A Good Night for Trump?

There were a bunch of primaries yesterday. Here are the most important results:

• Indiana state Senate: There were seven Republicans in the Indiana state Senate who dashed Donald Trump's redistricting dreams, and Trump vowed to take revenge against them. He was largely successful; five of his targets were defeated, one race is too close to call, and only one target definitely survived. The five losers were defeated by 52, 30, 24, 18 and 18 points. The uncalled race is split right down the middle, 50-50. And the one survivor won by 17.
  
  So, big win for Trump, right? Yes, in the sense that he went (at least) 5-1, and the 5 were all blowouts. This, in turn, will send the message to other Republicans that they cross him at their own peril. That said, Trump and his allies threw millions of dollars at races that would often involve spending in the five, or maybe six, figures. That is not going to be replicable at scale, say in November, when there are thousands of races at various levels. And if Trump & Co. were convinced that his endorsement/dis-endorsement was enough, they would not have lavished all those millions on a bunch of relatively small and not terribly important races.
  
  
• Michigan state Senate: It's not too often that we start these election roundups with two state Senate items in a row, but that's where the news was last night. While the Republicans—or, at least, Trump—got good news in Indiana, they got bad news in Michigan. Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet (D) won the state Senate seat that she previously occupied (SD-35) by 6 points in 2024, while Kamala Harris won the district by one point. Yesterday, in the special election to replace Rivet, Chedrick Greene (D) crushed Jason Tunney (R) by 20 points, 59% to 39%. That's obviously a swing of 14 points from the previous state Senate election and a swing of 19 points from the presidential election. So, the Democrats continue their general trend of overperforming in special elections. Meanwhile, the victory means that the blue team remains the majority party in the upper chamber of the Michigan legislature, 19-18.
  
  
• IN-01: At D+1, this is Indiana's only competitive House district (for comparison purposes, the next most competitive is the R+8 IN-05, and all the others are double-digit red, except for the one that's double-digit blue). Rep. Frank Mrvan (D), who is in his third term, will face off again Porter County Commissioner Barb Regnitz (R). Mrvan seems to be a good fit for the district; despite its near-even partisan lean, he's won the district (under its current boundaries) by 6 and 8 points. Regnitz is pretty Trumpy; all her platform planks are present in the form of "Make America/Americans __________ Again," such as "Make Americans Educated Again" and "Make America Armed Again." That, by contrast, seems a poor fit for a D+1 district.
  
  
• OH-01: Rep. Greg Landsman (D) has represented this district for two terms. Unfortunately for him, redistricting took the district from one that Trump lost by 6 points to one that he would have won by 2.5. The Republican who will try to knock Landsman off is Eric Conroy, a former Air Force and CIA officer who is MAGA-ish, but not as fanatical about it as some. Given the benefits of incumbency, as well as the current political milieu, Landsman is the favorite.
  
  
• OH-07: This R+5 district, represented by Max Miller (R), is right on the edge of "swing" territory. Miller, who is one of only two Jewish Republicans in Congress (Rep. David Kustoff of Tennessee is the other), won his first two elections in this district by 11, and then 15, points. That seems a tough hill to climb, blue wave or not. The person who will try it is union ironworker Brian Poindexter, who won a three-way primary by taking 37% of the vote.
  
  
• OH-09: Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D) was unopposed, but she found out yesterday that she'll face off in November against former state Rep. Derek Merrin (R). On one hand, the district is R+3 and Kaptur eked out a 1-point win in 2024, when the relatively moderate Merrin was also her opponent. On the other hand, there were presidential coattails in 2024, whereas this year is looking like a blue wave year. Perhaps even more importantly, Kaptur's demise has been predicted many times before, and yet she's been winning House elections in this part of Ohio since 1982. So while Cook has this as a "toss up," we think she's a pretty clear favorite.
  
