Political News

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Solar energy just provided more electricity in the United States than coal for the first time on record—marking a milestone for the rise of renewables in America. 

While gas and nuclear plants still lead the country’s energy mix, solar contributed 12.8 percent of the nation’s electrons in May, according to an analysis of government data by Ember, an energy think tank. Coal, meanwhile, provided just 12.2 percent. Just five years ago, solar was less than half of its current levels and coal was at 20 percent. 

“Overtaking coal for the first month on record shows just how far solar has come, from a niche contributor to the third-largest and fastest-growing source of power in the US electricity system,” said Nicolas Fulghum, senior data analyst at Ember, in a press release. “From Texas to California, markets across the US are betting on solar to meet rising power needs.”

The turnaround comes even as political headwinds have shifted against renewable energy. 

“Spending $700 million to bail out the coal industry is like throwing a lifeline to a ship that has already sunk.”

Last summer, Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which rolled back enormous swaths of former President Joe Biden’s landmark climate change legislation, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. And President Donald Trump has actively sought to hinder renewable energy development, even offering to pay at least one oil company $1 billion to stop building its offshore wind projects. 

The latest electricity data comes the same month that the Trump administration announced $700 million in funding for investments in the coal industry. It included money for what would be the country’s first new coal-fired power plants in 13 years—sourced from funds previously dedicated to reducing the country’s dependence on fossil fuels, not deepening it. 

“Today we’re taking historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal,” said Trump, who campaigned on the coal-friendly slogan ‘dig, baby, dig.” 

Ember’s analysis found that coal generation in May was actually up slightly from April, when it hit an all-time low. Its share of the grid will also likely tick up in the summer, as cooling needs peak. But the steady downward trend over the last several years suggests that even all the president’s men might not be able to put the coal industry back together again. 

“Spending $700 million to bail out the coal industry is like throwing a lifeline to a ship that has already sunk,” Lena Moffitt, executive director of the environmental group Evergreen Action, told the Associated Press. Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association disagreed, telling the AP that coal generation helps shield consumers from the impacts of volatile energy prices and supply challenges exacerbated by AI.

Regardless of what coal does, experts believe the solar market will continue its upward march. While installations dropped in 2025 compared to 2024, according to the Solar Energy Industry Association, it still accounted for more than half of all newly installed electricity capacity. Even MAGA influencers are promoting it. 

“We’re going to just keep seeing more and more renewables brought onto the grid,” said Patrick Drupp, director of climate policy at the Sierra Club. “That’s good for people’s wallets, it’s good for their health, it’s good for the planet.”

President Donald Trump’s plummeting popularity has promised a bloodbath for Republicans in this year’s midterm elections. To head off that debacle, party leaders in red states have set off an arms race of political gerrymandering. They’ve made an unprecedented move to redistrict their states before the next census to create new, safe GOP districts that might allow the party to preserve its control of Congress in November’s midterm elections. Blue states like California have responded in kind.

Amid that political tug-of-war, one red state will be holding its first non-gerrymandered congressional election of the 21st century: Utah, which Donald Trump won in 2024 with nearly 60 percent of the vote.

The change has been a long time in the making. Voters first approved Proposition 4, an anti-gerrymandering ballot initiative in 2018. But Republicans in the state legislature, with support from the governor, have gone to extreme lengths to prevent it from going into effect. After eight years of bitter legal battles, Utah courts finally forced the state to follow the law and adopt fair voting districts that will be in effect for the first time this year. As a result, a Democrat has a real shot at winning one of the state’s four congressional seats—an outcome that could help swing control of Congress in November.

The mere possibility of Utah voters sending a single Democrat to Congress has sparked a fierce and desperately devious backlash from state Republicans hell-bent on making sure such an outcome never happens again. Emma Petty Addams, co-executive director of nonpartisan faith-based Mormon Women for Ethical Government, says, “There was, and continues to be, a sense among our leadership in particular that an un-gerrymandered outcome was not favorable to their political future.”

“There was, and continues to be, a sense among our leadership in particular that an un-gerrymandered outcome was not favorable to their political future.”

Despite its reputation as a hard-core conservative state, Utah has sent several Democrats to Congress in the past. In 1992, the state even elected a Democratic woman, Karen Shepherd, who served a single term before she was ousted two years later by the scandal-plagued Enid Waldholtz.

Back then, the state had only three congressional districts, and one of them was mostly limited to Salt Lake City and its suburbs, the state’s largest population center. In 2000, that district elected Jim Matheson, a Blue Dog Democrat whose father, Scott Matheson, was the last Utah Democrat elected to serve as governor in 1980.

But as the GOP nationally grew more radical, Utah Republicans who couldn’t beat Matheson at the ballot box tried to redistrict him out of office. In 2002, they changed his district boundaries to break up Salt Lake City and staple it to rural areas like Vernal or the fast-growing conservative area in Southern Utah, eight hours away.

Much to their chagrin, Matheson continued to win elections, even after the legislature split Salt Lake County into four different districts in 2010. In 2014, he gave up and retired after 14 years. But his district remained somewhat competitive. The late Republican Mia Love won the seat that year but lost it in 2018 to former Salt Lake County mayor Ben McAdams, who served one term before losing to former NFL player and Fox News commentator Burgess Owens in 2020. In 2020, the state legislature redrew the maps again to ensure that no Democrat could ever be elected to Congress.

The Utah state legislature has been able to do this because Republicans have a veto-proof supermajority, even though the state’s demographics have changed dramatically. The legislature is also more than 80 percent male, nearly 90 percent Mormon, and 98 percent white. Yet Utah is now about 16 percent Latino, only about 60 percent LDS, and increasingly liberal. Brigham Young University professor Jacob Rugh has calculated that since 2004, Utah has swung left more than any other state in the country—by about 24 points. Even Provo, home of BYU, where Mitt Romney won about 85 percent of the vote in the 2012 presidential election, gave Trump only 56 percent of its vote in 2024.

MAPS BELOW:Note similarity of 2004 & 2012 Bush/Romney marginsWHAT A DIFFERENCE 20 YEARS MAKES IN PROVOUtah swings BLUE more than any other state since 2004D +24Utah County swings blue more than any other county in UtahD +36Provo swings blue more than any city in UtahD +52!

— Jacob S. Rugh (@jakerugh.bsky.social) 2025-03-13T22:40:53.323Z

Salt Lake City has become so liberal that democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) won the Democratic presidential primaries there in 2016 and again in 2020. Kamala Harris beat Trump in Salt Lake by 23 points even as she lost the rest of the state by more than 20. Yet none of those shifts are reflected in the state’s congressional delegation, which is currently made up entirely of white Republican men.

In 2018, Utah voters tried to change all that when they approved a ballot initiative to require an independent redistricting commission to draw nonpartisan maps. The measure also banned the state legislature from unfairly advantaging one party in redistricting. Almost as soon as Prop. 4 passed, the state legislature moved to repeal it, and in 2021, the legislature once again cracked Salt Lake into four GOP-dominant districts.

The next year, eight groups, including the League of Women Voters and Mormon Women for Ethical Government, sued the legislature, arguing that the repeal of Prop. 4 violated the state constitution. In 2024, the Utah Supreme Court ruled in their favor and sent the case back to the trial court for more litigation over the maps. In response, the legislature tried unsuccessfully to amend the state constitution to ban citizen-initiated ballot initiatives.

