Let’s face it – everyzing below ze tabs es kaput ...
Chicago woman mocks Democrats by speaking in a squeaky, high-pitched voice, who say black people's voting rights are in danger.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 18, 2026
The woman also called out the commissioners one by one to their faces.
"I'm 63 years old. I've been voting since I was 18. I have never had a… pic.twitter.com/7wzQ7zPKEn
Ed: All Democrats have to sell if fear itself. They spend all of their time stoking panic and insisting that the end of the world is coming, whether that be from global warming or Orange Man Bad. And these days, they have something else to sell as well ...
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San Antonio Current: Controversy-tarred congressional candidate Maureen Galindo this week pledged to transform a site south of San Antonio now used by the Trump administration to detain migrants into an internment camp for “American Zionists.”
“She’ll turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking,” Galindo wrote in an Instagram post over the weekend, referring to herself in the third person. “It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles, which will probably be most of the Zionists.”
Ed: This appears to be real. As of this afternoon, the Instagram link takes you to her campaign account, and the post does contain that language ... and a lot more. She's running against Bexar County Sheriff Johnny Garcia, who has to be grateful for this kind of lunatic for an opponent. I wonder when Graham Platner will show up to campaign for her.
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A democrat candidate for congress is suggesting a concentration camps for Americans who support Israel.
— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) May 19, 2026
I can't believe the world I am raising my children in. Like, I actually can't believe this is America in 2026.
(also I'm a zionist, so she wants me imprisoned too). https://t.co/ZDFAZ70V3l
Ed: Me too. And I live closer to Bexar County than Meghan does. More seriously, I have said this a number of times now: I feel as though I went to bed on October 6, 2023 in America, and woke up on October 7 in the "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" scene from Cabaret.
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Creepy Scott Wiener campaign event featured drag queens including one mocking women while dressed as a pig singing “Wiener is a girl’s best friend” in front of kids
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 18, 2026
This is one the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen pic.twitter.com/Ceaz5oSWfT
Ed: San Francisco, man. Weiner probably knows his voters better than we do. But what's with the pig nose? As far as the kids being there, that's on the parents. I'm much more opposed to having this kind of performative sexualization taking place at events aimed at and presented for children. If Weiner wants to have drag queens perform at his campaign events, that's more of an adult environment and an adult choice.
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Fox News: Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who is already facing criticism over past Reddit posts, made graphic sexual comments on his now-deleted account about masturbating in portable toilets and explicit graffiti found in military restrooms.
In one March 2017 post on Reddit’s r/Military forum, Platner responded to a discussion about nostalgic military smells by writing: "I still have to jerk off every time I sit in a portas----er… that blue water smell conditioned me."
The archived posts were made under "P-Hustle," a now-deleted Reddit account that Platner previously acknowledged was his.
Ed: Beege wrote about this earlier today from her perspective as a veteran. He's a real piece of work and it's worth pointing out, but this doesn't come close to the despicable nature of his Totenkopf tattoo and his remarks about rape. I worry that the next rounds of oppo-research reveals will be more puerile and petty, and wind up distracting from Platner's Nazi-curious record of almost two decades, not to mention his cheerleading for communism.
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Asked Senate GOP Leader John Thune — who had lobbied Trump for months to back Cornyn — about whether Trump’s backing of Paxton makes his job of keeping Senate harder.
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) May 19, 2026
“One state doesn't determine the outcome of this election,” he said, predicting they’ll hang onto the majority pic.twitter.com/eEblWeWhRJ
Ed: Meh. I think Cornyn may have had a slight edge over Paxton when it comes to Talarico, which I mentioned earlier, but in the end I think it's six of one and half a dozen of the other. Talarico is a Temu Beto, and while Paxton has baggage, he probably also has a better chance of energizing the Texas GOP base than Cornyn. Right now, I'd bet that Talarico is near his ceiling (46ish percent, maybe), while both Cornyn and Paxton are near their floors because of the runoff. Let's look at polling in August and see how this shakes out by that point. Paxton has won statewide elections too, while Talarico has only run in state legislative districts.
