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Rep. Mike Collins and former football coach Derek Dooley advanced to a runoff in Georgia’s Republican Senate primary, dragging out a bitter contest to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in November.

The result plunges Republicans into another monthlong intraparty fight. Meanwhile, Ossoff, who already has a massive name ID and $31 million and counting in his warchest, can continue building and conserving his resources in the marquee race.

It also sets up a proxy battle between President Donald Trump, who holds Collins as a close ally, and Georgia’s GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, who backed Dooley for the nomination. Dooley, who was polling in third place ahead of Election Day, had a late burst of momentum after casting himself as a political outsider and leaning on his ties to Kemp.

The outcome now intensifies pressure on Trump, who didn’t support a candidate in the primary, to intervene. The president’s endorsement in a runoff — where the electorate tends to be highly engaged voters — could prove decisive.

The primary was marked by infighting and state Republicans’ escalating concerns that the national GOP was shifting its attention to other battleground states instead of Georgia.

A runoff looked all but inevitable in the contest’s final weeks with polls showing none of the candidates near the 50 percent support they’d need for an outright win. Dooley and Collins will face off again June 16, though Tuesday’s result suggests the latter holds an advantage.

Early public polling of hypothetical general election match-ups shows Ossoff with a lead over both Republicans.

The general election is expected to be one of the most expensive in the country. The GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund has already pledged an initial $44 million in spending for the fall, while the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC recently committed $20 million.

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Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro just passed his first major test of the midterms.

Bob Brooks, a Shapiro-endorsed firefighter union leader, will take on GOP Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in a key November battleground after clinching the Democratic nomination for Pennsylvania’s 7th District over a crowded field.

It’s a significant win for Shapiro, who helped recruit Brooks into the race as part of his aggressive push to help Democrats retake the House by flipping four competitive seats in Pennsylvania. A romp across the map could serve as a launchpad for the governor’s potential 2028 presidential campaign.

It’s also a boon to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which recently added Brooks to its “Red to Blue” program and boosted him with a pre-primary ad buy.

Brooks, a first-time candidate, leaned heavily on the highly popular governor’s imprimatur to boost him over a four-way field that included former Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure, former federal prosecutor Ryan Crosswell, and engineer Carol Obando-Derstine, who served as an adviser to former Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.).

Shapiro went all-in, endorsing Brooks and hosting a fundraiser for him in December, cutting an ad for him in the spring and stumping with him shortly before Election Day.

The governor’s support brought scrutiny on both men. News outlets unearthed Brooks’ problematic old social media posts and a messy family property dispute. Brooks suggested that Shapiro tried to retaliate against a political foe in 2024 by encouraging his union to back her GOP opponent. (Brooks later said he misspoke.)

And a mysterious outside group with apparent ties to the GOP, Lead Left PAC, spent more than $1 million boosting McClure and attempting to sink Brooks and Crosswell in the final days of the race. Voters appeared to look past it all.

Brooks had more than just Shapiro in his corner. The blue-collar everyman who worked as a bartender and moonlights as a snowplow driver is being held up by an array of Democrats as a model for how the party can win back working-class voters.

He boasts one of the broadest endorsement lists of any House challenger on the map, a roster that spans from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and from the Congressional Progressive Caucus to the Blue Dogs. He’s also brought together a cross-section of top Democratic operatives, including the progressive Fight Agency and The Bench, a new group that works to elect nontraditional Democrats.

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President Donald Trump finally got his revenge on Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie.

The libertarian-leaning iconoclast who has been a hindrance to some of the president’s biggest priorities lost to Trump-endorsed former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein in Kentucky’s 4th District on Tuesday, in a primary that became the most expensive intraparty House fight on record. It’s the latest in a string of primary victories for the president that cements his viselike grip on the GOP even as his overall approval numbers continue to sag.

In a retribution campaign that has seen Trump fell GOP foes from Indiana to Louisiana, Massie’s race was perhaps his sweetest victory.

Massie has long been an irritant to Trump and House GOP leaders. But his votes against Trump’s signature tax-and-spending package, moves to rein in the president’s war powers over Iran and stewardship of the bipartisan effort to release the Jeffrey Epstein files finally pushed Trump to front a primary challenger.

The president searched for a “warm body” to run against the “third rate Grandstander” and eventually found one in Gallrein, a fifth-generation farmer and failed state Senate candidate. Trump endorsed Gallrein before he got into the race and rallied with him in March. His Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, promoted Gallrein at an event in the district Monday.

