The clicks will flow and vids will spill, and if the tabs want to fight, you better let them ...
🚨 JUST NOW: One of the people injured in the anti-ICE terror attack in NYC today was an IMMIGRANT on his way to his IMMIGRATION HEARING
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) July 20, 2026
Oh the IRONY
The suspect admitted in his interview that he "DIDN'T CARE" if he hurt or kiIIed anyone, regardless of whether they were federal… pic.twitter.com/t3EXoEey19
Ed: As Glenn Reynolds says, “Oft evil will shall evil mar,” which does not apply to the hearing or the person attending it, of course. This nutcase is so intent on hurting immigration enforcers that he’s putting actual immigrants at risk, and in this case actually harming one.
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WashEx: Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) challenged the director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History on Tuesday over an exhibit linking Mickey Mouse’s origins to blackface minstrelsy, accusing the museum of injecting politics into American history.
Gill asked museum director Anthea Hartig whether Mickey Mouse was racist, citing an exhibit that describes the character as containing “vestiges of longstanding traditions of blackface minstrelsy” during the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency’s hearing on the Smithsonian. The hearing follows a White House report that argued the Smithsonian Institution had abandoned objective scholarship in favor of progressive activism.
“Mickey Mouse is not racist,” Hartig replied, but said historians have documented that the character’s early origins are rooted in minstrel traditions. Pressed by Gill, she said it was her responsibility to present “what’s accurate,” not determine what is “problematic.”
Ed: Another round of 'experts say the stupidest things.' There really were cartoons that drew from blackface and minstrel shows, but Mickey has always been just a mouse, starting from his first film, Steamboat Willie. No doubt there are 'experts' who want to make themselves look deep and analytical by alleging everything is racist, but this is particularly dumb. The black crows in Disney's 'Dumbo' might make a better target for this kind of criticism, but Mickey and Minnie are just mice.
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🚨 OMG. Brutal moment as Rep. Brandon Gill embarrasses Smithsonian Director Hartig with this line of questioning
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) July 21, 2026
GILL: Is it important to be polite?
HARTIG: Yes
GILL: Your organization says politeness is a defining characteristic of white supremacy culture. Ma'am, are you a… pic.twitter.com/Yeoqtx32G9
… Ma'am, are you a white supremacist?
HARTIG: No, sir.
GILL: Why does your organization say being polite is part of being a white supremacist?
😭😭
ANOTHER ONE:
GILL: Is objectivity important for history?
HARTIG: We strive to be objective
GILL: Your document says being objective is white supremacy.
HARTIG: Mm...
GILL: Are you promoting a white supremacy culture at the Smithsonian? Ma'am, is this a difficult question?
Ed: Woke eats itself, by design. Leftist and Socialist revolutions are designed to be never-ending. The terms are never firm, either. George Orwell’s “1984” focused on language manipulation particularly as a tool for authoritarian control. It does not surprise me at all that Hartig can’t keep up with Gill’s rhetorical traps. These systems produce incompetents by design who will just follow orders without question or independent thoughts. Hartig is just another dull-witted functionary trying to keep up with the latest Newspeak from the Ministry of Truth.
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Nate Silver: Based on this grid, what is the most Democratic voting group in America? It’s voters with postgraduate degrees but lower-to-middle household incomes of $30K to $60K per year.
This is very much also the sweet spot for the DSA. In the group’s most recent member survey in 2021, 80 percent of members aged 25 or older had bachelor’s degrees, but 45 percent had household incomes below $60,000 per year.
This is unusual, because education and income are usually substantially positively correlated. In the composite CES data, only 19 percent of Americans with bachelor’s degrees or higher had household incomes of $60K or below. The DSA rate is around twice that.4 These voters aren’t necessarily “blue collar” in the sense of working with their hands. But that doesn’t mean they’re privileged. Common occupations among DSA members include teachers, non-profit workers, social workers, and public sector employees. ...
Could this just be some weird composite artifact of race? In the DSA’s 2021 survey, 85 percent of members reported their race as white5, which certainly isn’t representative of the country or the Democratic Party overall. But in the broader CES data, we find that the patterns mostly hold once you disaggregate by race.
Ed: Silver has several takeaways from this data, but the "sweet spot" for socialists appears to be those who went to college, got a useless degree, and now want government to redistribute social goods because they made poor choices. And they want to control that redistribution themselves and make it happen by any means necessary.
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This weekend I shared a post voicing my concerns about the far left. The response has been overwhelming. Leaders in both parties called to tell me the same thing: this stuff has gone too far.
— Van Jones (@VanJones68) July 21, 2026
To be clear: I'm a progressive Democrat. My whole life, I've wanted to see a youth… pic.twitter.com/RZXKQw5DSB
… But the movement is being hijacked by too many people with insane, outlandish and nutty ideas that have nothing to do with affordability, climate solutions or health care.
For example: Mamdani picked a DSA candidate who wants to abolish the police, empty every prison, erase every border and discourage interracial dating. Okayyyy ... So clearly, Chevalier has no problem condemning things! UNLESS it’s a designated terrorist organization. Believe it or not: Chevalier has refused to denounce the terror group Hamas — four times. That’s INSANE — and progressives can’t be afraid to call nonsense like that out.
Supporting Hamas is NOT progressive. The idea of “no police, no prisons, no borders” — which would let pedophiles, human traffickers, terrorists, hate groups and crime syndicates run wild — is NOT progressive for vulnerable communities. Celebrating the murder of Israeli civilians is NOT progressive. These ideas are REGRESSIVE.
