Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., won the Republican primary for Kentucky's U.S.
Senate seat, which opened when Sen. Mitch McConnell decided not to seek
an eighth term.
Newsmax and Decision Desk HQ called the race for Barr, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump, about an hour after polls closed.
With 34% of votes counted, Barr had 59.8%, followed by former state
Attorney General Daniel Cameron at 31.9%
and nine other candidates.
Barr will be the heavy favorite to succeed McConnell in a state Trump
won by nearly 31 percentage points in the 2024 election. McConnell, 84,
was the GOP Senate leader from 2007 to 2025, the longest tenure for any
party leader in the upper chamber's history.
Barr would have faced entrepreneur Nate Morris, who was endorsed by
Donald Trump Jr. and received financial support from Elon Musk. In a
Truth Social post
shortly before endorsing Barr, the president said he had asked Morris
to "step aside" from the race to join his administration as an
ambassador.
"Nate is a terrific businessman and strong MAGA Warrior," Trump wrote, adding that he will announce Morris' specific role soon.
Shortly afterward, Morris posted on X that he was proud to join the Trump administration and, in another post, endorsed Barr.
Barr's opponent in the November general election will be former state Rep. Charles Booker.
Newsmax and DecisionDesk HQ called
the race for Booker, who had 46.7% of the vote with about 95% counted.
Next was former Marine pilot Amy McGrath at 35.9%, followed by five
other candiates.
Booker narrowly defeated McGrath in the 2020 Democrat primary before losing to McConnell in the general election.
Democrats have not won a U.S. Senate race in Kentucky since 1992.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08) has
always had a slightly desperate air about him since he took over the
reins from Rep. Nancy Pelosi in November 2022. He lives in her shadow,
and in fact, many observers consider him her puppet.
He has grown increasingly bitter over the years as his political
impotence is exposed almost daily by the Republicans, who keep trumping
him on issue after issue. He's gone from just being generally unlikable
to bitter, vitriolic, and resentful, and his endless rage stands in
stark contrast to the optimism and hope that Trump and the GOP radiate.
He
was at it again on Tuesday, using inciting rhetoric at a progressive
event to further inflame his base. Even in an era where we’ve seen
increased political violence, this is the kind of language he inexplicably finds appropriate:
Jeffries, who stands to gain the House speaker’s gavel if Democrats take the majority in the midterm election,
said that "part of how we as House Democrats view this moment, either
MAGA extremists are going to break the country, or we're going to break
them, and our goal is to break them."
During the panel, Jeffries assured, "As a guarantee, we are taking back control of the United States House of Representatives in November."
"We
will defeat them," he continued. "We have to beat them electorally, and
then we have to break their spirit, because of the extremism that's
being unleashed on the American people, that's completely and totally
unacceptable."
What even is this?! He wants to
“break” over half the voters in this country (77 million) who chose
Trump in ’24? That’s some pretty sick stuff.
Minnesota GOP Rep. Walter Hudson summed things up nicely:
Conservative Actor/Director/Producer/Author Nick Searcy, director of “Gosnell,” had some choice words for the divisive NY rep: “The good guys don't say things like this. The super villains do.”
Hakeem
the Extreme wasn’t done, though. On Tuesday, he stood on the Capitol
steps, joining forces with the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus
(CBC), to stoke racial division by calling on black athletes to boycott
the powerhouse athletic conference, the Southeastern Conference (SEC),
to protest redistricting areas in southern states.
You mean the kind of redistricting effort that you heartily endorsed just days ago in Virginia, and an illegal gambit that even the VA Supreme Court couldn’t stomach? Or the kind of trashing of the state constitution promulgated by California Gov. Gavin Newsom with his Prop. 50 scheme?
Let’s see if we can undermine race relations and send them back to another era:
Leader @hakeemjeffries:
This is an unprecedented moment with an attack on Black political
representation, and it requires an unprecedented response. We are here
in solidarity with the NAACP and its call for athletes to boycott SEC
institutions in these states that have unleashed these Jim Crow racially
oppressive tactics.