  
• OH-10: Rep. Mike Turner (R) is serving his eleventh term in Congress, and his sixth representing this R+3 district, which he won by 19, 23 and 16 points in his last three elections. He's got some baggage, namely accusations of self-dealing and a habit of avoiding town halls entirely. The person who will try to make hay out of that baggage is Kristina Knickerbocker (D), a nurse practitioner and Air Force veteran who has built her campaign around kitchen table and women's health issues. She triumphed yesterday in a 6-way field with 33% of the vote.
  
  
• OH-13: Rep. Emilia Sykes (D) has been representing this EVEN district since 2023. She won a close one in 2024, by 2 points, and a slightly less close on in 2022, by 5 points. She'll face Carey Coleman; he is a former weatherman who now hosts a right-wing radio show. She is Black, and he (and 75% of the district) is white, so forgive us for predicting there will be more than a few dog whistles deployed during this campaign.
  
  
• OH-15: Rep. Mike Carey (R) is a prodigious fundraiser and, by virtue of the demographics of his district, is Congress #1 cheerleader for... Albanians. He might well have John Belushi's vote, if Belushi hadn't been dead for 40+ years. Carey will try to defend his R+4 district against Don Leonard (D), who took 52.9% of the vote in a head-to-head primary. Leonard stepped down from a professorship at Ohio State University to run for this seat, and is running a blue-collar, "I was raised by a single mother" campaign. Carey won by 13 in 2024, but by 6 in the last midterm, so he might be vulnerable in a wave election.
  
  
• The Big Offices: There were some important offices up last night, but relatively little drama, because the field was either effectively clear, or actually clear, for the favorites. Still, we will note that the Ohio governor's race is now officially Vivek Ramaswamy (R) vs. Amy Acton (D) and the Ohio U.S. Senate race is now officially Sen. Jon Husted (R) vs. Sherrod Brown (D).

Next week, it's Nebraska, where there is one interesting race (NE-02) and West Virginia, where there are zero interesting races. Things don't really get cooking again until May 19, when there are a whole bunch of states voting, and a long list of key races to be decided. (Z)

Spirit in the Sky... No More

There was no government handout or last-minute investor, and so cut-rate carrier Spirit Airlines ceased operations this weekend. The leadership of the airline dug itself a hole that would have been tough to climb out of. And then higher fuel prices, caused by the Iran War, finished Spirit off.

The official announcement came in the middle of the night on Saturday; that timing was deliberate so that the airline could make sure no planes were in the air, and that all staffers who were mid-trip had accommodations. It was also in time for members of the Trump administration to go on the various weekend news programs and blame Joe Biden for Spirit's collapse.

Is Biden actually to blame? The answer is... complicated. First of all, if anything, it's actually the Biden-era Department of Justice that is to blame, since the DoJ handles antitrust matters. Biden was not personally involved; Trumpers seem to forget that many presidents—say, 43/45 of them (95%)—do not involve themselves in DoJ business. Anyhow, Spirit tried to save itself a few years ago by merging with JetBlue, another low-cost carrier, and the move was successfully blocked by the Biden-era DoJ.

The position that the Biden-era folks took was that consolidation of airlines has generally hurt consumers much more than it's helped them, and that Spirit—as the lowest-cost airline of them all—was playing a particularly key role in keeping prices down. A federal judge agreed, and so the merger got the kibosh.

So, the ideal was a world in which Spirit still exists, and is competing with JetBlue and other low-cost carriers. But, failing that, a world with a JetBlue/Spirit merger, where all those jobs lost this weekend were saved, is better than what we ended up with, right? Well... maybe. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, and nobody could be sure 3 years ago that this would be the outcome. In particular, they could not predict a dramatic spike in fuel prices caused by an ill-conceived war in the Middle East. Beyond that, however, Spirit's problems were great enough that many analysts are convinced that, at best, a big price hike would have been necessary. And, at worst, Spirit might have dragged JetBlue with it, into the abyss.

