We really have to stop labelling this as something that Chuy invented. In IL alone, Bill Lipinski dropped out *after the primary* so that his son could be appointed as the nominee.
Also, how would legislation like that even work? Would a sudden medical event that caused a legislator to drop out close to filing prevent a party from finding another candidate? Ralph Metcalfe died in October of 1978 and the party bosses picked a mediocre machine alderman as a replacement nominee. Would that be legal?
What is it we're trying to prevent with legislation? Dropping out too close to filing? A departing legislator putting the thumb on the scale for their preferred successor?
I didn’t say Chuy invented it. I’m of the opinion that he brought new attention to it in an environment where the leaders of our major parties are already at war with the base (Dems) or behaving in an openly anti democratic fashion (GOP), and thus are more likely to be nervous about the concept of continued primaries. In a different environment, it wouldn’t have been as toxic as it was here, although it most certainly would not have been morally right. But given the propensity for anti-democratic behavior as of late, the risk of this kind of tactic increasing in use is far greater in my opinion.
As for the legislation question, one idea I’ve seen is extending the primary filing date when an incumbent retires. I believe some states already have this.
No, that isn’t even close to what I said. I said that the political environment we live in today makes the risk of other Reps repeating similar behavior much more likely. I don’t even know what you’re referring to when you say “after the primary”. Maybe it’s just me being paranoid, but I’m concerned about whether or not we’re going to have fair primaries going forward.
Last comment, and just the facts. By "after the primary," I mean that Bill Lipinski won the primary election for another term in March of 2004, and he dropped out of the race in August of 2004 so that his son could be appointed as the nominee.
I think people who aren't from IL are a bit taken aback by this, but as we both know, both parties at every level in Illinois do this. Probably a quarter of the Chicago City Council got their seats by doing something similar, and my own state senator got their seat from their FIL in a similar manner. That doesn't make it "right" but...
I believe some states just have different filing deadlines for incumbents - i.e., they have to declare a week before everyone else or something like that. These things can be fixed pretty simply if the will is there.
It not being new does not make it justified. It’s a subversion of the entire concept of primaries, and I additionally worry about it being weaponized in an ideological fashion, as in, to prevent someone from an opposing ideology from taking the seat. That’s my problem with it.
I agree. Being that Issa did the same thing back ahead of the 2018 midterm season, it shows his priorities are not really with serving constituents but advancing anything he can do to be relevant. But that outweighs the responsibility elected politicians have when they get elected in the first place.
It’s hard to truly know unless you live in the district. Often times what we see in the news and what’s reported is typically the headlines of Issa and others grabbing attention and using hearings and floor speeches to fundraise.
As someone who always has believed in the rules of checks and balances, it’s agonizing to watch the chamber and questioning being used to fire up the troops instead of due process and true accountability.
Up until Senator Lisa Murkowski cast her YAY BBB vote, she did have priorities resembling what her constituents were asking her to do. She had warm relations with Alaskans. I think BBB has certainly damaged her political future but I’ve never seen her to possess an ego like most in the GOP.
Yeah, that is possible. We did have Nixon to kick around some more: he made that comment after losing CA-Gov in 1962 to Pat Brown (Jerry's father). It was not the end of his political career, unfortunately.
By 2027, Desmond will be 70y/o replacing a 73y/o lol
Issa was the next most senior to try succeeding Jordan on Judiciary next term, and I wouldn't have been esp surprised if he'd won it. Sidebar that I also wouldn't be surprised if Jordan asked for and was given a waiver, but he could also hop back to Oversight (where Comer is similarly term-limited).
Dumb noise about not “seriously” funding TX for a flip. If we’re actually close to dead even with men nationally then other seats are probably off the board early enough to make TX more than viable for donors
You're not kidding about the dumb. Article defines Cornyn as a moderate and says that national democrats are eyeing Montana as a better spending target. Also says we "held" Montana as recently as 2018, which is false: we won it as recently as 2018, and held it as recently as mid Jan 2025.
Fortunately (?) for us, the DSCC's fundraising is less critical than candidate fundraising. Unless Schumer and Gillibrand work to stop donors from giving to Talarico, I think he'll do OK on money. O'Rourke raised about $80m in 2018. I wouldn't be surprised to see Talarico comfortably exceed that. He probably needs $100m+ to make this credible, which should be doable with good grassroots.
If he had any self-respect and respect for actual democracy, Berger should take his lumps and accept the will of the voters.
But since he's entrenched and drunk with power, he's going to call in favors to his son and the other three justices on our state Supreme Court to throw out ballots cast by fellow Republicans. Just like the solid he did for Jefferson Griffin -- only to get spanked soundly by a Trump-appointed federal judge.
Not to the disabled community. The r-word is the equivalent of the n word for us. Much like the n word, it’s used to imply that people with mental disabilities are stupider and slower than non-disabled people.
I grew up saying it all the time. I.e. anything silly or annoying was "r-word". I have to struggle not to use it in that sense. I.e. to describe a perposterous situation, rather than directed at a person as a slur.
I get that. The word was once used quite commonly — you hear it a lot on older South Park, for instance. It’s taken on a new meaning with the increase in acceptance of disabled people.
"Less egregious than the N word" leaves a lot of room for a word to be truly awful. I don't think there's a more egregious word, term, or phrase in the English language. As noted by the fact that the vast majority of us refuse to use the word at all, even in an academic sense, and only refer to it by its first letter.
So... "less egregious" covers effectively every word out there.
That evolution is itself quite interesting. Where the word has become not only obscene but taboo. Literally unspeakable. Of course in Black dialect it remains a term of respect. (Pronouced without the hard R, of course.)
I feel like the Trump era has brought back many ugly words that should have died on the school playground in the '90s (the r-word, the six-letter f-word, "gay" as a negative descriptor) and it's really gross.
I have serious concerns about Gen-Z and Alpha (apologies to Susan Collins for stealing her signature phrase).
In the upcoming Carroll 7 New Hampshire House of Representatives special election, a district with about 13,000 people, someone has decided to create a fake website to attack the Democratic candidate. Weird, desperate behavior.
Obituaries: Former Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI), who ran for several statewide and local but lost to opponents across the political spectrum, has died at 74.
Rest in peace. I still don’t get how she lost to Ige even after the whole mess with the missile alert notification, I’m not from Hawaii but it looked like she would have been a good governor.
I wouldn't say Hanabusa was seen as especially progressive.
