The Squad will fight another day

The 2024 primary season is slowly coming to a close — and last night’s marquee election saw a rare big win for the left-wing Squad in the House of Representatives: Congresswoman Ilhan Omar vanquished an underfunded opponent in the Democratic primary to avoid the fates of Congressmen Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman.

Following the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, the pro-Israel community was galvanized to challenge some of the most openly anti-Israel members of Congress. It successfully trained its fire on Bush and Bowman, who both carried major liabilities unrelated to foreign policy. Bush opposed signature bills of the Biden administration and used campaign funds to hire private security while publicly supporting defunding the police, and Bowman’s predilection for illegally pulling fire alarms did him no favor. 

Following her defeat, Bush went on a bizarre screed, telling AIPAC that she will tear its “kingdom” down, warning her opponents that they “radicaliz[ed]” her and would get “this whole other Cori” and celebrated that she would not longer have “strings attached” to her. 

Omar, however, won her primary by nearly fourteen points despite her surprisingly narrow primary win last cycle. Her victory ensures that she, along with Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, will be among the Squad’s members in office next year.

Elsewhere, Donald Trump’s endorsement in an open-seat GOP primary likely powered gas station owner Tony Wied to a plurality victory in Wisconsin’s 8th district to succeed Congressman Mike Gallagher. He also backed Congresswoman Michelle Fischbach in Minnesota, where she fended off a challenge from her right. 

While all eyes were on the Midwest, elsewhere in the country a state delegate so antisemitic that she lost support from her fellow Democrats in Connecticut, went down in flames to her Jewish opponent. State Representative Anabel Figueroa, who warned that her district “cannot permit a person who is of Jewish origin, to represent our community,” lost to a Jewish Democrat.

Finally, voters in Minnesota dealt a huge blow to members of #ElectionTwitter, the far-left, highly-online crowd that obsesses over making maps of election results, with civil rights attorney Will Stancil falling short in an open-seat primary for the state legislature. 

-Matthew Foldi

On our radar

‘IMMEDIATE RELEASE’ President Joe Biden demanded Syria return American journalist Austin Tice in a statement released on the twelve-year anniversary of his disappearance. Syrian officials claim to not know where Tice is, but Biden said in 2022  that knows “with certainty” that he is being held by the government. 

NO TAX ON TIPS RIPPED Democrats were reportedly “blindsided” by Vice President Kamala Harris cribbing Trump’s plan to eliminate taxes on tips. According to the Hill, strategists are concerned about the decrease in government revenue and that the tax relief would not help working class people who do not rely on tips for income. 

MERCHAN AND ON Former president Donald Trump lost a third attempt to get Judge Juan Merchan to recuse himself from the so-called “hush-money” case in which Trump was convicted on thirty-four felony counts and awaits sentencing. Trump has argued that Merchan’s daughter’s work with a Democrat-aligned consulting firm presents a conflict of interest for the judge. 

Walz goofs on union claim 

Minnesota governor Tim Walz spoke to members of the AFSCME union in Los Angeles on Tuesday, his first solo appearance as the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

Kicking off a five-state fundraising campaign, Walz warned that Trump would declare war on working people and threaten Social Security and Medicare. Trump has said that he will never cut either program and wants to eliminate taxes on Social Security. 

Walz also falsely told the 1.4 million-member union, which has endorsed Harris, that he is the “first union member on a presidential ticket since Ronald Reagan.”

Former president Trump was a member of SAG-AFTRA, the successor organization to the Screen Actors Guild, when he ran for president in 2016 and 2020.

He is no longer a member, resigning in 2021 after the union’s national board found probable cause that Trump violated the group’s constitution for his actions on January 6, 2021. Trump reported earning a pension from the union in his financial disclosures, which represents 160,000 performers across a variety of media platforms.

“The only thing those two guys know about working people is how to work to take advantage of them,” Walz said about Trump and his VP pick J.D. Vance. “Every single chance they’ve gotten they’ve waged war on workers.”

Walz mentioned his and Harris’s working backgrounds, noting that Harris worked at McDonald’s as a student. “Vice President Harris took that work ethic, goes to work every single day to make sure families don’t just get by, but they get ahead,” he said.

While speaking California, Walz neglected to mention anything about the state’s homelessness crisis, steep taxes and housing prices, which has pushed many residents out.

The Trump campaign has also courted union support, with Trump claiming he is going to save the auto industry from “complete obliteration.”

–Elisenne Stoller

Inflation nation 

The Labor Department released annual inflation numbers for July and presented a mixed bag for the Biden-Harris administration. While the inflation rate slowed to 2.9 percent in July 2024, the lowest rate since March 2021, it still sits more than a full percentage point above where it was in January 2021 when he first took office. Bureau of Labor Statistics data put the inflation rate at 1.4 percent in January 2021 and it stayed below 3 percent until April of that year.

Even worse, the new report shows that prices remain 20.2 percent higher than when Biden and Harris took office. This includes a 31.7 percent increase in electricity prices, a 21.6 percent increase in grocery prices and a 22 percent increase in average rents.

Nonetheless, the Harris campaign celebrated the report and claimed Trump would be the one to drop an “inflation bomb” on America. “Inflation is at its lowest in over three years and our economy is strong. Donald Trump’s agenda would take us backwards, giving tax handouts to the same big corporations that are price gouging Americans, while raising prices on the middle class by $2,500 and driving our economy into a recession,” campaign spokesman Joseph Costello said. 

–Amber Duke