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Hakeem

The Democrats will control both chambers in the next Congress. Although there may be some challenges, Hakeem Jeffries is expected to become the next Speaker of the House of Representatives. He would be the first African American Speaker.

He was born in Brooklyn 56 years ago. His father was a substance-abuse counselor and his mother a social worker. Jeffries went to New York City public schools before attending a public college, the State University of New York at Binghamton. He got a Master of Public Policy from Georgetown before enrolling in the New York University Law School where he graduated magna cum laude. He clerked for a federal judge. He then worked for six years as a civil litigator for a large, prestigious New York law firm, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.

Jeffries served in the New York State Assembly from 2007 to 2012, when he was elected to the House of Representatives from the 8th Congressional District, which stretches across Brooklyn. Jeffries had the distinct honor of representing the spouse and me in Congress when we lived in Brooklyn. The 8th District is the third poorest Congressional district in New York and is  42% Black, 27% White, 16% Hispanic, and 8% Asian.

He characterizes himself as a progressive concerned about racial, social, and economic justice. He wants increased background checks for potential gun owners and a ban on assault weapons. He supported Roe v. Wade and seeks to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. He has co-sponsored Medicare for All legislation.

He has supported Ukraine and has been one of the staunchest Democratic supporters of Israel. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other Jewish lobbying groups have given him $1 million in campaign contributions over the years. He opposed ending military aid to Israel. He opposes the Iran war.

He is married to a social worker and has two sons in their twenties who avoid the media spotlight. Unlike many in Congress and the administration, he does not have significant wealth. He is a member of a mainline Baptist church in Brooklyn. He lives in walking distance of Chuck Schumer’s home.

Last weeks, Jeffries told House Democrats he had three areas of priorities for the new House: affordability, accountability, and what he called American values. Affordability, he said, comes first. In the first hundred days he wants to reverse Medicaid cuts, restore SNAP funding, extend Affordable Care Act tax credits, end President Donald Trump’s tariffs, and stop the war in Iran.

The Medicaid cuts Jeffries seeks to reverse were part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed in July 2025. The enhanced ACA tax credits expired at the end of 2025. On affordability, he also identifies five other areas for further legislative action: housing, health care, groceries and consumer goods, gas and utilities, and caregiving. He maintains, “Here in America, when you work hard and play by the rules, you should be able to live an affordable life, a comfortable life and a good life. That’s the American dream, and House Democrats are determined to revive it.”

Jeffries’ accountability agenda begins in Congress. He said: “We must root out corrupt price gouging, clean up the mess at the Supreme Court and ban Members of Congress from trading stocks,” he writes. “Accountability begins at home.” He also pledges to make the House a stronger check on the White House and to investigate ethical problems in the Trump administration. “The massive corruption the country has experienced from the Trump Cartel explains why very little is getting done to help everyday Americans,” Jeffries said, “That changes immediately. Anyone who is stealing from the American people, ripping off the American people or screwing over the American people can no longer hide. We are going to hold the crooks accountable.”

He places ending the Iran war as an American values priority. He also includes in this category voting rights, equal protection, and immigration. Jeffries says, “Finally, we must restore classic American values like liberty and justice for all, equal protection under the law, the unfettered right to vote in a representative democracy and our heritage as a nation of immigrants.”

“The days of the House functioning like a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump Administration are over,” he wrote. Despite the confrontational language, Jeffries leaves open the possibility of working with Republicans. “In doing so, we will try to find bipartisan common ground whenever and wherever possible.”

Jeffries says that he will support the impeachment of Pete Hegseth. However, asked about calls within his caucus to impeach Trump, Jeffries said no House Democrat had raised impeachment with him. He said Democrats are focused on affordability and accountability.

However, I don’t think I am breaking any confidences when I repeat what Hakeem told me: He will adamantly oppose Trump’s plan to sell Texas to Denmark.

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Snippets

Alaskan Folly.

Four people are on the Alaskan ballot for Senator. Two are named Dan Sullivan. One is the Republican incumbent, and the other is virtually unknown. According to a New York Times article, the “other” Dan Sullivan was recruited by supporters of Democratic nominee Mary Peltola (but not by Peltola herself) to confuse voters. Republicans are voicing outrage. I am surprised by the outcry. Did anyone think that the “other” Dan Sullivan was on the ballot for any reason other than to be some sort of spoiler?

The Alaskan tactic is just another version of what both parties have done many times. One party, for example, has sometimes given aid and support to an extreme candidate in the other party’s primary, thinking that the extreme candidate will be easier to beat in the general election. Sometimes a party has aided a third party thinking that the third-party candidate will siphon votes from the major-party opponent. Reports, for example, said that Republicans helped the Green Party’s Jill Stein to get on the ballot in some states.

However, the story of two Dan Sullivans reminds me of a similar shenanigan in a different context. A Broadway play produced by David Merrick, Subways Are for Sleeping, got uniformly poor reviews from the New York critics. Merrick sought out people with the same names as the critics, such as Howard Taubman and Walter Kerr. He invited them to a performance and elicited blurbs from them such as “One of the few great musical comedies of the last twenty years,” and “A fabulous musical. I loved it.” Merrick placed the quotes along with pictures of the namesakes (Who knew what the actual critics looked like?) in a newspaper ad saying seven out of seven loved Subways. The flop play ran for almost another six months.