Finally, in August last year, Judge Diana Gibson ruled that the legislature had violated the state constitution and gave it a month to come up with new maps that complied with the law in time for the 2026 election. The ruling ignited a national firestorm on the right. “How did such a wonderful Republican State like Utah, which I won in every Election, end up with so many Radical Left Judges?” Trump said on Truth Social. “All Citizens of Utah should be outraged at their activist Judiciary, which wants to take away our Congressional advantage, and will do everything possible to do so.”

“How did such a wonderful Republican State like Utah, which I won in every Election, end up with so many Radical Left Judges?”

Instead of following the judge’s order, the legislature once again drew partisan district maps; Gibson once again threw them out. She ruled that the 2026 election would be governed by the nonpartisan maps created by the independent redistricting commission. Rather than accept the ruling, members of the state legislature immediately moved to impeach Gibson, who received death threats, along with many court employees. They also appealed her decision, with support from Republican Gov. Spencer Cox.

“The Utah Constitution clearly states that it is the responsibility of the Legislature to divide the state into congressional districts,” Cox wrote on social media. “While I respect the Court’s role in our system, no judge, and certainly no advocacy group, can usurp that constitutional authority. For this reason, I fully support the Legislature appealing the Court’s decision.”

The Washington County commission, in southern Utah, even voted in January to ignore Gibson’s order entirely, despite being advised by their own lawyer that they would be out of compliance with state law. “I think she’s guilty of criminal conspiracy for conspiring with democratic socialists, and with outside money to try to flip a district in a state and basically control Congress,” fumed Commissioner Victor Iverson, calling Gibson “that lady who shouldn’t even be on the bench.”

In February, the Utah Supreme Court unanimously rejected the legislature’s appeal, but it didn’t result in a ceasefire. In December, the head of the state GOP and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) had started a group called Utahns for Representative Government to repeal Prop. 4 through a ballot initiative.

The enterprise was run by a dark money group aligned with Trump that, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, funneled more than $4 million into the campaign and helped bring in out-of-state workers to gather petitions needed to get the measure on the ballot. It generated a host of complaints from people who alleged that they’d been tricked into signing it, thinking they were actually opposing gerrymandering. Good-government groups launched a grassroots effort to encourage people to withdraw their signatures if they felt they’d signed in error.

The measure failed to get on the ballot, and the election has proceeded. And now, for the moment, at least, the prospect of actually winning an election has invigorated the state’s long-moribund Democratic Party. Four candidates are currently on the primary ballot for the new 1st congressional district, and the state even saw a televised debate among them last month—an event that hasn’t happened since 2010. “It’s definitely a win for the people of Utah to finally have something they voted for working,” says Elizabeth Rasmussen, executive director of Better Boundaries, the bipartisan organization that spearheaded Prop. 4.

Former Rep. Ben McAdams looks poised to return to Congress. But Republicans seem committed to ensuring that even if he does get elected, he won’t serve another term. As state judges have repeatedly blocked Republicans’ campaign to undo Prop. 4, GOP officials have focused on undermining the independence of Utah courts.

“The legislature is really losing its stranglehold on Utah, and they do not want to be politically accountable.”

“The legislature is really losing its stranglehold on Utah, and they do not want to be politically accountable,” says Teneille Brown, a University of Utah law professor who helped found Co-Equal Utah, a nonprofit focused on protecting the state courts from political pressure. “Their relentless tactics are really evidence of why we really need better boundaries.”

Brown says Utah’s judges have historically been considered some of the best in the nation, largely because they have been selected on merit. A bipartisan judicial nominating commission was charged with identifying candidates for the governor to select from. But in 2023, the legislature removed the requirements for the commission to include Democrats and members recommended by the state bar. Now, the panel that selects appellate judges is entirely Republican, and includes members like Sen. Mike Lee’s nephew, who graduated from BYU law school in 2020, as well as the board chairman of the right-wing Sutherland Institute, a Utah think tank.

With that new system in place, Republicans have launched an attack on the judges who had decided the gerrymandering case. Utah holds retention elections for judges, and the GOP has actively urged voters to reject the Supreme Court judges who upheld the maps. They also instigated a particularly nasty smear campaign against Justice Diana Hagan.

Last year, Hagan had been involved in an ugly divorce, and her ex-husband had alleged to a friend that she had been having an affair with one of the lawyers who worked on the anti-gerrymandering litigation. Hagan was friends with the lawyer, but she had recused herself from any case in which he was involved. Nonetheless, her ex-husband’s friend, who has worked in the Trump administration, filed a complaint against Hagan with the Judicial Conduct Commission.

Hagan vehemently denied the affair allegations. After investigating, the commission found “very little credibility to this complaint” and dismissed it. The commission’s investigative report was supposed to be confidential, but the state legislature leaked it to a local news outlet, prompting Cox and the state legislature to demand an “independent” investigation.

The ensuing publicity, and a host of death threats, made Hagan’s life so miserable that in early May, she decided to resign. “[M]y family and friends did not choose public life,” she wrote to Cox in her resignation letter. “They do not deserve to have intensely personal details surrounding the painful dissolution of my thirty-year marriage subjected to public scrutiny.”

Meanwhile, in January, the legislature voted to expand the state supreme court by two additional judges, even though the existing court said it didn’t need more help. This month, Cox appointed two men with no judicial experience to fill the seats, including a senior counsel for the LDS church. Once the new judges are in place, it seems inevitable that the state legislature will go back to court to challenge the district maps to ensure that the 2026 midterm election will be the last time Utah Democrats have a shot at sending someone to Congress.

This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter.

“Who knows what was going on in Corporal Mobley’s personal life?”

The question hung in the air. 

“Who knows if he had a girlfriend, fiancée? Who knows if they were having relationship issues? Who knows if his parents were having relationship issues?” 

First Sgt. Christopher Rushton fired off the list of “who knows” as members of the Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting unit at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia sat in stony silence. 

“Who knows if his sister was having relationship issues? Who knows if his favorite dog died? Who knows if his favorite teacher just got in a car wreck and died?”

“Who the fuck knows that?” demanded Rushton, a drill instructor for more than a decade. “Do any of y’all? So how are you going to sit here and try to tell me, or tell the CO, that this environment caused [the death of] Corporal Mobley?”

Active-duty service members and veterans thinking of harming themselves can get free crisis care. Contact the Military Crisis Line at 988, then press 1, or access online chat by texting 838255. People who are not in the military can also call 988.

On April 7, 2025, one of their own—Cpl. Drew Mobley—had taken his own life. 

During an internal investigation after Mobley’s death, a number of his fellow Marines complained about the command climate, accusing leadership of tormenting Mobley after an injury sidelined him from regular duty and ignoring his declining mental health.

Drew Mobley graduated from Marine Corps boot camp at Paris Island in February 2022. Courtesy of April Mobley

Now, three days after Mobley’s memorial service, the rest of his unit—known as ARFF—was getting grilled. Rushton and Col. Scott Warman had gathered the Marines, collected their phones, and were taking turns berating them. The closed-door meeting lasted more than two hours. Secret audio recordings, later shared with The War Horse, reveal what happened inside.

 A War Horse investigation into the events surrounding Cpl. Mobley’s death points to systemic failures before and after his suicide and an alarming disregard for protocols spelled out in 98 pages of Marine Corps Suicide Prevention System Procedures. After inquiries from The War Horse, the Corps said it is investigating.

In the secret recording, Rushton is heard reading aloud and mocking individual Marines’ written concerns with command leaders: “Oh, Mas. Ser. [master sergeant] yelled at me. I’m sad. Boo-the-fuck-hoo. You really think ISIS cares?” 

At one point later, he tells them: “Call CNN. Call Fox News. See how that works out for you.”

And he insisted Mobley’s fellow Marines had no idea why he took his own life.

