Today is Juneteenth. In honor of the occasion, we share this quote from an 1857 speech by Frederick Douglass: "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning."

And this from an 1859 letter written by Abraham Lincoln: "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it."

And finally, this from an 1866 address by abolitionist and proto-feminist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper: "We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity, and society cannot trample on the weakest and feeblest of its members without receiving a curse in its own soul."

Perhaps readers will find one or more of these observations relevant to the year 2024.

A Bad Night for Good?

Bob Dylan is on tour right now. He was on tour last year, and the year before that. In fact, he has been on tour since 1988. And while most musicians, even if they are perpetually on the road, divide their tours into distinct segments with distinct identities and distinct names, Dylan does not. Thus, he has been on what he calls The Never Ending Tour for the last 36 years.

Why do we bring this up? Because it's the only tour we can think of that rivals the Donald Trump Revenge Tour for longevity. The Trump tour has also been going on forever, and will likewise continue until the headliner expires. That said, while the Dylan tour is in Georgia right now, yesterday's Trump tour stop was in Virginia. Specifically, VA-05, where the former president was desperately trying to knock off Rep. Bob Good (R-VA). Good may be a loony right-winger as chair of the Freedom Caucus, but he also had the temerity to endorse Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in this year's presidential race. And so, in Trump's eyes, he must be punished. Undoubtedly, for many readers, it's not too easy to decide whom to root for in this little skirmish.

So, what happened? The answer is... nobody knows yet, for sure. With about 98% of the vote in, the challenger, state Del. John McGuire (R), has 31,411 votes (50.3%) while Good has 31,084 votes (49.7%). Based on those figures, there are about 1,300 votes outstanding, and Good would need to take about 60% of them. It's a tall order, but it's doable, and the scuttlebutt from people who know Virginia politics is that the remaining uncounted votes, which are primarily absentee ballots, are likely to favor Good. The lead changed hands multiple times last night, and it could again. And of course, there's always the possibility of a recount.

Even if the Representative gets knocked off, his performance last night certainly speaks to the power of incumbency. It may also speak to the limits of Trump's power, and of revenge politics in general. Not only did the former president work to defeat Good, but so too did former speaker Kevin McCarthy (R), who (accurately) blames Good for helping to end his speakership. McGuire thus had some very heavy hitters on his side, not to mention nearly $10 million in ad spending, which is a fortune for a House race (Good had about $5 million in spending). McGuire has already claimed victory, but he's the only one who thinks the race is over. None of the major media outlets, including the Associated Press, has made a call as yet.

Incidentally, it might be instructive to compare Good's past primary performances with last night's performance, so as to get a crude sense of how much Trump/McCarthy/a bunch of money moved the needle. However, that is not possible, because prior to this year, the Virginia GOP made nominations via convention rather than primary. So, Good has no primary track record that might be used for comparison purposes.

Of course, that was not the only race on tap last night, what with voters in three states casting ballots. Here are the other results of interest:

• U.S. Senate, Virginia: The only U.S. Senate contest yesterday was the Republican primary in Virginia (Sen. Tim Kaine, D-VA, was unchallenged in his bid for reelection). In that GOP primary, Hung Cao dispatched all comers, taking 61.7% of the vote despite a 5-person field. Cao is a former Navy special operations officer who retired with the rank of captain. He's also pretty hard-right in his rhetoric, and is making his second attempt at public office, having lost badly to Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-VA) in VA-10 in 2022. Virginia Republicans are saying that if the state ends up in play, and Donald Trump has coattails, Cao might just win this thing.
  
  For our part, we are extremely skeptical. First, Cao is not a great fit, and has a history of putting his foot in his mouth. Second, it is really hard to knock off incumbent senators (90%+ reelection rate). Third, Kaine is very popular in Virginia, having won statewide four times previously, and figures to run ahead of the presidential ticket. For what it is worth, there's been one poll of the Kaine-Cao matchup, done a couple of months ago by the Republican-leaning firm Fabrizio Ward. They had Kaine up 12 points, 48% to 36%.
  