Yodeling

I watched a few minutes of a TV travel show about the Alps. It showed street performers in a touristy town. There was yodeling. That evening while getting ready for bed, an NPR segment featured yodeling. I had now heard yodeling twice in a day! I used to hear it more because a lot of country singers once yodeled. I thought I remembered that even my favorite of the singing cowboys, Roy Rogers, occasionally yodeled. The next day I went to YouTube and was pleased to find that some of my memories were still correct and that Roy Rogers did indeed yodel. (It does not seem right just to call him Rogers, but it would be ok to just say “Roy.”) As often happens with YouTube, that led me to other clips, and I heard more yodelers. I realized that during each of these yodeling encounters, I smiled while listening to the minute or two of the distinctive vocalizations. A whole hour of yodeling might be bad for one’s mental health, but a few minutes can make you feel lighthearted. Perhaps in these troubled times we all ought to take a break each day to listen to some yodeling. I, therefore, considered it good news when I was told that a new Broadway show about the life of Dolly Parton will have yodeling.

A Tribute?

Sir Patrick Stewart, the marvelous actor, just died. I will always remember him as Macbeth in a production of the Shakespeare play that took my breath away. I guess that many more will know him as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Whenever I watched that show, I marveled that even far into the future, humans had not learned how to grow hair. Perhaps as a tribute to Stewart, I should finally shave my head.

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An Alaskan Lawsuit about Two Dan Sullivans

In a highly unusual move, the Trump administration asked a federal court to block certification of the Senate election in Alaska if the Republican incumbent loses.

The Justice Department argued that confusion over another candidate on the ballot with a name very similar to the incumbent, Senator Dan S. Sullivan, could taint the election result. Mr. Sullivan is in a close race against Mary Peltola, a Democrat, but the ballot also features another Daniel Sullivan, but this one is Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr.

The lawsuit argues, “There is a realistic chance that, even if a majority of Alaskans wish to vote for Senator Sullivan, Daniel J. Sullivan’s presence on the ballot will result in a victory for Peltola.”

To guard against voter confusion, the suit contends, Alaska should “not certify any election result that may be impacted by voter confusion.” The possibility of such confusion exists, the suit continued, if “(1) Senator Sullivan does not win the election; and (2) had all votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan been cast instead for Senator Sullivan and Alaska’s rank-choice process played out accordingly, Senator Sullivan would have won the election.” The vote should not be certified until “an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan and any further procedures or relief this court deems necessary and appropriate.” It is unclear how such an investigation would work since ballots are cast anonymously.

I read the complaint several times and still do not understand the legal basis for the claim. The Constitution gives the states and Congress oversight over elections. As far as state oversight goes, this issue has already been litigated in Alaska. Its state Supreme Court affirmed in June of 2026 that both Sullivans could be on the ballot. Congress has not acted on the issue. This means that neither entity designated by the Constitution to oversee the election has found this to be significant enough to affect the election. In fact, the ballot takes care to avoid the confusion by explicitly listing Senator Sullivan as the Republican incumbent and listing the other Sullivan without a party affiliation.

Alaska will use ranked-choice voting. Ranked-choice voting will only come into play if no candidate receives an initial outright majority. If neither Peltola nor the incumbent has a majority on the first-place ballots, only then does ranked-choice come into play. At that point the candidate with the lowest vote total is dropped, and the second choices on those ballots are reallocated to that second choice. (See post of October 14 for an explanation of ranked-choice voting.) If the voters for the “fake” Sullivan list the incumbent as their second choice, then the Senator will be reelected.

Part of the reason for ranked-choice voting is to prevent a candidate from winning with a plurality when most of the voters were actually voting against the plurality winner.

With national ranked-choice voting, Trump may not be president. In 2016, he won crucial swing states not with majorities but with pluralities. In those states third- and fourth-party candidates received enough votes to deprive both Trump and Clinton of majorities. If these voters had the opportunities to list second choices, Clinton may have won. For whatever the reason, many voters who did not vote for Trump did not vote for Hillary Clinton either. They voted for third party candidates instead, and in key states those votes for Libertarians or Greens gave Trump pluralities and the decisive electoral votes.

In the swing state of Pennsylvania in 2016, for example, Trump won the state with the plurality of 48.8 percent (Clinton got 47.6 percent). Trump and Clinton together garnered 96.4 percent of the total ballots, while in 2012, the major presidential candidates had received 98.8 percent in Pennsylvania. In the intervening four years, third parties nearly trebled their votes from 69,000 to 192,000. A sizeable number of voters apparently wanted to vote for neither Trump nor Clinton, and as a result, Trump won.

A similar scenario played out in Michigan where Trump won in 2016 with only 47.3 percent of the vote. Again “others” made the difference. In 2012, only 1.4 percent of the ballots were not cast for the major parties, while in 2016 that number rose to 5.2 percent for minor parties, with vote totals increasing from 65,000 to 250,000. Trump’s plurality (again not a majority) was a mere 10,000 votes. The move to third parties again allowed him to win a plurality and get all of Michigan’s electoral votes.

And the beat went on. In Wisconsin, Trump won the plurality at 47.9 percent, but again, third parties swung the state. In 2012, third parties got 28,000 votes and 0.9 percent of the total. In 2016, third parties garnered 137,000 votes accounting for 5.4%.

We do not know who those third-party voters disfavored more, Trump or Clinton. Ranked-choice voting tends to answer that by allowing a second-place vote. If the second choices had primarily gone to Clinton, the results might have been different in 2016. Moreover, had Trump not been elected in 2016, I doubt that he would even have been nominated in 2024, much less elected. And even in 2024, although he came close to a nationwide majority, he still got only a plurality with 49.8% of the vote.

Perhaps this explains the Alaskan lawsuit, which Trump proudly proclaimed he ordered.

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Michigan Midterm

The Republicans best chance of flipping a Senate seat is in Michigan.

The incumbent Michigan Senator Democrat Gary Peters is not seeking a third term.

Michigan is a swing state. Biden won in 2020 by 2.8%. Trump won in 2024 by 1.9%.

The Democratic nominee for Senate is Abdul El-Sayed. His parents are immigrants from Egypt, but he was born and raised in Michigan. He graduated from the University of Michigan. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford where he earned a doctorate in public health. He has a medical degree from Columbia where he taught. He was Director of Public Health for Wayne County (Detroit) Michigan, resigning last year to run for the Senate. If elected, he would be the first Muslim member of the Senate.

Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee, was born, raised, and educated in Michigan, graduating from Adrian College, a small, Methodist-affiliated college. He was in the army and then in the FBI. After serving in the Michigan legislature, he was elected to the House of Representatives seven times. He ran for the Senate in 2024 and narrowly lost. He has been characterized as a moderate Republican.

This campaign has issues that can be found elsewhere—affordability, healthcare, housing, and tariffs, especially those on Canadian goods. El-Sayed tries to tie Rogers to Trump and as a candidate bought and paid for by corporate donors. El-Sayed, who is not a Democratic Socialist but espouses policies similar to the DSA, supports Medicare for all and other progressive measures that Rogers says will exacerbate affordability issues.

El-Sayed attacks the war in Iran. Rogers defends it. They differ on immigration enforcement, with El-Sayed calling for the elimination of ICE.

Of all the Senate candidates nationwide, El-Sayed has been the most vocal critic of Israel, calling the country a rogue state. He says that Israel should be a secular nation. He seeks to end United States military aid for Israel. Rogers defends Israel although he has tried to distance himself from AIPAC, the powerful Jewish-American lobbying group. Two percent of Michigan voters are Jewish.

This is the only race that has a focus on the Muslim Brotherhood. The day after El-Sayed won the Democratic primary on August 4, Rogers said that El-Sayed had “pledged his support to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

The Society of Muslim Brothers was founded in Egypt in 1928 as a pan-Islamist movement opposing British colonial rule and promoting social, economic, and political development with the goal of establishing a caliphate, or Islamic State under sharia law. After the fall of Hosni Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood won parliamentary elections in Egypt. Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Brotherhood, became Egyptian president. In 2012, El-Sayed signed an open letter from Egyptian Americans supporting the “revolutionary decisions taken” by Morsi.

The Muslim Brotherhood is a decentralized movement. It spans dozens of countries, and different branches vary widely in the way they operate, including in their use of violence. The Tunisian Brotherhood, for example, has been nonviolent and has peacefully won elections. On the other hand, Hamas has been seen as a Brotherhood offshoot and several countries including Egypt and Jordan have outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood. And the Brotherhood’s views on social issues, including opposition to gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights, are seen by many as “highly problematic” and inconsistent with universal human rights.

In addition to El-Sayed’s own comments fifteen years ago in support of the Brotherhood, claims have been made that his biological mother and half-sister have supported the Muslim Brotherhood. El-Sayed’s parents divorced when he was three, and he was raised by his father and stepmother. His mother worked for a charity that the U.S. government said supported terrorist groups. The charity closed in 2004. The mother was a low-ranking member of the charity’s staff. She says she worked there to support orphans, which the charity did. However, the executive director of the charity went to jail for sending money to Iraq in violation of sanctions. The half-sister, born to El-Sayed’s mother after the divorce, made statements in support of the Muslim Brotherhood a decade ago.

Mike Rogers, during a recent debate, also said that el-Sayed’s “biggest funders are from a group that supports the Muslim Brotherhood. He gets money from people who support openly Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda.” The claim is based on donations El-Sayed has accepted from individuals affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the country’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, and the Islamic Society of North America, which provides a number of programs and services to North American Muslim communities in North America. The two organization were named as unindicted co-conspirators in a 2007 terrorism financing case against Hamas. The organizations were not charged, deny wrongdoing, and deny allegations they are terrorist groups or are affiliated with terrorist groups.

The Republican governors of Texas and Florida have designated CAIR a terrorist organization. The federal government has not. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has filed federal lawsuits challenging the designations.

On the other hand, with all the focus on the Muslim Brotherhood, it is seldom mentioned that when El-Sayed made those statements in support, back in 2012, no Muslim Brotherhood organization had been designated a terrorist organization by our government. That did not even happen in Trump’s first term, but only in November of last year when the Brotherhoods of Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, but not from other countries, were so designated.

As we have seen elsewhere, when estranged mothers are brought into it, campaigns are ugly. Increasirngly, opponents avoid talking about Trumpian policies and actions, and instead ask whether El-Sayed is a loyal American. Rogers has asked, “Are you for America or are you for these terrorist groups overseas?” Trump refers to el-Sayed by his middle name, Muhamad. El-Sayed responds, “My name is not the reason you can’t afford gas.” Instead, he proudly claims that he is a person of faith, prays daily (suggesting some politicians do not), and suggests that Congress needs more people of faith. Trump has gone further and said that if El-Sayed wins, he will “invite hordes of jihadis to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have Christmas.” Trump has labeled the Democratic nominee “a jihadist Muslim Brotherhood member” and praised Rogers as “apple pie.”

But the attacks may be working. El-Sayed narrowly leads in the poll averages, but that advantage may be shrinking. Michigan is rated a tossup by the Cook political reports.

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Data Center Elections

While he did not originate the phrase, Tip O’Neill is the person most associated with “All politics are local.” As an absolutism, it was never true. It certainly is not now. Affordability, the quality and equality of healthcare, wars, and many other national flashpoints are affecting the elections throughout the country, but the political truism always does have some merit. Some issues, such as the border and immigration enforcement, have more traction in one place than another. And it also holds true for data centers, which may be of general concern in this country, but are a special focus in some electoral races.

Data centers are not so much a partisan issue as an anti-incumbent one. A mere year ago officeholders were flinging their arms open to data centers. The centers would bring construction jobs and some permanent ones into the county, district, or state with perhaps even an increase in the tax base. But then a grassroots opposition developed catching many of the public servants by surprise. Data centers have existed for a long time, and they had not produced a backlash. However, the politicians had not understood that the new centers were much different from the old ones. They are exponentially larger as the computing power needs of AI are exponentially larger than for routine internet uses. Snopes reports that a typical ChatGPT search uses nearly ten times the power of an average Google search. By some estimates electric demand of a typical data center is comparable to that of 25,000 private homes.