“He made a very personal decision,” Rushton sternly told the Marines, “to turn a temporary problem into a permanent solution. Very deliberate in what he did.”

“You can’t sit here and tell me that ARFF was the reason that he did what he did,” Rushton told them. “Do any of you have a suicide note from him?”

Again, silence.

“No, you don’t,” Rushton finally said. “You don’t know what was going through his head.”

First Sgt. Christopher Rushton became the senior enlisted leader of Marine Corps Air Facility Quantico in December 2024. Lance Cpl. Ethan Miller/U.S. Marine Corps

‘Not Going the Way We Thought’

For years, the military has been struggling to come to grips with an alarming number of suicides among service members. Suicide rates have climbed in the military since 2011, but, in a glimmer of hope, declined in 2024, in the most recent Defense Department report. Still, there were 471 suicides—more than one a day—in the US military in 2024. And the Marine Corps has among the military’s highest rates. Studies and the Marines’ prevention protocols warn that exposure to suicide can lead to a higher risk for similar behavior.

In February, Sgt. Maj. Carlos A. Ruiz, the Corps’ highest-ranking enlisted member, encouraged Marines in a social media video to speak up if they are struggling with their mental health. 

“This tribe demands that when you need help, you ask for help,” he said. “We bend together, and we don’t break together.”

Veterans interviewed for this story say, despite its suck-it-up image, the Corps has made strides in looking out for troubled Marines in recent years. But what happened at Quantico last April provides a rare and unvarnished look into a culture that critics say can persist on the inside when unit-level commanders think nobody else is listening.

Over four months, The War Horse spoke to six Marines who worked in ARFF with Mobley. In interviews, they described working long hours for an understaffed unit, missing time with their families, and toxic leadership that dismissed their mental health concerns. The Marines who spoke with The War Horse also noted that Mobley’s death was the third suicide in the Marine Corps Air Facility, which includes ARFF, in less than two years.

The Marines who spoke out had hoped their feedback would hold ARFF’s leadership accountable for their perceived role in Mobley’s death, which Michael Snell, a former ARFF unit member, calls “horribly preventable.”

“The maltreatment had been going on forever and was getting ignored, and by literally everyone in the command,” Snell said in an interview with The War Horse. “And we basically all got told that we’re committing acts of mutiny.” 

The Mobleys assembled a memorial to Drew at their home in Wallace, North Carolina, after his death in 2025.Courtesy of April Mobley

“We kind of all knew the moment they said, ‘Everybody put your phones outside’—we were like, ‘Oh, this is not going the way we thought it was going to go,’” said Malakai Standifer, another former ARFF Marine. 

The War Horse reached out multiple times over a two-month period to four members of ARFF leadership—Warman, Rushton, Master Sgt. Jerry Chapman III, and Gunnery Sgt. Brian Tabares. Rushton and Warman directed inquiries to the Quantico communication office. The others did not respond.

“Berating Marines weeks after the third suicide in two years—that just sounds like the worst possible way to handle this. Your first instinct should be, pull those guys into your arms and go, ‘Hey, let’s take care of you.’”

After The War Horse submitted more than a dozen questions, detailing the allegations and sharing a number of Rushton’s and Warman’s comments from the closed-door meeting, a Marines’ spokesman responded: “This incident is currently under investigation, and no details regarding the investigation can be provided at this time.”   

Rob Bracknell, a retired Marine officer and judge advocate, reviewed the recordings of the meeting at the request of The War Horse. He was not involved in the investigation.

“Berating Marines weeks after the third suicide in two years—that just sounds like the worst possible way to handle this,” Bracknell said. “Your first instinct should be, pull those guys into your arms and go, ‘Hey, let’s take care of you.’”

Drew Mobley was 9 when his third-grade essay about wanting to grow up to be a Marine won a Duplin County School District essay contest.Courtesy of April Mobley

‘Be a Marine and Protect Earth’

When Drew Mobley ended his life at 22, he was working what was supposed to be his dream job.

He’d known it since he was just a third grader. At Wallace Elementary in North Carolina, an hour’s drive east of Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, he wrote an essay on what he wanted to be when he grew up.

“I am going to be a Marine and protect [E]arth,” he wrote. “No one is stopping me until I die or end the war.”

His essay won a contest for the Duplin County School District. 

More than a decade later, Mobley was at Quantico on a Sunday afternoon. He updated his life insurance policy in the ARFF rec room. He played basketball for a bit with a few of his fellow Marines. He went to a sporting goods store, where he purchased a gun, and another store to purchase hollow-point bullets. Then, he drove his Hyundai Sonata to the parking lot of the C.F. Phelps Wildlife Management Area. Around 6:30 p.m., he messaged some of his friends on Discord, a social app he liked to use, telling them he’d be offline for a while. His internet search history shows he was on his phone until after midnight. 

Then, sometime in the early morning hours, he shot himself. 

A few Marines who were sent to check on him discovered his body after friends tracked his location on Snapchat.

Drew Mobley was put on dispatch duty after injuring his leg during physical training.Courtesy of April Mobley Drew Mobley, center, enjoys an outing with fellow Marine Sgt. Warren Engdahl, left, and Cpl. Michael Snell. Engdahl was among a group of Marines who discovered Drew’s body after friends tracked his location on Snapchat.Courtesy of Michael Snell

His mother later pieced together the last hours of his life from Drew’s phone log, receipts, and accounts from other Marines. In the months leading up to his death, Mobley was struggling, fellow Marines say, but they didn’t know how bad it was. He started isolating himself. His hair appeared unwashed. He arrived late to his shifts. He stopped wearing cologne. 

“The boy loved cologne,” said his mother, April Mobley. “And always wore it.” 

They checked in regularly on the phone, but he never told her how much he was suffering. “My son was not a complainer,” she said. “He didn’t share his feelings.” She remembers him telling her, after two other Marines’ suicides, that he didn’t understand why they would take their own lives. On their last phone call, he told her he was worried about his friend Cole McEachern, another ARFF Marine who was struggling. 

Drew Mobley felt like he’d lost his purpose on base, Standifer said. At first, he’d enjoyed his job, April Mobley said. He made friends and had earned a nickname, Horse, because he’d “kinda just roam and graze and do [his] own thing,” Snell said—random, but it stuck. When he left work, the other Marines would joke that they were “letting Horse out of the stable.” Later, Snell got a tattoo of a horse and the date of Mobley’s death on his shoulder.

In September 2023, a little over a year out of boot camp, Mobley broke his leg and tore his ACL while playing football during physical training. In February 2024, he had surgery to repair his ACL, but his leg didn’t heal as expected. He was eventually placed on limited duty.

It kept him from the airfield, where Marines trained for and responded to aircraft emergencies. Quantico is also home to Marine One, the president’s helicopter.

Around Christmas 2024, he was assigned to dispatch duty and sent up to the “tower.” The shifts were punishing—12 hours on, 12 hours off—and indeed, Mobley felt punished, he told his mom. Typically, dispatch shifts rotated among unit members, maybe up to six shifts a month, Standifer said. Mobley had been left on them full-time for three months.

Standifer said he witnessed Chapman, the master sergeant who was named 2024’s USMC Executive Fire Officer of the Year, berating and belittling Mobley on a regular basis. 

He’d get flak for attending medical appointments that took him away from work, Snell said. Toward the end, the abuse got worse, he said. “Basically, he was in Master Sgt. Chapman’s office, like, every day, just getting torn down, berated, basically getting told that he was garbage because he couldn’t work normally, like everybody else could,” Snell said. 