In any case, what's important for our purposes is that the White House is trying mightily to pass the buck here. That is a bright, red flashing light that makes clear that the administration is scared. And what they are undoubtedly scared about is that airplane flights are going to get noticeably more expensive, for at least three reasons. First, the loss of Spirit means that the downward pressure on pricing that airline was exerting is no longer in effect. Every airline can increase prices some, because they are no longer competing against those lower price tags. Second, every airline is going to be affected by the higher fuel prices that doomed Spirit, and the problem figures to get worse before it gets better. Third, summer is travel season, and higher demand for seats means higher prices.

So, the battle plan here is that when people start carping about (and, probably, pollsters start asking about) higher prices, the administration will have laid the groundwork to say, "Thanks, Biden." We are skeptical that this will work. First, there's a certain expiry for blaming economic problems on the previous president, and we may have passed that date already. Second, we very seriously doubt people will say, "Damn! My ticket to Miami was $1,000! If only Biden hadn't blocked that Spirit-JetBlue merger." We think it much more likely they will say, "Damn! My ticket to Miami was $1,000! It's gotta be fuel prices from the Iran mess, kind of like how the price for gas in my car is way up, too." For those of you keeping score at home, the national average gas price was $4.54/gal. this morning.

And let us also address one other thing we think is of interest. For a brief while, Trump flirted with the idea of the government taking over Spirit. Who knows how serious that was; in any event, obviously it didn't happen. And at least part of the problem with these things is that the impatient, no-impulse-control President simply doesn't have the patience to make an argument for his policy choices, and then to slowly build public support for those choices. It's always "bull in a china shop" with him.

Now, let us imagine Trump had made a case for a temporary or permanent government takeover. Could he maybe have pulled it off? We think that someone like Franklin D. Roosevelt or Lyndon B. Johnson or Ronald Reagan could have done it, even though the U.S. government operating its own airline would be a direct assault upon several sacred cows. We do doubt Trump cold have done it, though. He's nowhere near the salesman those presidents were, and he's also got no credibility on these kinds of projects at this point. No matter how good his arguments might be, the majority are going to say, "OK, he's the king of grifters. So, what's the how-does-this-benefit-Trump angle here?"

This is all just idle speculation. We'll never know what would happen if Trump made an honest effort to sell his policies to the public, because he never does so. (Z)

Be Careful What You Wish For

Right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro has been an obnoxious know-it-all since he and (Z) were at UCLA together (where, as we have noted before, Z got him fired from the Daily Bruin.) Shapiro is certainly very smart (though perhaps not as smart as he thinks he is), but he figured out long ago that there was big money in pandering to right-wingers in the same way that, say, Rush Limbaugh used to do. And so, Shapiro's writing, and podcasting, and interviewing—while reflecting some amount of factual truth and honestly held belief—are mostly composed of "owning the libs" and right-wing culture-wars grievances, and trying to comport to what his audience demands of him. Most obvious, in the latter category, was Shapiro's "miraculous" transformation from NeverTrumper to MAGA Man, as Trump went from "guy walking down a golden staircase" to "Republican presidential nominee."

Shapiro kept things going for a good, long time, but now his media empire is collapsing. Although he is no longer the editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire, that is nonetheless his base of operations. And this week, the Daily Wire laid off half of its staff, a total of about 100 people. This follows a previous round of layoffs, in which a quarter of the staff was cut (around 60 people). So, that's 260 to 100 employees in about a year, a drop of over 60%.

Part of the problem for the site is what is often called "mission creep." The Daily Wire was once a right-wing news and broadcasting operation. But then it got into the business of making non-woke TV and movies, projects which invariably lost lots of money. They also began selling non-woke consumer projects, most obviously a branded chocolate bar. You might wonder how chocolate can be woke and, truth be told, we're still not 100% clear on that point. What we do know is that the Daily Wire chocolate bars come in two varieties, one labeled SheHer, and one labeled HeHim. What is the difference between the two? HeHim bars have nuts. Get it? That's sure sticking it to the libs!