Edit: Hanabusa was never a CPC member and was very well known as a member of NewDem leadership. She was the more moderate candidate against Schatz for Senate in 2014, Ige for Governor in 2018 and in the runoff for Honolulu Mayor in 2020, she endorsed Republican Rick Blangiardi over more progressive Democrat Keith Amemiya.
Edited - I figured that since she ran against the likes of Schatz and Ige, who can be considered more moderate than progressive, she had progressive bonafides.
Schatz has always been more progressive than her. Ige was more moderate and reinvented himself for the 2018 election and ran to her left to defend himself.
Hawaii primaries rarely sort along a neat progressive-moderate axis, same goes for the politicians themselves. The state has a strong Democratic Party culture but not so much a left-leaning ideological one. More than anything Hanabusa's big races were contests of personality and perceived record, hard to slot into the categories above, much as observers from outside the state tried to. The state has fully open primaries and there's an established history of most gen election GOP voters choosing to participate in the Dem primary instead, making even less of a distinction between these and the officially non-partisan mayor races. In recent years there's been signs of a growing leftwing movement with younger voters (Kim Coco Iwamoto toppling the house speaker was massive), but this is also a state with a huge political center of gravity among the elderly, so combined with the structural factors favoring non-ideological campaigns targeting all voters, change has been slow.
Hanabusa was a Hawaii Dem through and through, a tenacious candidate who was just the victim of bad timing and bad luck. The dominos probably start with the 2006 HI-02 primary, where she very narrowly lost to Mazie Hirono, who was attempting her own comeback after losing the previous governor election. This set up Hirono to run for senate in 2012, while Hanabusa didn't get into Congress until 2010 and then ran up against Schatz in 2014 for the other senate seat. Had 2006 gone the other way, Hanabusa very likely would have become senator in 2012 and then served with Schatz the past decade. RIP.
No one in HI and AAPI politics I've spoken to has a high opinion of Hanabusa or saw her as a more progressive option compared to any of the above lol. And Hanabusa made herself clearly distinct from progressive politics with the exception of deep connections to labor.
The only possible reason I would think a Democratic senator would vote to confirm Mullin is so they wouldn't have to hear the nonsense out of him as much on the Senate floor.
Safe blue Senator with otherwise progressive record. No excuse.
I'd go as far as to say a primary challenge should be considered for this. (There's precedent for bad votes leading to a primary -- the reason former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun originally ran for Senate was because then-incumbent Alan Dixon voted to confirm Clarence Thomas to SCOTUS despite the Anita Hill hearings at the time.)
Ah, so it's another case of "I'm retiring soon, who cares about my votes?" They're not facing voters so why should they care?
I wish there was something that could be done about this. Vote better Senators in, I know, but something else. Between this and the Chuy/Daines/Issa shit, it really feels like a large number of members of Congress flat out don't care about their constituents anymore.
It's more likely senate comity. The oldest senators in particular seem to be content to be bound by age old norms that do little for protecting our institutions even if adhering to that norm does actual damage to said institutions.
Senators are socially expected to vote for other senators' confirmations. Either (a) they like the person and want them to get an earned promotion, or (b) they dislike the person and want to get rid of them. Makes it easier to get along with fellow senators too.
"He’ll be confirmed; the question is whether there’s bipartisan support for him. Markwayne Mullin is competent and he’s honest, so those are two good things that Kristi Noem did not have,” Welch told CNN’s Kasie Hunt in an interview.
Trump fired Noem on Thursday and announced he would nominate Mullin, a member of the Senate GOP whip team, to head the Homeland Security Department.
“This is going to give us an opportunity to have real discussion about what’s going on with the Department of Homeland Security,” he said. “Number one, we saw with that rampage in Minneapolis cannot ever happen again. You had Kristi Noem who essentially was calling two people who got killed domestic terrorists."
Personally, I'd rather Welch spend his energy going after ICE and preventing a vote until ICE is eliminated.
Sure, but he's known as a republican so less likely to be successful, or i should say that same chance to be successful as when dems do it, because we haven't been successful
But the Dems have gotten close because they are unknown quantities and can truly play the independent card. Kiley is a currently elected Republican and will be viewed as such.
I suspect that this poll shows name ID. Lasher seems to have the establishment behind him and he should do better as this race gets closer to the finish.
George Conway is a rather interesting character – and I trust him far more than his ex-wife, Kellyanne. He’s an adamant anti-Trumpist, but I’m not sure about his progressive bona fides.
Dems have raised $21M for their redistricting amendment in Virginia while the GOP has raised $300k and there are little signs of life on the No side as of yet.
I'm honestly surprised how little opposition Republicans are putting up to this. Cline, Wittman, and Kiggans have very close ties to Johnson and he seems to be hanging them out to dry with no support. I never say get too confident about an election but this one seems like it could be a foregone conclusion like the governor's race last year.
I gave to the Virginia Democratic Party myself, as I wasn't sure where to donate. (Before anyone says anything about me getting spam email, I have a separate email I use for donations/other spam so it doesn't clutter my regular email.)
GA-1: One potential major Republican candidate, Bryan County commissioner Carter Infinger, didn't run.
GA-10: State Rep. Houston Gaines and businessman Ryan Millsap are the only major candidates.
GA-11: Public Service Commissioner Tricia Pridemore, the incumbent Loudermilk's chief of staff Rob Adkerson, and physician John Cowan are the only major candidates.
GA-12: Despite retirement rumors, Rep. Rick Allen (R) is running for re-election.
GA-13: Rep. David Scott (D) is running for re-election after all. Carlos Moore, the former president of the National Bar Association who was running a longshot primary, withdrew.
GA-14: Practically every major Republican candidate for the special election also filed to run in this primary.
Since someone on here expressed interest in GA judicial races some time ago:
Two of the three GASCt Justices that are up (all R appointees) drew challengers. And for the first time in quite a while, a serious challenger filed against a sitting Court of Appeals judge - Fani Willis’ #2 filed to run against the judge that wrote the opinion kicking her off the Trump case (The one GASCt Justice who didn’t draw a challenger was the dissenter in that decision).