Ed: I’m actually surprised to hear Jones push back this hard – and accurately – against the DSA and its communist virtue-signaling. He’s correct, of course, and he’s got some guts to do so. He’s always been one of the smarter progressives on CNN, even if that comes with a pretty low bar.
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Associated Press: The progressive movement may already have hit its high point in the 2026 midterms. Or this may be the beginning of a much more powerful shift as voters, eager for change, decide to embrace far-left populism on a national scale.
It depends upon who you ask within a Democratic Party that is undeniably locked in a tug-of-war between emboldened progressives demanding radical change and the party’s pragmatic establishment. ...
Republican officials were watching with glee.
“Socialists have gone from a sideshow in the Democrat Party to the main event,” said Bernadette Breslin, spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Ed: Hey, at least Republicans aren't pouncing or seizing! Yet, anyway. Give the AP some credit for framing this straight up without making the entire story about the Republican reaction to the Democrat civil war. However, I certainly expect to see some pouncing and seizing from the GOP at some point in this cycle, especially after Labor Day.
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I just read through the DSA's new platform.
— Brad Polumbo (@brad_polumbo) July 20, 2026
It is the most utopian/dystopian, bat-sh*t insane thing I have ever read.
It includes:
1. No more bills for anyone
2. Government-run food, housing, medicine, transportation, and nationalizing all other large corporations and… pic.twitter.com/OxMuNBHArx
Ed: Click through to read the rest of the bat-guano crazy coming from the DSA. This is straight-up communism. Let's not forget that the Soviet Union and other socialist utopias used to have "elections" in order to claim credit for democracy, but only Party candidates could run.
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Robby Soave at Reason: Now, you might be thinking, Piker is just one random guy. Surely the DSA doesn't want to implement Maoist authoritarianism. Well, read its program: It sounds pretty Maoist to me.
According to official DSA materials, it would collectivize food, education, medicine, energy, and transportation: These would all be things the government made available rather than the market. The problem with that is that governments are bad at providing such services cheaply and efficiently. When private, profit-seeking firms compete with one another to offer you stuff at the best price, it works a lot better.
The DSA goes on to say that in its socialist utopia, you'd be free to spend your day however you want, and you'd never have to work if you don't feel like it. But that obviously doesn't make any sense. Somebody has to work to provide all those supposedly free things: grow the food, drive the transportation, build the power plants, offer the medical services. Under capitalism, you perform those tasks in exchange for money that you use to buy what you need. But under every actually existing socialist government in history, including Soviet Russia and Maoist China, the government ends up having to force people to work, since they don't have profits to motivate them, and you end up with both shortages and repression.
So let's not ignore the unworkable, radical nature of the DSA's agenda, which calls for scrapping the entire U.S. Constitution. It writes: "Our enemies are not just individual bosses, but the entire global system of capital."
Ed: Hasan Piker would undoubtedly respond that real socialism has never been tried ... not even by his hero Mao. To quote another set of keen observers at the time when Mao was still around: "But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow." Hopefully that remains true.
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In one four-minute, off-the-cuff answer, Talarico managed to advocate for or say all of the following:
— Team Cruz (@TeamTedCruz) July 21, 2026
- Reparations are part of his faith tradition.
- Race-based tuition relief.
- Race-based homeownership grants.
- Race-based baby bonds.
- Slavery still defines modern Texas.
-…
- Government must “repair” the past.
- When Democrats win the Senate they will enact reparations
- The George Floyd Act was “transformational.”
- Washington must protect Americans “from police violence.”
- Shows like 'Cops' promote violence
Ed: I didn’t see this until later, but it see my earlier piece on Talarico and his simping on Crockett. Talarico knows that he has a huge problem with black voters in Texas, and he’s doing everything but actual blackface to convince those voters that he’s one of them.
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NY Post: Journey rockstar Jonathan Cain ripped fellow musician Bruce Springsteen as an “annoying, bitter old man” for using his concerts to lecture fans about President Trump.
“I used to be a Democrat back in the old days, but I just couldn’t go there anymore, you know?” Cain, 76, opined in an appearance on the “Complete Disaster Network” podcast, according to Variety.
“I’m a diehard conservative… And guys like Bruce Springsteen should shut up. You know, really, honestly, shut up, Bruce, you know? Him and who’s the other one? Robert DeNiro. I mean, who cares, guys?… Do your art. I try to keep politics out of my music,” said the “Don’t Stop Believin'” musician during the May interview.
Ed: I wouldn't even mind if these artists kept their politics in their music, as long as it stayed there. People don't pay hundreds of dollars for The Boss' largely ignorant TDS rants between the songs. I can appreciate a good protest song, even if I disagree with the sentiment. It would be tolerable, perhaps, if these artists said, hey, this is what I believe, but I can respect you if you think differently, but that's not what they do. They vent their rage and hatred on the basis that their opinion is the sole acceptable position.
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I have to laugh when I get the obligatory hate from those accusing me of being an Israeli puppet. I was writing songs about Radical Islam in 2004. Here is "Infidel" from the Battle for Everything. A cool little rocker if I don't say so myself. 🇺🇸🤘https://t.co/uqPhGt84tz
— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) July 21, 2026
Ed: Like this! It's a great rocker, and a fine way to conclude the official FW tonight.
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Last night's lyric: "What Have You Done For Me Lately" by Janet Jackson. Excuse the bad acting, which was pretty much de rigueur for music videos at the time.
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