislative blockade in support of the bill.  Meanwhile, Trump has relentlessly pressured congressional Republicans to get the voter suppression package to his desk in time for the upcoming midterm elections, as he’s said he believes it will improve the GOP’s slim chances of retaining control of the House. 

Emily Singer at Daily Kos:

The health status of ailing Kentucky GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell remains a mystery weeks after he was hospitalized for unspecified causes, with his staff providing few details about what ailment he is suffering from or what his long-term prognosis is. On June 14, McConnell’s staff made a virtually detail-free announcement that the 84-year-old senator “was admitted to the hospital this morning” and that he was “receiving excellent care.”  Since this announcement, his staff had offered no more information about his condition or even whether he remained in the hospital or was back at home, saying only that he was recovering. It was only after independent journalist Desirée Townsend on July 1 released 911 call logs—which showed paramedics were called to McConnell’s residence on June 14 for a cardiac arrest, with the patient reportedly unconscious and needing CPR—that his staff said he remained in the hospital. Reporters asked McConnell’s staff about the 911 call recording, only to be told that McConnell’s staff “would keep reporters updated on the senator’s condition,” CNN reported—not denying that McConnell had a heart attack nor giving further information about his prognosis.

A heart attack is, to state the obvious, a serious health event. But if McConnell’s apparent heart attack rendered him unconscious and in need of CPR, that’s an even more serious situation. It would mean there was, at least briefly, no blood flow to the brain. How long it takes before CPR is administered is a critical factor in a heart attack sufferer’s long-term condition and survival odds. “Brain injury can happen after just five minutes without oxygen,” according to the Cleveland Clinic. “Survival drops sharply after eight to 10 minutes without CPR. Starting CPR in the first few minutes is the most important factor for survival.”

The lack of information about McConnell’s health has unsurprisingly fueled conspiracy theories, with a rumor that McConnell’s staff is trying to run out the clock so that there is no special election to replace the longtime senator. In 2021, the GOP-led Kentucky legislature passed a law that required the governor—in this case, Democrat Andy Beshear—to appoint a replacement for any vacant Senate seats from a list of three candidates chosen by the state party of the previous lawmaker. That was the GOP’s failsafe to keep a Democrat out of the seat if McConnell were to leave before his term expired.

But in 2024, the legislature went a step further, passing a bill that sought to block Beshear from appointing anyone to the seat at all. That new law requires the seat to remain vacant until a special election could be held. 

Yet that law states that the vacancy would have to occur at least three months before the next election—which, in this case, would be Aug. 3. It’s why people are wondering if McConnell’s team is not being forthcoming in order to run out the clock and avoid a special election, a risk in a midterm year like 2026, when President Donald Trump’s unpopularity is threatening to sink the GOP.

Andrew Perez at Zeteo:

A woman who dated Graham Platner accused Maine’s Democratic Senate nominee of sexual assault on Monday. “One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was, the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person,” Jenny Racicot told Politico. “I just want the truth out there. I just want people to have a whole scope of who he is as a person.” Racicot, 41, told the outlet that Platner came to her house uninvited in 2021, “almost blackout drunk,” and forced himself on her. Politico wrote that it reviewed correspondence between Racicot and her therapist, and spoke with a man whom she had confided in about the incident. The candidate denies the allegations.

The news arrived in Politico after Platner abruptly canceled a series of events in recent days. He did not campaign over the July 4 holiday weekend, and postponed a town hall set for Sunday in Augusta. His town halls scheduled for Monday were postponed as well. “From my understanding, he is not feeling well,” an organizer with Gorham Democrats said in a Facebook video on Monday. The latest allegations will certainly fuel calls for Platner to voluntarily withdraw his name from the ballot, in order to preserve Democrats’ ability to compete against incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins. The deadline for Platner to do so is next Monday, July 13. If he were to exit, Maine Democratic Party officials would need to choose a new candidate by July 27.

While Platner called the allegations “false” in a video, he added, “We are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”

Voters in Maine nominated Platner, a Marine combat veteran and oyster farmer, as their Democratic Senate candidate on June 9, despite a series of scandals that might typically end one’s campaign. Among them: Platner, for years, had a Nazi-style, skull-and-crossbones tattoo; he got it covered up in October, and denied he knew its meaning. He made misogynist posts on Reddit over the years, including one in which he said that rape victims should “take some responsibility for themselves and not get so messed up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.” As the primary election neared, news broke that Platner sexted several women after he was married. Just days before the primary, the New York Times reported on allegations by a right-wing operative, Lyndsey Fifield, about how, when they dated between 2013-15, Platner had been physically intimidating with her at times, as well as toxic and crude overall.

Maine Democratic US Senate nominee Graham Platner faces a fresh and potent accusation of sexual assault. Should he drop out, Democrats will need a new candidate to face off against incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME).

Time for Platner to drop out!

See Also:

The Guardian: Calls grow for Graham Platner to drop out after sexual assault allegation

Daily Kos: Graham Platner’s campaign is falling apart