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🎶 Friday Listening: Ella Langley - Choosin' Texas

I feel like this is the closest thing we have to a Song of the Summer this year, no? What's happening in popular music right now is really fascinating, if such things interest you. This languid little country ballad has over a billion streams and has spent 15 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Meanwhile, there are currently no rap songs in the Top 10, which probably hasn't happened in 20 years. Country supplanted rap music in terms of cultural significance while nobody was paying attention.

The thing about spending two days relitigating Covid and reappraising Dr. Fauci is that it means we're now backed up on covering the real news. A ton of new polls dropped this week that, taken together, buttress many of the arguments we've been making here. Three separate, high-quality national polls have President Trump touching his lowest-ever approval ratings: CNN has him at 34%, AP-NORC is 33% and Quinnipiac puts the POTUS at 32%. These are Bush-after-Katrina numbers, which makes sense since Iran will go down as Trump's Katrina. I'm not sure how the party in power holds any seats at all in midterms with the party’s leader being that unpopular.

But allow me to introduce you to... the Democratic primary voters of America.

The next two weeks will bring primaries in Michigan and Wisconsin, both of which will serve as big tests of whether these socialist or socialist-adjacent candidates can win in purplish swing states. Spoiler alert: they can, and they almost certainly will. At least in the primary.

The Michigan Senate primary is a knifefight between Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive insurgent backed by AOC, and Rep. Haley Stevens, the establishment pick backed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and other centrist Ds. Stevens has also taken millions from AIPAC, and if/when she loses it will be proof that accepting AIPAC money is now the kiss of death for Democrats in any election. El-Sayed has opened up a shocking 15-point lead over Stevens, according to Emerson. Assuming that's even remotely accurate, Stevens is about to go down big, embarrassing Whitmer on the way. The problem — if you're one of those extinction-era Democrats like yours truly who is interested in winning elections and wielding power — is that AES or Abdul, as he's known, will have a much tougher road to plough in the general against the GOP nominee, Mike Rogers. According to a Glengariff poll, Rogers has an 11-point lead in a head-to-head against AES. Against Stevens, that lead vanishes entirely. Democrats have virtually no chance of winning back the senate if they don't hold this Michigan seat, so when AES wins on Tuesday that could be lights out for any hopes of taking that chamber. No biggie!

The following week, neighboring Wisconsin holds its primary. The race to watch in the Badger State is the gubernatorial, where the progressive Francesca Hong has a 20-30 point (!) lead over her two more moderate challengers, one of whom (Mandela Barnes) just dropped out. Hong's claim to fame is that she's a college dropout and failed restaurant owner who racked up so much credit-card debt that she was sued by Capital One for $30K and had to get her parents to bail her out.

Side note: It doesn't really matter in running for Congress, since those people don't do anything, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that I expect people running for governor to exhibit even the most basic fiscal discipline/competence in their personal lives. The governor of Wisconsin oversees an $111B budget. I'm not saying you need to show an 800 credit score in order to run for that office, but you should probably be able to lease a Honda Civic without a guarantor if you had to. That’s my bar. Call me crazy!

While AES in Michigan is a smooth and polished talker, Hong has that liberal affectation that is like nails-on-a-chalkboard to me. (Before you call me sexist, plenty of male libs have a version of it, too. I find Bernie to be the most annoying speaker in all of Congress.) You know what I mean, right? Lots of talking with the hands, lots of long-winded word salads signifying nothing. Condescending, even if they don’t mean to be. Call it the Kamala Harris style. Here's a clip of Hong answering a question the other day about her past support for abolishing the police, where she goes right into one of my least-favorite liberal talking points about how “incarcerating an individual is more expensive that college tuition.”

Wow, you're telling me that feeding, housing, clothing and keeping safe a violent criminal in what is essentially a studio apartment costs the taxpayer more money than sending an 18-year-old to a bunch of lecture hall classes? What an insightful comment!

Neither Hong nor AES have fully backed the Democratic Socialists of America. Abdul isn’t even a self-identified socialist, and hasn’t endorsed the DSA’s platform, while Hong is more on board with it. And what is that platform? Take it from the lips of the DSA's national co-chair, Megan Romer. A smirking Romer went on Fox News Sunday last weekend to explain the DSA's goals in a way almost guaranteed to turn off any normal person: Abolish the police and prisons, abolish borders, amnesty for all illegal immigrants, abolish the Pentagon and Senate (??)... and on and on.

As if that weren't off-putting enough, Romer delivered this humdinger of a quote about the socialists' methods for obtaining power: “We will win by making conditions so intolerable to the ruling class that they would rather give in to our demands than live with the disturbance we cause, until we are able to fully seize power ourselves.”

I dunno if you guys are history buffs, but political movements used to win elections by appealing to as many of their constituents as possible, not extorting them. And this is the rising wing of the Democratic Party. When the Dems lose these totally winnable elections in November — and I will bet my daughter's Tooth Fairy earnings people like AES and Hong will win big in the primaries and them flame out spectacularly in the general — the party and its voters will deserve it.

