Progressive Progress Stops
Plus: Lakers sold again, Trump's plane switcharoo, & Arkansas player's snake in helmet
Houston, we have a polling problem. The pollsters — and this is nothing personal, I’m sure they’re great people — embarrassed themselves yet again with two terrible polling misses over the last nine days. The first was in Michigan’s Democratic primary for the Senate last Tuesday, where the two most recent polls showed El-Sayed winning by +14 and +15. He ended up winning by +1.
But that was nothing compared to the Wisconsin miss: Francisca Hong lost despite the latest polls showing her winning by +18 and +22.
Well, the good news for Hong is that at least she’ll get to have a peaceful Thanksgiv-… never mind.
In narrowly losing Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, progressive ambitions suffered their first major setback of the year.
By now you know that the “progressive wing,” or Democratic Socialists, are on the rise, from Zohran and his comrades in New York City, to a group of successful primary candidates in Colorado, and Abdul El-Sayed, the successful Senate candidate in Michigan. The next woman up was Francesca Hong, a 37-year-old Democratic Socialist seeking to run for governor in Wisconsin, a solidly purple state.
But not so fast: Despite nearly all polls showing Hong comfortably ahead, she narrowly lost to the moderate David Crowley, who won with 39.81% of the vote to Hong’s 39.33%. Crowley had the backing of the Democratic establishment and the state’s outgoing governor; Hong had the momentum of the progressive movement.
Yet was it really a defeat for the progressives?
Hong’s views had made her something of a liability for the party: In a state won by Trump and that is known for its meat-packing-themed NFL team, she had called on X to “Cancel Thanksgiving,” alleging that it was a genocidal holiday (she flipped on this last week, telling Politico, “My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving”). Democrats worried she would be unelectable; Republicans were so eager to go against her in November that they bought $2.2M in ads supporting her in the primary.
If Republicans and establishment Dems’ assessments are correct, by losing, Hong may have actually helped the liberals in Wisconsin, and saved the progressives from an embarrassing defeat.
Another story worth noting: Per the WSJ, “Mamdani’s honeymoon with New York is over.”
The Journal reports:
Now, after a streak of good fortune, Mamdani is facing growing discontent from New Yorkers upset with his anti-Israel rhetoric and slights against the business community. Efforts to fulfill some of his marquee campaign pledges have stumbled, including the messy launch of the pied-à-terre tax. His relationship with the City Council is fraying.
Hong may not be the only progressive to suffer a setback in the dog days of summer.
–Max Frost
Now you see me…
President Trump confirmed on Tuesday that he was secretly moved off of Air Force One after last month’s NATO summit in Turkey, leaving the presidential jet to fly as a decoy after an alleged Iranian assassination threat.
The switch happened July 8 at Ankara airport. Trump arrived in Turkey aboard the Qatari-donated Boeing 747 but announced he would leave on the old Air Force One. Cameras then filmed Trump boarding the original Air Force One but, according to The Washington Post, he slipped out the opposite side into an airport catering truck, then boarded a smaller C-32A military jet, a modified Boeing 757 usually flown by the vice president. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth boarded the C-32A separately by external stairs to keep the flight looking normal.
Officials told outlets that the US had detected a credible Iranian threat to fire a missile at the plane. The New York Times reported that US intelligence spotted a person carrying a shoulder-fired missile near the summit, and that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stayed aboard the decoy. Journalists and some staff aboard Air Force One were told to keep their window shades down and did not know Trump was gone. The 747 stopped at RAF Mildenhall in the UK, where Trump discreetly moved back to the original jet and was later filmed stepping off it and boarding the Qatari-donated plane before returning to DC.
Trump said, “I guess there was a threat out there. I didn’t really ask too much about it. I get a lot of threats.” He said the decision was the Secret Service’s. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) demanded a full briefing, saying it was unacceptable that Congress learned of the threat from the press.
The Iranian threats are nothing new: The country has been threatening to kill Trump since January 2020, when he ordered the drone strike that killed General Qassem Soleimani. The Justice Department charged an alleged Iranian Revolutionary Guard asset in November 2024 with plotting to kill Trump in revenge for Soleimani’s death. Iran has denied targeting Trump and says it wants him prosecuted over the strikes. Then last month, Israeli intelligence told Washington that Iran was again exploring assassination plots, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Last month, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the US military would “completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran” if Tehran acted on threats to assassinate him.
–Max Hudgins
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The Los Angeles Lakers just sold for $12.5B, the highest franchise valuation in the history of sports. But the real headline is the buyers: Bob Iger and Josh Kushner.
For decades, the LA Lakers were under the control of the Buss family. Jerry Buss bought the team in 1979, and his family owned it until last year, when they sold a majority stake to billionaire financier Mark Walter (also the owner of the LA Dodgers and Chelsea).