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Taylor Millard at WashEx: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton enters the May 26 Republican primary runoff against Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) with a fundraising gap that could prove fatal to his campaign.
And unusually for a race of this size, Paxton allies are pointing the finger at a single donor: Leonard Leo, the conservative powerbroker sitting atop a reported $1 billion-plus war chest, large portions of which he had previously deployed to make Paxton the GOP political force he is today, but which are now parked safely on the sidelines as Paxton faces the toughest fight of his political life.
Leo is not a household name in Texas, but his fingerprints are on a substantial portion of the conservative legal infrastructure that defines modern Republican politics. He helped build the Federalist Society into the primary pipeline for conservative judicial nominees. Every Supreme Court justice appointed by Donald Trump was recommended by the Federalist Society. The same network that shaped the federal judiciary also spent a decade shaping Paxton.
Ed: Hot Air readers should remember our friend and former contributor Taylor Millard, and he made a very interesting observation yesterday. Leo and TFS probably likes Cornyn too and may want to remain neutral here .... or did until Trump made his endorsement today. Trump got crosswise with Leo a year ago after getting adverse rulings from judges Trump appointed based on TFS recommendations. Leo may have been playing it safe. Let's see if Leo jumps into the runoff after this.
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Horrible Congressman Thomas Massie put out an old Endorsement, from many years ago, of him by me long before I found out that he was the Worst Congressman in the History of our Country. I endorsed Ed Gallrein, a true American Patriot, which Massie knows full well, so the…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 19, 2026
... so the statement that he put out is fraudulent, just like HE is fraudulent. WITHDRAW YOUR FAKE STATEMENT, MASSIE, RIGHT NOW! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Ed: Trump posted to Twitter/X for the first time since the start of the war. He must have really gotten angry to post that directly onto that platform. He also posted similar thoughts on Truth Social, of course.
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NY Times: In the fight to be the next Texas attorney general, Chip Roy has been on the ropes.
A hard-line Republican congressman who has at times broken with President Trump, Mr. Roy has weathered a barrage of negative ads from a wealthy and self-funded opponent, Mayes Middleton.
But the Republican primary for attorney general of Texas, a powerful position and a national conservative bellwether, could be upended in its final days because of a last-minute infusion of $2.75 million to Mr. Roy’s campaign from a single donor.
The contribution from Alex Fairly, an Amarillo businessman and emerging big-money Republican donor in Texas, was the largest in an influx of campaign cash that Mr. Roy reported raising in recent days, according to filings released late Monday. It could boost Mr. Roy’s odds in the final week of the race, which is a runoff. Early voting has already begun and the election is May 26.
Ed: I don't think I've seen any Middleton ads, but Roy is in nearly every ad break on the streaming channels I watch. I'm surprised he was behind in fundraising. How much impact will that have in the final week? And why did Fairly wait this long to drop this much money in the race?
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Sitting in a restaurant next to two boomer men who are probably mid70s. They begin by lamenting their Trump relatives aren’t grounded in reality and have been poisoned by Fox News and Mark Levin. They move on to how the Clintons were spies for Israel and the Jews are gonna steal…
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) May 19, 2026
They move on to how the Clintons were spies for Israel and the Jews are gonna steal the election from Thomas Massie tonight.
Ed: Hey, was Erick in Bexar County, by any chance?
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Shipwreckedcrew: It a real life version of “Cool Hand Luke” —
Luke is told the ground he’s standing on is Boss Kean’s ditch, his dirt is filling up Boss Kean’s ditch, and he needed to dig his dirt out of Boss Kean’s ditch. After digging the dirt out — really just digging his own grave — another prison guard tells Luke “I’ll be damned if you are going to put your dirt in my yard,” and tells him to use his dirt to fill up the hole he’s standing in. After Luke fills up the hole, the first Boss comes back and asks why he hasn’t removed the dirt from Boss Kean’s ditch like he was told.
In 2022, a federal judge in the Middle District of Louisiana held that Louisiana’s newly drawn congressional district map after the 2020 Census, with only one “Majority-Minority” district violated Sec. 2 of the Voting Rights Act because Louisiana needed two “majority-minority” districts to address the remaining vestiges of historical discrimination against the black population of the state.