Economics tells us that more demand for a product increases prices. Some communities have seen large jumps in the cost of electricity, and voter-residents have blamed data centers for this trend. There are other causes of increased power demands besides the centers. Hotter summers due to global warming have brought more demand for air-conditioning, for example, but the centers in some localities have been a major driver of increased utility costs. This may force local electric companies to expand their facilities, but this is seldom an easy process. It often takes five or more years to generate new power. The expansion takes money, and if the tech companies do not pay for that expansion, it inevitably passes to all the users. For utility companies to satisfy the increased demand from data centers, they have already had to buy expensive peak-time power, which is more costly than it might otherwise be because of our aging and inefficient power grid system. Fears of possible brown outs in some localities because of data centers have spread. These are hot topics on many community social media sites.

Water is also of concern in the data center disputes. Computers generate heat, and the extraordinary computing powers of the so-called hypercenters produce immense amounts of heat, which must be dissipated. Doing so through air-conditioning would just tax the power grids even more. Instead, some centers are cooled by water, vast amounts of water, and the fear is this use will leave the communities where the centers are located with insufficient water. The tech companies respond that data centers will use less water than golf courses. This, perhaps, should make us question golf courses that do not recycle water, but in any event the statement is misleading. Golf courses are spread throughout the country, and their water use is widely dispersed. The sources of the water needed for the cooling are concentrated in the communities where they are located. Tech companies have prioritized data center construction in rural, low-tax regions with inexpensive real estate and often limited infrastructure. Fears are that streams will be sucked dry and that groundwater needed for wells will drop.

There are other concerns as well. The increased electricity demand increases the burning of fossil fuels with greenhouse gases and other pollution increasing. And the computers, cooling systems, and the back-up generators running 24/7 produce a constant noise that nearby residents say could drive a person crazy.

Some of the concerns about data centers, while very real, may be a particular form of American paranoia and overstated, but the paranoia has often been fed by the tech companies’ lack of transparency. Some vaguely promise that electric costs will be paid for by the companies and that water use will be limited by technologies that don’t yet exist.

Politicians who genuflected before data centers have tried to catch the bandwagon questioning the tech companies, raising questions about the leadership, perspicacity, and sincerity of the officeholders. For example, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who less than a year ago, announced that Texas, with a vulnerable energy grid and a limited water supply, was to be an “epicenter” for AI and data centers, has now announced a moratorium on new data center approvals. Opposition to data centers has emerged quickly as an issue in many local and state elections and may affect who controls the Senate next year. Ohio is a case in point.

Jon Husted, the Republican incumbent Ohio Senator, is running for a new term. Husted had served extensively in state government and was serving as lieutenant governor when he was appointed to the Senate seat vacated by J.D. Vance upon Vance’s election to the vice presidency. As lieutenant governor, Husted pushed hard for data centers, assuring the people that they would bring jobs. He offered major tax incentives to tech companies. In 2026 Ohio became the fourth largest state in data center development with an expected $40 billion in investment contemplated through 2030. But as a result, Ohio voters saw their electricity bills increase often dramatically. Possibly in response, Senator Husted introduced the Ratepayer Protection Act that would require the tech companies themselves to cover the excess electricity costs. The bill died in the Senate.

Democrat Sherrod Brown, who was a 7-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives, then Senator from 2007-2025, is Husted’s opponent. Brown has run many anti-data center ads highlighting utility costs and “sweetheart tax breaks” to tech companies. He maintains that local communities should have veto power over whether centers are built in their neighborhoods. A leaked memo says that a Republican Senate Committee recognizes that Brown’s anti-data center messaging has gained traction with voters.

In what has been a red state, Brown leads in most polls, but narrowly. The race is rated a tossup. Stay tuned. Data centers may control who controls the Senate.

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One of Those Random Acts

A few years back, I took a day trip from the Pennsylvania summer home to NYC for a—oh, this is a big surprise at my age—a doctor’s appointment. I needed a knee replacement of my human left knee. My right knee had been replaced eight years before. After x-rays and a chat with the surgeon, a time was arranged for the procedure that fit my schedule. All went as well as I could have hoped for from this visit.

I then drove back to the country and decided to stop at Marshall’s, a farmers’ market about four miles off the highway forty minutes from the summer home. The goal was to buy a fried green tomato mix that the spouse loves. The stand was stocked up on Original Whistle Stop Recipes Brand Fried Green Tomato Batter Mix, which is also “Great for Eggplant, Onion Rings, Zucchini, Squash, and More!”. I bought enough to last for quite a few green tomatoes.

Although the day had gone well, I still felt stressed from the doctor’s appointment. You might think having had one knee replaced, I would have been less anxious this time around, but I felt as I did on my second marathon. I did not know what to expect before the first marathon. It was a new experience, and I was curious about it. However, I learned from that first marathon how hard the run was. Before the second marathon, I now had experience confirming my belief that the race was going to be especially arduous if I was to meet my goal of finishing in fewer than three hours. I was much more nervous before my second marathon than I was before the first.

So. I had gone through one knee replacement, and I remember the post-operative and rehabilitative pain, discomfort, and exhaustion. I was more nervous about the second replacement than the first, and on my drive to Pennsylvania, although I tried to distract myself with old rock ‘n roll, my mind kept returning to how hard it would be getting into a car to go home from the hospital and where I’d have to go for physical therapy and how to I was going to avoid the constipation from opioids. These thoughts led me to conclude that I was entitled to a little self-indulgence. I bought a ring baloney made for Marshall’s market, a purchase I had made only once before. However, ring baloney brings back a pleasant childhood memory when our local butcher took me into his smokehouse and cut me a piece of his just-smoked baloney. I still remember its warmth and juiciness and the smokey smell all around. A love affair with food blossomed.

