Incumbent North Carolina Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards on Wednesday announced he’s abandoning his reelection bid despite having won the GOP primary. The beleaguered second-term U.S. congressman’s exit won’t trigger a primary do-over, though. And it won’t mean second place becomes first.

Instead, an obscure bit of state election law has been set in motion that will see Edwards replaced on the ballot without a single additional primary vote cast.

“After much prayer and reflection, I’ve decided to withdraw from my re-election campaign,” Edwards wrote in a pre-dawn post on X, Wednesday, just days after the House Ethics Committee released its finding there is “substantial reason to believe Representative Edwards violated House Rules related to sexual harassment and hostile workplaces.”

The report, which recommended his censure, was released on Monday. Edwards dropped out less than 48 hours later. And now the GOP needs a new candidate.

And that’s where things are a bit quirky. The fact that the GOP’s primary winner is dropping out doesn’t give the runner-up the nod, for obvious reasons. You can’t take the distribution of votes that were cast as a given, so there’s no way to say taking the guy in second would be the “will of the people.” But it also doesn’t mean everyone will now vote again.

North Carolina General Statute 163-114 assigns such a vacancy in a House nomination to the party’s relevant district executive committee, which is NC-11 in this case. It doesn’t promote the runner-up, require a new district convention, or reopen candidate filing for new blood. And there’s no relevant Federal law either, not to have another primary or what to do in the event of a quitter.

So in other words, deciding who will replace Edwards on the ballot against Democrat Jamie Ager and Libertarian Travis Groo is a task that now falls to the NC GOP’s 11th Congressional District Executive Committee. That’s a committee composed of district officers, county party leaders, elected members-at-large, and appointed officials.

WHEN

Now, this doesn’t technically happen automatically, though it’s what’s going to happen. But strictly speaking, just announcing he is out doesn’t really count as an official withdrawal. Under Section 163-113, Edwards has to submit a written request to the North Carolina State Board of Elections to drop out, and do so before the first day military and overseas absentee ballots are sent.

For the November 3 election, absentee voting begins September 4. So time is of the essence, both in terms of the deadline for withdrawal and the party’s process for selecting a replacement.

WHO

And while it’s not the electorate per se making the call, it’s not a small handful of party brass, either. The party’s plan of organization lays out the executive committee as including four district officers, chairs and vice chairs representing the district’s counties, 25 elected members-at-large, and three appointed positions: the finance chair, audit committee chair and general counsel. That adds up to theoretically as many as 64 voting positions for NC-11’s replacement, though with vacancies and some members holding more than one position, the actual voting roll will be smaller.

The district’s current public leadership page identifies Merry Guy as chair, Ashley Hart as first vice chair, Michael Lyons as secretary and Kim Genova as treasurer. Molly McKim is second vice chair, who under the district plan substitutes only if the first vice chair isn’t present.

HOW

Now, calling the meeting is relatively straightforward. The district chair can do it, or one-third of the committee’s voting members can force the issue.

The party plan generally requires 10 days’ notice, unless members unanimously agree to waive it. Once assembled, 25% of the committee constitutes a quorum unless district rules set a higher threshold, and members have to show up for themselves. Proxy voting isn’t allowed.

WHOM

And then it all comes down to this. This is the real ballgame: who can be named.

Nominations are open. Committee members can nominate one or more eligible Republicans, and nothing in the published rules gives primary runner-up Adam Smith a leg up. Smith can certainly be considered, but the committee is also free to choose a Republican who never appeared on the primary ballot at all.

Exactly how the vote proceeds gets slightly more technical. The party plan turns to Robert’s Rules of Order where its own rules are silent, meaning ordinary majority rule would generally apply unless the committee adopts some other lawful procedure. That majority-vote standard is an inference from the party’s published rules, by the way, not something explicitly spelled out in the state law governing the replacement.

There are some limits on whom they may pick, but not many, really. The replacement has to meet the Constitution’s qualifications for the U.S. House: be at least 25 years old, have been a U.S. citizen for at least seven years, and a resident of North Carolina when elected. Notably, the Constitution does not require members of Congress to live in the district they will represent.

THE BALLOT

Once the committee makes its choice, it certifies the new nominee to the State Board of Elections. If ballots haven’t yet been printed, the new candidate’s name goes on them. If they have, state law calls for them to be reprinted where practical. And if they can’t be, there’s one more quirk: a vote cast for Edwards will count for the Republican who replaced him.

THE PLAYERS

So who are the people who will likely make the final decision? The Crimson Hub and Howe It Is have reconstructed the likely voting pool from district and county party records and the 2025 district convention minutes. The list isn’t definitive, since vacancies, overlapping offices and several positions with uncertain current status could change the final roll, but here’s who the available public records put in the room:

The operative word there is “likely.” The committee’s official voting roster will ultimately settle vacancies, overlapping offices and several positions whose current status can’t be established conclusively from public records. The secretary-certified roll should resolve current vacancies, the three appointed offices, any county vice-chair changes, the status of the Polk at-large seat, and whether Molly McKim will substitute for Ashley Hart. It should also account for the one-person, one-vote rule where offices overlap: Kim Genova is both district treasurer and Haywood chair; Jeff Patterson may hold both a county and at-large seat; and Harvey Sankey may hold both an at-large seat and the audit chairmanship.

For a definitive list, the most reliable records will be the voting roster issued for the committee meeting, the final credentials or roll-call record and the certification sent to the State Board. The district’s public contact address is info@nc11gop.org.

Cross-posted at The Crimson Hub.

Pop quiz: How does a Democrat win an election once people find out who they are?

Trick question: They don’t! Or at least, they seem to think they won’t. Democrats have become the only political party whose campaign strategy is convincing voters there isn't a Democrat running.

Yes, the hottest new strategy in the DNC is dropping out and letting someone else run instead. Joe Biden did it. (How’s that workin’ out?) Graham Platner did it. (Wie läuft das?) And now two other hapless Democrats, in Montana and Nebraska respectively, are adopting the strategy. Or trying to. They’re actually having some trouble withdrawing.

As it turns out, Democrats aren’t even winning at losing.

Democrat bigwigs are running for nominee Alani Bankhead to drop out of the Senate race in Montana, but it turns out, the law doesn’t really allow that, according to the Secretary of State.