Another problem for the Daily Wire is that it was, to a huge extent, a creation of Facebook. There was time when Shapiro's site was the most-shared site on all of Facebook, outpacing even Fox and The New York Times. But the algorithms changed, and then changed again, such that the Daily Wire's footprint on Facebook has now shrunk to almost nothing.

That leads to a third problem for the site. It is somewhat perilously perched on a relatively small foundation of profitable products. The Shapiro podcast was the key moneymaker, followed by the other branded podcasts from folks like Michael Knowles and Andrew Klavan. But their viewer/listener base has cratered. Shapiro's videos on YouTube used to exceed 1 million views on a regular basis. Now, they rarely exceed 100,000, and they often pull in something closer to 25,000. That is a drop of 97.5% or more. Or, if you're Donald Trump, a drop of 4000% or more.

It is not probable that the Daily Wire can pull out of this kind of death spiral; some of the podcasts, including Shapiro's will survive, very likely on a different platform. But they are never going to have the reach they once did. That means far less oxygen for discourse-poisoning "own the libs" crap, not to mention far less oxygen for the bigotries that Shapiro and his colleagues regularly express, most obviously homophobia, transphobia, a general hatred for the media, and a general hatred for the academy.

But note that the headline of this item is "Be Careful What You Wish For." Any right-thinking person, regardless of their politics, should cheer the removal of this kind of poison from the national conversation. However, the vacuum left by Shapiro, et al., is being filled by people even more odious. The obvious exemplars here are Nick Fuentes and Shapiro's former colleague/underling Candace Owens. Shapiro, for all his faults, made at least some attempt to remain connected to facts, and at least some effort to remain intellectually consistent. Fuentes and Owens care nothing for those things. They will say whatever they need to say to get their audience fired up, even if it's the polar opposite of what they said yesterday. No conspiracy is too crazy, no bigotry is too toxic. Most obviously, and most distressingly, they (and several other rising "stars") are staunchly antisemitic.

In other words, it would seem we are exiting the Shapiro/Hannity era of MAGA media, and we are entering the Alex Jones era. It would seem that even a little bit of truth was just a little too truthy for the Trump cultists. Needless to say, we shudder to think what the person who eventually supplants Jones/Owens will look and sound like. (Z)

Is the Trump Administration Scraping the Botton of the Anti-Trans Barrel?

As long as we are on the subject of transphobia as a uniting principle for MAGA, it could not be clearer that the Trump administration is trying desperately to return to that well to try to save the midterm elections (or, at very least, to minimize the damage).

Trump himself is absolutely obsessed with trans Americans. Cole Sear saw dead people, and Trump sees trans people. Everywhere. All the time. And he cannot keep it to himself. His YMCA-loving social media platform is full of anti-trans commentary, much of it from the President. And he is constantly bringing the subject up in awkward and bizarre contexts. For example, he tried mightily to get the DoorDash Grandma to engage him on the evils of trans Americans, but she wouldn't take the bait.

To take a second example, Trump gave a speech to an audience at The Villages last week, one that was supposed to be about making things more affordable for seniors. Instead, something like half the speech was about the things Trump is doing to combat the trans menace. He said, with a straight face, that the U.S. was "dead" until he came along and put an end to genital mutilation. He declared that the Democrats are "crazy" when it comes to this issue. And he told an extended anecdote, a favorite of his, about how trans women powerlifters have an unfair advantage. We've actually heard the anecdote a few times, and still cannot figure out if it's a real story or a hypothetical. Probably the latter since, if it's real, we can find no trace of the alleged event.

