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Grassroots GOP turfs out Indiana Republicans who betrayed base on state's redistricting

Indiana's state flag
© Visions of America/AlamyIndiana's state flag
In a remarkable demonstration of grassroots strength, Indiana conservatives ousted numerous Republican state lawmakers who betrayed their constituents on mid-decade redistricting.

According to The New York Times, preliminary results from Tuesday's primary elections indicate that at least five incumbent Republican senators who sided with Democrats last year to kill redistricting before the 2026 midterms are projected to lose their reelection bids. The successful challengers were backed by President Donald Trump, Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, and Turning Point Action.

In Senate District 1, challenger Trevor De Vries is estimated to defeat incumbent Sen. Daniel Dernulc. As of publication, De Vries leads Dernulc 76 percent to 23 percent, with 74 percent of votes tabulated.

In Senate District 11, contender Brian Schmutzler is projected to beat out incumbent Sen. Linda Rogers. The former leads the latter by roughly 18 points with more than 95 percent of votes counted.

Bullseye

From DEI to equal protection: There's a new direction in civil rights policy

protesters anti dei crt equity racism
© Cedar Attanasio/APProtesters opposing critical race theory in classrooms, outside the offices of the New Mexico Public Education Department's office January 4, 2023, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the US
CRT originated in the 1970s as a tortured rationale advocating that colorblind laws inevitably serve the interests of white people.

The Trump administration is restoring the core value of equal opportunity to civil rights enforcement. It is eviscerating the race-baiting, intersectional policies of the Biden and Obama administrations, and giving substance to the Supreme Court's unanimous decision in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services (2025) that whites, men, and heterosexuals are not held to a higher standard in discrimination cases.

This is a time for rejoicing, tempered by concern that the administration will not have time to complete its work, and that its reliance on executive orders, rather than legislation and consent decrees, will allow the next Democratic president to rip asunder President Trump's laudable accomplishments.

Despite more than a century of Supreme Court decisions forbidding discrimination on the basis of race, Democrats generally, and progressives specifically, have inverted President John F. Kennedy's executive order establishing affirmative action. Intended to bring an end to discrimination because of race, creed, color, and national origin, progressives instead transformed affirmative action into a system of preferences based on melanin content, and absorbed this once hopeful construct into radical philosophies used to justify bias, including Critical Race Theory (CRT), intersectionality, disparate impact theory, and ultimately DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion).

Comment: Good points by Spivak, except for getting sucked into the 'the jews need protection' shtick at the end. It's a weird contradiction to his early point that they are one of the most successful groups in the U.S.

7 out of 10 . . .


Arrow Down

We're All Disabled Now . . .

Disabled
© ericpetersautos.com
Imagine if you were pretty much obliged to buy a cane or a walker in order to be allowed to walk in public. Never mind you don't need a cane or a walker to assist you walking. Well, this is basically the situation with regard to new vehicles. You are able to drive - the state affirms this, having issued you a license to drive that at least nominally is only issued to people who have established a basic minimum level of competence to drive - yet the vehicle is layered with what is styled "driver assistance technology."

Walker
© ericpetersautos.com
This implies you need it. Which implies you're actually not competent to drive unassisted. So why the bother over licensing drivers? (Well, we know why. The driver's license is really just an ID - and the state very much wants you to have to carry ID around - and show it. It establishes who's boss - and who isn't.)

These "technologies" are not like seat belts or air bags that are purely impact-force mitigation systems that are designed to reduce the severity of injury (as well as the chance you'll be killed) in the event of a crash. You can argue with some force that it is none of the government's legitimate business to effectively compel people to purchase air bags or seat belts - for basically the same reason that it's none of the government's legitimate business whether we eat our veggies. I think that because this argument wasn't made - not effectively, at any rate - we now have "driver assistance technology" in our cars. Because the underlying idea that it is the government's legitimate business to "keep us safe" (not from government's depredations, of course) underlies all of this stuff.

If you are not competent to decide whether to wear a seatbelt - and especially if you decide not to wear one - then obviously you are someone who is in need of the kind of "assistance" government provides, which is always as compulsory as it is cloying. That is why in just a few months from now - as the 2027 model year begins - every new vehicle will be required to have an additional layer of "assistance technology," in the form of what's styled "distracted/drowsy driver" monitoring systems. The requirement was passed into law about five years ago and now - like a septic tank that's gone overfull - the shit is percolating upward.

Mr. Potato

Well done, Mamdani: New York City told billionaire Ken Griffin to leave... so he is

mamdani close up tax the rich meme
© NYC Mayor's Office/YouTube
Miami keeps winning by simply doing the impossible: not openly hating productive people.

Congratulations, Zohran Mamdani. Truly. This is elite governance. World-class stuff.

You publicly singled out one of the largest taxpayers, employers, and investors in New York City, used his apartment as a campaign backdrop your for freshman year at Pratt "tax the rich" art project, and now that same billionaire is openly admitting he's doubling down on Miami instead of spending more in New York.

Brilliant stuff. Innovative economic development strategy at work. Two weeks ago, honestly, all you had to do was read the damn title:


Pills

Religious leaders told 'prepare now' for UFO disclosure to unleash Bible-changing revelations

Illustration of a couple seeing a UFO
© Getty Images/gremlin
Influential pastors are claiming that they have been told to prepare their followers for shocking revelations about UFOs which may upend belief in the Bible.