From Semafor:

The Montana Secretary of State’s office tells Semafor that there’s no wiggle room if Democratic Senate candidate Alani Bankhead drops out of the race in the next two weeks.

“The Secretary took an oath to uphold the law, and Montana law plainly states that if a party’s candidate withdraws, that political party shall appoint a replacement. That’s the law, not a suggestion. We’re not interested in political games,” said a spokesperson for Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, a Republican.

Obviously, they want her out so as not to split the liberal vote with Independent candidate Seth Bodnar against Republican Kurt Alme.

Bodnar’s pitch is pretty familiar these days among those trying to beat Republicans: he was in the military, he brags that’s he’s not a politician, and posts pics of himself with trucks and trees and sports. (Aside: you won’t believe me and they’ll deny it, but when Trump first ran and made a big point of not being a politician, Democrats attacked that as a dumb lack of qualifications for the job. That’s very funny to me.)

And it’s true, a lot of politicos try to appear very EveryMan-coded when running for office - I live in North Carolina, so believe me, I know. The reasons are a bit different, though. Republicans want the Republican base to see them that way. Democrats, on the other hand, want the Republican base to see them that way.

Oh wait, that’s not different.

Running away from the Democrat party is really the only way to code EveryMan anymore. It’s hard to convince voters you’re some God-fearing tough guy Dodge Ram owner when in fact you’re a progressive weirdo Chevy Colorado owner. Right, Talarico?

As Semafor pointed out, it’s happening in Nebraska, too. Only that one is WAAAY more of a mess. See, a Democrat candidate who lost the primary is suing to have the party name a replacement for the winner of that primary, Cindy Burbank. Because she dropped out. His argument is that Burbank was run by Democrats just so she could beat him and then drop out to clear the way for Dan Osborn’s independent run against Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts, the incumbent.

It is very hilarious. But it’s not one-offs anymore. This is obviously a trend, about which no media nor anyone in the Dem party will inquire too deeply regarding underlying causes.

That is: they aren’t going to ask why the best Democrat strategy is to not be a Democrat. And that’s because they know the answer. Most normal Americans aren’t down with the DNC’s radical, far-left, insane agenda. They tried it in 2024 and look who is President now. You would think that message would land with the party, but how can it when they are so befuddled by their celebrity wing and their The Bulwark hallelujah chorus slobbering all over every far-left principle they can get their greased palms on?

So they keep trying it. And in individual races where “Yes All Gender Is a Construct Anti-Israel Pro-Terror Abolish Guns” politics are, it turns out, not huge box office draws, well it’s clear what will work. You can’t sell Democrat. So change the brand name on the ticket!

And will that work? So far .. lol, nah. But it’s not inconceivable that radical wolves in Independent clothing will sneak to D.C. in a race or two. It’ll probably be a short-lived victory though, if not a pyrrhic one. Because when that independent proves wildly unpopular after opening their mouth on T.V. for a couple of years, it’ll be even tougher to sell a Democrat to voters you tricked the previous go-round. Don’t you think?

This post has been updated.

Meet Nirav Shah, one of the Democrats now running for Senate in the great state of Maine.

He’s being described as a “Maine Democrat” and the former public face of the state’s COVID response. To be clear, those things are meant to be positives. He lives in Brunswick, teaches at Colby, the whole rustic-Down-East package. A Mainer, they say.

I say “they say” because, until as recently as this past March, it’s not what Shah was saying. Not to the federal government at least.

Shah announced his run with typical Trump-based stumping last week, one of several Democrats with long government job histories moving into the gap left by the Nazi-tattooed sideshow who paraded as an everyman. But resume aside, failed gubernatorial candidate Shah still tried playing the “outsider” card in his opening play for position in the race.

Outsider indeed.

On March 24, 2026, Shah cut a $3,500 check to a congressional candidate in Illinois. The address he put on that federal filing: 2232 W Oakdale Ave, Chicago, Illinois. Not Brunswick. Not anywhere with a lobster on the sign. Chicago. He also used a Brunswick address for donations in Maine ahead of his failed run for governor and now soon-to-be-failed run for Senate. And in the same time period, too. So he’s Maine Shah for the Maine causes and Chicago Shah for the Chicago causes. Neat!

Shah actually has a lot of history in Illinois. Why just listen to his admirer, Illinois Democrat Sen. Tammy Duckworth.

High praise.

Shah is a licensed Illinois attorney, and his registration with the state bar still lists that exact same Chicago address on Oakdale. Same house. Same city. Same guy.

Of course, you don’t have to be born and raised in a place to run for its Senate seat. People move. Stuff happens. But seems like you’d want to make up your mind about where you live once you’re trying to, I dunno, claim to speak for the people who live there full time. Or at least file their paperwork that way.

But you know the old Down East saying so familiar to us all: ‘When Illinois gladhanding isn’t enough, whip out the Maine zip for a little grandstanding. And if voters turn you down for governor, wait for a Nazi’s abusive past to crop up and swoop on in.’

That’s the Chicago Maine way, after all.

Watching NFL games used to require one thing: finding the right channel in the right region.

Now, depending on the week, team, or popular “importance” of the game, it may require remembering who bought the rights to kickoff. And then paying them for access.

The NFL insists its patchwork of partners and streaming exclusives is the most fan-friendly model in sports. They’re pretty much the only ones who feel that way, as anyone who uses social media knows. The unrest is getting louder by the day. And why not? The NFL’s current plan to air games on 10 different streaming platforms this season.

Yeah. TEN different subscriptions to watch the NFL, if you want to have access to every game. According to the Big Lead/Yahoo Sports, that’ll cost in the ballpark (ha!) of about $1,000 over the course of the entire season.

The idea that you have to subscribe to 75 different add-on services to see a continuous season of this single product is nuts. Especially considering it’s a product shored up with public money and that relies on public support, even from non-fans.

See it’s not just subscription fatigue at play, this is genuine outrage. I mean, if you’re an NFL fan who happens to be conservative, you’ve already felt a thousand times that the league doesn’t respect you and takes advantage of you. But even if you’re not conservative, if you’re not political at all, it doesn’t matter anymore. People don’t like being taken for a ride. And the NFL’s TV/Streaming/Blackouts/Subscription schemes feel like they’re straight out of a spam email: designed just to rip you off.

