11 AUGUST 2026
2028 ELECTION:
ARTICLE: Riccardi, Nicholas and Tom Beaumont (8/11/26) “What to watch Tuesday…” AP News.
State Representative Francesca Hong is a Democratic Socialist and front-runner for the party’s nomination for governor in Wisconsin.
In Minnesota, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is running for the nomination for an open seat against centrist Democratic Rep. Angie Craig.
Hong supported defunding the police in 2020, but has sine disavowed. The stakes are high for the Democrats nationally. Winning control of the GOP controlled legislature would give them a chance to redraw Wisconsin’s map to counter the edge the GOP built up in this year’s mid-decade redistricting. “Without that, their path to a House majority in 2028 becomes challenging.”
“Democrats will also likely need to win Wisconsin to retake the White House in 2028, and the governor will have a key role in certifying the winner of the election. In 2020, Trump tried to claim Wisconsin despite it being won by Joe Biden. Only to be blocked in part by Evers. Tiffany, who has been endorsed by Trump, supported the president’s attempt to overturn the election.” (Note: This is what we’re depending on? Jesus).
SHORTS:
· While telling everyone he was on Air Force 1, Trump secretly flew from Turkey on another military aircraft. He left the White House press pool on Air Force 1 as a decoy. What a guy.
· ICE has tried to up its arrest numbers by arresting academics at airports and even setting up a checkpoint at a popular creek in a National Forest where families picnic. What guys?
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BOOKS YOU OUGHT TO READ
Unger, Craig (2024) “Den of Spies: Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason that Stole the white House.”
“If the hostages were released before the election, the thinking went, the ensuing patriotic fervor would give President Jimmy Carter such a big bounce in the polls that he would beat Reagan. But if the hostages were still incarcerated, voters would see Carter as a weak and impotent president who allowed America to be humiliated. As a result, Reagan Bush campaign manager William Casey engineered a secret deal whereby Iran agreed to release the hostages, but only after the November elections had taken place.
ART
GAUGUIN
Hanson, Lawrence and Elizabeth (1954) “Noble Savage: The Life of Paul Gauguin.”
In 1873, when Paul Guiguin met Mette Gad, soon to be his wife, he was still working as a stock broker. He had a promising position. A brown, red mustache. And a complexion like his manner that was hearty and coarse. His nose, a great beak broken at the bridge, jutted from the long space between brow and mouth with the arrogance of a pirate chief. Mette was confronted with a lover once romantic and successful.
It could be argued that Gauguin should have told her that the stock brokering was temporary, but he did not. And, she was facing at home a diminished income and constant family quarrelling.
Gauguin looked perfect. He was not.
LIFE WITH CATS
I often think we should tell people we run a cat shelter because we do. It’s just that the cat shelter, now occupied by nine cats, is our house. It almost always smells like cats no matter how hard we work at making it smell like vanilla. But, at some point after they kept turning up at our doorstep, we decided that we loved our cats more than we loved our furniture and our house and friends who had delicate noses (besides we could always meet them at a restaurant). As one of our vets said once when we told him that the can standing in front of him was the last cat: “Once a feeder, always a feeder.”
Dr. christina j johns
LIFE AND NEWS NOTES
Law, Power, and Justice 
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