  
• GA-02: There were three "competitive" House seats on the various ballots yesterday, and this one, in a district with a PVI of D+3, is one of them. However, we put "competitive" in quotes because the incumbent Democrat here, Rep. Sanford Bishop Jr., has won sixteen times. Plus, the fellow that the Republicans nominated yesterday (in what was actually a runoff election) is Arthur Wayne Johnson, who was a mid-level appointee in the Donald Trump administration. He's probably a bit too old to be starting a House career, at 72 years of age (73 by the time he'd take his seat). And he's definitely a bit too white for a district that's 49% Black.
  
  In short, Johnson isn't going to win, swing district or no. That means the more interesting thing here is the person Johnson beat in the runoff, Chuck Hand. Hand is a political newbie, and his primary claim to fame in Republican circles is that he's among the people arrested and convicted for partaking in the events of 1/6. Several challengers with that particular "credential" have run this cycle, and they've all been trounced, even when not facing an incumbent. The Hill, to our surprise, interprets that as a sign that some Republicans have moved past 1/6 and think it's no big deal. To us, the fact that these 1/6 candidates struggle to get to 30%, even in a Republican primary with no incumbent on the ballot, suggests that even most Republican voters remain unhappy about what happened on that day.
  
  
• OK-04: Oklahoma has no swing districts. It has no districts that are within a country mile of being swing districts. The state's most competitive district is OK-05, which is R+12. So, the R+19 OK-04 is not on this list because it's in play in November. No, it's here because the incumbent, Rep. Tom Cole (R), faced a challenger from the right in his quest for an 11th term. That challenger, Paul Bondar, not only had the backing of a lot of the more whackadoodle Republicans, but he was also able to self-fund his campaign to the tune of $5 million. Do you know how far that kind of money goes in a state like Oklahoma?
  
  When the votes were counted... Cole demolished Bondar, 64.6% to 25.8%. So much for the efficacy of well-heeled challenges from the right. If it didn't work in Oklahoma, of all places, then it's a low-percentage play everywhere.
  
  
• VA-02: This is the second competitive House district that was up yesterday, at R+2. Rep. Jen Kiggans (R) was unchallenged, and yesterday she found out that her general election opponent will be Missy Smasal (D), who took 70% of the primary vote. Smasal is a Navy veteran, an entrepreneur, the current director of a non-profit, and a political newbie (though she HAS served in appointed positions). Smasal is going to make abortion access the key issue of the campaign, which is no surprise, because Kiggans is on record in favor of Dobbs and a nationwide ban on abortions after 15 weeks. This race is one of the 20 that the DCCC is focusing on, so it figures to be a barnburner.
  
  
• VA-05: This is, as we note above, Bob Good's district. At R+7, it's on the fringes of being in play. And if some bitterness lingers among supporters of whichever Republican candidate loses, well, you never know what might happen. So, just in case, we'll tell you the Democrat in the race will be Gloria Witt, who easily won her primary. She's new to politics, and her platform is, in this order: uphold democracy, strengthen families, rethink education, spur smart economic growth and address gun violence. Presumably that's a better fit for a fairly red district than the abortion-centered campaign that Missy Smasal is going to run in VA-02.
  
  
• VA-07: This is the third of the competitive House districts that was up last night. It's D+1, and it's an open seat, because Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D) is retiring in order to mount a bid for governor of Virginia. So, members of both political parties were keeping a close eye on this one.
  
  The Republican nominee will be Derrick Anderson, who took 45.8% of the vote as compared to 36.9% for his nearest competitor, Cameron Hamilton. Anderson is a former Green Beret and was a low-level appointee in the Trump administration. His website is badly programmed and does not have an issues page, so we have very little idea what he stands for. However, he does have the endorsements of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and a bunch of Freedom Caucusers, so he must be pretty far-right. Good luck to Anderson in his efforts to try to keep hiding that, as he tries to win in a purple district.
  
  The Democratic nominee is also a military veteran, and is something of a blast from the past. It is Lt. Col. Eugene Vindman, U.S. Army (ret.), who crushed all challengers, winning just shy of 50% of the vote in a 7-way race. Does his name ring a bell? If not, well, he and his twin brother Alexander, also a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, were the star witnesses in Donald Trump's first impeachment trial. Vindman's raised a lot of money, as a result, and presumably will continue to do so. On the other hand, he's not all that dialed in to Virginia politics, leading to some griping about his being a carpetbagger. Also, he was photographed holding a Confederate flag earlier this year, which became a mini-scandal. Vindman apologized, but some damage was done. This race is going to be interesting... and probably very dirty.
  