With Walter’s firm under federal investigation for possible fraud, Mark Walter has decided to sell his majority stake in the Lakers just one year after buying them for a then-record valuation of $10B. A group led by Bob Iger and Josh Kushner has agreed to buy the team at a valuation of $12.5B.
Bob Iger was the longtime CEO of Disney who stepped down for the second time this March. Josh Kushner is Jared Kushner’s brother and the founder of venture capital firm Thrive Capital. He recently made headlines for being part of the investor group that sought to buy a stake in FIFA’s planned subsidiary.
Both have histories with the NBA: Disney was the longtime media partner of the league, and Josh Kushner has owned minority stakes in the Memphis Grizzlies and Miami Heat.
–Max Towey
What Does Roca Nation Think?
Yesterday’s Question: If a government mandates a vaccine, should it also assume a legal/financial obligation to compensate citizens who experience side effects?
That is a very interesting question. I think it would have to assume some and maybe all of the consequences/costs depending on individual factors, i.e. did the person's physician agree with the recommendation, co- morbidity factors, preexisting conditions, environmental factors, etc. All which would exacerbate negative outcomes. I see this playing out in the courts.
-Frances from California
No because governments shouldn’t be allowed to mandate vaccines. You wouldn’t mandate someone eat an orange every day. You can’t mandate what people do with their bodies and even if you could the people themselves are responsible for what they choose to do or not do.
On the presidents change in vaccine schedule when my daughter got her school shots she got the combo MMR. Insurance would only pay $50 a shot and since that’s a combo shot they only looked at it as one shot and I had to pay over $200 for her shots. I’m for the shots being independent of each other and a reduced number of children’s shots.
-Julia from Georgia
Plus, a response to Tuesday’s story on the WNBA:
I am a female athlete, but (I consider it fortunate) that I am on the older side and didn’t have to deal with the transgender debate during my real playing days. Sports remains one of the gender/sex frontiers where women are still battling. For similar facilities/resources, air time, paychecks, public interest, and more. For many sports where it is an individual effort, such as tennis, I think the damage a transgender female would do is obvious. For many team sports, one player can make a substantial difference. It may not, but likely may, create a dominating experience. All this is to say, I welcome transgender female attempts to join the WNBA so that people can finally see the impact of transgender athletes in an arena where the stakes are actually high and public. It won’t be “oh that was high school track” or “college swimming”. It’s the best of the best competing against each other with real monetary consequences.
I also think everyone knows this is an attack on women’s sports. If it weren’t, where is the discussion about transgender males trying to join the NBA or NHL? It’s because even if a transgender male could make the team, his impact would be minimal to negligible. I am immensely supportive of transgender people, but don’t touch women’s sports. We’re still fighting.
-Lucy from Colorado
Today’s Question: Do you think the term “socialism” has lost its sting or are there just more younger voters who don’t know why it stung in the first place?
Reply to this email with your response!
In Other News
US inflation slowed to 3.4% in July, down from 3.5% in June and 4.2% in May, as gas prices fell.
The University of Michigan will stop putting letter grades on first-semester freshman transcripts starting in fall 2027, saying the change should ease a mental health crisis among college-age students.
Lawyers for Tyler Robinson, charged with killing conservative activist Charlie Kirk, argued he shouldn’t face the death penalty because the shot endangered no one but Kirk.
President Trump on Wednesday announced that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt will resign from her role at the end of the month.
Happy Hour News
A man who spent months taking steroids and drinking heavily without ever lifting weights entered a bodybuilding competition but ultimately came in dead last.
British speed driver Andy Green set a world record for hydrogen-powered vehicles, hitting 406.32 mph at Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats.
An Arkansas high school football player wore a helmet with a venomous snake tucked inside for nearly an hour during practice.
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The Roca Mag
Reading is on the cusp of extinction.
That is the thesis of an 8,000+ word Atlantic article that went viral last month. In The End of Reading Is Here, Author Rose Horowitch paints a grim picture of the US’ literacy crisis. Reading only a portion of the piece is enough to send shivers down the spines of lowly writers across the country, worried now that their chosen career path, already uncertain enough, is on the verge of dying out forever.
The article is worth a read on its own – I’m sure to miss some of the larger points as I attempt to cover it here – but Horowitch paints a bleak picture of the state of reading.
The country, she argues, is experiencing a type of dumbing down: Sentences are, on average, one-third shorter now than they were 100 years ago; romantasy, young adult, and adventure fiction have replaced true literature – she alludes to the fact that last year’s top-selling novel, the latest installment of The Hunger Games franchise, is inferior to the best selling novel in 1958, Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago.
But not content to take Horowitch’s argument at face value, and being the professional journalist that I am, I believe her fears, while valid, warrant a more critical look.
