Michigan Republicans haven’t had a better shot to win the governorship in over a decade. Deciding who should take it is turning into an ugly, hyper-online brawl.

With widespread name recognition and an endorsement from President Donald Trump, Rep. John James appears poised to be the GOP nominee ahead of Michigan’s primary Tuesday.

But the West Point graduate once thought of as a rising star within the national GOP is facing stiff resistance from an outspoken grassroots wing of the state party, which is rallying around his sole remaining competitor.

“I think you’re gonna be surprised when this race comes down,” said Oakland County GOP Chair Vance Patrick, who endorsed businessperson-turned-outsider candidate Perry Johnson in the closing weeks of the race. “It’s getting really interesting.”

As James and Johnson careen toward a contest to decide who faces likely Democratic nominee and current Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, the campaigning is getting weird. Johnson has launched increasingly caustic and personal attacks against James, who has led the field since he entered the race.

And Johnson cuts an odd figure for a leading contender: He is perhaps best known for his quixotic 2024 presidential bid, which came after a 2022 gubernatorial campaign fell apart amid a nominating petition scandal.

But state party officials and grassroots activists have also shared publicly and privately a litany of complaints about James: resentment over too many debates missed early on in the campaign, not enough visits to specific parts of the state, frustration over him giving away a battleground House seat Democrats are targeting this cycle to run for a new job after losing two previous statewide elections.

Nonetheless, even his detractors insist that Republican voters will rally around the eventual nominee. Patrick, whose county party — which includes parts of metro Detroit that fall within James’ district — received $13,350 from the Johnson campaign, said Republicans “will join lockstep behind the guy that wins the primary.”

The intra-party consternation comes at a pivotal moment for Michigan Republicans, who’ve watched eight years of Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s leadership — and yawning statewide victories — with disdain.

Meanwhile, Democrats appear ready to elevate Benson, who has built a $6.4 million war chest as of mid-July — albeit dwarfed by Johnson’s personal wealth — thanks to a prolific fundraising advantage. The secretary of state appears to be en route to easily beat Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson for the nomination.

And Trump winning the state in 2024 is no assurance for Republicans, who saw their Senate candidate falter to now-Sen. Elissa Slotkin in the same year. Now, the GOP is facing an uphill battle amid rising gas prices brought on by a deeply unpopular war in Iran that is causing headaches for the party nationwide.

Finding a nominee who can win over independents and compete in the mother of all swing states is paramount, some Republicans say, and they’re not sure James is it.

“There’s a large amount of Republicans that do not like him,” said Hassan Nehme, a former vice chair of the Michigan GOP and current candidate for state Legislature, referring to some voters’ hesitance about James’ voting record.

The Johnson campaign has launched vitriolic personal attacks at James throughout the race. Johnson, who is white, has referred to James, one of the few Black Republicans in Congress and the sole Black candidate in the race, as a “DEI candidate,” and accused him of playing the “race card” during a recent debate. James, in turn, has characterized Johnson as “desperate.”

The campaign has also turned to promoting an unsubstantiated rumor, while providing no evidence, about James’ personal life, reposting social media posts that attack James.

Tori Sachs, a senior adviser for the James campaign, characterized Johnson’s attacks in a statement as “lies” that are exposing “a desperate, career candidate who has no grasp on reality and no friends that he didn’t buy.”

“Never-Trumper Perry Johnson has burned through over $70 million attacking Trump and James with lies, only to crash toward his third loss in three cycles,” she said.

Such plays are emblematic of Johnson’s campaign strategy, which has leaned heavily online and embraced a constituency of right-leaning grassroots organizers. On social media, he’s employed artificial intelligence to construct sometimes bizarre ads, including a six-minute long odyssey in which he doggedly pursues James on foot, bus and helicopter in order to debate him.

Brian Szmytke, a campaign spokesperson for the Johnson campaign, reiterated in a statement that “John James is unelectable in a general election,” listing several attacks levied during the campaign.

The scrappy turn in the campaign intensified when former state Attorney General Mike Cox, who was also courting voters skeptical of the GOP establishment, dropped out of the race in mid-July. But even before then, Republican officials across the state had expressed doubts about James.

That the Johnson campaign has attacked James on such personal terms points to the campaign’s dire straits, said John Sellek, a Michigan-based Republican political consultant.

“We’ve turned a corner since Cox got out, where the Perry Johnson campaign has been throwing haymakers on what look like less than prime issues because they know the end is here,” Sellek said.