It’s not just crazed fans or right wing X posts saying so. Politicians feel the way the wind is blowing and some have even introduced legislation. A Democrat, mind you.

Oh, and actual football legends, too.

“I don’t like it,” said Hall of Famer Dwight Freeney,, joining the chorus last week in a Fox News interview. "To be honest with you, I think it should be accessible to all fans, no matter what your economic bracket is,” he said.

Freeney’s comments echo a common frustration and complaint as we all juggle broadcast networks, cable channels, Peacock, Prime Video, Netflix, NFL Network, Paramount+, ESPN, and all the other services and upcoming exclusive providers just to follow a single team for a single season.

And yes, Trump has weighed in too, okay? It happens. He made a similar point earlier this year during an interview with The National Desk, calling it “sad” that football is increasingly being priced out of reach and suggesting the league’s strategy basically amounts to price gouging. “They’re making a lot of money. They could make a little bit less,” Trump said. “They could let the people see. You have people who live for Sunday.”

But his being in agreement shouldn’t deter anyone from their own objections because this goes way beyond the weekly White House outrages.

Sen. Mike Lee, also a Republican of course, has argued that fans can spend hundreds of dollars or more to follow a season. Those concerns helped prompt a Justice Department antitrust investigation into the league’s broadcast practices, congressional hearings examining whether the NFL is still honoring the public-interest bargain behind its antitrust exemption, and most recently, a sharply critical report from the House Judiciary Committee.

That report, by the way, argues the league has drifted well beyond the narrow purpose Congress envisioned when it passed the Sports Broadcasting Act in 1961, granting the NFL unique antitrust protections in exchange for making games broadly available to the public.

Among the more striking findings are allegations the league actively resisted lower-cost options for fans that were on the table. ESPN allegedly proposed offering NFL Sunday Ticket for roughly $70 per season, while other proposals would have allowed fans to purchase access to only their favorite team’s out-of-market games instead of an expensive league-wide package.

!!!!!! Yeah. Read that again. Imagine getting the chance to buy just the out of market games for the Carolina Panthers and Buffalo Bills? (Hey that’s who WE watch anyway.)

The report is that the NFL rejected such reasonable and fan-friendly pitches in favor of their big expensive mess. It’s all in court now, so whether the allegations have any teeth remains to be seen. But still.

It’s not just Republicans, Democrats, too, question whether the NFL is satisfying the public obligations that justified government protections. Sen. Tammy Baldwin has introduced legislation aimed at addressing sports blackouts and the burden these exclusive streaming contracts represent for fans.

Yet through all of the backlash, the NFL has maintained that its strategy benefits viewers by making games available across more platforms than ever before. Commissioner Roger Goodell declined an invitation to testify before Congress on the issue, leaving the league’s public defense basically unchanged.

Under that pushback from the Trump admin and Congress, Goodell just plays the whole “nothing to see here” card, saying “87 percent-plus [of games] are on free television; 100 percent are on in the local markets.”

You know, a couple years ago, ticket reseller Vivid Seats did an analysis of which NFL team is most supported in which county, nationwide. This is the modern world, so nobody should be surprised at pockets of fans become the majority of fans in some counties far from their favorite teams home venue and market. Steelers enclaves, in Mississippi and Kansas. Tennessee Titans counties in Maine and Utah. Even my team, the Carolina Panthers are big time in Harney, Oregon, and Big Horn, Wyoming.

The NFL has an antitrust exemption that lets them dole out games in its archaic, serfdom-era fashion. But those exemptions were based on the idea of local, free TV. That’s not what’s happening now despite Goodell’s weak, protestations — a type of half-hearted pushback he thinks he’ll get away with Because Trump.

He doesn’t seem to get that this isn’t just another political or culture war fight for a league that has faced many over the last 20 years. And he and the league think playing the Because Trump game makes them immune from public outrage, press criticism, and the law. Time and again, they play act at being the adults in the room refusing to bend against criticism from the right — all while continuing to kowtow to the left.

That ain’t gonna work this time. This time, it’s not about players protesting the flag or DEI or raunchy halftime shows or political ads or any other cultural flashpoint. This time it’s about regular people who watch a sport wanting to, well, WATCH THAT SPORT.

Football legend Michael Irvin is among those hinting at an even worse future for fans as the NFL plows ahead. Speaking with On3, Irvin predicted that once the NFL’s current media rights agreements expire, the league could eventually award exclusive Super Bowl rights to a streaming platform such as Netflix, potentially ending the era of the championship game airing on traditional television altogether.

“They’re going to open that up for bids. And I guarantee you where the bids go, when the streaming service, it’s going to be … I don’t know if it’ll ever be on regular TV again, to be honest with you, because ABC can’t capitalize fully. They can get it in the region or the area. CBS can’t capitalize,” he said.

Um. Yikes.

Maybe that won’t happen. But you think it might, don’t you? Me too. And that’s a damning realization.

When millions of fans, former players and stars, sports writers and reporters, a sitting president, a Senate antitrust chairman, a progressive Democrat from a small-market football state all say the same thing about a $20 billion business with a federal antitrust carve-out, the league claiming it has nothing to fix isn’t confidence. It’s the same habit that’s gotten the NFL into trouble with the White House for years: assuming fans, and the law, will just adjust to whatever the league decides is best. It’s a bad call and poorly designed play.

Wait, you mean the Nazi tattoo guy’s campaign is having trouble facing the MeToo accusations and flailing about wildly?

NO.

WAY.

Dave Weigel pointed out on X Wednesday that Graham Platner’s collapsing “movement” is in very funny death throes right now. I mean, that’s not what Dave said specifically, but I’m just summarizing the end result here. I mean, besides the obvious end result that Susan Collins is going to win in a walk.

See Platner’s peeps (they seem like the kind who use youth-isms cringily) sent out this two-question volunteer survey and, well, it’s very funny.

it’s not just the sending of the survey itself. Weigel adds:

Here’s the text sent out, per Weigel.

We’ve said from the very beginning that this campaign was never about Graham but about a movement of working people united to take back power.

