We've put our two immediate 2026 Election Post Mortems, but we'll need a trailing thread as there's going to be a boatload of things coming.
One thing that already has come is new voters entered the voting scene in spades. The tyranny of the Boomers at the polls has ended. The youngest voters in this election were born in 2007 and they are pissed off. They don't admire their great grandparents in the Boomer generation (or in many cases, their great great grandparents) and they don't think the Boomers saved the world for civilization. They think the Boomers destroyed things for them.
They have good reason to think that.
For that reason, renewed dire warnings from politicians like Ron Johnson that "the Commies" are coming don't mean anything to them. Socialism? They aren't afraid of it.
For that reason, look for an early effort to bring in Medicaid for all. The Republican demographic already on Medicaid will oppose it.
The country is getting national healthcare. If not in 2027, then in 2029.
But we're seeing the revival of conservative Democrats, which actually isn't inconsistent with what we've noted above. The incoming Democratic 120th Congress will have 22 members in the Blue Dog Caucus.
Blue Dog Democrats, conservatives, were considered dead and buried in the pet cemetery. The festering stench of the dying and dead GOP caused, however, a revival. As already noted, the incoming 120th Congress has a couple of real red blooded Americans in it, so to speak.
Democratic Congressman from Montana, Sam Forstag, a smoke jumper. By Conorhogan16 - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=194696290
Our neighbor to the North, Montana, is sending a Democratic smoke jumper to Congress, whereas we're sending a man who couldn't even muster up the traditional photo on a horse propaganda. Alaska is sending a woman who was a commercial fisherman to the Senate whereas we're sending a woman who just likes to sound like an old harpie. The darling of the far right in the election, Becky Bextel, spent he first part of her campaign bragging about the size of her presumably imaginary testicals.
Alaska Senator, Mary Peltola.
Geez louise, we've become a bunch of candy ass wimps.
Add to that a logger who booted out Susan Collins in Maine.
Also add to that a collection of senior military officers including Eileen Laubacher, who replaced Lauren Boebert.
Eileen Laubacher
Boebert's departure, and that of Tommy Tuberville, raises the intelligence level of Congress in one fell swoop, although Tuberville was inexplicably elected Governor of Alabama, which doesn't speak very well of Alabama.
The fact of the matter is that Wyoming now has a real cadre of wimps and oddballs in D.C. John Barrasso rose all the way to Majority Whip. My guess his days of being useful to the GOP are over. He won't run again, and he shouldn't. He's as old as dirt now. Hageman is just going to be malignant, a bit of her speciality. Chuck, well who knows. He probably hoped that his beloved, Donald Trump, would pick him for something.
The blame game is going on in the GOP right now, which is interesting. No singular blame has been decided on, but some Republicans are speakign the truth. Trump killed his party. It's all Trump's fault, and that of the ideologues nad syncophants surrounding him.
A couple of people surrounding him have begun to run away from him. J. D. Vance immediately blamed hthe defeat on the war agianst Iran which he was alwasy against. TAht implicilty suggest that Trump listened to dumb ass advice and the dumb ass is Pete Hegseth. As of this morning, it looks like Marco Rubio, who like Vance was just riding in the wagon to get through the country and hopefully into the Oval Office, is getting ready to bolt.
Senior Justice Department official Harmeet Dhillon, who led the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Attorney's Office, and oversaw investigations into universities, voter rolls and alleged violations of religious freedom, bolted.
That's interesting. She surely has a reason to be doing so.
Rumors have it that Pete Hegseth is going to get fired. If that's the case, it has to happen soon as once the 120th Congress is seated, no new Secretary of Defense, and that's what it will be, not Secretary of War, will be confirmed.
One thing we're seeing big time now is Donald Trump's mental decline. As we noted yesterday:
We're likely to see more and more of this. People like Paula White and Franklin Graham aside, Trump has no real concept of religion and probably figures that any immortality he can obtain has to be in stone. He's desperate to be remembered. He'll become more and more fixated on this.
Indeed, fwiw, I've noticed this in older people who lack a concept of the existential. Some physical thing, or a business, becomes their "legacy".
Trump, deep down, know that his legacy is a vile one. Everything associated with this administration, including the ballroom and the arch, if its built, and the gilded crap will be tossed out like the trash of an all night party on Epstein Island, and smell just as bad. . .a and weird. He can't accept that.