I should have been satisfied with that single self-indulgence. The day had not been that stressful, but it was early afternoon, and I had not had lunch. I decided to indulge further at Humpty Junior’s, a short drive from the farmers’ market. With its red and white vinyl booths, black and white checkerboard floor, and white tables, it looked to be a throwback to an earlier era, which appealed to me. Think “Happy Days” but not as big as Arnold’s and without the jukebox. Although the sign in quaint typography out front proclaims, “Burgers, Steaks, Shakes, Dogs, Fries, Ice Cream & More” and another sign says, “Voted the Best Burger in Warren County by NJ. Comm. True Jersey,” to me screamed, “This is a place to get a milkshake.”

I was contemplating the board listing their more than fifty milkshakes, when I heard a young man who had been sitting in the booth by the door. “Excuse me,” he said, and then added the “Sir” we aged folk sometimes get. He continued, “May I pay for whatever you are going to order?” Not what I had expected, and I was flummoxed. I asked why, and he said he just wanted to. My usual mode of dress is not fancy, but I did not think that I looked homeless or destitute. I replied that I probably had more money than he did, but he just smiled as did the mother and daughter in the booth he had just vacated.  Perhaps I intuited the words of Sophocles: “One who knows how to show and to accept kindness/ will be a friend better than any possession.” Perhaps because I did not want to disappoint the hopeful looks the three smiles showed, but probably just because I was curious, I said, “Sure.”

He stuck out his hand and asked my name and then said he was John. After I inquired, he said that he lived nearby and worked for his church, one of those with “Bible” in its name. I asked what shake I should order. He asked what flavors I liked, and I said, “No, what would you order?” He said a Motor Oil, which he allowed had a funny name but was chocolatey with bits of Oreo. I gave that order to the young woman behind the counter. She asked, “Large or small.” John immediately said, “Large.” I knew this was more self-indulgence than I needed, but I demurred.*

After getting the drink, I stopped at his booth and found out the mother and daughter were from Pittsburgh, and they were visiting friends, gesturing towards John. I asked if they met through church activities, and the mother said no. She had watched John’s mother on YouTube. “She is a great speaker.” The girl told me that she was entering her senior year of homeschooling. I asked, “If your mother allows you to graduate, what do you plan to do?” “Interior design.” “Do you plan to study somewhere for it, or plan to get a job in the field?” “I hope to get an internship and take courses online.” The mother said she was a homemaker while homeschooling four children. The oldest had finished two years ago and now worked for Panera. John, too, had been homeschooled and did not mention any higher education hopes. After a few minutes more chatting, I went on my way with my paid-for Motor Oil milkshake.

I am in my eighth decade, and this was a new experience, and unlike many new experiences these days, a pleasant one. However, the shake did dribble down on to my clean tee shirt as I drove, and with my small bit of will power overwhelmed, I drank it all. I got back to my summer home looking a mess and with a bloated belly.

A good experience, but I was sorry that I did not ask how to watch a video of John’s mother and that I did not give them a card so that they might read this blog.

* The spouse had a similar experience a few years ago when, traveling back alone to NYC on Mother’s Day, she stopped at a diner for lunch. The diner was crowded, full of families celebrating Mom. Having finished her grilled cheese sandwich and chicken noodle soup, she went to pay the bill but was told that a patron had already paid! Had they found her forlorn — a handicapped woman alone on Mother’s Day? Sometimes people are just nice.

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Snippets

Scams and con artists seem to have been with us forever. I was reminded of that again from Alexander: God, King, Man (2026) by Edmund Richardson. I learned that ancient Egypt prized mummified baboons. Who knew? These expensive items had to be imported from what is now Sudan and Ethiopia. The priests of Toth sold what appeared to be such creatures. The priests, however, created fakes made of cloth and papier-mâché stuffed with twigs and the like and formed into baboon shapes. The fraud was enormous and highly profitable. The fakery went on undetected for thousands of years and became known only when the “baboons” were subjected to CT scans in modern times. The world may change, but it also remains the same.

After fifteen years on top, Princeton was bumped by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to number two on the lists of best colleges. U.S. News regularly tinkers with its rankings methodologies. My understanding is that the New Jersey school fell because this year the editors for the first time factored in that Pete Hegseth is a Princeton graduate.

Pete Hegseth costumes should be big sellers for Halloween. After all, what could be scarier than more Pete Hegseths? But, no matter how much they insist, don’t send your kids out trick-or-treating as slicked-haired Pete if they are fatties or have low testosterone.

Pete Hegseth has established the Office of Religious Affairs in what Hegseth calls the Department of War. Hegseth apparently sees himself as a spiritual person and believes we should improve the “spiritual health” of our “warriors.” This made me think of Christian principles and faith. I plan to start wearing my custom WWJB bracelet—not a “What Would Jesus Do” (WWJD) bracelet, which were popular in certain circles a few years back. Instead, my bracelet asks, “Who Would Jesus Bomb?”

Other current government officials believe our policies should be shaped by the Bible, or at least by their biblical interpretations. For example, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson who, when he retires plans to become a character on The Simpsons, has said, “I wish that everybody would acknowledge the importance of [the Israeli-American] relationship. There are a lots of scripturally based, biblical reasons to support Israel.”

The first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence does allude to the Creator and religion, but it mentions neither Jesus Christ, Jehovah, Moses, God, nor Christianity.

Praise the warrior; question the wars. Did the Mexican War, the many wars against Native Americans, or the Spanish-American War preserve American freedoms or make Americans safer? How about our invasion of Russia in 1920 or our many invasions in the Caribbean? How much safer or freer do you feel as the result of the Iraqi war or the frequent bombings of Libya? Are you safer now given the Iran bombings and their aftermath? Let us not forget the warriors when their service is completed, but let us realize that it is also patriotic to question the uses of our military.