But yesterday, the Maine Democratic Party said that our movement will “have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like.” Instead, under their watch and direction, they allowed the DC-based Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to send staffers to plan a potential nominating process behind closed doors. Both the state and national parties cut our team, our volunteers, and our vast networks of supporters out of the conversation completely.

We firmly believe that the supporters and volunteers who built this movement deserve to have a real role in any nomination process. If the Maine Democratic Party hopes to harness our movement, and avoid disillusioning the hundreds of thousands of supporters who came into the fray because of our movement’s policies, it must consult the feedback and proposals of the people who built and sustained this.

Your feedback will be sent to the Maine Democratic Party via this form:

So the campaign sent it out as if it’s the chance for some kind of revolution in Maine, a fight to keep Nazi-tattoos on the ballot. And guess what? ANYONE CAN RESPOND BY VISITING THE LINK!!!!!

THE LINK: CLICK HERE.

I have some proposed answers.

Q1: “What message do you have for the Democratic party?”
A1: LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Q2: “What message do you have for Graham?”
A2: Gerechtigkeit des universums, pal.

I’m not the only person who thought of great answers, of course. Here are two screenshots sent to me by email.

That seems about right.

A lot of the replies on X are from those on the right sharing the survey and encouraging respondents to encourage Platner to stay in the race. For the obvious reason that he’ll lose.

Others … take it up a few notches.

A good time was had by all. Still, you can always rely on Jim Geraghty to have the most correct answer, though.

“I’m not saying it’s certain Platner won’t withdraw from the race, but this is the move of a campaign that does not want to withdraw from the race.”

Yep.

It’s the little things that count, people say. I hate most things that people say, but in this case they have a point. That is, if you think of it negatively. It’s the little things that count toward the apocalypse. Also the big things, but whatever. The point is, every small annoyance can be a big one if you let it. And I do.

Today that annoyance is Jeopardy! clues, for starters.

At the Howe house, we usually watch Jeopardy during dinner. And when there’s no new episode because it’s a weekend or summer or YouTube TV is being a dick, we’ll watch an old one, and that often triggers pet peeves about the show that come up over and over and over again. The other day, that trigger was the insidious use of regional pronunciations when covering rhymes or homophones or whatever the case.

I know, this seems trivial (ugh), but I’m certain I can derive some larger meaning from this so just go with me here for a minute. I’m rolling, as I think the kids say.

It’s best to explain this by specific example, obviously. Here’s the one that caught my eye the other day.

The category: Sounds Just Like An Animal.
The clue: “Synonym for ‘pawn’, as in ‘my jewelry is in…’”
The answer?

HOCK. Which they say sounds like HAWK. Which makes me want to hork.

There are other examples with varying degrees of offense. Dents and dense is understandable, though I personally can say and hear the T in the first. “Trussed” and “trust” may sound mostly the same but there is a difference between a T and a D and most of the time, you should say it. “Knotty” and “naughty” or “not” and “naught” bug me. The “au” and “aw” sound is always blurred away by Jeopardy.

The biggest offender, though, and one that has driven me insane forever, is the show constantly insists “caulk” or “chalk” rhyme with “block” or “sock.” Or worse, treat it as a homophone of “cock.” SAAHK. CAAHHK. So hawk, hock, caulk, cock, and mock are all perfect rhymes. Madness. What they all actually rhyme with is “anarchy.”

I don’t know when the show started exclusively hiring cab drivers from the Bronx to write their clues but come on with this.

When I was a kid in Texas, my fourth grade teacher was covering homophones and homonyms. Now, most of the kids in the class were Texan, or Southern, or just not from Chicago. Unlike Ms. Fourth Grade Teacher. She wrote a word on the board and asked us to name its homophones.

We gave her the word “pour” and the word “pore” but, for the life of us, could not come up with another.

After a few minutes, and with an expression of surprise at our failure to produce the answer, she finally wrote this on the board.

She tapped it with the chalk. We all looked at each other and then said “paw” the way it’s pronounced, like “naw” or “jaw.” But our Chicago teacher interrupted saying “what’s this ‘paw’?” She then pronounced each of them for us.

Poo-uh, poo-uh, poo-uh, and poo-uh.

Broo-uh. I mean, it’s hard to give you the sound of it by typing, but suffice it to say those are only homophones if you are from a certain part of the country. And the same is true of “cock” and “hawk.” If you call them homophones, in my part of the country I might respond with “y’ain’t from rount heah, ah yuh?”

Here’s the thing though. It’s more than just a regional accent hilariously showing up in a classroom. Jeopardy clues are more like signpost. A warning sign, even.

COMMENCE SOAPBOX: It’s the Borg. It’s the monoculture and its elite adherents. Its Coastals telling Flyover how to “tahk” in addition to how to think and how to vote and how to diversity and how to socialism. AIN’T IT!

That’s not to say there’s a Grand Conspiracy afoot in game shows. But there is something here. Something beyond bad clue writing or America’s general acceptance of “good enough” as good enough in communication.

The way this wedges into a bigger point isn’t enforcement of uniformity but the *presumption* of it. In the “elite” culture that permeates every facet of daily American life, that writes and produces TV shows and movies, that delivers the news and interviews politicians, that crafts Jeopardy clues and decides what holidays Google and Disney will celebrate — in that mass-produced and homogenized reality, they all just know that Democrats are the good guys deep down, and Republicans aren’t. Being a liberal progressive is what good and smart people do. Being religious and conservative is what bad people or dumb people do.

If you’ve seen it, then you see it. Everywhere. It doesn’t require explanation.

Now, am I saying that Jeopardy (especially under Jennings) isn’t just home to paw-ly written definitions, imprecise clues, and pronunciation bias, but is actually subtly using subversive Jedi mind tricks to reinforce that Rich Men North of Richmond, Democrat, Coastal Elite worldview to 1984 us into a Newspeak boot stamping our faces forever?

No, of course not. I wouldn’t say it outright like that. But hey, I can’t help what you think I’m saying. It’s hard to get a precise meaning across, you know? What with everyone using inexact rhymes and whatnot.

The fact that we have a *default* viewpoint in the United States is something that liberal progressives decried when they thought that view was Catholic or Protestant or “White.” But what they said was objection in principle was actually just a viewpoint dispute. They don’t mind the principle of establishing a moral code. They just want to be the ones who do it.