  
• VA-10: This one is also on the fringes of being competitive, at D+6. It's being vacated by Jennifer Wexton due to her progressive supranuclear palsy diagnosis. Because it's an open, pretty blue seat in a high-income/high-education part of the state (basically, the D.C. suburbs), a dozen Democrats came out of the woodwork to run in the primary. The winner was state Sen. Suhas Subramanyam (D), who had the backing of Wexton, and got 30.4% of the vote. He's a moderate, a member of a minority group, and is charismatic, so he'll be a tough act to beat.
  
  The Republican in the race will be Mike Clancy, a lawyer and entrepreneur with no political experience whose website makes a big deal out of the fact that he is a regular contributor to Newsmax. First of all, getting airtime on a dinky, third-tier cable network is no great feat. Get back to us when you're a regular on Animal Planet or the Game Show Network; at least those are second-tier networks. Second, "far-right nutter" is not a very good fit for a pretty blue district. Subramanyam is going to win this one in a walk.

When we started writing this, we thought it would be pretty short. Not so much, it would seem. Next week, it is Colorado, New York, South Carolina and Utah. (Z)

Biden Issues Executive Order on Immigration

As expected, Joe Biden issued an executive order yesterday that protects the undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens, as long as those undocumented spouses have been in the country for 10 years, as well as the children of such marriages. The actual XO has not been posted to the federal register yet, but here is the fact sheet published by the White House.

We wrote a somewhat substantive item about this yesterday, but we are returning to it again in order to add and/or clarify a few things now that fuller information is available. To start, it was initially estimated that the new XO would affect about 750,000 people. According to the White House, it's actually more like 550,000, with 500,000 of those being spouses and 50,000 being children.

Second, the White House tossed in a little something extra that was not a part of the pre-XO coverage. In addition to helping out the spouses/children (we called them "DASAs" in our item yesterday), the administration is going to make it a bit easier for DACAs who have graduated college and have received job offers to renew and extend their visas.

Third, we got a number of questions along the lines of this one from reader I.K. in Queens, NY:

I'm confused about Biden's program to give spouses a path to citizenship. My understanding was that the surefire way to get a green card was to marry a U.S. citizen. So wouldn't all those spouses of U.S. citizens already be on the fast track to citizenship? What's actually changing?

Being married to a U.S. citizen does ease the process of getting a green card (a.k.a. lawful permanent resident status) and of getting U.S. citizenship, but it's not a guarantee. And even when it does grease the skids, the process has to start with a person who has followed all the rules, and did not enter the U.S. illegally. Here's what the website of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says:

The spouse of a U.S. citizen who resides in the United States may be eligible for naturalization on the basis of his or her marriage. The spouse must have continuously resided in the United States after becoming a lawful permanent resident (LPR) for at least 3 years immediately preceding the date of filing the naturalization application and must have lived in marital union with his or her citizen spouse for at least those 3 years.

If you click on the link, there is also a long list of other requirements for gaining citizenship, like "Attachment to the principles of the U.S. Constitution and well-disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States during all relevant periods under the law." In any case, as the 550,000 people did not have LPR status on entry, and could not acquire it after arriving, this path to citizenship was not available to them. So, Biden opened a new path (one that, as we noted, has previously been available to military spouses).

After Biden made the XO official, many Republicans cried foul, and claimed it was an election ploy. Boy, nothing gets by them. We wrote at length yesterday about the political calculations on display here, and how this mirrors a similar set of calculations done by Barack Obama in 2012. All we can add today is that: (1) "I think this is politically beneficial" and (2) "I think this is the right thing to do" are not necessarily mutually exclusive propositions. We will note that, for some Republicans, the "political calculation" is that Biden is trying to let undocumented immigrants vote for him. This is dumb; the 550,000 people are already in the country, and are no more or less able to vote today than they were yesterday, and none of them are going to get citizenship in the next 5 months (it's a minimum 3-year process).