To take a third example, Trump had an event yesterday highlighting the (currently very ironic) Presidential Physical Fitness Award. And after trying to get the kids in attendance to badmouth Barack Obama (who was president before most of them were born), and asking one of them if he thought he would win a fight with Trump, the President talked to a kid who aspires to be a powerlifter. That, of course, triggered yet another telling of the trans powerlifter anecdote. We will admit, we are not clever enough to understand why talking to kids about trans people is bad, but talking to them about trans weightlifters is good.

The point is that this is a recurrent theme. We see a story almost every day that involves Trump saying something along the lines of: "Oil prices will go down soon! And until then, what about those trans people?" And if there are any doubts, search the White House website and see how many anti-trans proclamations and actions the administration has promulgated.

The President has, of course, surrounded himself with sycophants who know full well what their marching orders are whenever the boss develops an obsession like this. And so, various underlings are looking under boards for anti-trans battles they can fight. Yesterday, for example, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced that her department is launching an investigation of Smith College, because the all-women's school has begun admitting trans women.

The claim here is that Smith College is committing a Title IX violation. However the argument seems to be "all women's school"... "trans women are actually men"... [hand waving]... ILLEGAL. In the press release, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey decrees: "An all-women's college loses all meaning if it is admitting biological males. Allowing biological males into spaces designed for women raises serious concerns about privacy, fairness, and compliance under federal law. The Trump Administration will continue to uphold the law and fight to restore common sense." Even if you grant the "facts" that are asserted here, we're not seeing what law has been broken. Maybe we don't grasp the nuances and subtleties of Title IX. On the other hand, we certainly understand the nuances and subtleties of press-release writing. And when an obvious bit of information does not appear, like the answer to the question of "Why, exactly, is this illegal?" then that's usually instructive.

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division is currently led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, who is a militant anti-civil rights activist, particularly when it comes to the civil rights of trans people. So, Dhillon could be motivated by a desire to impose her political will on people, or by a desire to please the boss in general, or possibly even by the hope that she'll get the nod to be the next AG. We don't know. In any event, last week, Dhillon launched a broad investigation of 36 different school districts in the hated blue state of Illinois, which is led by the hated Democratic governor JB Pritzker. The investigations are ostensibly looking into whether schools in these districts: (1) allow trans girls to play girls sports, (2) allow students to use restrooms for the gender other than the one on their birth certificate, (3) mention in class that trans people exist. This is not the first action of this sort from Dhillon. The previous ones were blocked by a federal judge, and this one probably will be as well.

Another Dhillon-led "initiative" is an effort to force hospitals to hand over all information they have related to trans kids who have been treated at the institution. Needless to say, hospitals are not inclined to accomodate these demands, starting with the fact that sharing such information is a HIPAA violation. Last week, Rhode Island Hospital became the latest healthcare institution to be targeted. Other attempts to get such information have been rebuffed by judges, so Dhillon & Co. are trying out a new approach. The plan is to exploit a loophole in the HIPAA law that says suits can be filed in the district where the hospital is located, or the district where the investigation is being conducted. Conveniently, this particular investigation is "being conducted" in the Northern District of Texas, where the federal court is mostly hard-right, and is home to such well-known "balls and strikes" judges as Reed O'Connor and Matthew Kacsmaryk.

Ultimately, it's not much of a stretch to say that transphobia got Trump his second term. There were several things that hurt Kamala Harris in 2024, but probably none more than "She's for they/them, He's for you." So, it's not surprising that Trump & Co. would return to that well again. But doesn't the whole narrative in this item, from Trump's out-of-place comments, to the "Hail Mary" court cases, smack of desperation? Seems to us like they are running out of fuel with which to keep the anti-trans fires burning. And at a time when Americans appear to be considerably more concerned about the fact that the country is running out of actual fuel. Our preliminary guess is that this angle will be nowhere near as effective as it was in 2024, in the same way that the gay marriage thing petered out pretty quickly after the presidential election of 2004. (Z)

Political Bytes: Hillbilly Eulogy

Lots of news over the last few days.