He'll get worse.
cont:
Ted, who of course is from Texas which saw a major Democratic insurgency:
I will say to every elected Republican: We need to listen to what the voters' said, listen to their frustration, and be working to lower gas prices, food prices, interest rates. Help people succeed and provide for their families.
Ted Cruz.
Cruz showed signs of breaking away the last several months. Now he's openly doing so. He's also campaigning for 2028.
In Colorado, Boebert's campaign claims they are investigating "unusual voting patterns".
You have to admit that, by definition, voting for Boebert demonstrates an unusual voting pattern. The pattern would be profound idiocy. They need to find them so they can get help, or relocate to Tommy Tuberville's house.
cont:
Over the past few days I've received an exposure to the MAGA mindset, some from people I know very well, and then one from somebody I don't.
One very well educated person I know, but who has an exceedingly narrow focus on things, is now all verklempt about socialism. I.e., he's convinced the Democrats are going to Karl Marx up everything.
That's flat out absurd.
One of the interesting things about that sort of view is that the same people are so blind to how National Socialist, i.e., Nazi the Republican Party had become under Trump. People are so focused on the racial evil the Nazis espoused (and MAGAs get into that territory themselves) that they don't realize that the Nazis had an economic theory the endorsed, autarky.
The Trump regime has really combined autarky with state capitalism, economic theories that don't work, and theories associated with fascism.
Anyhow, some people apparently seriously believe that there will a Gastronom coming to your neighborhood soon. That's freakin' absurd.
Another set of people I know very well are now all concerned they need to buy gold to hedge against a Democratic caused economic collapse. The funny thing about this is that I knew other people buying gold to hedge against a Republican caused economic collapse. During COVID I knew people who were buying gold to hedge against a COVID caused economic collapse.
Gold's nifty. Buy it if you want, but there's not going to be an economic collapse no matter how much people enjoy dreaming of one.
Another person talked to me in a panic after the election. Funny thing there is that its a case of somebody assuming that I have the same political views as they do.
I'm often amazed by that. It's based, I think, on being a semi rural person and a Wyoming native. That must mean, they figure, that I think the same thing they do, if we're both in Wyoming.
As an aside here, I'll note that I've been accused of TDS here before. I don't worry much about it as Trump is demonstrably demented, and everybody know it at this point. But where TDS may be asserted about me for sure in the ballroom.
It has to come down as soon as possible.
It's a really strong human instinct not to waste things. That's why people save piles of crap. It's why old people begin to hoard thing. And it's why there are all sort of proposals now to "well, we can rename. . ."
You can rename the Trump ballroom to whatever you want, but it'll be the Trump ballroom forever. Far better that it be a memory than an existing fascist monument.
Removing monuments is demonstrably difficult. The aged Confederates and their children put up monuments to their racist rebellion all over the place in the 1910s, and a lot of them are still up. Madrid decided to quietly start taking down Francoist monuments in 2016 and people who hated Franco were upset about it. And big buildings are another thing yet. Occasionally some old big building is the topic of removal and "Save the old big ugly building" will get rolling as a movement.
And this thing is expensive. It'll be expensive to remove it.
Spare no expense and blow the sucker to the ground is my demand to the next President. That's a fitting official memorial to Trump.
For that matter, and this is extreme, I'd look at filing suit against every company involved with this project. It's illegal. They know its illegal. It's a largescale act of vandalism, and as they're damaging things, they should be sued.
In 1946 the United States overwhelmingly turned towards the GOP after years of Democratic governance. The Depression was over, the Second World War was over, and the country was heading in a new direction politically. . . except Wyoming wasn't.
Dyed in the wool Republicans who like to scream that somebody they don't like is "a Democrat!" would be surprised to know that in 1945/46/47 Wyoming's Congressional representation was 2/3s Democratic and the Governor was a Democrat.
Oh my.
But it was.
In the 46 election, when the nation rejected the Democrats and brought the GOP back into power, Wyomingites did nothing of the same. They re elected all the major Democrats on the ballot.
It is, apparently, a Wyoming thing.
Chuck Gray gets his wish from the voters.