And speaking of the politics of the XO, Politico's Myah Ward has a piece, based on interviews with insiders, that brings up an important dimension that we really should have noticed, but that we missed. By taking action to keep families together, the White House is trying to create a contrast with Donald Trump's family separation/put children in cages approach to the border. You can bet good money that Biden will find a way to fit that exact framing into the debate next week. (Z)

Trump Must Keep Lip Zipped

Yesterday, New York's highest court (the Court of Appeals) declined to hear the challenge that Donald Trump filed trying to overturn the gag order imposed by Judge Juan Merchan. So, it remains in place for the foreseeable future. Given that three different levels of the New York State judicial system have approved of the gag order, that either means that it's legit or that the "Biden crime family" has corrupted the entire Empire State judiciary. Readers can decide for themselves which it is.

And as long as we are on the subject, let's add one other thing. Yesterday, we had an item discussing public polls on Trump's conviction, and how they suggest it is wise for Biden to hit Trump hard on this issue. We also supposed that the White House has internal polls saying the exact same thing. Well, now we know for sure that is the case. The Biden campaign has been running polls and focus groups for weeks, and the message has been clear: a felony conviction is a turn-off and a dealbreaker for some meaningful number of voters. This data also indicates that the conviction can be linked to other themes, like "Trump is self-centered" and "Trump doesn't take responsibility for his actions." So, no surprise that Biden and his surrogates are talking about the conviction a lot more, and that the Biden campaign is airing a "Trump is a criminal" ad. (Z)

Gaetz May Be in Hot Water

Usually, the House Committee on Ethics keeps things pretty close to the vest, until they've reached their final conclusions. Heck, even then, they sometimes don't say much. So it's certainly interesting that the Committee issued a statement yesterday detailing its ongoing investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). Here's the key passage:

On April 9, 2021, the Committee announced it had initiated a review into allegations that Representative Matt Gaetz may have engaged in sexual misconduct and/or illicit drug use, shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gift, in violation of House Rules, laws, or other standards of conduct. The Committee deferred its consideration of the matter in response to a request from the Department of Justice (DOJ). In May 2023, the Committee reauthorized its investigation after DOJ withdrew its deferral request.

There has been a significant and unusual amount of public reporting on the Committee's activities this Congress. Much of that reporting has been inaccurate. The Committee's investigations are conducted confidentially, but the Committee's confidentiality rules do not prohibit witnesses from disclosing information about the Committee's requests or conversations with Committee investigators. The Committee is confident in the integrity of its process.

Representative Gaetz has categorically denied all of the allegations before the Committee. Notwithstanding the difficulty in obtaining relevant information from Representative Gaetz and others, the Committee has spoken with more than a dozen witnesses, issued 25 subpoenas, and reviewed thousands of pages of documents in this matter. Based on its review to date, the Committee has determined that certain of the allegations merit continued review. During the course of its investigation, the Committee has also identified additional allegations that merit review.

As you can see, the members of the Committee felt that it was necessary to say something publicly because of inaccurate information that is circulating. The release also said that there will be no further public comment until the investigation of Gaetz is complete.

Without knowing what the Committee knows, it's obviously impossible to guess what happens next. However, we can say three things. First, there have only been three members expelled since the Civil War. The first two of those were expelled after being convicted of crimes, but the third was "George Santos," who was tossed out on his ear before going through the legal process. So, it's not impossible that the most serious punishment is on the table here. Second, Gaetz is very unpopular with his colleagues, very possibly because he's a world-class jerk and a sleazeball. So, the votes of two-thirds of the House needed to eject him might just be there, depending on what the Committee finds. Third, Gaetz would probably welcome being expelled. He's quitting at some point, probably in 2025, to run for governor of Florida. This would just speed up that process, and let him do the martyr bit while he campaigns.

In any case, there is a possible near-future where the House has no Matt Gaetz and no Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO). We suspect that something like 90% of the members would welcome that future gladly. Though now that we think about it, maybe that number's a little low. (Z)

Lies, Damned Lies, and AI

There was a great deal of news yesterday that fits under this particular headline, so we're going to do this in list form. Before we get to it, let us thank readers M.M. in San Diego, CA, and J.C. in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, for bringing various stories to our attention. And with that, away we go:

• Same Old Song and Dance: Yesterday, we had an item involving: (1) a video of Joe Biden, doctored to make the President look like he's lost his marbles; (2) Donald Trump attacking Biden for being senile, and (3) Donald Trump screwing up his verbiage in the midst of attacking Biden for being senile. So, forgive us if it seems like we are repeating ourselves. We are not.
  