“You get injured. You can no longer do the job you’re passionate about. The people above you are now reminding you every single day that…you’re a piece of shit, and you know they don’t want you there.” 

Cole McEachern, another former ARFF member, was also on dispatch duty because of an injury, alternating 12-hour shifts with Mobley. “They treated our injuries like we chose to get them and treated dispatch as a punishment,” he said. 

“You’re a guy all alone, separated from your friends and family,” Standifer said. “Then you get injured. You can no longer do the job you’re passionate about. The people above you are now reminding you every single day that…you’re a piece of shit, and you know they don’t want you there.” 

“Why didn’t they just kick him out?” April asked. “Why keep doing that to him every day?”

The Mobleys, sister Emma, left, mom April, and dad Joseph, visited Drew in May 2022 when he was training at Marine Corps Air Station New River in North Carolina.Courtesy of April Mobley

‘Felt I Had Let Him Down’

Months before Mobley’s death, ARFF unit members filled out what’s known as a Defense Organizational Climate Survey. Congress mandated the annual surveys across the military to service members to provide what is supposed to be confidential feedback about their command. The War Horse submitted a Freedom of Information Act request on March 31 for ARFF’s surveys but is still waiting for a response. 

In the survey, Mobley explained how he felt he was being treated unfairly and that his shifts were isolating, according to a friend and fellow Marine who read over his submission. Mobley wanted “to ensure it would be taken seriously by the command,” the friend told The War Horse. He asked not to be identified because he is still serving in the Marines and feared retribution for speaking to a reporter. 

Marines who spoke to The War Horse said many of their concerns about leadership were glossed over. 

“We all felt completely unheard,” said the Marine who advised Mobley. When nothing changed, Mobley, in particular, took it hard. “I felt I had let him down by saying that the command would take everything seriously.”

Within a few months, Mobley was dead.

His death rattled his family. 

April Mobley wasn’t one to coddle her kids, she said. “I am the toughest mama that you can find.” But Drew was such a good boy, she said. An easy, likable kid. Always the first person to ask how you were doing, always the last person to complain about his own problems. The chaplain at Quantico told April that Drew would often stop by and ask how he was doing. Nobody else ever did that, the chaplain told April. (The chaplain didn’t respond to a LinkedIn message from The War Horse.)

“To see how they just pulled the life out of him, the happiness,” she said, her voice quaking. 

At Drew’s memorial, Gunnery Sgt. Brian Tabares approached April and told her they knew Drew was struggling, she said. “They knew,” April said. She was too grief-stricken to ask Tabares: Why didn’t anyone do anything to help him? 

“I just, I can’t understand that,” she said. 

Col. Scott Warman, center, commanding officer of Marine Corps Air Facility Quantico, handed over the non-commissioned officer sword to First Sgt. Christopher Rushton, during a relief and appointment ceremony in December 2024.Lance Cpl. Ethan Miller/U.S. Marine Corps

‘You Really Think ISIS Cares?’

Unprofessional. Lacking values. A disgrace to the uniform. 

These are among the insults Rushton and Warman hurled at ARFF just weeks after Mobley’s death. When the doors shut and the meeting started, Warman, a first-generation Marine with two combat deployments, made it clear not everyone was on notice.

Some of you will do “great things,” he told the group. “There’s a great deal of you who have such amazing future potential, not just in the Marine Corps, but in life.”

His focus quickly shifted.

“Some of you are selfish. You’re entitled. And you’re the most disloyal people I’ve ever met.”

After Mobley’s death, several Marines had specifically called out Chapman, the master sergeant. 

Chapman had a “tendency to pick certain individuals he deemed not to his liking,” Standifer wrote in the statement he provided to investigators and later shared with The War Horse. “No matter the skills or actual work the individual does, they will always be bottom-tier low-lives to MSgt[Master Sergeant].” Drew was one of these, Standifer wrote.

“Cpl. Mobley was verbally and publicly ridiculed for his inability to work shift due to a major leg injury,” Standifer wrote. This “caused him to get put in dispatch over and over, locked in a hole with only the occasional visits from shift members to keep him sane until he was pushed too far and ended his life.”

Another Marine was “constantly accused of using his mental health appointments to get out of work,” Standifer wrote. 

These statements were supposed to be kept confidential, Marines said—they were told they’d only be shared with Warman and other officers involved in the investigation. But now, here they were. Less than three weeks after Mobley’s suicide, Warman and Rushton were sitting in front of the entire unit, reading snippets from those same statements. 

Marines had complained about limited time with family. Some hadn’t seen their families in weeks, they said. In response, Rushton reprimanded them for not being team players. 

“You don’t want to switch shifts, because, ‘Oh, my wife’s schedule won’t allow it,’” he said. “Nobody gives a fuck about your wife’s schedule. Sorry if it hurts your feelings—maybe your feelings need to be hurt.”

Some Marines complained that leaders discouraged them from attending medical appointments—including mental health appointments—during work hours. Rushton insisted these appointments needed to happen on personal time. 

As for those who didn’t agree with him, Rushton said: “They’re being fucking lazy. …That’s you being fucking selfish.”

“How many of you’ve ever deployed to a combat zone?” Rushton asked. “Do you really think ISIS gives a fuck about your feelings?”

Rushton scolded the unit for blaming Mobley’s death on leadership. “Stop blaming the chain of command over your own personal problems.” 

One after another, he read aloud and rejected the criticism. 

“The work climate at ARFF, and I quote, ‘Will not improve if Mas. Ser. Chapman remains in charge. I respectfully and tactfully request a review of Mas. Ser. Chapman’s leadership and its effect on the unit.’”

Rushton was having none of it: “Know what that sounds like to me? There’s a naval term that that falls under. … What term am I referring to? Mutiny. It’s a fucking mutiny.”

‘Every Marine Feels Supported’

Capt. Michael P. Kennedy struck a different tone in the Marines’ official response to The War Horse about the unit’s claims and the closed-door meeting. 

“The loss of even one Marine to suicide is one too many,” he wrote in an email. “Our prevention and postvention efforts are applied with equal commitment and seriousness across Marine Corps Base Quantico. At Marine Corps Base Quantico, we are dedicated to fostering a community where every Marine feels supported and knows that help is always available.” 

But an examination of the Marines’ official suicide prevention procedures calls into question the response before and after Mobley’s death.  

The latest version of the document issued by the Commandant of the Marine Corps—coincidentally four days before Rushton and Warman’s meeting with ARFF—lays out procedures, from suicide prevention training requirements to dispelling the stigma of mental health care. “Command climate is a critical aspect of suicide prevention in the Marine Corps,” it reads. 

Leaders should be “involved with every aspect of Marines’ lives in the unit,” and they should “facilitate the discussion of life stressors between Marines and leadership without judgment or stigma.” It lays out potential warning signs that might urge a commander to order a mental health evaluation for a subordinate Marine, including “significant changes in performance” and “behavior changes that appear to be unmanageable by the Marine.” 

It also offers guidance for how to respond in the aftermath of a suicide. Those left behind might experience guilt, anger, shame, and betrayal after a suicide, it says. It’s common for those left behind to “seek answers and assign blame,” the document says. Leaders can help by “fostering hope” and avoiding framing that causes shame or guilt. Trust in leadership is key, the document instructs. “Ask other Marines how they are and actively listen.”

Leaders should “foster a positive, safe command climate that promotes healthy stress responses.” 

After a suicide, other Marines can be “at high risk.” These efforts help survivors cope with grief and prevent future suicides.