Polls showed a tight race down the home stretch in what had become the fight of Massie’s political life. The president’s intervention united local forces and various factions of the GOP that had long wanted to oust Massie but previously lacked the firepower. And it unleashed a flood of outside spending against Massie that proved too much for the incumbent to overcome.

A pair of pro-Israel super PACs linked to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Republican Jewish Coalition spent more than $9 million targeting the isolationist, who has routinely rejected efforts to financially aid and symbolically support the U.S. ally. Another super PAC stood up by Trump’s top political operatives spent nearly $7 million berating Massie over his votes against the president’s tax cuts, border wall and other priorities. Overall ad spending in the race topped $33 million, per tracking firm AdImpact.

In delivering a death knell to the seven-term representative, the president has effectively silenced his loudest remaining Republican critic in Congress and sent a warning shot against further dissent.

While Massie will remain a thorn in Trump’s side through the end of the year — and likely an even louder one, now — he’ll be replaced by a staunch supporter.

Massie had cast the race in existential terms for the GOP, warning in an interview last month that his loss could further fray the coalition that Republicans are struggling to keep together in the midterms by pushing voters dissatisfied with the president to stay home.

“This is a congressional race. But it’s also somewhat of a national movement,” Massie said. “And it would be bad for Republicans’ prospects in the midterms if I lose.”

Now, Massie’s defeat will be a defining part of Trump’s legacy. And it stands as a sharp rebuke of the isolationist and conservative wings of the GOP that rallied around the incumbent, including prominent figureheads like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).

The race became a microcosm of the conflicts playing out across the Republican Party over foreign interventions, Israel and the influence of its allied super PACs as the GOP starts to splinter over all three. It also drained tens of millions of dollars in GOP resources in a safe red seat as Republican donors fret about the party’s chances in competitive midterm races.

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An Israeli influence operation run by a private intelligence firm branded two left wing French mayoral candidates as “pro-Palestinian”, “pro-Muslim” and “rapists”.

A joint investigation by liberal-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz and French outlet Liberacion exposed details of BlackCore, a shadowy disinformation operation. This is just the latest so-called ‘psy-op‘ to be exposed.

The targets were current Marseille and Toulouse mayoral candidates, Sébastien Delogu and François Piquemal.

Haaretz explained on Monday:

The French operation was first exposed by Le Monde on March 9, a week before the country’s local elections. The target was France Unbowed, the party of left-wing presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

The outlet said:

The first to be hit was Sébastien Delogu, the party’s mayoral candidate in Marseille; “Sophie,” a woman calling herself a blogger, accused him of rape and violence.

Adding:

A separate site published phony AI-generated photos that purported to be nude pictures of Delogu, presented as part of an alleged Gaza fundraising campaign.

A third website went after Toulouse mayoral candidate François Piquemal, while another “claimed to ‘help Muslim voters choose well’ and steered them toward Mélenchon’s hard-left slate”.

The whole package was amplified by a small army of fake accounts on social media.

BlackCore’s influencer operation

Haaretz said that once discovered, whoever was running the operation tried “to scrub their tracks, deleting avatars and websites, but digital traces remained online”.

French state security even stepped in.

A special investigative team from France’s General Secretariat for Defense and National Security, the Interior Ministry, the election commission and Viginum, the agency tasked with detecting foreign manipulation and disinformation on social media, picked up the trail and identified BlackCore as the main suspect. BlackCore’s name was first reported this weekend by Reuters.

The Haaretz/Liberacion expose revealed even more details about BlackCore.

Haaretz and Libération conducted an extensive analysis of BlackCore’s online digital footprint, including its website and other sites that seem to be part of the wider effort. For example, there is the company’s marketing website – a mini-site in Hebrew and English showcasing BlackCore’s alleged flagship product, “political campaign management.”

Adding:

It is built around the deployment of 1,600 avatars and fake social media accounts for the purposes of “infiltrating Facebook groups, manipulating trends, and skewing polls on TikTok and Instagram.”

Israeli business and intelligence links

A deeper look trawled up strange details and substantial inconsistencies about BlackCore.

The investigation could find no legal entity called BlackCore registered in any country. Its website contained no identifying details about owners or executives, or a physical address.

The domain blackcore.online was registered in an Icelandic registrar that allows owners to remain anonymous. The address was purchased only last August – by a company that presents itself as long-established.

Additionally, investigators identified “eight subdomains tied to BlackCore”.

One was active on a London-based server run by a Finnish cloud provider that hosted only a small handful of other websites that all had shared characteristics.

That server, which was “active until a few weeks ago” had “hosted a collection of different systems that required a username and password to log in to, tools through which an influence campaign could be conducted”.

For example, one login page was called “Galacticos AI Avatar Generator Login Page.”