Through it all, however, remember one of the Rules for Staying Young by Satchel Paige: “Avoid fried meats which anger up the blood.”

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Ranked-Choice Voting for Senate: Maine and Alaska

Ranked-choice voting is in effect in the Alaska and Maine Senate races. Both states operate similarly, and in both states, the race is up for grabs. Each voter can rank the candidates in the order they prefer. So, for example, I can say my first choice is A, my second choice is B, and so on.

Here’s how it works: Assume four candidates and 100 voters. If 40 voters had A as their first choice, 35 for B, 15 for C, and 10 for D, no one has the majority required in a ranked-choice election. Another count is undertaken. The candidate with the lowest number of first place votes is dropped, D in this case, and the second-place choices on those ten ballots are reallocated to the candidates who were the second choices. 

Assume that five of the ten ballots where D was the first choice had A as the second choice and five had B as the second choice. That means that both A and B have five more votes, giving A 45 votes and B 40 votes. Still neither has a majority so we have another count. C is dropped and the second choices of the voters for C reallocated. If six or more of those second choices are for A, A has more than 50 votes, a majority, and is elected. If, on the other hand, eleven or more of those fifteen had B as their second choice, then B has the majority and is elected.

Maine is unlikely to be determined by ranked-choice voting in the Senatorial election because ranking choices comes into play only when there are three or more candidates. In Maine, although several people have mounted write-in campaigns, only two candidates are on the ballot.

One is Susan Collins, the only incumbent Republican Senator up for reelection in a state that voted for Kamala Harris. Troy Jackson is the Democratic candidate.

Jackson tries to tie Collins to Trump making it a standard pro-Trump /anti-Trump battle, but there are a couple of local issues, too. Immigration enforcement became a hot-button issue after ICE killed a Colombian immigrant in Maine a few months ago. Collins opposes Trump’s immigration enforcement, but she supported increasing the ICE budget. She asked, “Do you really want to get rid of an agency that deports violent criminals?”

Collins, it is often said, had the deciding vote in favor of Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. She stands by her vote. Kavanaugh was instrumental in voting for the Dobbs decision banning abortion. Jackson’s argument is, “Do you trust Collins to pick the next Supreme Court justice?” Jackson, who now supports abortion rights, did not always do so.

Collins touts her Senatorial seniority that has helped bring federal funds to Maine, more than $1.5 billion in recent years, she says. Jackson maintains that she has not leveraged her power wisely and tries to tie Collins to Trump for rising gas and grocery prices. Collins, on the other hand, accuses Jackson, who was a former Maine Senate president, of setting state policies that caused high energy and housing costs.

Finally, in Maine, which has significant trade with Canada, the Canadian tariffs are a flash point. Collins says that she has used her power with Trump to ameliorate the Canadian tariffs. She says that she got the tariff lifted on Canadian rock salt, which is important to Maine. Jackson responds, “You can’t eat rock salt.”

Polls have the Maine Senate race as a dead heat.

Alaska does have four candidates on the Senatorial ballot, but only two real contenders: Dan Sullivan, a Republican, a Harvard grad, a lawyer, a marine, and the current incumbent. He is opposed by Mary Peltola, a Democrat, a native American, a past member of the Alaska House of Representatives, and a one-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives. As elsewhere in the country, affordability, housing, and health care are campaign points. However, there are local issues. Alaska has a special epithet reserved for one’s opponent: To be aligned with the “Lower 48” is a terrible thing. This plays out in many ways. The federal government owns 60% of Alaskan lands, and the state is frequently in conflict with the federal government over drilling rights and roads. So, e.g., Sullivan says Peltola is “aligned with the Lower 48” by opposing expanded oil and gas drilling in the state; she, on the other hand, touts an oil project she supports that environmentalists have opposed.

The Alaska race also has a fierce battle over fisheries management. Fish are central to Alaska’s economy and identity, and fish are at the center of the campaign. Peltola, a Yup’ik Native American, says often she has been fishing since she was 6. Showing the importance of fisheries in Alaska, her campaign slogan is “Fish, Family, Freedom.”

The hot-button issue between the candidates is “bycatch,” the catching of salmon and other nontarget species from huge trawling vessels that harvest pollock and similar fish. Many blame bycatch for declines in salmon, halibut, and crab stocks. Peltola supports a ban on factory trawlers that combine fish harvests with onboard processing and distinguishes large out-of-state operators, mostly based in the state of Washington, from smaller Alaska-based operations.  Sullivan touts a bill he introduced in Congress called the Bycatch Reduction Act. Peltola plays up that the large fishing industry opposes her approach more than Sullivan’s, in essence saying if they are against me, you should be for me.

 The Trump/Doge cuts to fishery science and the National Weather Service have also been at issue. Musk supports Sullivan.

Finally, Alaska sees China as a huge market for its seafood, and tariffs have hurt this. Sullivan has stood with Trump on tariffs.

Peltola leads narrowly in the poll averages, but Alaska is a tossup. In Alaska, ranked choice might matter. Two minor candidates are also on the ballot. One is a Republican, and the other claims no party affiliation. If Peltola were to get the plurality but not the majority and the second choices on the minority candidate’s ballots are heavily for the Republican Sullivan, he could win even though coming in second on the initial count. If, however, Sullivan is leading without a majority on the initial count, but lost because the second choices favored Peltola, I predict that someone will be baselessly contending that Alaska was a stolen election. Trump has already labeled Alaska’s system as “stupid.”