See? I knew I could shoehorn in some larger complaint! And hey, maybe imprecisely rhyming hawk and hock isn't the apocalypse. Maybe the whole point of my new feature is to complain about small things and treat them like some kind of sign of the End Times because it amuses me.

Maaybe.

But then again, it's the little things that count. I mean, that's what people say! Right?

DOOOOO SOMETHING!!! That’s a refrain in politics, if not in so many words. A terrible phrase that has resulted in terrible ideas time and again. Maybe it’s because I live here but it seems like North Carolina is especially prone. Just look at the Senate race between Whatley and Cooper.

Former head of NC GOP Michael Whatley has been tearing ex-gov Roy Cooper up over the absurd COVID-era prison release fiasco brought to us by Democrats — namely Cooper and current governor Josh Stein, then AG. It’s fair to say the scandal has become a centerpiece of Whatley’s Senate campaign. Fair enough.

But digging back through the pandemic years brings to mind a subject I’ve written about a lot in the past: The dangers of “do something” politics.

That is to say, be careful when you demand officials do something during a crisis (real or imagined). Sometimes … they listen.

Whatley’s been ripping Cooper over the prisoner release settlement negotiated through Stein’s office that Cooper signed off on. It’s big news in the state, and there’s an ongoing probe being conducted by Republicans.

It’s central enough to Whatley’s campaign that he agreed on the Scott Jennings Podcast that the prisoner releases are the “number one issue” in the race. He says Cooper has to answer for it, telling The Nick Craig Show he hopes the North Carolina General Assembly will “bring [Cooper] in and explain what he was thinking” in caving to left wing pressure and settling with the ACLU and NAACP in their lawsuit over prisoner conditions during COVID.

Again, and I can’t stress this enough: fair enough. BUT … there’s more to the background here.

Back in 2020, when Whatley was chairman of the state party, he criticized Cooper on the same subject, prisoners and COVID. But from the other direction.

In a July 2020 video posted by NCGOP Communications, Whatley slapped Cooper for failing to “protect folks in prisons” during the pandemic. The state party also issued a press release accusing Cooper of only taking “COVID in prison seriously when a judge orders him too.”

Hmm, now what judge would that be?

Oh right. We keep saying “settlement” on this prisoner release deal, right? That’s because the judge’s orders here are from the same legal fight over prison conditions during COVID. The release even linked to an article on NC NAACP v. Cooper, the very lawsuit settled resulting in the prisoner release scandal.

So Whatley and the NC GOP under his leadership were attacking Cooper for not doing what the ACLU and NAACP were pushing for, and only taking the COVID prison problem “seriously” when a judge — again, a judge making a ruling in the since settled, scandalous lawsuit — ordered him to.

Awkwaaard.

Now, that obviously doesn’t mean Whatley agreed to, or with, the settlement. And it doesn’t give Cooper a pass, and certainly not Stein.

But it really makes me think of one of the things that’s bugged me endlessly in writing about politics the last 20 or so years. The dangers of DO SOMETHING!

First, it’s not a Republican or conservative principle that the government should always do something about something. They can butt out. I mean obviously when it comes to the state that’s running the prisons, the issues related to what goes on in those prisons is the government’s business. But..

Second, even if it is the job of government to do a thing, it doesn’t mean a panicked “do something!” is a principle on which to base a timeline or an action. People will always demand what they aren’t getting and often what they should not get. Not every wish should come true. Remember “Unanswered Prayers” by Garth Brooks?

Yeah that’s right, I know about music things.

And third, cynical “of the moment” political maneuvering almost always backfires. When Republicans take up a position because its contrary to, or hurts the prospects of a Democrat, but fail to consider where the position itself has inherent merit, they are asking for trouble. Borrowing it for the future, if you will.

No, it wasn’t Whatley who signed on the dotted line when FedEx delivered the actual nightmare of the mass prisoner release scandal. It was Cooper that did that. And who should be reminded of it daily. And yeah, Cooper is still the obvious worst choice for Senate. Maybe ever.

But Past Whatley left a landmine for Future Whatley by playing political tiddlywinks with the NAACP and ACLU point of view on prisoners and COVID. He and the party may claim they never saw it going so far as a mass release of violent criminals into and among the citizens of North Carolina.

But for me? I’d say they damn well should have seen it coming. I’m calling it The Whoops Conundrum for now. Not as good a name as The Override Paradox but what do you want from me? I’m not that clever.

Failing upward is one of those phrases in politics that translate right away, but is applied so casually and often that it doesn’t really mean what it’s meant to mean anymore. So let’s talk instead on the subject of success through failure in terms of … time travel. I guess?

The year is some year in the future. Let’s arbitrarily pick, oh I don’t know, 2028? Josh Stein is trying to move up in the Democrat party, maybe all the way to the Oval Office, if it’s still called that, and the ticket to that ticket is the “moderate” label. You can be pretty not moderate and still be billed as a moderate in the modern (D) pool, but there are some areas where they still pretend, especially “kitchen table” issues like affordability and safety. You don’t want to be a radical soft-on-crime guy in 2028, what with the War for the Planet of the Apes raging.

Lucky for Stein, he’s got an unlikely ally in the field. The 2026 North Carolina GOP, who saved his past self from future heartache on the topic with a well-placed and correct override of then-Governor Stein’s reprehensible decision to veto a bill requiring state and local law enforcement to cooperate with ICE.

See it wasn’t an error on the part of the state’s Republicans, they did the right thing. But that’s the problem with retroactive campaigning: it often benefits from the past actions of those against it. We’ll call it “The Override Paradox.” This legislative defeat for past Stein was a gift for future Stein. A preemptive albatross removal, to further mix metaphors.

Stein is kind of a have-your-cake-and-brazenly-murder-it-too type of governor for my home state. His party, whose law and order credentials include the endless and avoidable failures leading up to the horrific murder of Iryna Zarutska here in Charlotte, railed against the outrage over the murder rather than the murder. And when he ultimately and reluctantly signed a GOP crime bill dubbed “Iryna’s Law” last year, he did so while attacking the law as “barbaric.” That’s a word Democrats can’t bring themselves to use for any murdering psychopath or vicious street gang but find wholly appropriate to use about Republicans, their voters, and the laws meant to protect citizens.