Bitterness, angst, fear,
and hate: those appear to be the Democrats’ main political postures
since Biden was finally exposed as a puppet president and sent packing.
Hakeem is even outdoing his sclerotic counterpart in the Senate, Chuck
Schumer (D-NY), and it’s dangerous.
No matter how much rage and
hate rhetoric Jeffries spouts, it will never make him captivating or
appealing to anyone but his most hardcore acolytes. In the meantime,
however, he’s doing a lot of damage.
After warning that NYC faces a budget crisis of “historic magnitude” in late April, Mamdani
now assures the 8.5 million residents of the Big Apple that the city is
on “firm financial footing” after he “balanced the budget” “without
raising property taxes” or “slashing services.”
While it is
certainly true that Mamdani did not slash services or raise property
taxes even higher than they already are, it is ludicrous for him to
declare that NYC’s budget is sound and sustainable.
Aside from Mamdani’s smoke-and-mirrors budget summary, the harsh reality is that the Big Apple is bankrupt.
According to NYC Comptroller Mark Levine,
the “$2.2 billion budget shortfall for FY2026 and projected $10.4
billion gap for FY2027… is the first time since the Great Recession that
the City faces a budget shortfall of this magnitude.”
Based on Mamdani’s “balanced budget,” the FY 2026 and FY 2027 deficits are no longer a concern.
Much
of the gap has been taken care of by what Mamdani calls a “partnership
with Albany.” New Yorkers outside of the Big Apple call it a bailout.
“Thanks
to Governor Kathy Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins
and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, the City secured an additional $4
billion in state support and actions to help stabilize the budget,”
Mamdani bluntly put it.
However, Albany could not supply enough money to make the short-term math work.
Thus, Mamdani’s balanced budget relies upon accounting gimmicks and “new tax revenue.”
“A considerable amount of savings comes from a delay of payments into
New York City’s municipal pension funds, a measure that Mamdani said
could save $1.6 billion in the upcoming fiscal year,” reports TIME.
In
budget parlance, this is known as “restructuring unfunded pension
liability.” It is also referred to as kicking the can down the road.
In
this case, it is an accounting atrocity because NYC miscalculated the
return on pension investments for years, thereby creating an additional
$27 billion unfunded pension liability on top of the enormous amount of
money NYC has already promised to current and future public employees.
For
context, NYC spends nearly $30 billion per year on pension payments and
debt service compared to about $95 billion for all agencies and
services.
In the NYC budget pie chart, two agencies, the
Department of Education and Department of Social Services, eat up
approximately two-thirds of the $94.7 billion in spending.
Meanwhile,
the uniformed agencies (NYPD, FDNY, DSNY) are allotted 12 percent of
the total budget, health 5 percent, and transportation 2 percent.
I
highlight this to demonstrate that spending more money on services like
public education by no means guarantees better services.
Although Mamdani claims that he achieved his miraculous balanced
budget via “strong fiscal management” and “aggressive savings,” that
could not be further from the truth.
Austerity measures are like kryptonite to the democratic socialist agenda.
Already,
after being in office less than six months, Mamdani has turbocharged
the NYC nanny state with “free childcare” and government-run grocery
stores.
His FY2027 budget is chock-full of new public programs
and more money for existing programs, especially “help for homeless”
people. In 2020, NYC spent $200 million on homeless programs. In 2027,
it will likely exceed $2 billion.
Predictably, Mamdani repeatedly
referred to “taxing the rich” as the magic budget bullet. However, his
proposed pied-à-terre-tax, which needs to be approved by the NYC
Council, would amount to just a drop in the revenue bucket.
As
Mamdani and the NYC Council squabble over the FY 2027 budget, the real
story is that even under Mamdani’s dream budget scenario, NYC faces
projected budget shortfalls of $7 billion in FY 2028, $9 billion in FY
2029, and $9.7 billion in FY 2030.