Warman addresses Marines before the Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighter Rodeo on Marine Corps Base Quantico in April 2024. Lance Cpl. Joaquin Dela Torre/U.S. Marine Corps Master Sgt. Jerry Chapman, center, was named the 2023 Military Chief Executive Fire Officer of the Year during the annual Marine Corps Fire & Emergency Services Awards Ceremony in June 2024.Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Pedro A. Rodriguez

Bracknell, the former Marine judge advocate who is now an adjunct professor at William & Mary Law School, said Rushton and Warman’s response to ARFF does not align with these guidelines. 

“First Sg. Rushton’s comments seeking to shift blame off the unit and pointing fingers at their ‘unprofessionalism’ in the wake of a suicide—that’s not the ‘positive, safe command climate’ the Commandant expected when he approved that guidance,” Bracknell said. “Instinctively, their reactions are the opposite of what any professional, caring, thoughtful, engaged leader would do in that instance.” 

Retired Marine Col. Don Wogaman, who was not involved in the investigation, appeared visibly troubled after he reviewed—at The War Horse’s request—how command leaders rebuked the Marines for raising concerns after Mobley’s suicide. 

The subject is painful for him—Wogaman remembers how a fellow Marine who served in the Gulf War took his own life while Wogaman was responding to his Facebook post. It “tears me up,” he said. He called Rushton and Warman’s response to the ARFF Marines “horrible leadership.”

In the Marines, Bracknell said, leaders often “fail to discern the difference between tough and cruel.” The skills hardened military commanders rely on to lead a unit are not the same ones needed to help them cope after a fellow service member’s suicide, he said. 

But at times during the closed-door meeting, Warman softened his tone, sharing lessons on leadership and living and dying as a team. 

At one point, he became contemplative over the suicides: “If anybody’s responsible, it’s me,” he told the Marines. “And I accept responsibility for that, because I’m the commander, and it’s happened under my watch. I own that, and those are the things I have to live with the rest of my life—that I had three, three Marines take their lives under my watch. 

“Never once in my 23-year career have I ever seen that. Ever.”

The Mobleys held Drew’s funeral on April 17, 2025, at Poston Baptist Church in his hometown of Wallace, North Carolina. Fellow Marine Michael Snell was one of the pallbearers. Courtesy of April Mobley

The Third Suicide

Mobley’s death was the third suicide in the Marine Corps Air Facility, or MCAF, in under two years. A senior enlisted Marine in the MCAF command died by suicide in August 2023, and an ARFF Marine took his own life about three months later. While The War Horse was reporting this story, another former ARFF member took his own life in February 2026.

The War Horse was unable to contact family connected to the most recent suicide, but did reach the spouses of the first two Marines who died. In a Facebook message, one of the women said her husband “never had any issues with higher-ups or colleagues” and that command leaders were there for her after his death, “especially MSGT Chapman,” the master sergeant whom Mobley’s unit members criticized.  

“It’s kind of like—you should get help, and then just know that your career might be over.” 

The other said in a phone interview that her husband had a largely positive experience in MCAF at Quantico. He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, which stemmed from personal childhood trauma as well as his experiences in Fallujah. MCAF was one of the most supportive units he was in, his wife said. 

He took his own life a little over a week after receiving an official PTSD diagnosis, she said. 

“He knew that [seeking mental health treatment] would be career-changing,” she said. He reached out to a counselor during his time at MCAF, but the counselor told him she would have to notify his command if he came to her for help, which scared him off. 

Military culture dissuades people from seeking help, she said. “It’s kind of like—you should get help, and then just know that your career might be over.” 

The Suicide That Didn’t Happen

In the weeks around Mobley’s death, there was almost another suicide. 

Sgt. Cole McEachern’s story is similar to Mobley’s in many ways. During an aircraft emergency, he sustained a labral tear in his shoulder. Like Mobley, he was put on limited duty and 12-hour dispatch shifts. He and Mobley would alternate shifts, and sometimes spend extra time in the tower to keep each other company.

Unlike Mobley, McEachern wasn’t new to the military and had seen some violent things. On 12-hour dispatch shifts, he had “nothing but time” to think about these memories, he said. When he sought treatment for his nightmares and post-traumatic stress at the Quantico mental health clinic, he was told he had insomnia, and they couldn’t do anything for him, McEachern said. 

That’s when he started self-medicating with cocaine. 

The drugs fought off the nightmares. He’d stay awake for so long that when he crashed, his sleep was dreamless. 

Some days, McEachern would be driving to the ARFF station from the barracks, and he’d turn around, filled with dread at the thought of another day-long shift spent in solitude. Then, he said he’d think of Mobley—I can’t leave him there alone, he remembers thinking. He’d turn around again and make it to work, where he’d sit in his car, trying to psych himself up to go inside. 

Around shift changes, when both he and Mobley were present, he remembers that Chapman would regularly show up to chew them out. They were the “trouble kids” because they were injured, McEachern said. 

He talked to his dad Ryan McEachern on the phone nearly every day, and his father said he had noticed a shift in Cole’s demeanor. Cole was always frustrated, his father said, and he’d become more negative, more withdrawn. “When he would call, he just kind of had this depressed vibe about him,” Ryan McEachern said. He remembers one call where Cole said a member of leadership had told him he was “a piece of shit” and that “they didn’t really want [him] around anybody else” because he was a bad influence. Cole took a lot of pride in his work, Ryan McEachern said, so that hurt.

Ryan McEachern saw his son, Cole, graduate from boot camp in San Diego in 2019, 32 years after his own graduation there. Courtesy of Ryan McEachern Cole McEachern served in 2023 on Marine Wing Support Squadron 171 in Japan.Courtesy of Cole McEachern

“There’s just a meanness in people that do that, even in the Marine Corps,” said the father, also a Marine Corps veteran.

Around January 2025, Cole’s calls home became sparser, and Ryan McEachern could see on the “Find My Friends” app that Cole was keeping erratic hours, sometimes out as late as 4 a.m. 

Then on April 1, 2025, Ryan McEachern received a call he’ll never forget. 

“I fucked up, I’m a piece of shit, everyone’s going to f-ing hate me,” McEachern remembers his son saying. Cole confessed he’d done drugs the night before. “He spiraled into this, just, whole conversation about how horrible he was.” 

“I’m panicking,” Ryan McEachern said. “I was like, ‘Dude, where are you right this second?’” 

Cole told him he was on base in his truck. 

“I need you to drive to the mental health clinic,” Ryan McEachern told his son.

Cole resisted—the mental health clinic on base hadn’t been helpful in the past, so why would he go back there? 

“I said, ‘Do not hang up your phone,’” Ryan McEachern said, his voice shaking as he retold the story. He stayed on the phone as Cole walked into the clinic and approached the front desk. From the phone, Ryan shouted a message to the receptionist. “Before he can say a word, I’m like, ‘Don’t let this guy leave!’” 

As the clinic staff started to handle the situation, the gravity of what had almost happened hit hard. “I was like, holy shit,” Ryan McEachern said. “I think my kid was about to kill himself.” 

On April 11, Cole McEachern was eventually admitted into a month-long inpatient mental health program, just days after his friend Drew Mobley died. Cole missed the memorial service. 

Ryan McEachern said he wished Drew would have made a similar phone call. “I think about that constantly. That phone call sucked, but I was sure lucky to get it.” 

‘Feel Like I Owe Them’

Drew has been gone a year, but for April, the pain is still fresh. Her voice is still raw with anger and sadness. Sometimes, she trails off midsentence, choked by tears.  

Drew, who as a third grader, wanted everyone to “pray to God for the Marines that protected us and were willing to die,” is still with her. Once, after she visited Drew’s grave, she got in the car. The clock had changed to military time. “Never done that before,” she said. 