I find it interesting to see the congressional caucus PAC involvement in primaries and where they support different candidates. I look at the identity and ideological groups, so for Dems I look at:
-CPC PAC (Congressional Progressive Caucus)
-New Dems Action Fund (New Democrat Coalition)
-Blue Dog PAC (Blue Dog Coalition)
-CBC PAC (Congressional Black Caucus)
-BOLD PAC (Congressional Hispanic Caucus)
-ASPIRE PAC (Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus)
-Equality PAC (Congressional Equality Caucus)
-Elect Democratic Women (Democratic Women's Caucus)
And for Repubs I look at:
-House Freedom Fund (House Freedom Caucus)
-House Conservatives Fund (Republican Study Committee)
-Republican Main Street Partnership PAC (Main Street Caucus)
-RWC Fund (Republican Women's Caucus) – I used to use VIEW PAC as the proxy for this, but RWC seems to be the new leadership vehicle
One thing that makes this more difficult is the PACs that don't give any indication of their endorsements on their websites; and very often there will be some spending that isn't toward someone from their press releases. I used to look at OpenSecrets to look at their candidate recipients for the current cycle, but they haven't added any 2026 spending. On the Dem side, it's really only CBC PAC that doesn't list this information and I only see what random endorsements they make an instagram post about or find out just by reading the news. I find it ironic that for Repubs, HFF is the only PAC that consistently publish candidate endorsements when their House side (HFC) is the only caucus without an official website and public member list. All the other caucus PACs don't publish endorsements (HCF doesn't even have a website anymore) and I've only ever gotten information on most of them (RG2 in particular) from OpenSecrets for the past several cycles, at least until this cycle. RWC is brand new as both a caucus and a PAC (both founded this term), and published at least one endorsement, and HLT is fairly new (2022 was its first cycle as a PAC). But hard to have any takeaways about Repubs with such little information.
For Dems, the interplay between caucuses in the same primaries I'm seeing are below (only including candidates endorsed by caucus PAC arms, not any other candidates):
-AZ-01: Marlene Galán-Woods (BOLD, EDW) and Amish Shah (ASPIRE)
-AZ-07 (special): Deja Foxx (ASPIRE), Adelita Grijalva (BOLD, EDW) and Daniel Hernández (Equality)
-CA-11: Connie Chan (ASPIRE) and Scott Wiener (Equality)
-CA-22: Jasmeet Bains (ASPIRE, Blue Dogs, New Dems) and Randy Villegas (BOLD, CPC)
-CA-40: Esther Kim Varet (ASPIRE) and Lisa Ramirez (BOLD)
-CA-48: Ammar Campa-Najjar (ASPIRE, BOLD) and Marni von Wilpert (Equality, EDW)
-CO-08: Shannon Bird (EDW) and Manny Rutinel (BOLD)
-IL Sen: Robin Kelly (EDW, CBC) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (ASPIRE)
-IL-02: Donna Miller (EDW) and Robert Peters (CPC)
-IL-07: Melissa Conyears-Ervin (EDW) and Anthony Driver (CPC)
-IL-08: Junaid Ahmed (CPC), Melissa Bean (New Dems, EDW), Sanjyot Dunung (ASPIRE) and Kevin Morrison (Equality)
-IL-09: Daniel Biss (CPC), Laura Fine (EDW) and Mike Simmons (Equality)
-MI-10: Eric Chung (ASPIRE, Equality) and Christina Hines (EDW)
-NE-02: John Cavanaugh (CPC) and Denise Powell (BOLD, EDW)
-NJ-11 (special): Analilia Mejía (BOLD, CPC) and Tahesha Way (CBC)
-NC-03: Allison Jaslow (EDW) and Raymond Smith (CBC)
-PA-07: Bob Brooks (CPC) and Carol Obando-Derstine (BOLD, EDW)
-TX-18 (special): Amanda Edwards (EDW), Jolanda Jones (Equality) and Christian Menefee (CPC)
-TX-33: Collin Allred (CBC) and Julie Johnson (Equality, New Dems, EDW)
-UT-01: Nate Blouin (CPC) and Ben McAdams (New Dems)
-VA-02: Elaine Luria (EDW) and James Osyf (Equality – dropped out)
I’m waiting for the vote count in Nepal’s election. In the lead is Balendra Shah, an ex-rapper who has served as Mayor of Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital. There are huge changes happening in those humble-sized Himalayan countries: Bhutan, Sikkim and Nepal.
Ok, granted, Sikkim is no longer an independent country, having voted in a referendum to join India in 1975 – while its capital was occupied.
Take a look at this. It’s an article from November of last year that should have received far more attention. In short, good things are happening in Bhutan – impoverished Bhutan is doing what far-richer nations are neglecting to do!
This is so true: "Earth will survive no matter what we do. The urgency to control global warming, to fight climate change, is for us people now and for our future generations."
I was surprised recently to find out that African countries like Senegal and Uganda started manufacturing and using electric buses, like around 2024.
Not only do citizens reap the environmental benefits (cleaner air, time saved from not driving), but also better employment for the citizens who work at the bus stations and manufacturing facilities.
Here is a collection of news stories about Sikkim from "India Today". For example, when it was recently announced that Sikkim would be adding 500 police officers, nearly a third of those positions are being reserved for women.
And (very un-American), one man was just arrested for cheating a woman by falsely promising marriage.
Since marriages in India involve so much money changing hands, it makes sense that the laws concerning them are different from those currently in force in the U.S.
Actually, dowries are "prohibited" in India. Good luck with that! They are, of course, still widely practiced – as are the most vile forms of caste discrimination.
Dowries have got absolutely nothing to do with caste discrimination. It’s gender discrimination practiced across all castes and religions in South Asia.
Over 20 million Azeris live Iran, while less than 10 million live in Azerbaijan. There was a briefly lived Azeri state in Iran after Word War 2, and minority cultural rights remain a major issue for the Islamic Republic. The notion of Iranian Kurds being the 'boots on the ground' has already been floated. But Azerbaijan has a proper military and possible ethnic allegiance of nearly a quarter of Iran's population.
Needless to say, I don't think balkanization is popular with the Iranian people at large. You can look at an ethnic map and imagine 6 or 7 countries. But we will see how this all unfolds.
Unlike Kurds (and Balochs for that matter), however, Azeris have been much more included in the Iranian national project going back decades; they are considerably better integrated into the national firmament, and that’s saying something since pre-1979 Kurds were decently built into the Iranian firmament under the Shah.
It also wouldn’t really be in Aliyev’s interest to have a new country where two thirds of the population is “new” to him. I think his rhetoric is pretty clearly a shot across the bow to tell the IRGC to fuck off and stop poking the bear
The Shah, Reza Shah I, Khamenei, Pezeshkian, Qajars were/are all Azeris and suppressed the Azerbaijani language. Azeri identity in modern day Iran is as relevant as Huguenot or Ruthenian identities in Europe.