And so, in 2026, when we had two lousy candidates for Congress, one trying to move from the House to the Senate, and one trying to be a real boy, even if he has a nasty public disposition, is a liar, and a carpetbagger.
Why did we do that?
Well, they were both Republicans and one, Harriet Hageman, was a sort of kind of incumbent. Indeed, they both were.
Hageman is an enemy of public lands who basically told Wyomingites who weren't in favor of disposing of public lands on some scale were stupid. Wyomingites hate this. And yet we elected her anyhow. She's a far right wing anti public lands lawyer who claims to have had a career taking on what she now is, the Federal Government.
We know very little about Gray. He's a Californian child who had a job in his daddy's radio station after university in Pennsylvania and then became a legislator, by appointment, as at the time local committee people liked his right wing screeds against the government. He built on that and advanced with a carpet of lies to Secretary of STate, where he was campaigning for his next move ever since. That's all public.
Most people don't know anything else about him. He isn't married, and the only time he's ever been seen with women of his same approximate age is when he started showing up at US football games. Does he have friends, other than his campaign manager? There don't seem to be a lot of testimonials for him, unlike people who will say "I know Barlow", etc. There's no big family to be photographed with like Bextel.
His campaign manager is the exception. He claims Gray is one of his best friends, and that's probably true. He even claims that Gray is one of the few friends he's managed to keep since entering college, and having met him, I'd believe that too. In my experience, which is limited, he's arrogant. He's also a Charlie Kirk fan, also unmarried (he's quite young), and is known to have frequented Francoist websites, which caused him to get canned by Harriet Hageman.
He's no doubt angling for a political career himself, and now that he's successfully shepherded Gray around nearly universal dislike of Gray, he's well on his way to that. . . or a life of complete and utter irrlevancy.
In the primaries a major movement existed against Chuck, and while it carried on into the general, most people dutifully lined up and voted for him as the opponent was a Democrat.
Now, having said that, the opponent, Lisa Kinney, virtually signifies what's happened to the Democratic Party in Wyoming. She was a pathetic candidate, and old. Not a good choice. Byrd, who ran against Hageman, was no spring chicken, but was a pretty good candidate.
So, we're packing them off to D.C., from which they'll ultimately never return, having dusted off their sandals or Lucchese's.
Both will be entering a Democratic controlled Congress. Hageman is already talking tough, but going into Congress she'll get committee assignments from Democrats. And she'll be a freshman Senator. Chuck will be brand new, and also be getting assignments from Democrats.
So, both will end up being assigned to something like cleaning the men's room. That's about it.
At least they won't be harmful to the state, anyhow.
Be that as it may, voting the way it did, Wyoming no longer has any voice in D.C. whatsoever. Hageman will be free to talk tough, like she likes to do. Chuck will be free to sound like a pig at the Boucherie. John Barrasso will wonder around with his now patented dumb looking stare, perhaps being the Senate minority whip, although I doubt it. The incoming GOP is going to look at Thune and Barrasso and blame them for what occurred, in part. And they'll deserve it.
Good job Wyoming.
Well, Wyomingites like to complain about the Federal Government. Now we'll have reason to do so. Changes will becoming in the 120th, and if not htat, in 2028.
On Gray and Hageman, one final thing, maybe, to note.
Democratic Congressman from Montana, Sam Forstag, a smoke jumper. By Conorhogan16 - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=194696290
Our neighbor to the North, Montana, is sending a Democratic smoke jumper to Congress, whereas we're sending a man who couldn't even muster up the traditional photo on a horse propaganda. Alaska is sending a woman who was a commercial fisherman to the Senate whereas we're sending a woman who just likes to sound like an old harpie. The darling of the far right in the election, Becky Bextel, spent he first part of her campaign bragging about the size of her presumably imaginary testicals.
Alaska Senator, Mary Peltola.
Geez louise, we've become a bunch of candy ass wimps.
Probably not in the 120th in 2027, but rather starting in 2029, Federal leasing for oil and gas will really start to be curtailed in a major way. That had started in the Biden Administration, but it's going to really take off in in 2029. 2027 and 2028 are going to be the Twilight of the Oil and Gas Industry. It was coming sooner or later. Coal will be as done as dinner. That was inevitable as well. Neither will go away immediately, but the carpetbaggers dream of Wyoming, where the young are all truck drivers and oil and gas workers is coming to an end, rapidly.