April stays in touch with other Marines. She feels responsible for them, she said. She calls them on holidays, invites them to her home for dinners, sends their kids Christmas and birthday presents. 

“Every boy that calls me, I feel like I owe it to them,” she said.

“I prayed to God. Like, what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to have a purpose in all of this?” she implores. “What is my path?

“I truly feel like at this point, it’s to make all of these boys feel heard. To make them feel like what they went through was wrong and [for] somebody to acknowledge that.” 

On the first anniversary of Drew’s death, April took a trip to the Grand Canyon with her family. On the way there, they stopped at a convenience store. April wanted to buy a Coke, Drew’s favorite drink. She didn’t know why; she just felt like she needed to. At the rim of the canyon, as they took in the view, she placed the glass bottle down on a post. 

On the post, she spotted a sticker, left behind by another traveler. Its message astonished her: “Drew’s Crew.”

Click here to listen to a recording of the entire meeting at Marine Corps Base Quantico.

When the Mobleys got to the rim of the Grand Canyon a year after Drew’s death, they spotted this sticker on a post. Courtesy of April Mobley

In a 99-1 vote Wednesday night, food and beverage workers staffing Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium for the FIFA Men’s World Cup ratified an agreement that includes better wages and protections around immigration enforcement—a high-profile labor victory after months of dispute over poor pay and work without a contract amid huge employer revenues.

The workers include cooks, dishwashers, concession workers, bartenders, and servers at SoFi, which will host eight soccer matches in the coming weeks, and whose operator had previously ceased negotiations after multiple bargaining sessions failed to reach an agreement. After threatening a strike, the union workers won, among other things, contractual guarantees that allow them to walk off the job if federal immigration enforcement threatens worker safety during a match.

In an interview with The Athletic last week, Kurt Petersen, the president of the union representing the food and beverage workers, UNITE HERE Local 11, said the stadium operator was “not taking the concerns and demands seriously enough.”

But on Wednesday, workers ratified an agreement that the union said “won every major issue” it had brought to the table, including raises of at least 30 percent, a housing fund, job protections, AI and automation restrictions, privacy rights around personal data, and walkout rights in the event of ICE raids or similar federal action.

2,000 food and beverage workers at SoFi Stadium reached tentative agreement with Legends Hospitality last night, just days before FIFA World Cup begins. Workers will ratify this week, after which we’ll release more details.

— UNITE HERE Local 11 (@unitehere11) June 9, 2026

“This contract proves what workers can accomplish when we stand together,” Susana Lahargue, a union member, said in a statement. “We are proud to welcome fans knowing that workers have secured a contract that respects our work and our dignity.”

The union announced last week that the workers it represents had voted 96 percent in favor of authorizing a strike with just days to go until the first World Cup match—giving their employer every incentive to come back to the table.

As I wrote last week, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said that “every single” federal law enforcement agency would be on site at the soccer tournament: “If we have people coming in that’s on the terrorist watchlist, we’re going to collapse on them. That’s not going to [just] be ICE, that could be state police that collapse on them. We’re all working together.”

Additionally, FIFA, the international governing body of soccer, is enforcing an accreditation process that involves collecting stadium workers’ personal data and sharing it with the Department of Homeland Security prior to the World Cup.

“We are seriously concerned that FIFA will hand over our most sensitive personal information and waive our rights under California law, or lose our job working the World Cup,” Yolanda Fierro, a stadium worker and union member, said in a May statement. “We cannot celebrate the World Cup while workers, tourists, immigrant families, and local communities are made to feel unsafe.”

Union members also raised concerns about the enormous revenues their employer, Legends Global, a worldwide venue management company, would earn from the World Cup, including from individual luxury suite packages worth more than $100,000. According to the union, workers—despite the high-pressure environment of the tournament and the immigration risks—aren’t seeing anything like a fair share: “Legends Global’s most recent proposal includes wage freezes for some suite attendants and bartenders and 25 cents-an-hour annual increases for cooks and dishwashers,” the local wrote.

Despite a tournament already marked by abuses of power— including the Trump administration’s denial of visas to national team players, staff, and match officials—roughly 2,000 food and beverage workers have scored the first goal.

There’s little doubt that Republicans have won the redistricting war started by Donald Trump, thanks in large part to favorable decisions from GOP-appointed judges on the US Supreme Court and state supreme courts.

Since last year, Republicans have drawn 16 new US House districts favoring their party, while Democrats have only been able to draw 6. That means, as a result of redistricting alone, Republicans have a 10-seat advantage heading into November. Obviously, that could make it significantly harder for Democrats to take back the House, despite Trump’s record-low approval ratings.

But even against these odds, Democrats could still come out ahead in the redistricting wars by 2028. According to an analysis by election experts Stephen Wolf and David Nir at The Downballot, over the next two years, Democrats could draw 21 new blue districts in 9 states with their own redistricting maps. Specifically, they could pick up four seats in New York, four in Virginia, three in Colorado, three in Wisconsin, two in Minnesota, two in New Jersey, and one each in Illinois, Maryland, and Oregon. 

Many Democratic states were unable to draw new maps in time for the 2026 midterms because of constraints in their state constitutions. But over the next two years, Democrats should be more able and willing to fight back against Trump’s election rigging. The Supreme Court’s destruction of the Voting Rights Act makes this battle more urgent.

Yes, gerrymandering is bad for democracy. But to level the playing field, Democrats will have to fight fire with fire and maximize their power everywhere they can. 

Watch our new explainer to learn more.

What do you think is the most important issue facing America right now? Inflation? Rising gas prices? An out-of-control war? Nah. It’s that we don’t have a giant “triumphal” arch devoted to the eternal glory of President Donald Trump. So Trump is determined to fix that for us all, thank goodness. Per the National Park Service, crews are going to work on the arch 20…

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A daily roundup of the best stories and cartoons by Daily Kos staff and contributors to keep you in the know. What do inflation and Iran have in common? Trump screwing up. When you’re the president and everything’s on fire, maybe you’re the problem … Nancy Mace’s political career goes down the toilet Finally something to celebrate! Republicans can’t get on the same page…

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A cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Related | Trump wants his face on new currency most Americans can’t even afford…

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Senate Republicans on Wednesday begged their donors for money to try to save Maine Sen. Susan Collins, saying that newly minted Democratic nominee Graham Platner is a threat and that Collins will go down without GOP donors’ monetary support. The National Republican Senatorial Committee issued a memo saying that despite Graham’s flaws, he is the favorite in the race as Democratic voters know…

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We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but as it turns out, police officers are abusing their power. In this case, cops are getting arrested for allegedly using Flock Safety to stalk people. Flock, which develops AI-powered surveillance systems, boasts itself as the “future of investigations” for law enforcement to help them “solve crimes faster.” However, as its technology spreads into more…

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The Trump family has come up with a new way to personally profit from the presidency. This time, the grift is centered around the Ultimate Fighting Championship cage fight on the White House lawn scheduled for President Donald Trump’s birthday on June 14. The “Trump Coins” website is currently selling UFC- and Trump-themed silver and gold coins. The site claims—without evidence—that the…

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At a press conference this afternoon, a reporter asked President Donald Trump if he is concerned about inflation rates after new data showed the consumer price index at a three-year high of 4.2 percent.

“I love the inflation,” Trump said. In Februrary, before the US began bombing Iran, inflation was at 2.4 percent. Trump predicted that inflation will “come down like a rock” once the war is over.