A source told Haaretz that Galacticos “had developed a product that generates avatars that can be deployed both for influence operations and the monitoring of social media – as both require active accounts”.

Galacticos incorporated as a firm “in Tel Aviv in April 2022 under the name Pagecorn Ltd”.

 A year later it changed its name to Mycelium Intelligence Networks, and then to Galacticos in 2024.

The investigators discovered connections to two Israeli businessmen. One, Guy Geyor, is a “tech entrepreneur and former contestant on the Israeli versions of Survivor and The Bachelor“.

The other is lawyer Doron Afik. Both claimed when questioned to have no knowledge of BlackCore and denied “political activity in France”.

Less than two hours after they were asked for comment, the remaining digital infrastructure of both BlackCore and Galacticos was pulled offline.

Haaretz and Liberacion traced the various firms involved and found links to Israeli intelligence unit 8200 and to Yigal Unna, the former head of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate. Unna also denied any link to the operation.

It is rare — though not unknown — to get a glimpse inside a state influence operation. What is also remarkable is how quickly this one was shut down and traces of it scrubbed once it was exposed.

It is not exactly a secret that the settler-colonial state seeks to influence democratic outcomes in foreign states. But it is still fascinating when details of subterfuge and deception emerge.

Featured image via La Dépêche/ Adrien Nowak 

By Joe Glenton

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Wes Streeting‘s supporters – most likely his campaign team – are briefing the media that Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham will give a “senior job in No 10” to Josh Simons.

Simons is the now-ex MP who stepped down to trigger the Makerfield by-election in which Burnham plans to stand. He is then expected to challenge Keir Starmer – and Streeting, if he goes ahead with his bid – for the Labour leadership and prime ministership.

Streeting’s motives for this briefing are obvious: he would lose to Burnham by a country mile. So claiming that Burnham will put Simons back into a position of influence is an obvious attack point. Simons was director of ‘Labour Together’ – now rebranded as “Think Labour”, but without significant change – when it spied on journalists. The journalists were investigating its sabotage of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour and its lie-campaign to install Keir Starmer to replace him.

The reports quote anonymous ‘Labour sources’, but other well-connected sources told Skwawkbox the briefing comes from Streeting’s cadre. Streeting’s other manoeuvres to try to nobble Burnham’s chances in Reform-run Makerfield include announcing that Streeting wants to rejoin the EU. This forced Burnham to into a no-win choice. Stick to his own earlier comments about rejoining, or u-turn and alienate Labour members he would then be asking to vote for his leadership.

Quid pro quo

The fact that the ‘No 10 job’ claims are campaign smears does not, however, remove concerns about Burnham’s indebtedness to the very saboteur outfit that brought down Corbyn and installed Starmer. A faction that destroyed Starmer by being found out in connection to Epstein-fan Peter Mandelson’s ambassadorial appointment and is desperately trying to retain control when Starmer is gone.

But the inside word is that the ‘quid pro quo’ currently on offer is Burnham then smoothing the way for a straight swap. Burnham would be Makerfield MP (if he wins). Former incumbent Simons would then be given a straight run at becoming Labour’s candidate in the mayoral election to replace Burnham.

Of course, none of these things are going to happen if Burnham fails to win a seat in which Reform are strong favourites. But it’s beyond reasonable doubt that the contingencies and ‘Plan B’s are being discussed – and that Streeting needs to nobble them to preserve his own chances.

Featured image via Getty Images/Gary Oakley

By Skwawkbox

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Amid the leadership turmoil in the Labour Party, pro-Israel lobbyists are rebooting their antisemitism smears to stave off even a mention of Jeremy Corbyn’s name.

Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell told Times News on 15 May that part of reunifying the left meant:

reinviting Jeremy Corbyn back into the Labour Party.

But Corbyn has a long record of consistently supporting Palestinian rights. So Israel supporters hate him. And many spent years trying to derail his leadership of the Labour Party. That means the mere mention of Corbyn now has sparked a renewal of rage in pro-Israel and Labour circles.

Former Israeli embassy employee, pusher of smears, and election loser Ella Rose-Jacobs

Ella Rose-Jacobs, national chair of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), had a particular problem with the thought of Labour making amends with Corbyn. That’s unsurprising, considering that the JLM seemingly relaunched itself to fight Corbyn’s leadership and later proudly proclaimed it had helped to ‘see Corbyn off’.

As the Canary recently reported, Rose-Jacobs also once worked at the Israeli embassy, appeared in Al Jazeera’s undercover investigation into Israeli influence in British politics, and helped to push antisemitism smears against Corbyn and his supporters. She was a Labour councillor too, until she lost her seat in this year’s local election.