The shift will be monumental for Wyoming.
It'll be good for public lands in a major way. The GOP was starting to become land rapine. It still is. We have two years of that to endure, but that will start to reverse in 2029.
An open question is whether Gray wills survive a Republican challenge in 2028. He's widely detested already. Had the Democrats gotten their act together and not nominated somebody a bit flakey who came out on the Oregon Trail, he may have lost (it's a shame that Lynette Gray Bull chose not to run). Gray will not have achieved anything but spouting lies for two years by 2028.
There's also major news, of an odd sort, from the Governor's race.
Local races in Wyoming went much better than the Congressional one did. In the primaries the decamped armies of Nathan Bedford Forrest were sent packing in a major Wyoming Freedom Caucus defeat. Only Bill Allemand inexplicably remains. That actually fits into the national pattern with a return to rationality.
Eric Barlow won the Governor's office, but in doing so one of the Confederate acolytes crossed into the Constitution Party, Becky Bextel. Loud in claims that everyone who isn't with her is a Democrat, and with plans that amount to no plan at all other than to be obstructionist, she went down in inevitable defeat, but took enough ignoramuses with her to get the Constitution Party on the ballot in 2028 as a major party
Now they're nervous:
Constitution Party Happy Bextel Made It A Major Party, But Says It's Not Freedom Caucus
Oh, contraire, mon frère.
If the Republicans' learned anything locally this election, and their committees probably didn't, parties are made up of the people who register to vote in the polls. Wyoming Republicans turned out not to be a bunch of Confederate saps. The saps, mad, moved over to the Constitution Party. Some of the saps in county organizations, outright bolted to Bextel, while not surrendering their places. Like it or not, the Constitution Party, which was already right wing, is now the United Confederate Veterans.
They'll take the Constitution Party down, just as they did the WFC members of the legislature. All of that is a good thing. It removes the Partisan Ranger stain from the GOP.
The Libertarians, like the Democrats, really underperformed this election. If they couldn't make it to 10% in a major election in 2026, they have no hope of doing os in any election. They ought to just disband.
The 2027 Legislature, a full session, is going to be a mess. The WFC perpetually loaded up sessions with scary bills and will try to do so again, as the new legislature does not come into existence until January. By the time the legislature convenes we'll be seeing bills like "a bill to change Wyoming's name to Trumpistan", and "a bill to make school children bathe in crude oil". Lots of stuff will fail off the bat, but there really won't be much time to take on anything substantive.
The next two years are going to be rough for Wyoming. The 2027 Legislature is going to have to overcome the Cornfederate bittereinder remnant that's in office until January, which means the 2027 session may be a bit of a wreck. They have a lot to do, as the far right was wrecking things to start with. In Congress, we're now completely decapitated, which was perhaps predictable but now that we've sent to people who like to scream and another whose perfected the blank stare, we might as well have them stay home. Barrasso can stare at people here, and the budding crop of new charter schools with far right leanings would give Gray an audience to yell at. Hageman can rediscover her agricultural roots.
A final note. Just as Wyomingites can be really pleased with their legislative picks, and their picks for the top state offices, all contrary pretty much to the wishes of the Francoist controlling the GOP locally, we can also be very glad that Proposition 1 failed. It would have wrecked the funding for local governments and have been a disaster.
Franco ordered a halt to the execution of Basque Catholic Priests who were considered supportive of the Spanish Republic. Republicans executed about 2,400 political prisoners (including more than 200 priests, nuns and seminarians) in Madrid.
Spanish Prime Minister Francisco Largo Caballero and his government fled Madrid for Valencia. Nationalist troops were on the edge of the city.
Francisco I. Madero was officially inaugurated as the President of Mexico. Rebellions were already ongoing, and while Madero hoped to quell them, things would soon grow worse.
The revolution in China was much in the news.
It seemed to be a frequent topic of cartoons.
The first straight pool tournament, using the rules for "14.1 continuous" pocket billiards, was held.. Cuban Alfredo De Oro won.
Lift Every Voice and Sing, often called the "Black National Anthem" was by brothers James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson.