But trashing one crime bill and trying veto another are not the only reasons Stein isn’t trustworthy on crime. The multiply-released killer of Iryna Zarutska? Old Roy Cooper, former governor and current candidate in the state, doesn’t like to talk about that guy’s release from prison. Gee, wonder why?

And that’s just one violent criminal released under Cooper. A whole army of them were released during COVID thanks to a barbaric decision by Cooper. Oh and .. wait for it … Stein.

Stein was Attorney General at the time. It was his office that negotiated those releases. As the Daily Caller wrote in May, “Stein’s office played a crucial role by capitulating to leftist criminal reform groups” in that consequential bad decision that has produced many new violent crimes.

The whole thing is under investigation now, a probe led by the party that also overrode his ICE veto. The Override Paradox.

This happens a lot in politics, and not always in the form of someone stopping your worst decisions from becoming reality and thus sparing you the years of consequences.

I see ads for Cooper’s Senate campaign every day. Seriously every damn day. And he’s running this barrage on how health insurance companies are the Big Bads and he’s out to get them. Trying to make "insurance companies are mean to you" the centerpiece is such an obvious attempt to latch onto a politically “safe” issue to avoid the more uncomfortable issues like “Why are Democrats so crazy?” or “Why is the new Democratic Kingmaker a loudmouth dog-abusing anti-Semite?” or “Why are anti-American communists taking over Democrat politics?” or “Why did you release a dozens of repeat violent offenders including the man who brutally murdered Iryna Zarutska on public transportation in your state?” and, well, you get the idea.

He didn’t have anyone to undo the decision he and Stein made on that one. Not like Stein had for his veto of the ICE bill, that changed his McFly family photo from “disaster” to “never mind.”

Now, I will grant you that success via failure isn’t limited to Democrats. I mean this business of everyone pretending to want to end the filibuster and then magically not ending the filibuster is a good example of a well-worn phenomenon in Congress. The idea of planning to vote for something in just enough numbers not to get it.

But in this movie, the guy whose future self benefited from a failure in the present is definitely Josh Stein. That’s good for North Carolina right now. But if the future is listening, someone from right now is reminding you to point out what happened and not to let him coast to victory on the power of his defeat.

The White House on Friday slammed California Gov. Gavin Newsom for “making life worse” in California, telling me exclusively his new tax hike is "just the latest blow" to hard working families.

You may recall California as the state that tried to punish people for exposing rampant fraud, including Medicaid fraud, and is home to Newsom’s Own Ambulance Scam to bilk federal taxpayers.

It’s also home to routine spending sprees by irresponsible Democrats at every level. The latest example is Newsom’s massive $350 billion budget plan finalized Friday — the largest chunk of change in the history of the state. And that’s a very high bar.

And what better way to pay for such things, Katie Couric’s crush thought, than to, um, .. take it from hard-working Americans by way of their healthcare? His scheme, a monthly per-enrollee tax on Medicaid, ObamaCare, and health plans at work, is going to see higher premiums across the board for working residents in the state. Genius!! No wait, that other thing. Terrible! That’s it.

As White House spox Allison Schuster puts in this exclusive statement:

“Gavin Newscum has done everything in his power to make life less affordable for Californians, and a $400 hike in healthcare premiums is just the latest blow to hard-working taxpayers. While the Trump Administration is actively working on making life more affordable through the President’s tax cuts, deregulation, and no tax on tips, overtime, or Social Security, the Democrats in California continue to steal money from taxpayers and make life worse. “

More taxes, more spending, and more Big Government in the state that’s the natural home to all those things.

Newsom is simultaneously loudly pantomiming about taxing the rich, in his supposedly sincere “national billionaire tax” bluster the last few days, which is cover for the fact that he opposed the same thing in the California budget that raises premiums on everyday Americans. So even the crazies can’t count on him. (Oh, and the crazies know it, by the way.)

Newsom thinks he’ll be the next president. A lot of Democrats and Courics hope that’s true. As long as the press keep glossing over what he’s done to the state, continues to do, it’s a genuine risk.

I’m not calling California a lost cause, but …

… as we say in North Carolina, that state ain’t right.

Kellyanne Conway tore into Democrats on Thursday night during remarks at GOP event in Connecticut, mocking Mamdani, AOC, Platner, and a slew of others. (Catch that audio here.) But she also had jokes directed at Republicans and even midly teased President Donald Trump on his social media escapades. (Catch that audio below.)

Conway was the keynote at the Connecticut Republican Party’s 47th Annual Prescott Bush Awards Dinner in Stamford and was quick with cutting remarks and quippy comments throughout.

The heavy roasting was for the left side, but there still a few pretty good ones that weren’t specifically directed at the enemy. Conway talked about the great leaps forward in GOP messaging and what an improvement it’s been over the “shitty” ads you’d see just a few years about the mechanics and “non-sexy” parts of politics.

“We were horrible at this for decades. We had no idea how to do the mechanics of politics,” she said. “The left: so smart. They got people to the polls. Were driving seniors to the polls, were calling you, reminding you.”

“And we’re like, ‘We have this great ad.’ They’d run it and I’m like, Oh, my God, that ad’s terrible.” she continued. “‘And we’re going to translate it into Spanish.’ I’m like, Okay, now, great. Now we have two shitty ads. Perfect. That’s fabulous. Thank you so much. You sound like the Taco Bell dog. This is not a compelling ad for anybody.”

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Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway put on a roast in Connecticut on Thursday, hitting Hochul on gestation and Mamdani on toddlerhood, trashing AOC’s ass-vertising and Kamala’s entire being, and even talking Trump tweets and Rupert Murdoch reax along the way. And I’ve got the audio.

Conway was the keynote at the Connecticut Republican Party’s 47th Annual Prescott Bush Awards Dinner in Stamford, and during a wide-ranging talk, Conway drew laughs and applause several times for her zingers and slams.

Most of the roasting was done “inline” with the narrative, but the hit on socialist NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani just seemed to pop out. A relatable moment: it’s virtually impossible to mention that walking joke and not say something hilarious or mean.

She was talking midterms when she blasted the “manchild in Manhattan” for finally finding his constituency.