This person went straight from working at Netanyahu’s embassy in London to heading the “Jewish Labour Movement”

JLM is an Israel lobby group that weaponises antisemitism to destroy critics of the Zionist entity

Doesn’t work anymore. Everyone knows what’s going on https://t.co/0LbAeAmYTe pic.twitter.com/xJhRtfi9vX

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— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) May 17, 2026

Ella Rose is currently part of an aggressive push back by the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) against John McDonnell’s proposal that any new leader of the Labour Party should overturn Jeremy Corbyn’s expulsion and invite him to return to the Party.

Ella Rose is the current interim… pic.twitter.com/2Fx2bxLjId

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— MikeD (@mjdaly57) May 18, 2026

Rose-Jacobs also attracted attention for her dreams of physically assaulting Black Jewish activist Jackie Walker:

As journalist Asa Winstanley reported in 2022:

Rose had been hired by the JLM as director while she still worked at the Israeli embassy in London. The Electronic Intifada was the first to expose this link, in 2016.

In 2017 Rose was the subject of complaints by Labour members after Al Jazeera revealed in The Lobby that she had made comments implying she would like to physically attack left-wing anti-racist activist Jackie Walker.

“I can take her,” she told Al Jazeera’s undercover journalist, boasting of her prowess in the Israeli combat technique Krav Maga. “She’s five foot two and tiny.” Rose also said her critics should “die in a hole.”

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Labour Friends of Krav Maga have been triggered https://t.co/vjzUGCWTGm pic.twitter.com/9XpMN2ZVEy

— Hon. PolProf of Agile Ceremonies (@CeilNoyle) May 17, 2026

Winstanley also wrote about the links between Rose-Jacobs, the JLM, the Israeli embassy, and the campaign against Jeremy Corbyn:

The Jewish Labour Movement, founded in 2004, was revived in September 2015, the same month Jeremy Corbyn was first elected leader.

This was done in order to “battle” the new left-wing, Palestine campaigning leader, a transcript of an undercover recording obtained by The Electronic Intifada last month shows.

As part of this effort, [then JLM chair Jeremy] Newmark hired a new staff member, recruiting her out of the Israeli embassy.

In another secret transcript, obtained by The Electronic Intifada last year, former director Ella Rose admitted that her group worked in close coordination with the Israeli embassy and its agents.

“We work with [Israeli embassy spy] Shai [Masot], we know him very well,” she told an undercover journalist in 2016.

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The JLM website says Rose-Jacobs:

also serves as a trustee of KeshetUK, having previously been a trustee of Yachad, the London Jewish Forum and the Union of Jewish Students.

Yachad has also played a role in targeting prominent voices speaking up for Palestinian rights.

Little risk of Corbyn returning to Labour, but you can sense the panic among Israel apologists

Other Israel supporters have also come out against the prospect of Corbyn returning to Labour. One was anti-Palestinian censor Mike Katz, a former JLM chair and one of Labour’s whips in the House of Lords.

A key part of Keir Starmer’s project as leader of the Labour Party, of course, has been its commitment to Israel and underplaying of its crimes. Historian David Edgerton recently wrote about the death of the party, calling it:

a party deeply committed to the alliance with the United States, and the one country with which the US has a special relationship, Israel.

It’s of little surprise, then, that prominent figures hoping to take over from Starmer are hardly clamouring for human rights champion Corbyn’s return to the party.

Sources close to Andy Burnham, for example, have already said the Labour leadership hopeful is against readmitting Corbyn. And considering Corbyn’s cutting critique of Wes Streeting, the former health secretary is unlikely to call for the former leader’s return either:

As Health Secretary, Wes Streeting deepened the privatisation of our NHS and handed over our data to Palantir, a company involved in genocide.

I am sure his friend Peter Mandelson is very proud.

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Time to reinstate our NHS as a fully public service — and kick Palantir out!

— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) May 14, 2026

In short, there’s little chance of Corbyn re-entering the party. But Israel supporters like Rose-Jacobs would love to keep it that way, showing a full commitment to warding off even the remotest possibility that this situation could change.

The problem is, the cynical smears of Israel apologists don’t work any more. Because the horrors of the genocide in Gaza have shown once and for all that supporters of Israel are very much on the wrong side of history, and Corbyn is very much on the right side.

Featured image via Getty Images/Brook Mitchell

By Ed Sykes

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The match between Nantes and Toulouse in the 34th and final round of the French League came to an abrupt end on 17 May. This happened after Nantes fans stormed the field of the La Beaujoire stadium to protest the team’s official relegation to the second division. The scenes were chaotic. As a result, the referee terminated the match.