There are several reasons given for ranked choice voting. It is said that it reduces mudslinging; a candidate does not want to alienate an opponent’s supporters, hoping to get second place choices. This deters ad hominem attacks and forces a focus on the issues. Also ranking assures that we don’t elect candidates who are opposed by a majority of the electorate. Sometimes, we elect a candidate with a plurality because there are enough third-party votes to prevent a majority. However, the third-party voters might have preferred the losing candidate to the winning one. In that case, the winner, was actually opposed by a majority. Finally, ranked choice voting eliminates a run-off election, which is costly, and in which turnout is often less than in a regular, general election.

Although ranked-choice voting is used in Alaska, it is not universally loved. It was adopted in 2020 in a statewide referendum with a bare 50.55% of the voters approving. A 2024 attempt to repeal the system was defeated by an even tinier margin with 50.12% voting to retain it. Another attempt to repeal Alaska’s ranked-choice voting is on the ballot in November.

Posted on by rjonakait

What’s on the Docket?

The scariest words this month don’t come on Halloween. They cme on the first Monday of October: “The Supreme Court is back in session.” Be afraid; be very afraid.

The Supreme Court has two quite different dockets. There is the emergency docket, sometimes called the shadow docket, where the Court acts quickly without full briefing or oral argument. Then, without giving an opinion, it determines whether some sort of temporary (i.e., emergency) action should be taken.

Then there is the docket often called the merits docket, the one I will focus on here. These cases have written arguments by the litigants (briefs) followed by oral arguments and written opinions explaining the decisions of the Justices. Cases on the merits come before the Supreme Court when four Justices of the Court agree to hear them.  A writ of certiorari (which, I believe, is Latin for “Bring it on”) is granted. More colloquially, the Court grants “cert.” Right now 30 cases have been granted cert.  This is less than half of the cases usually decided in a term, so the Court will continue to add cases in the coming months. Oral arguments for cases on the merits docket started this week.

Many of the cases now docketed are technical in nature and will garner little attention from most of us. Several cases, however, are potentially noteworthy and of general interest. One of those cases asks whether there a Second Amendment right to possess an AR-15 or a similar semiautomatic weapon? These guns are sometimes called assault rifles.

Several cases will consider whether religious freedom is being infringed, including whether local land use regulations can prevent the construction of a religious structure on property that a religious institution owns. Another religion case involves the provision by Colorado of money to both public and private (including religious) pre-K schools, but only if those schools do not discriminate on sexual and gender identity grounds. The defendant (a Catholic Church) is asking the court to force Colorado to carve out an exemption for it so it can continue to discriminate on these grounds and still get the taxpayer money. The Church is arguing that it is religious discrimination against the Church if such an exemption is not granted.

The Court will hear several immigration cases. One deals with immigrants who have been granted asylum status but whose asylum was later terminated. Can they still become lawful permanent residents or are they categorially barred from permanent status? Another immigration case asks under what circumstances, if any, may the government deport people to countries where they have no contacts or ties? A third case: When, if ever, does the government have to give a bail or bond hearing to a detained undocumented immigrant?

The list goes on.

An important parental rights case: Can parents challenge a state law that displaces parental determinations on “gender transitions”?

Voting. Does federal law prevent Arizona from requiring “satisfactory evidence” of citizenship to register to vote and whether federal law prevents Arizona from purging noncitizens from registrations within 90 days of an election?

The case, however, with the widest potential impact is Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, which was argued this week. Colorado localities have sued the oil companies Suncor and Exxon Mobil under state law for the harm greenhouse gas emissions have caused to the global climate. Suncor is arguing that federal law and the Constitution prevent this use of state law. At first glance, this seems like a normal contention that comes up often, i.e., When does federal law preempt state law? But in the usual preemption situation, there is a federal law that contradicts, or conflicts, or is inconsistent with a state law, and the question is whether under such circumstances the state law can still be enforced. This case, however, is different. There is no specific federal law that is at odds with what Boulder is doing. Instead, Suncor’s novel argument goes along these lines: Since greenhouse gas emissions cross interstate and international boundaries, a state can act against the oil companies only if Congress has affirmatively authorized state action since the Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. That concept is new.

A decision on the merits, of course, will greatly affect oil companies. There are fifty or more suits around the country similar to the Colorado one. The companies argue that billions upon billions of dollars are at stake, and the companies could be bankrupted because of such suits.

Something more general is also at stake. If the Court accepts that the states cannot act because Congress has not authorized state action, this decision will mean that other companies will begin to look for similar situations where states, lacking specific congressional authorization, are prohibited from acting. In other words, what other circumstances would be like climate where states cannot act?

However, there are also technical jurisdictional issues in this case. Normally, the Supreme Court does not decide a case until that litigation has had a final determination in the lower court. That is not the situation here. Although the case has gone on for years, it some ways it is just at the beginning. The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled only that the suit can proceed to its next stage. It has not, in fact, been fully litigated in the lower court. The U.S. Supreme Court case might be decided on the procedural issues and not the merits.

And there is another kicker here. In a rare move for the Court, Justice Samuel Alito has recused himself from this case. No reason is given, but it is assumed it is because he owns oil company stocks, and all oil companies will be affected by the outcome.

It’s going to be an interesting term. Boo!

Posted on by rjonakait

Cool Machine Sets the Mind to Musing

Colson Whitehead’s marvelous Cool Machine (2026) is the third in his series of Harlem crime novels. They feature Ray Carney, the street-smart owner of a 125th Street furniture store and a sporadic fence who is often in trouble. Cool Machine reminds me again that New York City is not one city. It is, instead, a conglomeration of many cities that sometime overlap. Whitehead’s trilogy, which included Harlem Shuffle (2021) and Crook Manifesto (2023), has its center in the Harlem world of hustlers and criminals and business people and strivers and family men, but those people intersect with gem merchants of midtown Manhattan, the changing world of the Lower East Side, Radio Row in lower Manhattan, a part of the New York scene that was demolished with the construction of the World Trade Center. Some of his other books also show us the differing New York City worlds. Sag Harbor is about a tony part of eastern Long Island, but it is also about the world of the privileged living on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and its culture of exclusive private schools. And his The Colossus of New York is a marvelous prose poem, something of an ode to the many “cities” of New York City.