That’s all despite a huge spending advantage for the self-funding Johnson.

He has spent over $32 million getting on the airwaves, while James’ campaign has spent $2.4 million, according to advertising insight firm AdImpact.

“All the typical support mechanisms are moving toward James, even though he is being wildly outspent,” said Sellek.

Before appearing in a set of televised debates held in July, James had abstained from participating in several debates held earlier in the primary. James at the time defended skipping the events, saying he was more focused on uniting the party than bickering with candidates. But some voters took his absence as a sign of disengagement from the grassroots.

Daire Rendon — the Republican Party chair for Michigan’s 1st District, which covers the entire Upper Peninsula and swaths of northern Michigan — suggested that James doesn’t connect with voters in her rural region.

Rendon, a former state representative who was charged for her alleged involvement in a scheme to unlawfully access voting machines after the 2020 election, noted that “we don’t see John James much.”

“They are going to gravitate towards candidates who spend time learning about [the Upper Peninsula], and who show up,” said Rendon, who pleaded not guilty and whose case is ongoing.

Detractors have also criticized James for running for governor in the first place, viewing the contested House seat he’s leaving behind as more valuable amid the GOP’s slim majority and as Republicans stare down an unfavorable midterm cycle. Trump also initially took issue with his gubernatorial ambitions, grousing about it publicly, before endorsing him in June.

“You don’t blow off 80 million in an investment to get you elected to Congress, and in one term leave,” said Muskegon County GOP Chair Tim Cross. (James was first elected to the House in 2022.)

James, however, also appears to have a slew of grassroots support himself. Several Michigan Republicans touted James in interviews with POLITICO, including former state legislator and Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido, who said James is “a proven leader, and he’s gonna continue to go ahead and govern and lead.”

Public and private polling appears to indicate that James remains comfortably in the lead. An internal poll, shared with POLITICO, of more than 700 likely primary voters conducted for the Cox campaign in the days before he dropped out in mid-July showed James leading with 36 percent points, with Johnson trailing at 23 percent and Cox at 21 percent.

Likely Cox voters split for Johnson over James as their second choice, 44 percent to 38 percent respectively.

James, the Cox campaign wrote in a memo to donors and supporters attached to the polling, “benefited by hundreds of millions of dollars targeted toward voters, specifically in Southeast Michigan, over the past several election cycles, coupled with the endorsement of President Donald Trump, creating a scenario where James’ lead is largely insulated.”

Now, the James campaign is rolling out its line of endorsements ranging from state representatives, senators and conservative activists, with Trump’s endorsement as a crown jewel.

The president brought James on stage at a late July rally outside Detroit, where the candidate asserted, falsely, for the first time that Trump won Michigan in 2020. James had previously said that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, though he said earlier this cycle that he was “screwed” that year when he lost his Senate bid.

“You have to win,” the president told James onstage Monday. “You have to win.”

Source link

We have today sent the following email to the Crown Office.

——————————————————————–

3 August 2026

Thank you for your letter of 30 July. I offer one last chance to reconsider. I do so having, once again, taken advice from the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates.

Advertisement

On 1 July, you wrote to me saying inter alia:

“No one was reported to the procurator fiscal in relation to charges of fraud. However, as part of a full and thorough police investigation by Police Scotland and the procurator fiscal, full consideration was given to whether the crime of fraud could be established.  That investigation did not disclose sufficient evidence of fraud, or for any crime other than the crime of embezzlement. These conclusions were agreed by the procurator fiscal, by Crown Counsel who was a KC and by a reviewing KC.”

The following day, I responded as follows:

“I note that you have advised that “full consideration was given to whether the crime of fraud could be established.  That investigation did not disclose sufficient evidence of fraud, or for any crime other than the crime of embezzlement. These conclusions were agreed by the procurator fiscal, by Crown Counsel who was a KC and by a reviewing KC.”

I agree that the evidence to which I have pointed demonstrates the crime of embezzlement. Indeed, that is what I said to you in my previous correspondence. The point is, however, that there are two instances of embezzlement: that to which Mr Murrell pled guilty (ie his embezzlement from the SNP); and that which has not been the subject of investigation or prosecution, for reasons which remain unclear.

The evidence to which I have pointed admits of little doubt. In short:

Advertisement

1. Money was ingathered by the SNP on the basis of assurances that it would be “ringfenced” for defined purposes.
2. That money was thereafter subject to a trust under Scots law, in terms of which it could only be spent for those defined purposes.
3. The First Minister of Scotland has now confirmed that the money was spent on other matters.