“In the last 75 years, in 92% of the midterms, which means all but three, the party out of power has picked up seats in at least one of the chambers,” Conway said. “If anybody can defy political gravity, it’s Donald J. Trump, but he’s not on the ballot.”

“When the governorships in New Jersey, where I still vote, and Virginia, and of course Mamdani, manchild in Manhattan got elected… It just rolls off the tongue if you forget his last name,” she said. “He looked so at ease with those five-year-olds recently. I’m like, ‘Finally, he’s found his peeps. He’s got a constituency.’”

At another point in her remarks, Conway likewise trashed Kamala Harris in somewhat of an aside. She was talking about Fox News host Brian Kilmeade showing clips of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris, but before making her point she took some time to just rip Harris utterly to pieces.

Conway said Kilmeade’s clip showed Harris “out on the book tour or something or other.”

“Nobody told her she has to read it, but someone wrote one for her,” she said. As the crowd reacted, Conway rolled with it. “I really don’t like her at all. I don’t respect her. No. I don’t respect her.”

She added one more “I don't respect her” to the fire then fanned the flames, saying Harris was so lazy as VP that neighbors like Conway were never disturbed by comings and goings.

“She didn't work hard,” Conway said. “Her publicist is my neighbor. Near the vice president's residence, and by my house. And I didn't live there before Mike Pence was vice president, but when he was, I had his schedule right here, and I still had my mobility constantly compromised because the vice president of the United States was going to work and coming home from work. And I never had that happen in four years of his successor.”

Conway unleashed on “The Squad” and AOC, and segued into Platner and others as she outlined all the ways Democrats continue to get worse rather than better. More out of touch instead of more connected to actual Americans.

She lead into the topic by saying that Republicans can disagree with Trump and that’s healthy, because you can have a “unified” party without being a unanimous one.

“The Democrats have unanimity. I don’t want it,” she said. “They all sound alike. They all say the same thing. They all look alike most days. The Squad that doesn’t do squat. They’re famous for being famous.”

“What’s her name, AOC, had to write ‘Tax the Rich’ on her ass, excuse me, at the Met Gala. How ridiculous,” Conway said. “Yeah, she did. And she got a sanction for doing that. Got a sanction for doing that. Terrible.”

She wasn’t done with AOC though, pegging her as a do-nothing big-talker attention hog.

“Name a bill she’s passed,” she said., “I looked it up again the other day because I’m like, I don’t, I want to be fair to her if I missed one. She’s yet to pass one, she’s in her fourth term. She renamed a post office. She’s never walked in one, but she renamed a post office. She renamed a bench for somebody. And she has a microphone in her face at all times. She doesn’t do anything that matters to anybody in this room.”

She then listed the terrible people who are influencers and new recruits for Democrats, calling out Maine Democrat, Nazi tattoo-haver, and #MeToo villain Graham Platner, as well as Michigan Dem frontrunner Abdul El-Sayed and his buddy and top Dem influencer Hasan Piker, who hates dogs and loves Hamas.

“This is what we’re up against. We should be winning everything not nailed to the ground,” she said. “But people need to know it.”

Unfortunately the audio for the jab at New York Gov. Kathy Hochul didn’t survive, but the gist of the comments, per a source in the room, were slamming the new law in the state that replaces the words “mother” and “father” with heinously idiotic euphemisms.

Important to understand: This is not a joke. The state now uses the terms “gestating parent” and “non-gestating parent” instead of mom/mother or dad/father in statutes, court, and everywhere else. Seriously.

Conway said gave birth to her children in New York City and “can’t imagine” what it’s like now, mockingly saying, “‘Congratulations, gestational parent… it’s a… to be determined later."

That’s not all the audio by a long shot. In the next article you can hear her comments about Trump tweets and Murdoch and bad GOP ads and more.

You hear a lot of complaints from the David French wing of politics about how people are a bunch of mean assholes, especially those who are of the Christian conservative Republican sort that French still preposterously claims to have been.

But I’m not talking about being asshole. I’m talking about being ass. And while David French is indeed an excellent example of an ass, that’s not who I’m bitching about today, specifically.

I’m talking about people trying to pull this crap:

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Woke progressive enclave Seattle has set up “protest zones” around the stadium where four World Cup matches are set to take place, but it’s Los Angeles where the much more interesting demonstrations are set to take place. Iran faces New Zealand tonight at SoFi Stadium, and not everyone is thrilled the team was allowed to come here and participate. To say the least.

Among those taking the field is Mehdi Torabi, a favorite of Khamenei whom the dictator dubbed “dignified” in 2022 for declining to wear a black wristband in solidarity with protesters crushed by the regime.

In fact, the soccer star was accused of deliberately taking a penalty “with the express purpose of revealing a pro-regime message on a shirt underneath his jersey.” It’s a stunt he pulled once before, revealing a shirt in 2019 in protest of the people’s protests that said “The only path to salvation of country is to follow orders of the leader.”

East Coaster may not realize the size of the Iranian diaspora concentrated in Los Angeles just a few miles from the stadium. West LA is home to the largest Iranian community in the world, outside of Iran. Tehrangeles, it is sometimes called. Or “Little Persia.”

Protesters outside the stadium on Sunday waved the Lion and Sun flag, the flag of Iran before the Islamic Revolution. But inside the stadium, you’re not likely to see it. FIFA has banned it from inside World Cup stadiums.

Tonight as Torabi takes the field, you have to wonder if he’ll try for another demonstration of his loyalty to the regime. A shirt, a message, a penalty display, it’s possible. In the shadow of the deal between Iran and the U.S., the team that faced the prospect of being excluded from the World Cup now has the chance to not just show up and play, but do so free from messages against that regime inside the stadium.

But outside? Well you can watch that below.

It wasn't so long ago that the idea of a ghost in a machine writing news articles sounded like science fiction or a conspiracy theory or a third item. Today, it barely raises an eyebrow, even though it should.

The rise of the machines—from automated customer service interactions to generated artwork to increasingly innovatory writing tools—has become an undeniable part of modern life. AI-generated content has moved from novelty to normality with remarkable speed—and whether we as definite human beings fully realize it or not, it's already changing the way information is created, distributed, and consumed. It's exciting in some ways. It's also worth asking whether we've stopped to think about what might be lost along the way.