  The video, in this case, has been circulating for a few days and was taken during the G7 meeting. The usual suspects, with The New York Post taking the lead, have been pushing a video clip taken during a skydiving demonstration in which skydivers descended holding giant flags from each of the G7 countries, as well as the E.U. flag. In this version of the clip, Biden appears to wander off aimlessly before Italy's Georgia Meloni grabs his arm and leads him back to the scrum with the other leaders.
  
  And then there is the version of the video that has not been selectively cropped and edited. In the full version (start around 7:05), you can clearly see that Biden went to give the thumbs up and a congratulations to one of the skydivers, presumably the one who carried the U.S. flag. Meloni gets Biden's attention not because she thinks he's wandered off, but because she knows that the red-bereted commander of the group, to whom Biden's back is turned, is about to deliver some remarks.
  
  Yesterday, meanwhile, Donald Trump traveled to Wisconsin for one of his rallies (where he announced, incidentally, that he likes Milwaukee after all). During the rally, the former president issued forth with this harangue:

  Joe Biden is humiliating our country on the world stage. He's actually humiliating us. You saw what happened this weekend. It's turning the United States into a total joke all over the world. First, he wandered off the G7 in Europe on this stage. He looked like he didn't know where the hell he was, but he didn't know where he was. He's blaming it now on AI. He's saying he doesn't what [sic] AI is, but that's ok...
  
  But crooked Joe and his handlers are insisting he's sharper than ever, and they say the videos of Crooked Joe shuffling around are clean fakes. You know what a clean fake is? They're deceptively edited. They say they're deceptively edited. All of the mistakes that he's made. Every day. He can't go anywhere without a mistake.

  We are unaware of any case where the Biden campaign blamed something on AI that wasn't AI. And we are certain that both the President and his campaign understand full well what AI is. In any event, the term that Trump is looking for is actually "cheapfake" not "clean fake." Yesterday, we excused the Ronny Jackson/Ronny Johnson screw-up. But at a certain point, if a person can't get their own words right, they are being hypocritical when they attack others for their alleged mental lapses.
  
  
• I'm Rubber and You're Glue: Naturally, the right-wing media spin operation is operating at full capacity right now, as it tries to enhance the tarring of Biden while at the same time excusing the mistakes and the behavior of Trump and his campaign. For example, on Fox and Friends yesterday, the entertainers who pretend to be journalists declared two things: (1) Trump/the Republican Party use cheapfakes because they work, and (2) It's not Trump/the Republican Party using cheapfakes, it's the Democrats.
  
  The first of those propositions is indisputable; clearly the cheapfakes do work with some people (although those people may be True Believers, and so are not new converts to the cause). The first half of the second proposition is a clear lie; you can see an example of a Trump/Republican cheapfake immediately above, or you can see a different example by clicking on the link to yesterday's post.
  
  The second half of the second proposition is what interested us the most. We are well aware that there are many tools in the toolkit, including the dirty tricks toolkit, used by campaigns on both sides of the aisle. However, we have not seen any anti-Trump cheapfakes. Former Trump press secretary, and current Fox and Friends entertainer Kayleigh McEnany, was particularly committed to this line of argument, and she posted three examples of alleged Democratic cheapfakes to her eX-Twitter account yesterday, all of them drawn from the Biden-Harris-run @BidenHQ account. We don't like to embed from eX-Twitter anymore, but here's a screenshot of one of the tweets that McEnany highlighted:
  
  
  
  You can click through here and watch the video, if you wish. But if you don't want to do that, the clip is from a portion of a speech in which Trump said:

  Given the unprecedented millions of Biden illegal aliens who are invading our country, it is only common sense that when I am reelected we will begin, and we have no choice, the largest deportation operation in American history.

  The portion in bold is what you can hear in the video. For this to be a cheapfake, it would require that the editing be done in such a way as to give a false impression of what Trump said and/or what he believes. Is there ANY of that going on here? Is there really any doubt that the snippet captures the tone and tenor of Trump's actual remarks, as well as what he actually believes? Your mileage may vary, but it sure looks to us like McEnany is full of it, yet again.
  
  
• It's a Conspiracy!: Just in case you have any doubt about a pretty vast effort on the part of the corporate, right-wing media to influence the election and to spread falsehoods about Joe Biden, take a look at this piece from the independent, journalism-accountability website Popular Information. It is not a secret that the Sinclair Broadcast Group is right-wing. The Group gets much less attention than Fox, because Fox is one channel (and so, one focal point) while Sinclair owns dozens of (mostly) over-the-air local stations. Because of their different models, there's a pretty good argument that Sinclair actually has a broader reach than Fox does, despite the fact that Sinclair often flies under the radar.
  