Polymaths, Jams was an author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter and early civil rights activist. Rosamond was a composer and singer.
The United Kingdom and Brazil signed a treaty agreeing to arbitration to establish the boundary between northern Brazil and British Guiana (Guyana). The King of Italy was the mediator.
Guatemala introduced its draft plan for an international Court of Claims for the nations of the Western Hemisphere at the Pan American Conference.
In a blistering opinion, a Federal Court judge ruled that President Donald Trump improperly used a $10 billion lawsuit he filed against the IRS to extract personal benefits from the government and prevented the terms of a settlement agreement from taking legal effect.
71 Wyoming attorneys signed onto the letter. Lummis and Barrasso will ignore it.
August 1, 2026
Charges against an Olympic kayaker for vandalizing the reflecting pool have been dropped.
That was predictable, but what the Justice Department admitted was not. It admitted the damage was the result of "flawed installation by the contractor" as well as "the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026."
Every lawyer associated with this should be dismissed and disbarred. Trump should be impeached. The victim of these false charges should sue for malicious prosecution.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office dismissed all charges against David Hearn, Justin Carreno, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Cameron Thiers for the pool vandalization that never occured. Donald Trump had previously described these people as “SICK, DERANGED PEOPLE". He's the sick deranged people, but people who aren't victims of Trump Derangement Syndrome and think he's something other than a rampaging deranged narcissist know that.
Now, even after the Toddler's tantrums, no charges are pending at all. They never should be.
Lawsuits should, and I predict will, be filed against the government over this.
August 8, 2026
The DC Circuit ordered Trump to halt his illegal ballroom construction but, in a wussy move, stayed its decision for fourteen days in order to allow Trump to appeal, which he, or rather his administration, will.
The Court, in its decision, noted:
Whether or not a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help.
August 11, 2026
It's not that there aren't some really issues here.
Gray violated the law on this and needs to be held fully accountable. Courts looking at this issue have uniformly supported the states that refused to provide the information.
Gray should be made to recover the information he supplied. This was illegal.
But coming when it does, it may very well be the law in a practical sense this election cycle, and impact the election. It's specifically designed to frustrate Democratic voting. However, as Amy Howe reports:
A separate ruling by the same judge, in a case filed by a different set of plaintiffs, temporarily prohibits the U.S. Postal Service from implementing one provision of the executive order anywhere in the United States. That ruling remains in effect, at least for now.
The decision is flat out wrong and the Supreme Court will regret it. The Democrats are increasingly like to win both houses of Congress this Fall and they will begin to work on major Supreme Court reform. Trump can prevent that while he's in office, but he's becoming the political kiss of death for GOP candidates and when a new Democratic President comes in, this order will come off and the Supreme Court will be radically reformed. Perhaps first up will be age limitations, likely 70 years of old, which will wipe out the conservative majority on the court.
A decision like this one will help bring about that downfall. So does stuff like this:
The mail in voting one at least has some think judicial reasoning Staying ballroom construction was the obvious choice here and the Court didn't do it. That probably signals that they'll let this insane project go forward.
One of Rasner's previous suits is in the CST today on the pending summary judgment motion.
August 31, 2026
The Supreme Court sealed its fate today in holding that the Plaintiffs in a case challenging the legality of Trump's illegal construction of a giant garden shed on White House Grounds lacked standing.
Bullshit.
Justice Roberts, who dissented in the 5 to 4 decision, noted that the construction was likely illegal. It is. This was a standing decision.
So construction will commence and may well get completed. The legality will be ruled upon in the future, and then the heaping pile of shit hopefully blown to the ground by a future administration that will rely on this decision. The Supreme Court will go to 13 members, and an age limitation will be put on the justices guaranteeing a liberal majority on the court for a century.
September 10. 2026
Twenty states filed two separate lawsuits against the government alleging the Trump administration illegally weakened the Endangered Species Act.
September 11, 2026
The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals refused to lift an injunction on the USPS prohibiting the implementation of crybaby's attempt for a fall coup by banning mail in voting.
September 15, 2026
The US Supreme Court decided in a 7 to 2 vote to block the Trump USPS rule prohibiting mail in voting. Alito and Thomas were the two dissenting votes.
October 14, 2026
That this is even a topic shows how absurd our times are.