It really is that simple. It defies belief to think that the PF and two KCs could look at that simple factual matrix and conclude that there was no evidence of a crime. That being so inherently unlikely, I can only assume that those involved were not considering that point, and were (as your last message suggests) considering rather whether or not it could be shown that fraud was involved in the solicitation of donations. I can quite understand that proving fraudulent intent at the time the donations were sought would be difficult.

But again (and at the risk of repetition) that is not the point. Assume that the donations were solicited in bona fide for the defined purposes: thus no fraud in ingathering the money. That does not answer the question which I am posing, which is on what possible basis could it be lawful for those donations then to be spent on anything other than the defined purposes for which they were solicited?”

You have now, by your email of 30 July, responded thus (in an email which used two different fonts, suggesting a cut-and-paste from earlier emails, as is clearly what has happened):

“We are not able to discuss the detail of the evidence. As we noted in out (sic) earlier response and in the information that we have published …  the Crown’s assessment of Operation Branchform included the allegation of fraud, and the embezzlement for which Peter Murrell was prosecuted. Full consideration was given to whether the crime of fraud could be established against any individual.  The evidence did not disclose sufficient evidence of fraud, or for any crime other than the crime of embezzlement.”

That just parrots the earlier, incomplete and unsatisfactory answer to my queries. It betrays either an unwillingness or an inability to grasp basic legal propositions.

I’m not sure I can make the point any simpler: but I will try.

Advertisement

1. I know you have considered, and discounted, the possibility of fraud. That is not my complaint.
2. I know you have evidence of embezzlement: that is the very point I am seeking to make.
3. The undisputed facts of this case show that there were two instances of embezzlement: Murrell (now convicted) embezzling from the SNP; and the SNP – as the First Minister himself has admitted publicly – embezzling from the ring-fenced referendum funds.
4. Every time I raise this with you, you say “we found no evidence of fraud”. I accept that. I am not asking you to reconsider that. Please do not address this again.
5. Rather, I am pointing out, and have gone to the significant trouble of obtaining an opinion from the actual Dean of the Faculty of Advocates showing, that there has been a second instance of embezzlement which has not only happened at the hands of the governing party in Scotland, but has been openly admitted by the First Minister of Scotland.
6. This is really very simple. It would be apparent to a first-year law student. If COPFS is not prepared to investigate that which is under their very noses, by way of apparent fact and clear admission, then there are only two possibilities: COPFS is institutionally inept, or COPFS is institutionally corrupt. Neither would be a good look.
7. For one final time, I thus offer this simple invitation: given the legal analysis of the Dean of Faculty on facts which are as clear as day, can you please explain why COPFS is turning a blind eye? I am not asking you to discuss the evidence. No such discussion is needed: the facts are clear and admitted. This turns entirely on legal analysis. If you have a coherent legal answer to the Dean’s analysis, I will be very happy to ask him why he has got things wrong. If you do not, certain conclusions follow, as night follows day. None of them would be good for the rule of law in Scotland.

Please do not make the mistake of thinking that I will eventually get bored and go away. I will not. The eyes of the world are on COPFS. The country, and COPFS itself, prides itself on Scotland being a place where justice will be done without fear or favour. Fiat justitia, ruat caelum, no? Or is that all to be sacrificed in the interests of political quietude?

For the avoidance of doubt, I have run this email past the Dean. He is, and has indicated that I may so confirm, comfortable that I send it to you. I hope, in earnest, that this will now be given proper and mature consideration. Anything less will devalue COPFS, and its supposed independence, irremediably.

I thus ask that this be placed before a Senior Depute for consideration, and that a proper response be provided. If there is a legal answer showing that the admitted facts do not demonstrate a crime, I am happy to hear it. If there is not, a “hear no evil, see no evil” approach is one that I would suggest needs to be looked at further.

I look forward to hearing from you.

——————————————————————–

Advertisement

Doubtless we’ll receive the same reply as before, but in three different fonts, in around a month’s time, so make a note in your diaries, readers.

Source link

Source link

Source link

©Alamy.Cheese Scientist

Dame Prue Leith is a writer, broadcaster, entrepreneur and campaigner who has become one of the most recognisable faces on British television. As part of our Women in Westminster series, we sat down with Dame Prue to talk about both living and dying well

Advertisement

Any discussion with Dame Prue Leith moves at a breathless pace. Over the course of our sit-down conversation, we travel from apartheid-era South Africa to the Sorbonne in the early 1960s, and on to her current campaign for the right to a dignified death in later life.