Reading Whitehead makes me think of the cities within the City that I inhabited or entered into during my more than half-century in the City. But it also brought to mind some other authors. The cover of Cool Machine reminds us that Whitehead has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction…twice. He is one of the few writers who have won more than once, but the kudos go further. Yes, he won a Pulitzer for his 2016 novel The Underground Railroad and again three years later for The Nickel Boys, books much different from the Harlem crime trilogy. However, he also was awarded the National Book Award for The Underground Railroad, and he has been the recipient of many other honors. This got me thinking about the twentieth century writer who won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, a National Book Award for a different novel, and two Pulitzers for drama, Thornton Wilder.

Today Wilder is largely overlooked, even though many of my generation have read the Pulitzer-Prize-winning The Bridge of San Luis Rey, an innovative, powerful work. And many of us have seen or read or even acted in his innovative, powerful play that won a Pulitzer: Our Town. On the other hand, I have never seen his other Pulitzer-Prize winning play, The Skin of our Teeth, although I would have liked to have seen the original Broadway cast of it, starring Frederic March and Tallulah Bankhead. Now there’s a pair.

Some years back, I found that our library in the country, the Barrett Friendly Library, had a copy of Wilder’s The Eighth Day, which won the National Book Award four decades after Bridge won the Pulitzer. It is very good, and that made me wonder why he wasn’t read much these days. Even so, I did not seek out more of his output or reread Bridge, and perhaps it is telling that I could not recently remember the title of The Eighth Day nor could I tell you a lick about it other than I remember it as being a good book.

These thoughts returned when I plucked Theophilus North, Wilder’s last novel, published when he was 76, out of a leave-one-take-one book kiosk. I enjoyed reading it and read more about Wilder, an astonishing man. In addition to the Pulitzers and the National Book Award, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Letters and the Presidential Medal for Freedom. He knew many languages and his translation of Ibsen’s A Doll House was running on Broadway when Our Town opened. He wrote The Matchmaker, which had a long Broadway run, and its adapted version, Hello, Dolly, played even longer. He wrote a famous screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock, and his friends included both Sigmund Freud and Gertrude Stein. Even with all of these accomplishments, few of us would think to place him on our list of great American writers.

Theophilus North is set in 1926 and reads as if it is a slightly fictionalized version of the author’s life. In the summer of 1926, Theophilus, our narrator, a graduate of Yale, has left his teaching job at a prestigious prep school in New Jersey (Wilder had taught at Lawrenceville and graduated from Yale) and heads off to Newport, Rhode Island, near where Theophilus (and Wilder) had been stationed in World War I. Importing archeological ideas from ancient Troy, North tells us his theory of nine cities of Newport—early settlers, seaport, playground for the rich, local workers, and so on. North spends the summer teaching tennis to and tutoring youngsters and reading to the elderly. Each chapter is a short story, with some of the same characters popping up in many of them. Each story has a similar structure: A problem or a mystery crops up, and Theophilus resolves it. Although those helped are grateful, he always rejects pay or any hint of future consideration. The book explores the various posited Newport cities but does not have any central plot or moral or theme. Each chapter could stand on its own. This made for satisfactory, episodic reading. A chapter a day is the way I approached it.

As I was reading, I kept thinking that Theophilus North reminded me of something else that I had read at about the same time, but at first I could not place it. It was not the dissection of a time or place as in Updike’s Rabbit novels. It was not the intertwined short stories of Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin. Or a book like Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge with vignettes of intersecting characters. It was not his contemporary or semi-contemporary authors writing about American themes, like O’Hara, Bellow, or DeLillo. Instead I realized it reminded me of another episodic book, The Second Rumpole Omnibus by John Mortimer, a collection containing three Rumpole books that had been separately published. Each Rumpole book consists of short stories, but, as with Theophilus North, characters recur and incidents from one story are referred to in another. The Rumpole stories are similar to Theophilus not only because of the first-person narration, but also because at the beginning of each story a problem or mystery is presented and by the end the situation is neatly resolved by the narrator. Both North and Rumpole, the well-worn barrister, have pockets of erudition;­­ North has a vast knowledge of literature and languages; Rumpole knows bloodstains, Wordsworth, and judges. But given the choice, I would take Rumpole over North. Wilder has created a character that seems too good to be true, while one can imagine the true existence of Rumpole because, although an idealist, he is flawed. North is a prig; Horace Rumpole has self-deprecatory humor and a wife who at least slightly terrifies him (the infamous “She who must be obeyed”). I would like to have a glass or three of Chateau Fleet Street at Pomeroy’s with Rumpole because I might not only enjoy the conversation, but I also might learn something about human nature. I can’t imagine having a drink with North unless I wanted to learn more about him. I’m sure he would be delighted to tell me.

The New York Times in its book review interviews writers and asks them what writers, living or dead, they would like to have dinner with. No one is going to interview me for The New York Times Book Review, but I find that interesting to think about. If asked, I would like to get together with the fictional Ray Carney and Horace Rumpole. I think that they would find each other fascinating, but I would like it to be in a New York bar, or diner, or Chinese restaurant. For various reasons, I no longer live in New York, but Whitehead reminds me of how much the City has been part of my being. I miss it. I relate to the conclusion of Cool Machine when Carney is thinking about the next phase of his life and ruminates: “Escape from New York. The question remained: Where do you go? There was no place else. It was like going on the lam from yourself. He had been suckered before and fallen for scams. Swindled himself when he let vanity or pride get the best of him. Same as anyone. But he’d never been so foolish as to fall for that long con, the biggest con of all, that there were other places besides New York City.”

As Whitehead dedicates his most recent book: for New York Fuckin’ City.