Q: Are you concerned about the latest inflation numbers that came out this morning?TRUMP: No, I love it. I love the inflation. You know why? Because as soon as this war is over — do you know we've been taking out millions of barrels of oil? You know who doesn't know? Iran until right now.

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-06-10T16:08:03.927Z

Meanwhile, Trump suggested that the US has been ferrying oil out of the Strait of Hormuz. “We’ve been taking out millions of barrels of oil,” Trump said. “Every night…now I’m going to tell you because they just figured it out. It was very hard for me, I wanted to say it so badly, but I didn’t want to ruin it. But millions of barrels of oil has come out, and that’s why it’s at 85, $90 a barrel instead of 250.”

About an hour later, he reiterated this point via social media post: “Last month, I directed our Great U.S. Military to execute a secret mission to support Oil Tankers and other Commercial Ships through the Strait of Hormuz.”

When the war is over, “You will see oil drop to where it was before,” Trump said at today’s press conference.

It’s not clear when that will happen, though: today, Trump also vowed to continue attacking Iran. “We’re going to be attacking them…very hard,” he said. Almost 3,500 Iranians have been killed in the US and Israel’s war on the country since February 28.

Inflation continues to rise, according to a new Bureau of Labor Statistics report, due in no small part to President Donald Trump’s chaotic and unpopular war with Iran—but the orange dictator doesn’t seem bothered. In fact, Trump seems over the moon about it. During an Oval Office press conference on Wednesday, when asked about the terrible inflation numbers, Trump responded by saying, “I love it.”…

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A cartoon by Drew Sheneman. Related | Americans don’t want a data center in their backyard…

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Delaney Hall has been many things: a jail, a halfway house, a rehabilitation facility. For the past year, however, it’s been something more fraught: an ICE detention center and the site of ongoing clashes between federal law enforcement and protesters. Reporters aren’t allowed in, health inspections are rare, and congressional oversight has been obstructed—as my recent interview with Rep. LaMonica McIver revealed. She’s now a year into a battle against criminal charges stemming from her attempt to inspect the facility.

So much of what we know about the inner workings of Delaney Hall comes from the letters that detainees have smuggled out with allegations of wormy food, denied medical care, and unsafe working conditions. In December 2025, 41-year-old Jean Wilson Brutus, died inside.

With Delaney Hall now thrust into the national spotlight, there’s still so much we don’t know. That’s why I wanted to talk to two reporters who have been watching this closely.

I sat down with journalist Amanda Moore and my colleague Sophie Hurwitz, both of whom have reported from outside Delaney Hall for Mother Jones.

I asked them how this place became a flashpoint, what protesters and detainees are demanding, and who is ultimately to blame.

WATCH:

Republican operatives are growing increasingly desperate in the Senate race in Texas, where they’re pushing false, offensive, and contradictory attacks against James Talarico—who they fear could become the first Texas Democrat to win a Senate race in more than 30 years. The latest comes from a Trump-aligned super PAC, which is running a gross and deceptive AI-generated deepfake ad in which…

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Former Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway shared her thoughts on Maine’s Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner to Fox News, and it was dripping with hypocrisy. “Is there a magic number in the scandelabra that would make you stop?” Conway asked. “Would it have to do with Nazis or putting upon women, perhaps underage women, but definitely women, not your wife of two years?

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British Labour Party leadership accused Elon Musk of inciting violence on social media ahead of massive ongoing white supremacist, anti-immigration riots centered in Belfast, Northern Ireland. 

“It’s appalling. Anyone that is seeking to drive and exploit a situation like this to drive their own political agenda is grievously wrong and doing damage,” Labour Party Chair Anna Turley told LBC News on Wednesday, in reference to Musk’s remarks. “We’ve seen children, families having to flee their homes on the streets of Belfast last night.”

On Tuesday night, rioters reportedly lit buildings and vehicles on fire and broke into and damaged homes, with at least some targeting people of color, in response to news that a Sudanese refugee with legal status was charged with attempted murder for stabbing and attempting to behead another man on Monday night. 

As far-right activists called for “mass protest” across the UK early Tuesday, Musk quoted one of the viral posts, writing, “Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!!” 

Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!! https://t.co/73GDcLLFwv

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 9, 2026

What’s the “change” Musk is demanding? A short list of some his activity on X on Tuesday morning:

• Tuesday 11:03am ET: Musk posts: “The truth is that there are VASTLY more hate crimes, especially aggravated rape and murder, per person by Blacks against Whites than the other way around.” 
• Tuesday 11:27am ET: Musk promotes a clip of remarks he made to a crowd last September via video during a separate anti-immigration protest in the UK where he said, “Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back, or you die.” 
• Tuesday 11:32am ET: Musk posts “This is the way” in response to Rupert Lowe, a right-wing member of Parliament vowing that his political party, Restore Britain, will “aim to prosecute officials and politicians who knowingly placed dangerous third world savages in our communities”—a campaign that will “apply retrospectively.” 

The truth is that there are VASTLY more hate crimes, especially aggravated rape and murder, per person by Blacks against Whites than the other way around.

The is not remotely debatable, as the numbers are so extremely lopsided! https://t.co/li1ipYrHWu

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 9, 2026

He continued into Wednesday:

• Wednesday 8:48am ET: Musk boosts a post claiming that “the left” conducted the “greatest rhetorical heist of the century” by using the word “racist” to counter criticisms of their policies.  
• And about an hour later: Musk reposts a graphic depicting a judge beating a person holding a “White Lives Matter” sign with their gavel. 

pic.twitter.com/oIneMaNCFe

— Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith) June 9, 2026

Elon Musk is pressing for a race war, where the violence from the left requires one to “fight back, or die.”

It’s a strange and perhaps fitting irony that Musk’s rhetoric comes the same week he could turn into the world’s first trillionaire with a SpaceX initial public offering that could tank your retirement fund.

A wave of anti-immigrant violence rocked Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Tuesday night after a Sudanese man was charged with attempted murder in a knife attack in the city. Racists have used the tragedy to stoke outrage at the broader immigrant community, and they’ve been aided by Elon Musk, the world’s richest person. The wave of violence forced immigrant families to evacuate their homes after…

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Graham Platner, the rugged oyster farmer positioning himself as a progressive populist, won Maine’s Democratic Senate Primary on Tuesday, earning more than 70 percent of the vote so far. He is now slated to face incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins in the November general election.

By some measures, the outcome was long-expected, since Governor Janet Mills announced she was suspending her Senate bid back in April. But at that point, only some of the salacious revelations about Platner’s past had come to light: namely, his tattoo resembling a Nazi Totenkopf symbol (he has since covered it up), and the racist and sexist posts he penned on Reddit more than a decade ago, including ones questioning why Black people “don’t tip” and criticizing sexual assault victims for not taking responsibility for what happened to them.

Since then, additional allegations against Platner have emerged. One June article by the New York Times quoted some of Platner’s past romantic partners, including one who was a Republican operative, who characterized their relationships with Platner as “unsettling.” And a May story by the Wall Street Journal indicated Platner had sexted other women while married. During his speech accepting the primary nomination on Tuesday, Platner leaned into a redemption-arc narrative. “If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics, and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change,” Platner said, speaking at a YMCA. “And the reason I believe that is because I have lived it—and the reason I have lived it is because of my wife.”

“If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics, and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change.”

A couple of decades ago, these revelations would have been disqualifying. But as the Democrats confront how to win back voters who have—now twice—elected a president with a penchant for his own sexist, racist, and even criminal behaviors, Platner’s proliferating controversies are perhaps less disqualifying, and possibly even endearing to some discontented Americans.