Meanwhile, Albany does not
have the wherewithal to provide future Big Apple bailouts because the
Empire State is also on the verge of bankruptcy.
In February 2026, the New York State Comptroller
warned that “the trajectory of projected State spending is estimated to
increase at a rate faster than expected revenues, creating cumulative
outyear budget gaps estimated by the Division of Budget to total $27.5
billion through SFY 2030 while reserves remain stagnant.”
Unlike the federal government, which can run giant annual deficits by
printing money, states and cities must balance their budgets,
eventually.
The oldest trick in the book, raising revenue, is
already producing diminishing returns in NYC and New York because most
of the revenue generators have skipped town and state for locales that
welcome them with very low taxes.
Earlier this year, Mamdani
alluded to the fact that he thinks property taxes would need to be
raised again, possibly to 9.5 percent, to keep New York City afloat.
New
York City deserves better than this. New York City residents should
demand a freeze on new spending; waste, fraud, and corruption
investigations into existing programs; accountability for those who
misspent public funds; and at least a 9.5 percent across-the-board cut
from the bureaucratic management levels at both the Department of
Education and Department of Public Services.
On Tuesday night, Republican Representative Thomas Massie suffered a
humiliating defeat to Republican challenger Ed Gallrein in the Kentucky
US House 4 Primary. It appears the incumbent Massie will lose by almost
10 points. On CNN, Republican commentator Scott Jennings weighed in on the trouncing. Jennings says Massie wasn’t MAGA, and voters resented him fighting against President Donald Trump’s America-first agenda.
Here’s Jennings with his Massie primary post-mortem. (WATCH)
You
don’t tug on Superman’s cape, spit into the wind, pull the mask off the
ole’ Lone Ranger, or mess around with … Trump! My KY-04 analysis for
CNN tonight. pic.twitter.com/YgZCdhBSXA
Massie indeed had a lot of support, but it was mostly from the Democrats.
Posters cheekily admit that’s a clear sign that Massie’s reelection hopes deserved to go down in flames.
Can’t
believe getting endorsed by Ro Khanna, Cenk Uygur, and the New York
Times didn’t clinch the Republican primary victory for Massie. I just
don’t know what to believe anymore
— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) May 20, 2026
Ro Khanna, Cenk Uygur, the NYT… I haven’t seen so much political firepower collected in one place since Brat Summer™️
Sadly,
this is only partially correct. Thomas Massie will be offered a
lucrative position as a contributor on a far left outlet like CNN or
MSNBC. There’s nothing the legacy media loves more than giving a
Republican airtime to bash fellow Republicans.
Undoubtedly,
he’ll probably soon be rubbing shoulders on cable ‘news’ programs with
fellow pre-Trump ‘Republican’ luminaries like Ana Navarro, Michael
Steele, and Joe Scarborough.
In a demonstration of his enduring grip on the Republican electorate,
President Donald Trump appeared to score another major intra-party
victory as the Associated Press officially called the race in favor of Ed Gallrein, defeating incumbent Representative Thomas Massie in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District Republican primary.
With polls closed and results coming in, Gallrein took a clear lead.
Earlier in the day, he was already projected to win by a slew of news
networks as he held roughly a 54%-46% advantage in early counting —
delivering a blow to one of Capitol Hill’s most independent and
libertarian-leaning lawmakers.
The contest, which became the most expensive House primary in U.S.
history with tens of millions spent, pitted a Trump loyalist against an
incumbent who has repeatedly clashed with the president and GOP
leadership.
Massie, an MIT-educated engineer who had held the northern Kentucky
seat since 2012, often highlighted areas of alignment with conservative
principles. However, his votes against key short-term government funding
measures and opposition to signature Trump-backed legislation
ultimately proved too much for Republican voters to overlook.
The campaign drew massive national attention and heavy financial
intervention. Gallrein, a farmer and retired U.S. Navy SEAL, centered
his campaign on loyalty to President Trump’s second-term agenda. The
White House and Trump allies also notably deployed strong support,
including an appearance by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth the day before
the vote.