Iranian Azeris are almost completely assimilated, belong to the Shia religion unlike Kurds and don't feel connected to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan and Iranian Azerbaijan have been disconnected for over 200 years since the Russian annexation and Azerbaijan mostly developed its modern-day identity with the rise of nationalism, conflict with Armenians and other Christians, and Pan-Turkism/Turanism before and during WW1. They used to be called Caucasian Tartars before they took on the name of the nearby Iranian province.
And I don't really think anyone in Turkey or Azerbaijan except the loonies want them either.
The existence of Azeri nationalist dissidents in Iran, Azeri exiles/communities in Azerbaijan, the presence stance of Azerbaijan and the past stance of the Soviet Union all speak to the wrongness of this opinion.
There are always going to be dissidents; it will never be zero. There is no notable Azeri exile community advocating separatism from Iran. The stance of Azerbaijan is largely posturing, and historically the Soviet Union attempted to create a puppet Azeri Republic just after World War II, which was dismantled when Iran—backed by the Allies—reasserted control.
There is no significant separatist movement in Iranian Azerbaijan, and Iranian Azeris are well represented within Iran’s political and economic elite. Even in the chaotic aftermath of the 1979 revolution, disturbances in the region were relatively weak compared to those in Turkmen areas in the northeast, Kurdistan, Baluchistan, and among the Ahwazi Arabs.
The idea that Iranian Azeris seek reunification with the Republic of Azerbaijan or autonomy is largely wishful thinking.
"As it turned out, the Soviets had to recognize that their ideas on Iran were premature. The issue of Iranian Azerbaijan became one of the opening skirmishes of the Cold War, and, largely under the Western powers' pressure, Soviet forces withdrew in 1946. The autonomous republic collapsed soon afterward, and the members of the Democratic Party took refuge in the Soviet Union, fleeing Iranian revenge. In Tabriz, the crowds that had just recently applauded the autonomous republic were now greeting the returning Iranian troops, and Azerbaijani students publicly burned their native-language textbooks. The mass of the population was obviously not ready even for a regional self-government so long as it smacked of separatism."
Swietochowski, Tadeusz 1989. "Islam and the Growth of National Identity in Soviet Azerbaijan", Kappeler, Andreas, Gerhard Simon, Georg Brunner eds. Muslim Communities Reemerge: Historical Perspective on Nationality, Politics, and Opposition in the Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 46-60
Yesterday, I finally finished my article about the political geography and 2022 election results in Israel. I was going to post the link here last night, but I was so tired that I went to sleep really early and didn't get a chance to. So here it is!
Now that I’ve had a chance to read the full thing, that was very informative - I learned a lot beyond my very high-level and rudimentary knowledge of Israeli geography and now politics!
Rumors are it's part of a Chuy Garcia / Steve Daines-style handoff.
Uh oh
This doesn’t seem quite as egregious as the Daines situation
WTF was the deleted post? These constant deletions are really annoying!
It was a different article showing Desmond's candidacy. My apologies. Should have edited.
No problem.
Yes, I vote for editing – especially when you already have a few replies.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-03-06/veteran-rep-darrell-issa-decides-not-to-seek-reelection-in-new-democratic-leaning-district-sources-say
CA-48, CA-49: Darrell Issa pulled a Chuy Garcia/Steve Daines. His Republican successor is Jim Desmond, who ran in the 49th previously.
Boy bye
This is getting ridiculous. I was upset when the Chuy thing happened for this exact reason. We need legislation to stop this insanity.
We really have to stop labelling this as something that Chuy invented. In IL alone, Bill Lipinski dropped out *after the primary* so that his son could be appointed as the nominee.
Also, how would legislation like that even work? Would a sudden medical event that caused a legislator to drop out close to filing prevent a party from finding another candidate? Ralph Metcalfe died in October of 1978 and the party bosses picked a mediocre machine alderman as a replacement nominee. Would that be legal?
What is it we're trying to prevent with legislation? Dropping out too close to filing? A departing legislator putting the thumb on the scale for their preferred successor?
I didn’t say Chuy invented it. I’m of the opinion that he brought new attention to it in an environment where the leaders of our major parties are already at war with the base (Dems) or behaving in an openly anti democratic fashion (GOP), and thus are more likely to be nervous about the concept of continued primaries. In a different environment, it wouldn’t have been as toxic as it was here, although it most certainly would not have been morally right. But given the propensity for anti-democratic behavior as of late, the risk of this kind of tactic increasing in use is far greater in my opinion.
As for the legislation question, one idea I’ve seen is extending the primary filing date when an incumbent retires. I believe some states already have this.
So what Lipinski did would be okay because it was after the primary? Chuy should have just waited until after the primary?
No, that isn’t even close to what I said. I said that the political environment we live in today makes the risk of other Reps repeating similar behavior much more likely. I don’t even know what you’re referring to when you say “after the primary”. Maybe it’s just me being paranoid, but I’m concerned about whether or not we’re going to have fair primaries going forward.
Last comment, and just the facts. By "after the primary," I mean that Bill Lipinski won the primary election for another term in March of 2004, and he dropped out of the race in August of 2004 so that his son could be appointed as the nominee.
I think people who aren't from IL are a bit taken aback by this, but as we both know, both parties at every level in Illinois do this. Probably a quarter of the Chicago City Council got their seats by doing something similar, and my own state senator got their seat from their FIL in a similar manner. That doesn't make it "right" but...
If I could like this comment 100x, I would.
Huh. So it’s common in IL. IMO another argument for legislation to prevent this.
We need a law like if the incumbent drops out during the last two weeks the filing deadline will be extended another two weeks.
I believe some states just have different filing deadlines for incumbents - i.e., they have to declare a week before everyone else or something like that. These things can be fixed pretty simply if the will is there.
Issa did this before back in 2018. Nothing new.
As much as I have had distain for him since the 2003 CA gubernatorial recall election, I don’t think Issa wants his “legacy” ruined
It not being new does not make it justified. It’s a subversion of the entire concept of primaries, and I additionally worry about it being weaponized in an ideological fashion, as in, to prevent someone from an opposing ideology from taking the seat. That’s my problem with it.
I agree. Being that Issa did the same thing back ahead of the 2018 midterm season, it shows his priorities are not really with serving constituents but advancing anything he can do to be relevant. But that outweighs the responsibility elected politicians have when they get elected in the first place.
