These messages aren’t coming from Democrats. @adambonica.bsky.social did a deep dive into these texts/emails a couple of months ago. They’re coming from profit-making outfits, and very little of the money goes to the ostensible candidates. Block them all.

Instead, well...

The real problem, of course, is that what the Navy needs is focused, knowledgeable civilian leadership committed to holding it to account so that it actually develops a platform that is *cheap* and *semi-expendable* rather than stuffing it full of special requests and alterations.

requires the FBI to notify Congress of any redactions and justify them on the record.

There are real questions about whether Trump will willingly order the files to be released in compliance with the law, but the idea that he's just erased them all is silly.

Please do not make me have to defend my trash country because I totally will.

He doesn't deserve *all* the credit--he has been complicit in some really dumb stuff--but just his basic insistence on civility and obeying the letter of the law has done a ton to stall the advance of MAGA in Utah's institutions.

This is happening, by the way, because Utah's (exclusively Republican) judges have done a commendable job of pushing back against the legislature's overreaches on several key issues. Utah's judiciary is a major reason why it hasn't become as institutionally MAGA-fied as some other red states.

It does not actually matter at all whether someone wants to play poker versus pinochle or eat Ethiopian food versus Texas BBQ. These are totally subjective matters of individual taste. And yet they've become incredibly useful wedges for rage-baiters.

Part of the reason the "culture war" has become so intractable is that so many people have (sometimes wildly) different definitions of what is acceptable as part of their perceived cultural in-group and can therefore almost always find someone else to be mad at and get others mad at.

I think the real alarm for the GOP is that it's *Nashville* suburbs potentially going thermonuclear, because that's exactly the kind of what southern (and also midwestern) suburb that props up their ability to be nationally competitive

Except there's this to consider as well. The GOP can recover from a bad midterm cycle. I'm not sure they can recover from every seat within 20 points suddenly becoming a tossup *at best* at the same time.
bsky.app/profile/jflo...

In a very literal sense, they can't afford to have every Trump+20 seat become a functional tossup. The money isn't there. Their fundraising apparatus has been circling the drain for years, and is especially weak down the ballot. The next two cycles have the potential to ruin the GOP financially.

I mean, even if this specific race ends up R+3 or something in the end, a Trump+22 seat doing that probably means a 2026 extinction event for the GOP in general. A whole lot of "safe" seats are suddenly and chaotically in play.

Utah becoming essentially a tossup just in time for Mike Lee to be up for re-election would be just peachy. I always figured that he would eventually go too far for the LDS community (Trump-as-Moroni and all that) and get primaried, but him losing straight up to a Democrat would be much funnier.

Also, Idaho and Wyoming are just deeply, deeply broken places. Incredibly culturally insular, low-education, low-trust, high-grievance populations.