It feels that Leith has crammed the contents of several lifetimes into one. Born in South Africa, Leith tells us that her upbringing was in many respects one of privilege. However, she adds that history teaches us that privilege can sometimes be an enabler for driving change rather than an obstacle to it.

“It’s interesting how often female heroes come from the educated middle classes or upper classes,” she tells us. “Because they’re the people who had the time and the leisure and the education to realise how they could change things.”

Advertisement

She points to the example provided by her own mother, South African actor Margaret Inglis. Leith has clear memories of her, along with other middle-class women, actively protesting against the inequities of the apartheid state.

“I remember my mother coming home one day and she was wearing a black coat,” she remembers. “It was winter, and it was covered in egg yolk because she’d been on the town hall steps and pro-apartheid morons have been throwing eggs at them.”

For any interviewer, getting Leith to open up is not difficult. She clearly relishes recounting elements of what is, by any standards, a remarkable life.

“First of all, I’m a complete blabbermouth,” she laughs. “I’ll tell anybody anything. I think I embarrass my family sometimes. I remember when I wrote my most recent book, and I gave a copy to my son. He said, ‘ Oh my God, mum, not more revelations, please’.”

Advertisement

It is that openness, and Leith’s ability to connect with different audiences, that has led to her becoming one of the best-known broadcasters in the UK. You get the sense that for Leith, speaking out is itself an act of liberation. That was not always the case. During her childhood in South Africa, she remembers that there were many conversational topics that were firmly off limits.

“When I was young, there were things you didn’t talk about at dinner. You didn’t talk about politics. You didn’t talk about sex. You didn’t talk about money. You didn’t talk about food,” she says. “God knows what you did talk about. Those are the interesting things. There’s nothing left.”

Leith’s willingness to step into areas where conversations may previously have been off-limits is a quality that has encouraged the broadcaster to speak out in recent years in support of assisted dying. She is a patron of Dignity in Dying, an organisation campaigning to allow everyone the right to a good death. It is a cause that she became passionate about after watching her brother, David, suffering with terminal bone cancer on a hospital ward.  

“Sometimes he would be begging, crying, screaming,” she recalls. “I remember once him absolutely yelping. It’s very unpleasant for everybody else in the ward. And it’s horrible for the nurses, and they’re powerless to do anything about it.”

Advertisement

That experience led to Leith joining other voices in pressing for a change to the law to allow terminally ill people more choice at the end of their lives.

Leith is now 86. I ask her whether her own death is something she contemplates more as she gets older.

“Oh, of course,” she says. “Everybody does. I don’t fear death. I certainly don’t welcome it. You know, I don’t want to die, but I do want to be able to die if I find life intolerable.”

That option is currently not available to Leith or indeed to anyone else seeking choice at the end of their lives. Recent legislation to allow assisted dying failed to clear the House of Lords after some peers used procedural devices to slow its progression. Leith tells us that she is angry at the way that happened, describing the behaviour of some peers as “disgraceful.”

Advertisement

“It actually brings the House of Lords into disrepute,” she says. “The reason that a bill goes to the Lords is that they’re supposed to scrutinise it and improve it. They are not meant to bury it under over a thousand amendments. They let the side down. But it’s coming back, and I think it might get through. It’s time.”

Leith remains optimistic that the weight of public support behind a change to the law means that it will eventually happen. She tells us that such a change is desperately needed, despite the efforts of the bill’s opponents, who include her own son, Reform MP Danny Kruger.

“He really leads the anti-assisted dying crowd, which is a bit ironic,” she tells us. “But I have got him to admit that if it’s legal, he will hold my hand when my time comes. He said, if it’s illegal, and I still do it, he’ll have to look the other way.”

That exchange typifies Leith. She is a woman who has spent a lifetime refusing to avoid difficult conversations. Whether campaigning for better school food or for greater choice at the end of life, her instinct is always to confront difficult subjects honestly and openly.

Advertisement

“Nearly everything that I’ve got involved with has been because of personal experience,” she says. “Just feeling, ‘This is wrong, somebody should do something about it.’ And because I’m a bossy woman, it tends to occur to me that I could do something about it.”

Advertisement

Source link

Source link

Source link

Source link

People have criticised generative AI for the many ways in which it’s corrupting what it means to be human. The latest example of this comes from OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman.