At this point, I question if there is a single Republican left whose priorities even resemble serving their constituents.
It’s hard to truly know unless you live in the district. Often times what we see in the news and what’s reported is typically the headlines of Issa and others grabbing attention and using hearings and floor speeches to fundraise.
As someone who always has believed in the rules of checks and balances, it’s agonizing to watch the chamber and questioning being used to fire up the troops instead of due process and true accountability.
Up until Senator Lisa Murkowski cast her YAY BBB vote, she did have priorities resembling what her constituents were asking her to do. She had warm relations with Alaskans. I think BBB has certainly damaged her political future but I’ve never seen her to possess an ego like most in the GOP.
Damn! So we don't have Darrell Issa to kick around anymore?
I'm OK with that...
Until he runs in the 40th in 2028 and kicks out Ken Calvert or Young Kim.
Or in Texas's 32nd. Not sure if he'd run against Jace Yarbrough, though. Maybe if Dan Barrios pulled off an upset.
Yeah, that is possible. We did have Nixon to kick around some more: he made that comment after losing CA-Gov in 1962 to Pat Brown (Jerry's father). It was not the end of his political career, unfortunately.
I wanted him defeated for re-election.
And it looks like we will never get that. Double GRRRRR
By 2027, Desmond will be 70y/o replacing a 73y/o lol
Issa was the next most senior to try succeeding Jordan on Judiciary next term, and I wouldn't have been esp surprised if he'd won it. Sidebar that I also wouldn't be surprised if Jordan asked for and was given a waiver, but he could also hop back to Oversight (where Comer is similarly term-limited).
More like Issa pulled another Issa like he did back in 2018.
This makes winning the House seat all the more easier for Democrats.
Dumb noise about not “seriously” funding TX for a flip. If we’re actually close to dead even with men nationally then other seats are probably off the board early enough to make TX more than viable for donors
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/06/democrats-james-talarico-donors-spending-texas-00815690?nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&nname=playbook&nrid=aaddaad4-1b9e-4ff1-b8ab-84832729a0d9
You're not kidding about the dumb. Article defines Cornyn as a moderate and says that national democrats are eyeing Montana as a better spending target. Also says we "held" Montana as recently as 2018, which is false: we won it as recently as 2018, and held it as recently as mid Jan 2025.
Fortunately (?) for us, the DSCC's fundraising is less critical than candidate fundraising. Unless Schumer and Gillibrand work to stop donors from giving to Talarico, I think he'll do OK on money. O'Rourke raised about $80m in 2018. I wouldn't be surprised to see Talarico comfortably exceed that. He probably needs $100m+ to make this credible, which should be doable with good grassroots.
"Hold" being a term for an electoral victory by an incumbent.
That part of the article is correct.
Republican Party insiders have already indicated that they expect to spend $ 200 million or more to prevent this Texas Senate seat from flipping.
They have to spend $200 million+ to defend the seat?
Looks like TX GOP has nothing!
Phil Berger is probably gone: https://nitter.poast.org/PollTracker2024/status/2030058573921743159#m
First Tillis and now Berger.
The NC GOP of the early 2010s is dead and buried
It won't be dead and buried until Tim Moore, Paul Newby and the GOP judicial majorities go bye-bye.
If he had any self-respect and respect for actual democracy, Berger should take his lumps and accept the will of the voters.
But since he's entrenched and drunk with power, he's going to call in favors to his son and the other three justices on our state Supreme Court to throw out ballots cast by fellow Republicans. Just like the solid he did for Jefferson Griffin -- only to get spanked soundly by a Trump-appointed federal judge.
Wow, Sam Page has increased his lead more than tenfold!
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/wa-gop-senator-uses-slur-on-senate-floor-doubles-down/
WA state senator Leonard Christian (R) used the r slur on the floor of the legislature, and it's controversial.
Personally, I don't like the word and don't use it, but it's less egregious than say, the n word.
Worse than the F word though.
The context for this was troubling. He grouped the "r words" in with rapists to criticize the prison system. Clearly, they're not the same.
When in doubt, assume it’s a legislator from Spokane Valley.
Not to the disabled community. The r-word is the equivalent of the n word for us. Much like the n word, it’s used to imply that people with mental disabilities are stupider and slower than non-disabled people.
I know. My previous comment was pretty insensitive, sorry if I offended or anything of the sort.
That’s fine. I felt it was important to provide context.
You didn't say the whole word so I had only assumed you were aiming to be cautious.
I grew up saying it all the time. I.e. anything silly or annoying was "r-word". I have to struggle not to use it in that sense. I.e. to describe a perposterous situation, rather than directed at a person as a slur.
I get that. The word was once used quite commonly — you hear it a lot on older South Park, for instance. It’s taken on a new meaning with the increase in acceptance of disabled people.
"Less egregious than the N word" leaves a lot of room for a word to be truly awful. I don't think there's a more egregious word, term, or phrase in the English language. As noted by the fact that the vast majority of us refuse to use the word at all, even in an academic sense, and only refer to it by its first letter.
So... "less egregious" covers effectively every word out there.
That evolution is itself quite interesting. Where the word has become not only obscene but taboo. Literally unspeakable. Of course in Black dialect it remains a term of respect. (Pronouced without the hard R, of course.)
John Mulaney's bit about that is pretty funny. https://youtube.com/shorts/yVhIo2VgRik?si=lVdX9956FOVREsRe
I feel like the Trump era has brought back many ugly words that should have died on the school playground in the '90s (the r-word, the six-letter f-word, "gay" as a negative descriptor) and it's really gross.
I have serious concerns about Gen-Z and Alpha (apologies to Susan Collins for stealing her signature phrase).
In the upcoming Carroll 7 New Hampshire House of Representatives special election, a district with about 13,000 people, someone has decided to create a fake website to attack the Democratic candidate. Weird, desperate behavior.
https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2026/03/06/former-hawaii-congresswoman-colleen-hanabusa-dies-74/
Obituaries: Former Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-HI), who ran for several statewide and local but lost to opponents across the political spectrum, has died at 74.
Rest in peace. I still don’t get how she lost to Ige even after the whole mess with the missile alert notification, I’m not from Hawaii but it looked like she would have been a good governor.
Ah, that’s a shame. RIP. Far too young
I wouldn't say Hanabusa was seen as especially progressive.