Here’s the thing: most people don’t spend a lot of time wondering whether an article they’re reading was written by a fellow human or by a mechanical machine-o-mat. Why would they? The words are there. The information is there. The byline is on the screen. The skin alleles are on the keyboard. At first glance, it all seems so perfectly normal.

But that’s exactly what makes this so pivotal. As artificial intelligence becomes better at sounding like real human beings, like what you and I are, the distinction between human judgment and machine-generated content is becoming increasingly blurred—with implications harder to ignore than a humorous illustrative analogy.

One of the most significant concerns we face involves what experts commonly refer to as hallucinations—instances in which AI systems generate information that appears credible, authoritative, and remarkably convincing despite being entirely fabricated. These hallucinations can take many forms—including wrong or invented facts, nonexistent sources, mismatched historic event dates, and even wrong or fake quotations. As one veteran editor recently observed, “A fabricated quote is more than a mistake—it’s a fundamental breach of the trust wall that exists between journalists and the public they serve.”

Whether an error is large or small, the potential damage to public confidence can be substantial—and increasingly difficult to reverse. The reality remains that a machine capable of producing a convincing falsehood at scale presents a remarkably unique challenge for news organizations.

Beyond questions of factual accuracy lie issues of trust. Journalism has always relied upon a foundational relationship between writers and readers—a relationship built on transparency, accountability, and authenticity that persists to this day. It’s a verified and checked fact that TV and print news outlets enjoy widespread national acclaim and warm feelings from the American public at large. The hallowed and trusted press are an institution respected across politics thanks to their years of accurate reporting, non-biased interviews, and refusal to indulge in rank and offensive partisanship.

Now, AI writing threatens that pristine journalistic record the American press have maintained. When consumers encounter news content, they could very well assume that judgment was exercised, sources were evaluated, information was verified, and facts were checked.

But the growing integration of AI in news content means consumers have to wonder whether a computer has produced the latest inaccurate information without the help of any human gatekeepers whatsoever.

If readers become uncertain about who—or what—is responsible for the false information they consume, confidence in the broader information ecosystem could completely vanish 12 years ago!

Additionally, there’s the growing problem of content homogenization. In today’s increasingly interconnected digital environment, information is produced, distributed, consumed, shared, aggregated, summarized, reformatted, repackaged, redistributed, reshared, aggregated again, disintegrated, reintegrated, redistributed, and consumed once more at an unprecedented pace.

As AI-generated content becomes more common, there are legitimate concerns that the internet could become flooded with articles that sound remarkably similar—utilizing comparable structures, recurring phrases, familiar transitions, and predictable conclusions. In effect, a digital landscape of synthetic, low-effort content of ample supply and meager variety.

There is also the question of human judgment. Reporting is not merely the mechanical act of assembling sentences into paragraphs or paragraphs into articles. Journalism requires curiosity. It requires skepticism. It requires intuition, perspicacity, acumen, understanding, discernment, perceptiveness, and insight. And it requires the ability to recognize contradictions, identify significance, ask difficult questions, understand context, provide examples, and present things in list formats.

Artificial Intelligence cannot replicate lived experience or human understanding—even if it’s the latest version featuring the all new custom Emotional Differential Intelligence and Truthfulness engine that will change your whole perspective on AI and is available now in limited markets, check local listings.

At the end of the day, meaningful journalism is about more than simply generating words on a page—it’s about generating perspective, context, insight, and value. An American media without that quality would be an American media of no quality at all.

And as Americans, are you truly accustomed to the media being of low or no quality?

Ultimately, the conversation surrounding AI-generated journalism is about more than technology—it’s about people, who are humans just like I am. As we (humans) move forward into an increasingly automated future, we must ask ourselves an important question: what role should authentic human voices continue to play in the creation and dissemination of news, information, politics, and memes? The answer may not always be simple, and the path forward may not always be clear. Nevertheless, it is essential that innovation remain aligned with the values that have historically made journalism in the United States trustworthy, and impactful.

Yes, the threat to journalism is most assuredly coming from AI generated articles and their very difficult to spot markers and tells, and not from any other more looming credibility issues, fact-checking problems, or overt biases.

You’re in your car, leaving a parking lot headed out to the rest of your day when it happens. You’re turning right from the exit. You’re waiting patiently for oncoming traffic to clear. Your signal is blinking. Your blood pressure is normal. A partial break approaches, the near lane clear, other vehicles safely in the far one. Your foot moves to the gas and then ...

Then some jackass decides that Right Damn Now is the perfect time to just roll on into the right lane. The closest lane. Your lane.

This is what we in the business call “being a prick.”

Of the ruling idiocies in our idiocracy, two of the most aggressively irritating are:

1. Being oblivious.

2. Pretending to be oblivious.

I despise both, though maybe the second thing, popularly described as “pretending not to understand” among us complainers on X, that is the most pervasive and intentional. Being actually oblivious may speak to moral turpitude, or maybe narcissism, or to actual outright dumb cluelessness. But the pretense? As a means of argument?

That’s what we in the business call “being an absolute bag of dicks.”

You see it in TV news all the time. Or rather half the time, I should say. And just guess which political party is always the target when “playing dumb” is deployed. Give you two guesses, and both of them are cable news networks.

Yep.

But the lane changer is a special kind of irritant, too. They’re the person who stops just inside the door when they enter a store or restaurant. The person who has a loud speakerphone conversation in public or, worse, on public transportation. The “listening to music or watching videos with no headphones” performers. The movie theater talkers, the open mouth chewers, the social media goodbye cruel world-ers, the “leave the grocery cart in the middle of the parking lot” shoppers. The airline seat recliners. Yeah, I said it.

The sheer obstinate will of humanity to irritate and enrage is a force that gives jerks their power. It’s a malignant energy field created by all living assholes. It’s a bad attitude that surrounds us and infuriates us; it binds the galaxy together in wanting to be torn asunder. It makes some long for solitude.

We are the irritated. The grouches. The curmudgeons. I mention this not to teach but to complain. It’s what I do. What we do. It’s a lifestyle, if not a living. It may not be a philosophy, but it’s not not one. It’s a surly state of mind. Surlitude.

And it’s going to come up a lot around here.