There, Hegseth publicly criticized Massie’s pattern of obstruction.
During his Monday campaign stop in Northern Kentucky, Hegseth leaned
heavily into military and battle analogies to describe Massie, calling
him an “obstructionist” and slamming him for breaking party unity during
a period of international conflict.
“Too often, Thomas Massie has acted like his job is to stand apart
from the movement that President Trump leads, instead of strengthening
it. When President Trump needs backup, Massie wants to debate process,”
the Pentagon chief said.
“President Trump needs reinforcements, and that’s what war fighters
do. They stand behind leaders and have their back. War fighters
understand mission, they understand teamwork, they understand loyalty.
And they understand that in the middle of a fight, you don’t weaken your
own side,” he added.
Meanwhile, Massie’s defeat was also driven by a multi-million-dollar
wave of outside negative advertising and conservative donors angered by
his consistent opposition to foreign aid packages, including funding for
Israel, and his votes against related symbolic measures.
Additionally, in the final week, Massie faced personal allegations
from a former partner regarding a congressional staff matter. He denied
them as lies and rumors, but the controversy added to the momentum
against him among traditional conservative voters.
The Allegations
Cynthia West, a former girlfriend of Massie who dated him for about
six months between late 2024 and early 2025, alleged that he had helped
secure her a temporary congressional aide position in the office of
Representative Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), one of Massie’s close allies in
the House. West claimed that the arrangement was intended to allow her
to spend more time with Massie in Washington, D.C.
According to West, after her relationship with Massie ended, she was
wrongfully terminated from Spartz’s office after raising concerns about a
toxic work environment. She alleged that Massie later personally
offered her $5,000 in cash to drop a formal wrongful termination
complaint against Spartz. West also claimed she was offered a separate
$60,000 settlement through official channels to settle the dispute with
Spartz’s office, which she turned down because it required signing a
strict nondisclosure agreement (NDA).
“It’s sad that a week before this election people are making false
and unsubstantiated allegations about me in an obvious attempt to
influence the outcome of this election… I’ve never offered anyone money
in exchange for their silence,” Massie said in response to the
allegations.
According to analysts, with Gallrein’s projected victory, President
Trump has once again shown that even entrenched incumbents who choose
repeated confrontation over cooperation cannot withstand the power of
his political movement.
This builds on other recent successes, including the primary defeat of Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy. Since Kentucky’s 4th
District remains a solidly Republican stronghold along the Ohio River,
Gallrein is all but guaranteed to win the seat in November’s general
election — adding another strong voice to a House GOP that is
increasingly aligned with Trump’s agenda.
Senator John Cornyn’s offhand “I think that ship has finally sailed”
comment about a possible presidential endorsement was not just a shrug —
it was a concession. President Donald Trump has now publicly thrown his
weight behind Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Republican
Senate runoff, ending weeks of arm‑waving and wishful thinking. For a
race where every vote and every activist matters, that two‑step —
Cornyn’s admission followed by Trump’s endorsement — is the moment that
rewired the contest.
Trump’s endorsement changed the dynamics
Make
no mistake: a presidential nod in a tight Texas GOP runoff moves the
needle. Polling showed Paxton with momentum heading into early voting,
and Trump’s endorsement supercharged that base energy. Cornyn had hoped
neutrality or a last‑minute intervention might save him, but his “ship
has sailed” line exposed the reality — the base had already decided, and
the president answered their call. That is what endorsements do: they
turn enthusiasm into turnout, and in a runoff every turnout point
matters.
Why the SAVE Act offer mattered — and why it was a political bluff
Paxton
dangled the SAVE Act — a relentless voter‑ID measure — as his
bargaining chip, saying he’d consider dropping out if Senate Republicans
rammed it through. It was a clever bit of theater aimed at Trump
loyalists who want big, bold election security changes. But anyone who
knows how the Senate works knew it was unlikely to happen on Paxton’s
timetable. Cornyn’s team should have called that bluff and run hard on
conservative results instead of letting the spectacle become the story.