Edit: Hanabusa was never a CPC member and was very well known as a member of NewDem leadership. She was the more moderate candidate against Schatz for Senate in 2014, Ige for Governor in 2018 and in the runoff for Honolulu Mayor in 2020, she endorsed Republican Rick Blangiardi over more progressive Democrat Keith Amemiya.
Edited - I figured that since she ran against the likes of Schatz and Ige, who can be considered more moderate than progressive, she had progressive bonafides.
Schatz has always been more progressive than her. Ige was more moderate and reinvented himself for the 2018 election and ran to her left to defend himself.
Hawaii primaries rarely sort along a neat progressive-moderate axis, same goes for the politicians themselves. The state has a strong Democratic Party culture but not so much a left-leaning ideological one. More than anything Hanabusa's big races were contests of personality and perceived record, hard to slot into the categories above, much as observers from outside the state tried to. The state has fully open primaries and there's an established history of most gen election GOP voters choosing to participate in the Dem primary instead, making even less of a distinction between these and the officially non-partisan mayor races. In recent years there's been signs of a growing leftwing movement with younger voters (Kim Coco Iwamoto toppling the house speaker was massive), but this is also a state with a huge political center of gravity among the elderly, so combined with the structural factors favoring non-ideological campaigns targeting all voters, change has been slow.
Hanabusa was a Hawaii Dem through and through, a tenacious candidate who was just the victim of bad timing and bad luck. The dominos probably start with the 2006 HI-02 primary, where she very narrowly lost to Mazie Hirono, who was attempting her own comeback after losing the previous governor election. This set up Hirono to run for senate in 2012, while Hanabusa didn't get into Congress until 2010 and then ran up against Schatz in 2014 for the other senate seat. Had 2006 gone the other way, Hanabusa very likely would have become senator in 2012 and then served with Schatz the past decade. RIP.
No one in HI and AAPI politics I've spoken to has a high opinion of Hanabusa or saw her as a more progressive option compared to any of the above lol. And Hanabusa made herself clearly distinct from progressive politics with the exception of deep connections to labor.
Sorry to hear. She was so much better than ed case and 1 of only 3 pickups for us in 2010 along with Louisiana 2 and Delaware all.
thehill.com/homenews/senate/5771060-mullin-to-replace-noem/amp/
Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) will vote to confirm Markwayne Mullin as DHS secretary. I imagine his colleague, Bernie Sanders, will certainly not.
The only possible reason I would think a Democratic senator would vote to confirm Mullin is so they wouldn't have to hear the nonsense out of him as much on the Senate floor.
Senate club. Confirming one of their own.
Safe blue Senator with otherwise progressive record. No excuse.
I'd go as far as to say a primary challenge should be considered for this. (There's precedent for bad votes leading to a primary -- the reason former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun originally ran for Senate was because then-incumbent Alan Dixon voted to confirm Clarence Thomas to SCOTUS despite the Anita Hill hearings at the time.)
He will be 81 next election. Will probably just retire
Ah, so it's another case of "I'm retiring soon, who cares about my votes?" They're not facing voters so why should they care?
I wish there was something that could be done about this. Vote better Senators in, I know, but something else. Between this and the Chuy/Daines/Issa shit, it really feels like a large number of members of Congress flat out don't care about their constituents anymore.
It's more likely senate comity. The oldest senators in particular seem to be content to be bound by age old norms that do little for protecting our institutions even if adhering to that norm does actual damage to said institutions.
Senators are socially expected to vote for other senators' confirmations. Either (a) they like the person and want them to get an earned promotion, or (b) they dislike the person and want to get rid of them. Makes it easier to get along with fellow senators too.
It's very dumb, but not surprising at all.
Welch's statement:
"He’ll be confirmed; the question is whether there’s bipartisan support for him. Markwayne Mullin is competent and he’s honest, so those are two good things that Kristi Noem did not have,” Welch told CNN’s Kasie Hunt in an interview.
Trump fired Noem on Thursday and announced he would nominate Mullin, a member of the Senate GOP whip team, to head the Homeland Security Department.
“This is going to give us an opportunity to have real discussion about what’s going on with the Department of Homeland Security,” he said. “Number one, we saw with that rampage in Minneapolis cannot ever happen again. You had Kristi Noem who essentially was calling two people who got killed domestic terrorists."
Personally, I'd rather Welch spend his energy going after ICE and preventing a vote until ICE is eliminated.
Disappointing, but as with the unanimous support of Rubio, this is a tradition far down on my list of things to get worked up about.
Yeah, this is how I feel. I don't love it, but there's so much worse things to worry about.
ROFL Rep. Kevin Kiley trying to save his job by running as a "No Party Preference" candidate. https://x.com/KevinKileyCA/status/2030096771335213064
???
How does he think that will make it better?
Basically an Independent. It likely won't save him as CA-6 is too blue.
There's still a top-2 system and he's a known quantity.
But against a Democrat in a blue seat?
Sure, but he's known as a republican so less likely to be successful, or i should say that same chance to be successful as when dems do it, because we haven't been successful
Guess it’s his own project Hail Mary, may as well try?
But the Dems have gotten close because they are unknown quantities and can truly play the independent card. Kiley is a currently elected Republican and will be viewed as such.
“NY-12 Democratic primary (Conway internal)
🟦 Jack Schlossberg: 25%
🟦 George Conway: 16%
🟦 Alex Bores: 11%
🟦 Michael Lasher: 11%
⬜ Not sure: 33%
GQR poll | 2/25-3/2 LV”
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/27776167/signal-2026-03-05-114405.pdf
*Micah Lasher
Sad Lasher isn't doing better. Seems like an all-around good candidate.
It’s a pro-Conway poll. Grain of salt.
Conway ran an ad about the poll results but conveniently left Schlossberg out, LOL.
Frankly, I don't much care for either of them.
Agree.
I suspect that this poll shows name ID. Lasher seems to have the establishment behind him and he should do better as this race gets closer to the finish.
George Conway is a rather interesting character – and I trust him far more than his ex-wife, Kellyanne. He’s an adamant anti-Trumpist, but I’m not sure about his progressive bona fides.
They're nonexistent.
I like him as a commentator (he's clearly very intelligent), but we can do better in a district that blue.
My guess is that Schlossberg probably wins on family connections/sympathy. Oh well.
I hope not.
Really? Schlossberg finally decided to put down the joint and put on a suit and he's the favorite?