Tensions from the start

France Info Sport reported that tensions began within the opening minutes. Nantes fans lit flares and threw projectiles towards the pitch, before storming the pitch just 20 minutes into the game.

The sports outlet added that players and staff from both teams quickly left the pitch. They then sought refuge in the locker rooms under security protection. At that point, the referee had ruled that the game must be suspended. This decision came in the absence of security guarantees. In addition, there was ensuing chaos inside and around the stadium.

Riot police deployed

The same outlet reported that riot control forces were deployed inside La Beaujoire stadium to control the situation. They secured the exit of players and referees.

For its part, Ouest-France reported that Nantes fans booed loudly from the beginning of the match, adding that security forces faced difficulty in containing the fans who stormed the pitch from several sides.

Amid a tense atmosphere that the newspaper described as ”chaotic”, the shock was clear on the Nantes players and the technical staff after the match was stopped.

Ouest-France also indicated that there are fears of disciplinary sanctions being imposed on the club by the French League, against the backdrop of riots and fans storming the pitch, on one of the most turbulent nights in the club’s modern history.

Featured image via One Football

By Alaa Shamali

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With Labour’s NEC allowing Andy Burnham to run for selection for the Makerfield by-election and Wes Streeting confirming at the weekend’s Progress conference that he will stand in any potential Labour leadership contest, Keir Starmer is soon to be replaced at the top of the party. But one man’s shadow continues to loom over the top echelons of the party: war criminal Tony Blair.

One of Wes Streeting’s first jobs was a one-year stint at Progress, a New Labour pressure group set up in 1996 to support Tony Blair’s bid for power. Progress was funded by David Sainsbury, another Blair ally who also just happens to be a major backer of Labour Together, and in 2021, the organisation merged with the Policy Network think tank founded by Peter Mandelson, widely seen as a mentor to Streeting.

In 2010, during his first Labour leadership bid, Andy Burnham said that he would be “proud” to be seen as the candidate who would carry on where Blair left off. Burnham described the illegal invasion of Iraq, which he voted for, as giving “20 or so million Iraqis hope of a better life”.

Blair’s rise

Blair’s initial rise to power was largely financed by Michael Levy, also known as “Lord Cashpoint”, who would go on to raise over £100 million for the Labour Party. Blair first met Levy at a dinner party hosted by Gideon Meir, the deputy chief of mission at the Israeli embassy at the time. Levy was “entranced by Blair’s drive and religious commitment”, and would later say that he and the Labour Prime Minister were “like brothers”, whereas Blair,

a politician spellbound by wealth, was in thrall to a rich man whose prodigious fundraising ability had definite promise.

The enduring significance of this relationship should not be underestimated. A 2006 report in the Sunday Times states the “crucial accomplishment” of Levy’s input was:

to cut Labour’s dependence on trade union funding so that the party’s reliance has declined from two-thirds in 1992 to about a quarter now.

Blair and Levy had a mutual friend in Eldred Tabachnik, a former head of the Board of Deputies and a senior barrister at the law chambers at which Blair trained. Michael Levy’s son, Daniel, is a former Israeli soldier who later served as an assistant to Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister who once described Blair as “a true friend of the State of Israel”.

Blair’s Zionist backers

Levy convinced other wealthy pro-Israeli donors to back Labour: Emmanuel Kaye, who is “closely associated” with Labour Friends of Israel; Westfield chairman Frank Lowy, who served in the terrorist Haganah militia (a predecessor to the Israeli army); and Trevor Chinn, a director and funder of McSweeney’s Labour Together.

One of Tony Blair’s first acts upon entering parliament in 1983 was to join Labour Friends of Israel. Lobbyist Jonathan Mendelsohn explained:

Zionism is pervasive in New Labour. It is automatic that Blair will come to LFI meetings.

Through his Red Capital Ltd outfit, now Labour peer Mendelsohn has also funded Wes Streeting.

Business Secretary Peter Kyle, a former vice-chair and current member of Labour Friends of Israel who served as a special adviser under Blair, has celebrated his continued influence. Kyle once opined that Starmer would benefit from having an:

elder statesman … people around the world know and trust.

In 2023, the Tony Blair Institute paid for Kyle and Streeting to attend a conference in Brussels.

On May 3rd, Blair’s biographer Anthony Seldon suggested that Starmer should appoint Blair as foreign secretary to save his own failing government. But in reality, Blair’s influence is “from policy to personnel … everywhere.”

Featured image via Leon Neal / Getty Images

By Jody McIntyre

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