Cornyn’s misplay — and what he can still do
Look,
Cornyn is a seasoned senator and a smart politician, but this campaign
tasted too much like inside baseball. He seemed to assume an endorsement
was negotiable like a trade at the country club. That was naive. If he
loses the runoff, he’ll have only himself to blame for misreading the
mood of the Republican base and underestimating Trump’s sway. If he
wins, he needs to move fast to prove he can deliver conservative wins —
and stop treating grassroots voters like an afterthought.
The stakes for November and the GOP
The
bigger worry isn’t just who wins the runoff — it’s whether the party
can stop fighting itself long enough to defend the Senate seat in
November. Paxton carries baggage that Democrats will exploit in a
general election, and Cornyn would be a weaker general‑election nominee
if he survives the runoff bruised and divided. Republicans should want a
clear outcome and then a united front. The messy drama of last‑minute
endorsements and public concessions is exactly the kind of show
Democrats sell to independents.
At this point the lesson is
simple: stop making politics into polite factional theater. If Trump
wanted to settle the matter, he did. If Cornyn wanted the endorsement,
he should have courted it before the game was half over. Now both camps
must pick up the pieces, rally the voters, and prove that conservative
principles win when they’re argued for, not outsourced to drama. The
voters in Texas don’t need another inside‑the‑Beltway script — they need
results and respect.
President Trump followed through on a promise that would have made
previous administrations choke on their secrecy: he directed federal
agencies to begin identifying and releasing government files related to
unidentified anomalous phenomena, a move framed as putting power back in
the hands of the American people rather than shadowy bureaucrats. This
is the kind of bold, unapologetic transparency voters were promised —
and too often denied — by elites who prefer cover-ups to accountability.
On
May 8, 2026 the Pentagon began publishing an initial batch of
declassified UAP files as part of a rolling disclosure initiative,
making previously hidden documents accessible to citizens who have a
right to know what their government has been investigating for decades.
The administration has organized the releases under a new system meant
to stream records to the public rather than bury them in dusty archives.
Conservative
patriots should applaud a president willing to challenge the permanent
class in Washington that hoards information under the guise of secrecy.
For years, whisper networks and anonymous officials treated the public
curiosity about aerial phenomena as fodder for ridicule instead of
legitimate concern, and it’s refreshing to see an administration choose
openness over another bureaucratic stonewall.
Make no mistake:
some in the establishment and their allied media are already trying to
spin the disclosures into a two-step process of gaslighting — claiming
“nothing to see” while simultaneously scoffing at the very idea of
accountability. Conservatives know better than to let Democrat
operatives and coastal pundits shut down the debate; the files deserve
sober examination, not reflexive dismissal.
There are legitimate
national security considerations, and responsible declassification must
protect sensitive sources and methods, but that should never be an
excuse for an open-ended cover-up. Defense leaders have said the process
will be handled carefully and in coordination with agencies, which is
appropriate — but vigilance is required to ensure redactions aren’t used
to protect political favorites or well-connected insiders.
This
first release is a promise delivered; it’s now on everyday Americans,
their elected representatives, and honest reporters to follow the trail.
If you value truth, you should demand that this administration keep
moving forward, that Congress hold oversight where needed, and that the
media stop reflexively protecting the permanent government and start
doing its job for the people.
told Newsmax on Monday that
President Donald Trump should suspend negotiations with Iran and instead
move aggressively to choke off Tehran's economy by seizing strategic
locations, including Kharg Island.
"I cannot believe how reasonable he's been in this whole process and how measured he's been," Kellogg told "Rob Schmitt Tonight."
Earlier Monday, Trump said he had called off
a planned strike against Iran because there was still "a good chance" a
deal could be reached, despite the White House rejecting Tehran's
latest nuclear proposal as inadequate.