I guess he had enough of posting too much on social media! /s
Ugh. Voters love to live down to up expectations.
Yep. But that district has had decades of great representation, so a disappointing replacement would be very unfortunate.
https://www.virginiascope.com/millions-flood-into-virginia-democratic-redistricting-effort/
Dems have raised $21M for their redistricting amendment in Virginia while the GOP has raised $300k and there are little signs of life on the No side as of yet.
I'm honestly surprised how little opposition Republicans are putting up to this. Cline, Wittman, and Kiggans have very close ties to Johnson and he seems to be hanging them out to dry with no support. I never say get too confident about an election but this one seems like it could be a foregone conclusion like the governor's race last year.
I gave to the Virginia Democratic Party myself, as I wasn't sure where to donate. (Before anyone says anything about me getting spam email, I have a separate email I use for donations/other spam so it doesn't clutter my regular email.)
Good!
https://mvp.sos.ga.gov/s/qualifying-candidate-information
Georgia filing deadline:
GA-1: One potential major Republican candidate, Bryan County commissioner Carter Infinger, didn't run.
GA-10: State Rep. Houston Gaines and businessman Ryan Millsap are the only major candidates.
GA-11: Public Service Commissioner Tricia Pridemore, the incumbent Loudermilk's chief of staff Rob Adkerson, and physician John Cowan are the only major candidates.
GA-12: Despite retirement rumors, Rep. Rick Allen (R) is running for re-election.
GA-13: Rep. David Scott (D) is running for re-election after all. Carlos Moore, the former president of the National Bar Association who was running a longshot primary, withdrew.
GA-14: Practically every major Republican candidate for the special election also filed to run in this primary.
Since someone on here expressed interest in GA judicial races some time ago:
Two of the three GASCt Justices that are up (all R appointees) drew challengers. And for the first time in quite a while, a serious challenger filed against a sitting Court of Appeals judge - Fani Willis’ #2 filed to run against the judge that wrote the opinion kicking her off the Trump case (The one GASCt Justice who didn’t draw a challenger was the dissenter in that decision).
I find it interesting to see the congressional caucus PAC involvement in primaries and where they support different candidates. I look at the identity and ideological groups, so for Dems I look at:
-CPC PAC (Congressional Progressive Caucus)
-New Dems Action Fund (New Democrat Coalition)
-Blue Dog PAC (Blue Dog Coalition)
-CBC PAC (Congressional Black Caucus)
-BOLD PAC (Congressional Hispanic Caucus)
-ASPIRE PAC (Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus)
-Equality PAC (Congressional Equality Caucus)
-Elect Democratic Women (Democratic Women's Caucus)
And for Repubs I look at:
-House Freedom Fund (House Freedom Caucus)
-House Conservatives Fund (Republican Study Committee)
-Republican Main Street Partnership PAC (Main Street Caucus)
-RG2 PAC (Republican Governance Group)
-Hispanic Leadership Trust (Congressional Hispanic Conference)
-RWC Fund (Republican Women's Caucus) – I used to use VIEW PAC as the proxy for this, but RWC seems to be the new leadership vehicle
One thing that makes this more difficult is the PACs that don't give any indication of their endorsements on their websites; and very often there will be some spending that isn't toward someone from their press releases. I used to look at OpenSecrets to look at their candidate recipients for the current cycle, but they haven't added any 2026 spending. On the Dem side, it's really only CBC PAC that doesn't list this information and I only see what random endorsements they make an instagram post about or find out just by reading the news. I find it ironic that for Repubs, HFF is the only PAC that consistently publish candidate endorsements when their House side (HFC) is the only caucus without an official website and public member list. All the other caucus PACs don't publish endorsements (HCF doesn't even have a website anymore) and I've only ever gotten information on most of them (RG2 in particular) from OpenSecrets for the past several cycles, at least until this cycle. RWC is brand new as both a caucus and a PAC (both founded this term), and published at least one endorsement, and HLT is fairly new (2022 was its first cycle as a PAC). But hard to have any takeaways about Repubs with such little information.
For Dems, the interplay between caucuses in the same primaries I'm seeing are below (only including candidates endorsed by caucus PAC arms, not any other candidates):
-AZ-01: Marlene Galán-Woods (BOLD, EDW) and Amish Shah (ASPIRE)
-AZ-07 (special): Deja Foxx (ASPIRE), Adelita Grijalva (BOLD, EDW) and Daniel Hernández (Equality)
-CA-11: Connie Chan (ASPIRE) and Scott Wiener (Equality)
-CA-22: Jasmeet Bains (ASPIRE, Blue Dogs, New Dems) and Randy Villegas (BOLD, CPC)
-CA-40: Esther Kim Varet (ASPIRE) and Lisa Ramirez (BOLD)
-CA-48: Ammar Campa-Najjar (ASPIRE, BOLD) and Marni von Wilpert (Equality, EDW)
-CO-08: Shannon Bird (EDW) and Manny Rutinel (BOLD)
-IL Sen: Robin Kelly (EDW, CBC) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (ASPIRE)
-IL-02: Donna Miller (EDW) and Robert Peters (CPC)
-IL-07: Melissa Conyears-Ervin (EDW) and Anthony Driver (CPC)
-IL-08: Junaid Ahmed (CPC), Melissa Bean (New Dems, EDW), Sanjyot Dunung (ASPIRE) and Kevin Morrison (Equality)
-IL-09: Daniel Biss (CPC), Laura Fine (EDW) and Mike Simmons (Equality)
-MI-10: Eric Chung (ASPIRE, Equality) and Christina Hines (EDW)
-NE-02: John Cavanaugh (CPC) and Denise Powell (BOLD, EDW)
-NJ-11 (special): Analilia Mejía (BOLD, CPC) and Tahesha Way (CBC)
-NC-03: Allison Jaslow (EDW) and Raymond Smith (CBC)
-PA-07: Bob Brooks (CPC) and Carol Obando-Derstine (BOLD, EDW)
-TX-18 (special): Amanda Edwards (EDW), Jolanda Jones (Equality) and Christian Menefee (CPC)
-TX-33: Collin Allred (CBC) and Julie Johnson (Equality, New Dems, EDW)
-UT-01: Nate Blouin (CPC) and Ben McAdams (New Dems)
-VA-02: Elaine Luria (EDW) and James Osyf (Equality – dropped out)
I’m waiting for the vote count in Nepal’s election. In the lead is Balendra Shah, an ex-rapper who has served as Mayor of Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital. There are huge changes happening in those humble-sized Himalayan countries: Bhutan, Sikkim and Nepal.
