Tuesday's Final Word

In the cool of the evening, when all the tabs are getting kinda groovy ...

“Senator Darline Graham” pic.twitter.com/eMkS597vcS

— Matt Laslo (@MattLaslo) July 14, 2026

Ed: Best wishes for success in the next six months, Senator Graham, and our continuing condolences for the loss of your brother. 

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Axios: President Trump's prime-time Thursday speech from the White House is slated to include election integrity, an update on Iran and whatever else he deems important, a senior adviser tells Axios.

"It will be a potpourri," the adviser said.

Why it matters: Though ever-available to reporters, Trump hasn't given many prime-time, direct-to-camera speeches from the White House. He wants to do more of them, the adviser said.

Ed: I’ve never understood why Trump and his team have not taken more advantage of this direct channel to the electorate. Trump jousts with the press every day, which is orders of magnitude more transparency than his predecessor(s) offered, but that still filters his message through the Protection Racket Media. Trump has the energy and the access to do this instead, and if he needs a foil, he can have his Cabinet secretaries sit in with him for dialogue. It’s a lot cheaper than holding rallies.

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“Women not having sex, husbands, or giving birth is a good thing actually” pretty much validates every critic of abortion and feminism and they’re too self-absorbed to even notice. https://t.co/gsdqRdbqhX

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) July 14, 2026

Ed: Not to mention the impact of delayed and lowered fertility on the strength of the social safety net programs that progressives love. Strategic thinking and gaming skills are not well developed among Leftists. Speaking of which ...

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NY Post: New York’s share of US millionaires dramatically declined in recent years, causing a nearly $11 billion loss in much-needed tax revenue in just one year, according to a bombshell new analysis.

The study released Monday by the Citizen Budget Commisison comes amid fears that socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s push to “tax the rich” will drive even more wealthy taxpayers and their businesses out of New York City.

Even before Mamdani took office, the Empire State’s share of the nation’s millionaires dipped from 12.7% to 8.7% between 2010 and 2022 – the largest decline of any state, according to the CBC’s Competitive NYS: Value Proposition Tracker dashboard.

Ed: Mamdani does not set tax policy for the state, even now. This reflects a decades-long drift by voters into big-tax progressive policies fronted by Democrats at the state level. Mamdani is just a symptom of how far the rot has spread even in the world’s most important capital-management city. Capital is portable, though, and this trend makes that excruciatingly clear. 

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This would be a reward for an Iraqi shift away from cooperating with Iran, and toward better cooperation with the US.

That's a positive trend; we'll see how far the results go. https://t.co/fSrAu8xZFY

— J.E. Dyer ☘️ (@OptimisticCon) July 14, 2026

Ed: Iraq will only shift away from cooperating with Iran when we force the IRGC to collapse. Until then, the IRGC is the strongest horse in the region, as well as the most audacious, and Iraq does not have math on its side as a counterweight to it. 

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Free Beacon: Left-wing Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed supports universal health care through a single-payer "Medicare for All" system that would cover every American "from cradle to grave." His wife, psychiatrist Sarah Jukaku, does not take Medicare or any other insurance plan, forcing her patients to pay out of pocket for the services they receive. She also appears to have scrubbed a portion of the "Frequently Asked Questions" page on her website making clear that she does not accept insurance.

Jukaku, who has a medical degree from Columbia University and a masters from the University of Oxford, worked as co-chief of psychiatry at University of Michigan Health—which does accept Medicare—before starting her own Ann Arbor, Mich.-based practice, Mind Work Psychiatry, in 2024. The following March, Jukaku opted out of Medicare, records show, meaning she cannot bill the program and requires Medicare patients to pay out of pocket. The same goes for patients with private insurance plans, though they can often submit bills to their providers and recoup some of the costs.

Ed: If there is a better demonstration of the hypocrisy in socialist systems, I’d like to see it.

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Ro Khanna isn’t pro resistance enough for Drop Site News.

Can’t make this up. pic.twitter.com/qYGEHAE4VV

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) July 14, 2026

Ed: Khanna just learned the lesson of the Pig Song. "You can tell the man who boozes by the company he chooses – and the pig got up and slowly walked away."

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NY Post editorial board: Rep. Ro Khanna’s latest showboating stunt is too much even for other Democratic electeds — not only a transparent ploy to get past his all-in bet on the Graham Platner campaign, but a transparently pathetic bid to play victim of those darn Israelis.

Just days after his scorched-earth defense of the Maine Senate candidate failed to stop the implosion, Khanna (D-Calif.) rushed off to the Middle East to change his storyline.

He headed to the West Bank, intentionally directing his entourage into a restricted zone, then pretended he’d been taken hostage by Israeli “settlers” run amok.

In reality, he was briefly stopped by local security; after the army checked out his story he was free to proceed on his inane “fact-finding” mission.