The Iranian proposal included broader language pledging not to pursue
a nuclear weapon but did not contain specific commitments to halt
uranium enrichment or surrender existing stockpiles of highly enriched
uranium.
Kellogg argued the administration should stop negotiating altogether.
"What I'm saying is I think we should break negotiations off," Kellogg said.
Kellogg said the United States should seize Kharg Island, Iran's primary oil export terminal in the Persian Gulf.
"We should seize Kharg Island for a couple of reasons," Kellogg said.
"One, it controls 90% of their economy. You put the whole country at
risk, especially the leadership."
Kharg Island handles most of Iran's crude oil exports and is widely viewed as economically vital to the regime.
Kellogg also called for U.S. forces to take Larak Island, which he
described as Iran's command-and-control position near the Strait of
Hormuz.
"You take Larak Island, which is your command-and-control hub for the strait," he said. "You put your Marines in there."
Kellogg said the U.S. Navy should then position minesweepers to keep shipping lanes open.
"You line up your Avenger-class minesweepers, and you escort everybody out of the Gulf on the Omani side," he said.
The retired general warned against trusting Iranian officials during
negotiations, specifically mentioning Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas
Araghchi.
"I don't trust the Iranians, the Revolutionary Guards at all,"
Kellogg said. "We're falling right into Araghchi … the playbook that he
set out."
Kellogg argued that targeting Iran's economic survival would be more effective than solely eliminating military leaders.
"That's the reason I said, you go after a place like Kharg Island,
you take away their economy, you put them at risk, you strangle them,"
he said.
Asked how long such a strategy would take to weaken the regime,
Kellogg said he believed the pressure could produce results relatively
quickly.
"I don't think it takes years. It may not even take months," he said.
Kellogg also openly endorsed regime change in Tehran.
"Does it mean regime change? Yeah, because you cannot deal with a theocratic government," he said. "These guys are thugs."
He said the U.S. should make clear negotiations are no longer the priority.
"You basically say, 'You have my phone number. Give me a call when
you want to talk,'" Kellogg said. "But you put everything they own at
risk right now."
As we reported, TMZ thought they had a big scoop when they found out
that Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt had stayed at the Hotel
Bel Air, rather than only in an Airstream trailer on his burned-out
lot.
Democrats thought they had something and attacked him over the hotel
stay. Of course, that was a bit of a self-own, because the reason that
Pratt has no real place to live is because of what he alleges to be the
incompetence of people like Mayor Karen Bass (D) in responding to the
2025 Palisades fire. So they really didn't help themselves.
Then, too, one of the things that makes Pratt's campaign different from others is that he seems to understand
how to point out his opponents' absurdity. In this case, in response,
he posted a video that was a takeoff on the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" TV
series to mock their attack on his hotel stay.
And it was awesome. "Now
this is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down,"
Pratt explained.
He showed again why he's inspiring people with his gift for communication.
Then,
news of a new serious fire broke, and that hit one of Pratt's main
issues, after having lost his own house because of the Palisades fire.
A fast-moving wildfire
dubbed the Sandy Fire broke out on Monday in Simi Valley, a Ventura
County city about 35 miles northwest of Los Angeles. The area burnt has
now expanded to 836 acres, according to the Ventura County Fire
Department. They even had to evacuate the Reagan Library, as we
reported. About 550 firefighters have been deployed in response.
Pratt's
X timeline was full of concern for the people and areas affected. The
fire was in Ventura County, but the Los Angeles Fire Department was
providing some assistance.
He also made the general point
that the Los Angeles Fire Department now has about three dozen fewer
firefighters than when the Palisades fire hit, "while Karen Bass is
worried about meth-heads new grills [teeth]." "Folks, you need to vote
like your life depends on it, because it does," Pratt declared.
It's
a reminder of the importance of voting for people who are competent to
be able to address important issues. Because if the people in power
fail, there can be some serious consequences. And we've seen that
failure for a long time in Los Angeles, from fires to crime and
homelessness.