We’ve gotten some interesting responses to Hudgins’ piece so far. Here are a few:
Carrie wrote:
I have so many thoughts about this, and I love your more nuanced approach compared to the author in the Atlantic. Yes, there is a huge shift in how we read among older adults. Some of us (me) still love paper books, but a majority enjoy audiobooks and their kindle. Are they always reading “meaty” books? No, but that doesn’t make it any less important. It’s still reading, and there are still benefits (Also, audiobooks are FANTASTIC for struggling readers). Where I would love to see more studies done is with the under-30 age bracket. This is where I see a more concerning trend of not reading at all. However, there is a whole subgroup of people on social media, “BookTok”, that are all reading based on recommendations they get online, and some of them are actually reading paper books! I just am curious how many in that age bracket are. As a HS English teacher, that teaches mostly 11th grade, it is VERY difficult to get students to see the importance of sitting and reading. It’s worse every year, as many kids (that I have in my classrooms) have no one monitoring their prolific use of their phones. Most current students don’t understand the connection between reading and reading comprehension. They don’t see reading as a skill to be learned. We have seen a trend where kids can pass basic writing skills assessments, but they cannot dissect complex texts because they lack reading comprehension. There are only so many things you can do to improve your reading comprehension... the main one is more reading! We have dedicated independent reading time in class where they read and eventually react to and talk about the books they are reading. Do I have kids that fake it? Yes. But, it’s always lovely to see those kids who finally find a book they enjoy and want to read. I hope with the advent and popularity of “BookTok”, and new apps where readers share and talk about books, we see more and more of the younger generation find joy in reading again.
An anonymous reader wrote in:
The article Hudgins wrote talking about the reading epidemic is real and concerning. I have noticed that the adolescent literacy rate in the past 10ish years has dropped off dramatically. I help out with a teen youth group through my church and when we ask the kids to read Scripture they struggle with a lot of words that I feel they shouldn’t struggle with, and if they come across a name they don’t know how to pronounce, they’re often incapable of even sounding it out to get something even adjacent to what the name sounds like. I don’t necessarily blame them, they’re kids, and it’s parents and the school system who should be ashamed of that, but in all likelihood they’re not involved enough with their kids to even know about the problem.
On another vein, in terms of literature genre and complexity, I started a Youtube channel recently hoping to earn some extra money, and the channel focus is classic literature. Reading classics like To Kill a Mockingbird, Heart of Darkness, The Great Gatsby, The Iliad, The Odyssey, etc. makes one realize the chasm of writing quality between 100 years ago (or further) and now.
Even reading Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a book that had no underlying message and was simply just fun for the sake of fun, it still felt miles ahead of the “best” books that are published now. Add to that the fact that I hear about so many titles these days having smut in them (looking at you, Yarros) and it’s plain to see that our increasingly illiterate generation just wants cheap thrills of all kinds, and authors don’t have anything valuable to say like they often did back then.
If any parents are reading this, please, please, PLEASE read quality books to your children. You won’t regret it.
And Ethan said:
I was having a similar conversation with my sister today. Reading comprehension and the younger generations’ desire to read seems to be declining. There is a level of basic, functional reading that is required in order to navigate life, but for many, reading is a chore and a book is considered unpleasant.
Here is a personal observation on comprehension: I’ve noticed that you can ask a GenA person to read a sentence like “In my anecdotal experience, reading comprehension is declining.” They can usually read it fluently, but if you ask them the meaning of what they read, many of them won’t really know. It’s as if they understand the mechanics of how to read by lack anything but the most basic vocabulary. In practice, they mentally skip over what they don’t understand.
I’d be very curious: If you asked one hundred 18 year olds to describe the meaning of “anecdotal”, what percentage would be able to do so relatively accurately? “Anecdotal” is a word which should be understood from about middle school with a Lexile level of roughly 1000L.
I don’t say this as a curmudgeonly old man. I’m in my 30’s. But I live in a sea of native English-speakers who don’t see the problem with “could of” or “alot”. 😉
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Final Thoughts
We apologize to any pollsters who might be in the audience. We have nothing but respect (*cough* and skepticism) for what you all do.
Hope you all have a great day!
—Max and Max
Commenting on the lack of reading comprehension. I'm sure a majority of us have seen the reels of an early 20 something adult approached on the street and being asked to read aloud an index card. Their attempts are mostly embarrassing and comical but all very concerning. Any career, any job worth holding requires reading. Professional careers that will guarantee a solid income use complicated phrases as a standard. Personally, I don't think reading goes hand in hand with intelligence. I feel it travels with diligence and curiosity. Hard work and the desire to KNOW will always set students apart. I don't think we should worry too much about the future. The youngest generation in grade school right now will simply rocket through the indolent and lackadaisical young adults we have in the work force currently. We simply need to wait and curtail the stupidity of the nonreading crowd until then. And possibly, somehow, foster intelligent curiosity in the ones we can reach. Hopefully, they will grow out of it.