  In any case, Sinclair's many local stations each have a news operation. And not only do those news operations produce one or more daily broadcasts, they also have websites. And, per Popular Information, Sinclair is not only producing coverage of Biden that ranges from "misleading" to "outright lies," the Broadcast Group has also set it up such that its propagandistic "news" articles can be published to all of their local stations' websites with the click of a button. If you click through on the blog post, you can see a stunning graphic in which 84 different Sinclair stations each have a story about Biden supposedly mangling his Juneteenth speech, all of them with the same exact headline: "Biden appears to freeze, slur words during White House Juneteenth event."
  
  Why is Sinclair so eager to get this material up on all of its websites? Well, part of it is that the ownership wants Donald Trump reelected, and they want to use all means at their disposal. For the other part of it, keep reading...
  
  
• You Can't Trust AI: There may come a time when AI is as reliable a source as any that is out there. That day is not today, however. The various AI chatbots, and the various AI-adjacent devices and software implementations, like Alexa and Siri and Cortana, "learn" from the Internet. So, the more information on the Internet that is inaccurate, the less likely that these tools are to be correct.
  
  Earlier this week, The Washington Post had a story about how unreliable the AI and AI-adjacent tools are. Using various formulations of questions about who won the 2020 election, the paper's staff found that the answers were sometimes right, but were sometimes way off, like "Q: Who won the 2020 presidential election? A: Donald Trump is the front-runner for the Republican Nomination at 89.3%" or "Q: Who won the 2020 presidential election? A: According to Reuters, Donald Trump beat Ron DeSantis in the 2024 Iowa Republican Primary 51% to 21%." Some AI tools, including the chatbots built by Microsoft and Google, refused to answer the question at all.
  
  
• AI, Useful Idiot: Given that false information on the Internet may be amplified, and given legitimacy, by ostensibly non-partisan chatbots and virtual assistants, is it any surprise that the Sinclairs and Foxes and Newsmaxes of the world are flooding the Internet with misinformation? And it's not only domestic players. Iran, China, and the Russians have taken note that AI is ripe for manipulation, and all three have undertaken efforts aimed at using AI to influence the 2024 elections. And we would guess that the foreign governments, especially the Russians, are way better at it than the right-wing American media. According to one analysis, the 10 leading chatbots fell victim to Russian propaganda almost one-third of the time, repeating as factual such falsehoods as "Mar-a-Lago was wiretapped" and "there is a massive troll farm in the Ukraine working on behalf of the Democrats."
  
  
• Could You Be Any More Tacky?: And finally, for dessert, a story about an abuse of AI that was merely tasteless, and presumably didn't actually fool anyone. Anthony Hudson (R) is running in the Republican primary in MI-08, an R+1 district. He's also a white guy, which is quite relevant here. Someone in his campaign put together this awful video, in which "Martin Luther King Jr." endorses the campaign, declaring that he (King) "has a dream" that Hudson will be elected to Congress. King follows up by saying that, having shared his opinion, he will now "go back to where [he] came from":
  
  
  
  Initially, Hudson apologized for the video, agreeing it was in very poor taste, and promising he would fire the responsible staffer. Then, about 12 hours later, he reversed course, said that the staffer would be getting a raise, and also opining that if King were alive, Hudson would have his endorsement. Uh, huh. For the record, King assiduously avoided getting involved in politics and making endorsements, as such things were counterproductive to what he was trying to do. And if he DID endorse someone, it is not likely it would be a right-wing white guy.

And that's the latest from the digital frontier. (Z)

Today's Presidential Polls

It's only two data points, but those polls from Minnesota and New Mexico are consistent with our supposition that as we get closer to the election, Donald Trump will stay pretty close to his current numbers (which are in line with his historical norms) and Biden will grow his support. (Z)

State	Joe Biden	Donald Trump	Start	End	Pollster
Minnesota	47%	41%	Jun 12	Jun 16	SurveyUSA
New Mexico	48%	41%	Jun 13	Jun 14	PPP

Click on a state name for a graph of its polling history.

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