While appealing that decision, but wanting to have a compliant map for the 2022 elections in case it lost the appeal, Louisiana drew SB8 above — creating a second “majority-minority” district as ordered.
But Louisiana was sued again in 2023 over SB8, with the plaintiffs alleging that the explicit use of race to create SB8 violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. A special three-judge panel that hears such cases ruled in favor of the challengers, finding the SB8 map above to be a racial gerrymander that violated the 14th Amendment.
Ed: If you need a detailed and thorough explanation of the decision in Callais, you won't find one better than this. The Cool Hand Luke reference just makes it more colorful and relatable. 'Catch-22' comes to mind, too.
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Hunter going on Candace to say that Democrats ran Biden out of the 2024 race because "he was never part of the Epstein class" may ultimately be what does me in https://t.co/zCPxzgpeNm
— Andrew Egger (@EggerDC) May 19, 2026
Ed: The claim by Hunter that his father wasn't part of "the DC elite of the Left" is nonsense. Biden Inc existed to cash in on those connections to power. And that may be the least crazy moment in this clip.
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Alexander Larman in The Spectator: Regardless of whether you are an especially big fan of Star Wars or not, there is no denying the way that the first film completely reshaped the American cinematic landscape when it emerged in 1977. Becoming an even bigger hit than Spielberg’s Jaws two years before and laying the groundwork for virtually every big-budget science-fiction fantasy that followed ever since. Its sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, is justifiably believed to be one of the seminal films ever made, introducing elements of moral ambiguity and genuine wit into the series.
Yet when Disney paid the big bucks for Lucasfilm, they were not thinking about moral ambiguity or wit, but instead as to how they could monetize the franchise for all that it was worth. The first revived Star Wars picture, The Force Awakens, was an enormous hit – at one point, the highest-grossing film ever made – and initially the investment seemed justified. Then amid massive controversy as to the sequel, The Last Jedi, the gilt soon came off the gingerbread. Lucasfilm and Disney were accused, rightly, of pursuing wokery over coherent plotting or characterization, which led to a feeling of contempt both for the series and for its audiences. Show any old rubbish on screen, and the dumb millions will show up for it, because it’s got Star Wars branding on it. How else can you explain one of the worst line readings in cinema, Oscar Isaac’s notorious “Somehow, Palpatine returned”, from Rise of Skywalker?
Whatever you make of George Lucas, who has now been absent from cinema since 2005’s Revenge of the Sith, he was at least a visionary, whose dedication to putting something new and thrilling on screen made up for his lack of skill with actors or dialogue. Nobody who has come after Lucas has ever had his innate understanding of the Star Wars universe, which has meant instead that there are as many as yet unmade projects floating around as there are existing uses of the IP.
Ed: This is meant to answer the question of how Disney ruined Star Wars. All of this is accurate but not complete, but Larman comes closest when he talks about Lucas' vision being the major missing element. Christian Toto and I discussed this a bit in our OTBP podcast episode today, but the real problem is that Disney feminized the Star Wars universe rather than lean into its appeal to boys. Disney had princess IPs galore, and other original material oriented to girls, and sticking with the original orientation would have given them the greatest synergy. Instead, they caved to the feminists and sucked the life out of it.
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First current political candidate suggests concentration camps for American Jews.
— Jared Moskowitz (@JaredEMoskowitz) May 19, 2026
This should be national news!
National Democratic leaders must call this out immediately https://t.co/uS8rOjLFG1
Ed: Can't wait to hear from the Obama Bros about how we need to put Galindo into context. But yes, Moskowitz is right – and this is an easy test case to boot. Of course, I thought the Nazi tattoo on the guy who claimed that women who don't wear Kevlar underwear bear some responsibility for their sexual assault was a pretty easy test case too.
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Yo Nick, Let's jam. ❤️ https://t.co/mX8CuyfhGc
— John Ondrasik (@johnondrasik) May 19, 2026
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