It's not all doom and gloom for us normie Ds, though. Check out some of these Fox News polls in other competitive senate races, featuring candidates who are actually adept at appealing to swing voters: Fox has Jon Ossoff +13 (!) in GA, Roy Cooper +9 in NC, Sherrod Brown +8 in OH and Josh Turek, just endorsed by Obama, +4 in Iowa.

The lesson here is that Democrats are committing many of the mistakes that Republicans did in the 2022 midterms, elevating loons over normies, and will suffer the same results if history is any guide. The blue-wave election is there for the taking. Trump has nuked his mandate. Everybody is sick of him and MAGA. But D primary voters appear committed to letting this opportunity slip away. If you wanna win national elections on a primary map that is deeply slanted toward Rs, you need to present moderate candidates to the voting public. It's really not that complicated, and yet...

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Carlo Versano is Newsweek's Director of Politics and Culture. He has in-depth knowledge and experience covering a range of topics and stories over a 20-year career in the news business. Carlo joined Newsweek in 2024 after a stint at The Messenger. Before that, he was an Emmy-winning producer at NBC News. He is a graduate of the University of Richmond and the New School. You can get in touch with Carlo by emailing [email protected].

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By Shane Croucher

"Viva España!" some of the migrants shouted to a freelance photographer as they came around the Tarajal breakwater into Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on Morocco's northern coast.

Watching from the Spanish side, Rachid Sbihi, head of the association representing Civil Guard officers in Ceuta, expressed sentiments heralding the death of Spain instead. "Absolute chaos," he said, adding that the border had "totally collapsed."

Confidence in Spain and the collapse of Spanish control, in a single moment. That collision is the key to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's confrontation with President Donald Trump.

I spoke with Florida Lt. Gov. Jay Collins over the phone about the latest investigation Florida launched into Dr. Anthony Fauci following his Capitol Hill testimony this week, where he pleaded the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer questions.

Collins praised Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, telling me, “I fully support him in doing this.” He added that “he’s standing there and defending our people and doing what he has to do.”

When I asked Collins, who is running for governor of Florida, what he would do on this issue if elected, he told me, “Well, let’s get this in a court of law.”

He emphasized, however, that the attorney general and his team will conduct the investigation to determine whether any laws were violated and whether to move forward.

Watch the phone call here.

I also asked Collins’ Republican gubernatorial primary rival, Rep. Byron Donalds’ campaign, for a statement on the issue. A spokesperson referred me to his X account, where he posted, “Attorney General James Uthmeier is right to demand answers and accountability for what happened during COVID.”

Meanwhile, another Republican gubernatorial candidate, James Fishback, told me, “Anthony Fauci lied to Americans. His lies hurt, and even killed, Americans. He must be held accountable. As Florida Governor, I will hold him accountable.”

After a few weeks away from soccer, Gianni Infantino brought me back to my favorite topic to speak about corruption. FIFA's president has managed something few thought possible: he united European soccer. Unfortunately for him, they united against him.

UEFA's 55 member associations voted unanimously Thursday to boycott the World Cup and every other FIFA competition unless Infantino scraps his plan to sell a stake in a new subsidiary, FIFA Forward Enterprise, to private investors. FIFA and Infantino announced the plan Tuesday to set up a separate subsidiary that would control the commercial and operational rights of one of the globe's biggest sporting events.

The investor expected to lead the group is Thrive, an American venture capital firm founded by Joshua Kushner, brother-in-law to Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. It's the same cast of characters as the last controversy: Infantino created the FIFA Peace Prize for Trump, intervened by phone to help clear Folarin Balogun's red card at the World Cup, and now wants to bring Kushner's firm in as a long-term investor in the tournament itself.

UEFA called the plan "irresponsible and indefensible," saying it was "conceived in secret and brought to the brink of approval without any meaningful consultation." Concacaf, FIFA's own regional body, joined UEFA in rejecting the proposal, as did some voices within the AFC.

Infantino spent a decade positioning himself as the reformer who cleaned up FIFA after Sepp Blatter's resignation. Now Europe is accusing him of doing something Blatter never attempted: putting the World Cup itself up for sale. Infantino has offered FIFA's 211 members $20 million each to sign off, with a deadline in mid-September.

Whether that offer outweighs Germany, France, Spain and England walking away from his tournament is the question hanging over the sport heading into fall.

The new American wellness politics begins in the glow of an open refrigerator.

MAHA turned health anxiety into a lifestyle brand, making food, trust and family wellness the new front in America’s culture war.

“My sixth grade geography class could do better.”

— Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, responding to a U.S. government presentation at an AIDS conference in Brazil that displayed a map of Africa with every country mislabeled. A Reuters analysis found the image contained an AI watermark indicating it was created with OpenAI tools.

On this episode of The 1600, Carlo sits down with Georgetown professor Dr. Charles King to explore the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. They discuss what modern America can learn from Ancient Rome, examining its culture, political institutions, and the challenges facing democracy.

Watch the latest episode here. ⬅

Newsweek is part of the Trust Project, which focuses on honesty, accuracy and fairness in journalism. Read more about our best practices. To get in touch with our newsroom with suggestions on how to point out possible errors, please contact us at [email protected].