Perry Stone, a well-known evangelist, author and Bible teacher from Tennessee, warned that fellow pastors were recently invited to a secret meeting with US intelligence officials to prepare for the release of secret files on extraterrestrials.

According to Stone, the officials warned a small group of pastors with a large reach in the Christian community that the government was about to release reports and possibly videos of aliens and spacecraft which were not from this planet.

Comment: More from RT:
Citing an unidentified friend, Stone said that "there were a large number of pastors who had been invited to go to a certain state to hear some men in the United States government and others share with them a concern that they had".

The officials, he said, warned that forthcoming releases would cover non-human spacecraft built of materials "not allegedly a part of our planet", as well as "very strange reptilian-looking creatures" - details Stone said, "almost sound like something out of a sci-fi movie". In this vein, he speculated that Steven Spielberg's upcoming sci-fi film 'Disclosure Day' could be loosely based on those secretive documents.



Bulb

Over 60 percent of US citizens agree war on Iran 'has done more harm than good': Poll

Exxon sign
© Annabelle Gordon/Reuters)
A number of recent surveys indicate that Trump's support base is eroding as anger grows over rising fuel prices and economic strain

Six out of every 10 US citizens disapprove of President Donald Trump's handling of the war against Iran, as rising fuel prices and a weakening US standing abroad weigh heavily on the country, according to a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll published on 6 May.

Disapproval of Trump's war rose from 54 percent in March, while just 33 percent say they approve of Trump's Iran policy.

The findings also indicated increasing unease among Republicans. While 72 percent continue to support Trump's Iran policy, disapproval has risen to 22 percent, up from 15 percent in March.

Comment: It's a testament to how propagandized, programmed and brainwashed Americans are that only over 60% of Americans polled think that the war against Iran is a bad idea. But as they wake up to the reality of just how bad an idea it is (never mind all the death and destruction that Iran has sustained) all-around - once its further effects on the economy takes its toll, among other things, they'll be speaking quite differently.

Give it 6 months.


Airplane

DIY Air? Travelers are collectively pooling cash to buy defunct budget airline Spirit — raising $88M so far

spirit airline shut down
© BACKGRIDSpirit Airlines shut down for good this weekend May2, 2026, after 34 years.
Spirit 2.0?

They're keeping the spirit alive.

Spirit Airlines permanently shut down on Saturday after 34 years after a surge in fuel prices that impacted restructuring efforts, resulting in the cancellations of hundreds of flights and leaving customers wondering what this means for their future travel plans.

However, a group of common folk on social media are coming together to save the airline with a movement called "Let's Buy Spirit."

The website has already crashed twice due to an overwhelming response.

Prior to the site crash, a whopping 124,755 people expressed their intent to be a founding patron, with an unverified total of $88,071,428 pledged so far.

Stock Down

As CEO salaries explode, worker pay continues to stagnate

jeff bezos
CEOs got an 11% raise in 2025; workers just 0.5%. The average top exec now makes 490 years of a typical employee's wages.

Top global CEO pay increased 20 times faster than workers' pay in 2025, while at least four CEOs of major corporations each pocketed over $100 million in pay and bonuses last year.

At a time when the global workforce is concerned about keeping up with the challenges imposed by artificial intelligence in the workplace, corporate top executives are hoarding the lion's share of the profits. As they have done for centuries, the rich are not investing in their workforce, opting instead to fatten their wallets.

CEOs of the world's biggest corporations enjoyed an 11 percent real-terms pay increase last year, while the average global employee saw real wages increase by just 0.5 percent, new analysis by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and Oxfam reveals. To put it another way, top global CEO pay increased 20 times faster than global workers' pay in 2025.

Bizarro Earth

Virtue gone mad: Store manager punished more harshly than the shoplifter he stopped

store merchandise stock locked up shoplifting
© Justin Sullivan via Getty ImagesMerchandise sits behind locked cabinets at a Walgreens store on July 18, 2023 in San Francisco, California, due to rampant shoplifting.
Nietzsche thought that the decline of the Christian religion in Europe would inevitably lead to a social, cultural, and moral crisis. This was because a traditional morality based upon religious belief could not be upheld once the religious belief itself weakened or was abandoned.

This was not an original thought. The poet and essayist Matthew Arnold said much the same thing in a poem, "Dover Beach," written in the 1840s but not published until 1867, before Nietzsche:
The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar...
This, thought Arnold, had the consequence that life would have no transcendent meaning. His answer to this problem was human love, the only solution to moral, social, and intellectual chaos:

TV

Caitlin Johnstone: Dissecting an 'anti-Semitism' psyop

Starmer group
© Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 4.0PM Keir Starmer meets emergency response workers, April 30, as he visited Golders Green following stabbings
There is no evidence that pro-Palestine marches that Keir Starmer wants to ban have anything to do with anti-Semitic attacks in London. But watch how a Sky News propagandist marries the two nonetheless.

I recently watched a Sky News segment on the need to ban pro-Palestine marches that nicely illustrates the way the mass media have been working to manipulate the public into believing these demonstrations are causing anti-Semitic attacks.

Reporting on British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's recent assertion that the "repeat nature" and "cumulative effect" of pro-Palestine marches may necessitate a ban on some protests following the Golders Green stabbings, reporter Mollie Malone repeatedly told the Sky News audience that the marches are happening in the "context" of anti-Semitic incidents and "against the backdrop" of attacks on Jewish people.

Comment: Starmer does what he is told. If he didn't he wouldn't be 'there'.