What if you just talked to your children

— Alex Hirsch (@_AlexHirsch) July 31, 2026

OpenAI…

Young people today are growing up at a time when they can use generative AI to do their assignments for them. Workers can use AI to write their emails. Half of what you read online could be written by AI. In other words, we live in a world in which human communication is increasingly devoid of the human element.

As such, it’s unsurprising people have reacted to Altman with messages like the following from BuccoCapital Bloke:

Over the next few years you are going to have to fight with everything you’ve got to retain your humanity. They will try to convince you to give up connecting with each other, to give up truly being alive. It will be the most important fight of your whole life

Helen Lewis wrote:

I’m in awe of how sociopathic this comes off. What if I… actually enjoy talking to my family about their lives and interests?

Dylan Dittrich commented:

“Cool use case of chatgpt” and it’s just the worst, most dehumanizing idea you’ve ever heard.

Some responded sarcastically, including the Wild Geerters account:

Seems like a lot of hassle. A cool idea would be to replace the kids with AI chatbot kids and then have chatgpt talk to the chatbot kids on the drive, and maybe let AI drive the car while you chill at home watching an AI generated movie about a guy driving his kids to school

Jathan Sadowski remarked:

Telling my child to stop talking because I’m listening to the AI podcast about their soccer game and upcoming birthday.

Let’s stay human everyone

Despite claims to the contrary, generative AI is not an intelligent technology, and it seems unlikely it ever will be. That doesn’t mean it can’t act as a substitute for human interaction, though, and the threat to what that could mean for society is grave.

Be sure to speak to your children and loved ones and be grateful for the opportunity to do so.

Featured image via EPA/ BBC

By Willem Moore

Source link

The US has dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on the home of an Iranian family on Qeshm Island, murdering a two-year-old and his parents. Two other children were pulled from the rubble alive.

The U.S. dropped a 2,000-pound bomb on an Iranian family’s home this week on Qeshm Island, killing a 2-year-old and his parents.

Barbaric savagery by soulless ghouls. pic.twitter.com/n4EfzZsxIG

— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) August 1, 2026

The US attacked the residedential area of Iran overnight on Thursday 30 July.

According to the New York Times, the size of the crater and weapon fragments suggest that the bomb was a 2,000-pound Mark-84. This is one of the US military’s largest conventional bombs.

Additionally, the location and time of the strikes are consistent with where the US military was operating at the time.

US has created a pattern of destruction

Of course, this is part of a pattern.

For years, Israel, funded by the US, has dropped 2,000-pound American bombs on Gaza, in an attempt to systematically wipe out Palestinians, including refugees in tents.

2,000-pound Mark 84 bomb was what Biden-Harris sent to lsrael on a regular basis to kill and flatten Gaza in their genocidal campaign. https://t.co/aTIoTr2A5k

— CanCanGirl&TobyBear (@ApricotForever) August 1, 2026

Both the Trump and Biden regimes green-lighted it.

Now, the US is doing the same to Iran.

For years, Israel was using 2,000lb American bombs to kill Gazan refugees in tents. Both the Biden and Trump administrations permitted it.

A precedent was set.

Now it appears the US is doing the same in Iran.

Advertisement

A 2000lb bomb was dropped on a family house in Qeshm, killing a taxi…

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) August 1, 2026

During the first month of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Israel dropped hundreds of these bombs. Many of them are capable of killing or wounding people more than 1,000 feet away.

At the time, satellite images revealed more than 500 impact craters over 12 metres in diameter. This is consistent with those left behind by 2,000-pound bombs.

The U.S. should be held accountable for these war crimes https://t.co/hsrFKxcWCY

— Ray Jackson (@RayJackson123) August 2, 2026

International humanitarian law dictates that militaries should take “all feasible precautions” to minimise civilian harm. Of course, that means not attacking innocent civilians.

“The choice to use that type of munition in such a densely populated area is “very difficult to reconcile with” https://t.co/2zu3d2utPE

— Reem Rifai (@ReemRifai_) August 1, 2026

But the US and Israel have never cared about the lives of Palestinian, Lebanese, or Iranian families. They are rogue terrorist states, and as long as the world continues to whitewash their crimes, they will continue destroying, bombing and murdering the people of West Asia.

On Thursday, an airstrike killed 3 a mom, a dad, and their 2-year-old son on Qeshm Island in southern Iran.

Our visual investigation (drawing on photos/videos from the site, satellite imagery, weapon fragments, and a crater size estimate, analyzed by weapons experts… pic.twitter.com/54xGryP0CI

— Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) August 1, 2026

Feature image via New York Times 

By HG

Source link