Vance Gets Poped in the Eye: It would appear that someone has persuaded Donald Trump that he cannot win a fight against Pope Leo XIV. And so, he's toned down the anti-Leo rhetoric, and has dispatched Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the Vatican to make nice with the Vicar of Christ. The administration's other prominent Catholic, J.D. Vance, certainly could have tagged along, but was not invited to do so.

Our Take: We guess the White House wants to extend an olive branch to Leo, and not to kill him.

In seriousness, though, the evidence continues to mount that Rubio is the favorite child, not Vance. That said, 2+ years is plenty of time for someone to go from Donald Trump's penthouse to his doghouse.

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The People vs. James Comey: The second attempt to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey, this time over some seashells that made Donald Trump cranky, has been met with much derision, even from those on the right. The news that the government spent 11 months "investigating" this incident does not help. Acting AG Todd Blanche insists the government has gathered a lot of other dirt on Comey, and it will all come out in court.

Our Take: This could be true; we won't know for sure until Comey has his day in court (and maybe not even then, if the case is dismissed). However, we are skeptical that Blanche is telling the truth, for two reasons. First, he rarely tells the truth. Second, when Comey had his arraignment, the government asked (unsuccessfully) for the court to require bail. Bail serves two purposes; (1) to keep people from fleeing, and (2) to keep dangerous people from harming anyone else. Clearly, neither applies to Comey, so the bail request was a gross overreach. And if the DoJ is ALREADY overreaching, then it's an early indicator that the whole case is the overreach it appears to be.

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Inc'est la vie: A new analysis from Politico finds that Donald Trump has appointed at least 10 of his former personal lawyers to prominent positions in the federal government. Naturally, his hope, which is often realized, is that they will continue to regard him as their client, as opposed to the people of the United States.

Our Take: We were stunned by this report. "Only 10?," we said.

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Sleep Deprived: The Daily Beast crunched the numbers and found that of the 30 nights in April, Donald Trump's Truth Social account was sending out messages during normal sleeping hours on 25 of them. So, either he's got someone who is responsible for sending out tweets, written in his style, at 2:00 in the morning, or he's not getting a full night's sleep very often.

Our Take: Given Trump's propensity for dozing off at Cabinet meetings and other events, we know which explanation we favor.

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The Blue Wave Blues, Part I: Ken Griffin was the fifth-biggest donor to the GOP during the most recent complete cycle (2022-2024), giving a little over $108 million to various Republicans candidates and committees. Yesterday, he declared that the House is lost to his party, and that the Senate is on razor's edge.

Our Take: If Griffin's prediction means he's going to close his wallet until 2027, that is unhappy news for the red team. $108 million is, as we understand it, quite a bit of money. However, this could mean that Griffin is going to put the full $108 into Senate races.

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Blue Wave Blues, Part II: Perhaps the even better indicator that Republicans are expecting a blue wave is this story: The Office of the White House Counsel has put together a PowerPoint presentation about "how congressional oversight works and best practices for handling it." In other words, "There will be a boatload of House investigations coming down the pike starting on January 3, 2027, so get started preparing now."

Our Take: What is not clear is if the advice is about how to deal with investigations once the subpoenas start to arrive, or how to prepare in advance, when you are rather less constrained in getting rid of certain kinds of evidence. But the (implicit) advice might be to shred any documents the Democrats might want right now and then burn the strips.

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COVID v2.0?: Well, this is unsettling. There has been an outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship currently anchored (and quarantined) off the coast of Cape Verde. The disease, transmitted by rodents, is not commonly found in this context (i.e., tourist transports). There is no vaccine, and no known cure. Oh, and the World Cup is about to come to North America.

Our Take: One hopes this is an aberration, and that we're not witnessing the prologue to another pandemic. The (somewhat) good news is that WHO is taking the lead in managing the situation, by virtue of having special expertise in this area. The bad news is that Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from WHO. He's a man of vision, that one.

Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow. (Z & A)

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