Ok, granted, Sikkim is no longer an independent country, having voted in a referendum to join India in 1975 – while its capital was occupied.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqxdlz3y95ro
Thanks. Very interesting reporting. What's happening lately in Bhutan and Sikkim?
Take a look at this. It’s an article from November of last year that should have received far more attention. In short, good things are happening in Bhutan – impoverished Bhutan is doing what far-richer nations are neglecting to do!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/18/bhutan-pm-tshering-tobgay-first-carbon-negative-nation-climate-wellbeing
This is so true: "Earth will survive no matter what we do. The urgency to control global warming, to fight climate change, is for us people now and for our future generations."
I was surprised recently to find out that African countries like Senegal and Uganda started manufacturing and using electric buses, like around 2024.
Not only do citizens reap the environmental benefits (cleaner air, time saved from not driving), but also better employment for the citizens who work at the bus stations and manufacturing facilities.
Here is a collection of news stories about Sikkim from "India Today". For example, when it was recently announced that Sikkim would be adding 500 police officers, nearly a third of those positions are being reserved for women.
And (very un-American), one man was just arrested for cheating a woman by falsely promising marriage.
https://www.indiatodayne.in/sikkim
Also rather un-American:
“Public trust should be the true strength of the police, not weapons.”
– Prem Singh Tamang, Chief Minister (CM) of Sikkim
Since marriages in India involve so much money changing hands, it makes sense that the laws concerning them are different from those currently in force in the U.S.
Actually, dowries are "prohibited" in India. Good luck with that! They are, of course, still widely practiced – as are the most vile forms of caste discrimination.
Dowries have got absolutely nothing to do with caste discrimination. It’s gender discrimination practiced across all castes and religions in South Asia.
Agreed. I was mentioning two separate things. And the intrinsic misogyny in India is a huge issue, which all too often has violent manifestations.
Thinking about the various ways the Iran War might play out, I found this article about Azerbaijani Iranian relations very enlightening:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1e9qpy90g3o
Over 20 million Azeris live Iran, while less than 10 million live in Azerbaijan. There was a briefly lived Azeri state in Iran after Word War 2, and minority cultural rights remain a major issue for the Islamic Republic. The notion of Iranian Kurds being the 'boots on the ground' has already been floated. But Azerbaijan has a proper military and possible ethnic allegiance of nearly a quarter of Iran's population.
Needless to say, I don't think balkanization is popular with the Iranian people at large. You can look at an ethnic map and imagine 6 or 7 countries. But we will see how this all unfolds.
Unlike Kurds (and Balochs for that matter), however, Azeris have been much more included in the Iranian national project going back decades; they are considerably better integrated into the national firmament, and that’s saying something since pre-1979 Kurds were decently built into the Iranian firmament under the Shah.
It also wouldn’t really be in Aliyev’s interest to have a new country where two thirds of the population is “new” to him. I think his rhetoric is pretty clearly a shot across the bow to tell the IRGC to fuck off and stop poking the bear
Indeed, Tabriz has been part of Iran since the 17th century.
The Shah, Reza Shah I, Khamenei, Pezeshkian, Qajars were/are all Azeris and suppressed the Azerbaijani language. Azeri identity in modern day Iran is as relevant as Huguenot or Ruthenian identities in Europe.
Iranian Azeris are almost completely assimilated, belong to the Shia religion unlike Kurds and don't feel connected to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan and Iranian Azerbaijan have been disconnected for over 200 years since the Russian annexation and Azerbaijan mostly developed its modern-day identity with the rise of nationalism, conflict with Armenians and other Christians, and Pan-Turkism/Turanism before and during WW1. They used to be called Caucasian Tartars before they took on the name of the nearby Iranian province.
And I don't really think anyone in Turkey or Azerbaijan except the loonies want them either.
The existence of Azeri nationalist dissidents in Iran, Azeri exiles/communities in Azerbaijan, the presence stance of Azerbaijan and the past stance of the Soviet Union all speak to the wrongness of this opinion.
There are always going to be dissidents; it will never be zero. There is no notable Azeri exile community advocating separatism from Iran. The stance of Azerbaijan is largely posturing, and historically the Soviet Union attempted to create a puppet Azeri Republic just after World War II, which was dismantled when Iran—backed by the Allies—reasserted control.
There is no significant separatist movement in Iranian Azerbaijan, and Iranian Azeris are well represented within Iran’s political and economic elite. Even in the chaotic aftermath of the 1979 revolution, disturbances in the region were relatively weak compared to those in Turkmen areas in the northeast, Kurdistan, Baluchistan, and among the Ahwazi Arabs.
The idea that Iranian Azeris seek reunification with the Republic of Azerbaijan or autonomy is largely wishful thinking.
"As it turned out, the Soviets had to recognize that their ideas on Iran were premature. The issue of Iranian Azerbaijan became one of the opening skirmishes of the Cold War, and, largely under the Western powers' pressure, Soviet forces withdrew in 1946. The autonomous republic collapsed soon afterward, and the members of the Democratic Party took refuge in the Soviet Union, fleeing Iranian revenge. In Tabriz, the crowds that had just recently applauded the autonomous republic were now greeting the returning Iranian troops, and Azerbaijani students publicly burned their native-language textbooks. The mass of the population was obviously not ready even for a regional self-government so long as it smacked of separatism."
Swietochowski, Tadeusz 1989. "Islam and the Growth of National Identity in Soviet Azerbaijan", Kappeler, Andreas, Gerhard Simon, Georg Brunner eds. Muslim Communities Reemerge: Historical Perspective on Nationality, Politics, and Opposition in the Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 46-60
Yesterday, I finally finished my article about the political geography and 2022 election results in Israel. I was going to post the link here last night, but I was so tired that I went to sleep really early and didn't get a chance to. So here it is!
https://kildere53.substack.com/p/political-geography-of-israel-and
Thank you!
This is fascinating and exactly why I love this site and the community here in the comments, thank you for sharing.
Kildere, thanks a million for doing this!
Now that I’ve had a chance to read the full thing, that was very informative - I learned a lot beyond my very high-level and rudimentary knowledge of Israeli geography and now politics!
That's impressively exhaustive! I'm probably a bit more than half way through and will come back to this. Congratulations!
Fantastic work! Very detailed and informative.
Good read, thanks for putting it together.