Khanna’s subsequent whining that it’s “unprecedented” and “illegal” for an “American citizen” to be stopped in a high-security area in another country is not only absurd, it’s the ultimate entitled “ugly American” behavior.

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Alas, Mr. Congressman, I'm not lying. And I started this line of questioning assuming you were telling the truth. I've written long essays on extremist Israeli violence in the West Bank. I know it happens. I was ready, at first glance, to believe it happened here. But it didn't.… https://t.co/R52qY5SJO3

— Haviv Rettig Gur (@havivrettiggur) July 13, 2026

But it didn't. This wasn't Israeli violence. This was agitprop for your American audiences.

I said explicitly that I'm not familiar with the details of that area. It took a lot of effort for JPost to find out what it found out -- which was that it was a closed military zone only recently opened.

But if you'd coordinated your visit with Israeli authorities, this would have been sorted out from the start. Those soldiers weren't angry or aggressive, they seemed mostly just confused about the status of the area and how to handle your visit.

Because, you know, there was no coordination.

Ed: There's more at the link, so click through, but this gives readers the gist of what happened. Gur points out that Khanna alleged that he'd been treated violently, but Khanna went there with a camera crew, and yet has produced no video or photographic evidence of violence. Gur challenges Khanna to produce it. It's safe to say that Khanna won't, because it doesn't exist. 

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NBC News: Mahmoud Khalil is suing the federal government and several private groups, alleging they were part of a conspiracy to suppress criticism of Israel by doxing, jailing and attempting to deport supporters of the pro-Palestinian movement.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court Tuesday, alleges a coordinated campaign among senior officials of President Donald Trump’s administration, leaders of the Heritage Foundation and two online surveillance groups, Canary Mission and Betar.

According to Khalil’s lawyers, that “public-private partnership” — first brought to light in a separate trial last year — may violate the Ku Klux Klan Act, a Reconstruction-era law that sought to restrict government coordination with vigilante groups.

Ed: Yeah, the term "vigilante" does not refer to anything that these groups do. Khalil's lawsuit has less of a chance than his fight against deportation. This is what's known as a "kitchen sink" strategy, as well as "desperation."

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Christopher Nolan dismissed all criticism of 'The Odyssey' as 'irrelevant' — and the internet took that personally.

'We don't need to see the film,' one critic wrote. 'We know you bowed to the forces that say you must hire based on skin color or protected class to win awards.'… pic.twitter.com/nl3tXzwnYK

— Fox News Entertainment (@FoxNewsEnt) July 14, 2026

Another fired back: 'Since conservatives are irrelevant, I guess Nolan is counting on every single leftist paying to see this movie 3 times so they can break even.'

The backlash centers on casting choices that critics say contradict Homer's source material — Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy, Elliot Page as a Greek soldier — plus modern dialogue in an ancient setting and a lack of Greek actors. Nolan's response? He reportedly sat there 'grinning serenely, lifting his cup and saucer and taking a theatrical sip.'

Ed: Count me somewhere in the middle on this argument. The casting choices are worthy of discussion whether one has seen the film or not. The debate about the adaptation used for the film probably should wait until people have seen the film and can judge whether it had a negative impact. Once trailers go into the public sphere, though, at least criticism of what's in the trailers is fair play, and "relevant."

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Dallas Morning News: Trump administration officials told Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to suspend most vehicle stops after two deadly shootings within a week, people familiar with the decision said Tuesday.

The policy change came after an ICE officer shot and killed a Colombian driver Monday in Maine and a week after one shot and killed a motorist in Houston, renewing criticism of the agency’s enforcement tactics that were widely condemned last winter after the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota.

The suspension allows room for exceptions when executing a criminal warrant or working with partner agencies, according to a person who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive law enforcement operations. Matthew Felling, a spokesperson for Maine Sen. Angus King, said the senator’s office was also told by the Department of Homeland Security that ICE was suspending vehicle stops.

Ed: This is a wise decision. I assume both cases involve justifiable use of lethal force, but even assuming that, it means that current policies are putting agents in lethal danger often enough to review the policies to ensure that the risks are necessary. However, with that said, the Pretti and Good shootings didn't involve car stops, and the Pretti shooting didn't involve a car at all.  

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There is a GOP primary in August to replace him on the ticket in which actual voters will participate, unlike in Maine where 600 special Democrats will replace Platner with whoever they want. https://t.co/lxcqRNDRrE

— David Marcus (@BlueBoxDave) July 13, 2026

Ed: Appointing family members to fill out a deceased senator's term is not at all a new idea. Darline Graham Nordone is the first sister of a deceased senator to be appointed, but spouses and children have been appointed in similar manners. And if there's any reason for outrage, maybe we should be looking at the Dingell seat in the House, which has been held by one family for almost a century. Wake me up when the Graham Seat hits its 50th anniversary. 

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Last night's lyric: "Double Shot of My Baby's Love" by the Swingin' Medallions. 

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