How America’s Birthday Got Hijacked |
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Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, a newsletter that could have beaten Elon Musk to trillionaire status but is consciously pursuing a slow-growth model instead.
This week, as every week, we check in on the latest primary results, as well as complete our regularly scheduled check-in of California’s primary results. Elsewhere, Senate Republicans are at each other’s throats and thinking about calling it a year, workwise. Graham Platner’s margin in the Maine Senate primary was closely watched, but why? Who knows.
Let’s begin with our second-ever, and second consecutive, octogenarian president.
How America 250 became Trump 80.
We’d like to congratulate President Donald Trump for making it to 80 years old, a milestone he will celebrate on Sunday. More importantly, we’d like to congratulate you, reader, for having successfully cohabitated the Earth with Donald Trump for up to 80 years. The president will celebrate the occasion with a mixed martial arts fight at the White House, for which he’s had constructed a metallic eyesore on the people’s lawn. Between his own birthday, America’s 250th birthday, and the president’s having given up on responding to public opinion, Trump is using the powers of the office mostly to entertain himself while he still can.
The fight is the kickoff of a summer of amusements in the nation’s capital, ostensibly tied to America 250 but rebranded by the president into celebrations of himself. (More than rebranded: The congressionally authorized group planning the festivities has been shunted aside in favor of Trump’s own group.) After the UFC fight, Trump 80 will feature an IndyCar race in Washington, as well as a Great American State Fair, at the president’s urging. Trump is planning a “rally to end all rallies” for late July, replacing the concert series that had been planned before many of the artists backed out. But first: fight night. The forecast calls for thunderstorms.
Yes, “rigged” is the only possible explanation for a Republican to lose in Los Angeles.
We have to offer a mea culpa. Last week, we wrote that it was possible for Democrat Nithya Raman to leapfrog past Republican Spencer Pratt into the top two in Los Angeles’ mayoral race as counting continued, but that the odds were against it. You’ll never guess what Raman did a couple of days later. The young intern who shot us with a tranquilizer dart and then inserted that inexact analysis apologizes. But the outcome makes sense. L.A. is (famously!) a very blue city; Trump won 26 percent of the vote there in 2024—a higher share than Republican presidential candidates typically receive—and........