As New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie said in a recent podcast episode about the rise of the “dirtbag” Democrat, Platner is not just a candidate but a manifestation of the crossroads at which the Democratic Party now finds itself.

“It stands with how you view the kinds of people that Democrats tend to recruit to run for office. Should they be polished, with the right credentials?” asked Bouie. “Or should there be a bit of a looser and more open approach to candidate recruitment?”

And yet, character does matter. At least it seemed to be relevant in 2020, when Collins focused on her opponent, Maine Speaker of the House Sarah Gideon, the then-Democratic nominee, and accused her of not investigating a fellow state representative who had been accused of preying upon teenage girls. Six years later, I wanted to know how a candidate like Platner pulled off a victory in Maine’s Democratic primary in spite of—or maybe even because of—his questionable past. So I asked Musa al-Gharbi, an associate sociology professor at Stony Brook University who wrote the best-selling book “We Have Never Been Woke,” which examines how political correctness isn’t the remedy to inequality that elites have assumed.

The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why do you think Graham Platner emerged as the winner in the Maine Senate Primary?

One thing that influenced how the primary shook out is that there are a lot of people within the Democratic coalition who recognize there’s a large cultural distance between them and the rest of society. Maine is a pretty rural state; it’s a pretty purple state, and so they were maybe thinking, hoping, that someone like Platner would send a different set of social signals than the typical Democrat. The problem, though, is that on the one hand, he’s someone who positions himself as working-class, but the reality is he is from a pretty affluent family. He positions himself as an oyster farmer, but the farm provides stuff mostly to his mother’s restaurant. The house that he lives in was bought with a $200,000 loan from his father. An open question in the general election would be: To what extent are swing voters going to buy into this portrayal of himself that he’s tried to cultivate?

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) is another example of a wealthy person from elite schools who positions himself as this average-Joe kind of a person. Even to the point of wearing hoodies to Congress. Here’s a pro tip: Someone who’s genuinely poor and from a working-class background who made it into Congress wouldn’t be showing up in a hoodie.

So, how much do Platner’s alleged controversies factor into the choices of voters who are on the fence in the General Election?

A lot of working-class voters, irregular voters, and so on, are often over-willing to overlook various types of indiscretions of politicians who represent them, as long as they have the sense that this person is on their side and not looking down on them—even if the candidate isn’t a saint, even if they have serious character flaws.

In a world where a lot of voters have come to feel like neither party and almost no candidate is actually going to help them or improve their lives, then the main thing that they have left to vote on is basically, “Okay, well, if my life is not going to be meaningfully improved by these folks in Washington either way, then I can at least vote for the person who doesn’t hate me.”

In his best-selling 2024 book, “We Have Never Been Woke,” Sociologist Musa Al-Gharbi explains how elite progressives use social justice rhetoric to gain more power, without helping the marginalized people they claim to care about.

Is there a world in which Platner’s controversies and mainstream media’s reactions to them make him even more appealing to some voters in Maine?

To the extent that people feel like a politician is being held to an irrelevant standard (i.e. Who cares about his sex life? I’m not hiring him to be my son-in-law), or to a needlessly high standard, then that can redound to the benefit of the person who is being targeted. It can generate more sympathy.

For instance, when people were calling Trump racist. For a lot of voters who themselves feel unfairly maligned as racists, it just evokes something in them that actually makes this person more sympathetic to them than they otherwise might be—even if they don’t like the way the [politician] is talking about racial issues.

And you could see a lot of this in the polls and surveys, even from most Republican primary voters in 2016. Most Republican voters reported being deeply disturbed by Trump’s rhetoric and behaviors with respect to race and gender. They [largely] didn’t approve of them, which runs contrary to a lot of our assumptions that they voted for him because he’s a racist. No, they voted for him because the other choice was this person that they viewed as corrupt, who called them deplorables, who said that they wanted to put coal out of business.

You also saw this with President Bill Clinton. A lot of polls showed that the way that the media responded to Bill Clinton made the public sympathize with him more, even though they didn’t approve of his behavior. They didn’t approve of him cheating on his wife or exploiting an intern, but they thought the attacks were out of proportion and were devoid, importantly, from the main responsibilities of the job.

Don’t President Donald Trump and Platner have a few things in common? They both ran as populist outsiders facing various controversies regarding racism, sexism, and infidelity. They certainly aren’t perfect on paper, but maybe that makes some voters feel less judged for their own improprieties?

They’re both deeply flawed candidates in many respects. But one disadvantage that Platner has is that a lot of the people who have felt frustrated or alienated have voted Republican in recent cycles. The Republican Party has been the party of people who feel that sense of alienation, and in this case, Platner is running against a Republican—a Republican, sure, who bucks Trump sometimes, but Platner is also positioning himself as someone who’s bucking Trump. For the swing voters who still think the Republican Party is a better vessel for their frustrations and more proximate to them in various respects, Platner has an uphill struggle there.

That said, one thing you can clearly see in the polling is that a whole bunch of folks who drifted away from the Democratic party in recent cycles are now very frustrated with Trump. They still don’t hold the Democrats in high esteem, either. But it’s a two-party system, and Trump is the one in power, so if people are dissatisfied with the way things are going, that will probably benefit Democrats in these midterms.

Why do you think swing voters are becoming dissatisfied with Trump?

One of the things anti-woke people often take for granted when they get elected is that they were elected in the first place because the public is tired of culture-war stuff taking precedence at the expense of the things that they care about. Rather than concluding, “Oh, people are tired of the culture wars,” the message that anti-woke people often internalize is, “Oh, people are done with left-leaning culture wars.”

Some anti-woke people, like Trump, think voters want the culture wars to simply go in the other direction. If you look at the Trump administration and its focus on wanting to change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and put Trump’s face on everything from passports to coins—there’s this really intense focus on symbols, even though a lot of Americans are struggling with more concrete things. People who voted against Biden voted because he seemed like this addled old man: The world seemed to be burning, and he seemed to be incapable of doing anything about it. Well, that’s basically the same situation that voters face now with Trump in office, so that probably won’t work out well for him in the midterms.

If a conservative candidate were facing identical allegations to Platner’s, do you think the media and other perceived elites would be responding in the same way?

Certainly, if a Republican candidate said, “Hey, look, I got this Nazi tattoo. I didn’t know what it meant at the time”—they wouldn’t be given the same grace.

In terms of the extramarital stuff, that’s hard to determine, because Trump has really lowered the bar with that for Republicans. In the past, a Republican who had serial infidelity would have been lambasted by the media as a hypocrite, especially if he positioned himself as some kind of Christian or family-values kind of guy. In Platner’s case, he doesn’t really position himself that way. He says he loves his wife and all, but he’s not the family-values candidate, and the Democratic Party isn’t the family-values party. So he’s maybe less susceptible to that kind of angle.

What should establishment or elite Democrats and the mainstream media learn from Platner’s race so far?

Someone like Platner is kind of directionally correct for the party. He’s plain-spoken and tends to emphasize issues voters care about in a very economically populist way. He’s also unapologetically manly. He’s a war vet, he has a strong physique, he does a job that is, at least superficially, physically demanding. He has this kind of unapologetic masculinity about him that isn’t necessarily toxic, or that doesn’t have to be. You’d want a guy whose understanding of what manliness means is—among other things—taking care of your family, being a good leader, putting the needs of your community ahead of yourself and your own ambitions and desires. Unfortunately, the extent to which Platner could be this kind of positive male alternative is undercut by the allegations against him.

That doesn’t mean women can’t be strong Democratic candidates. The real problem for both Hillary [Clinton] and Kamala [Harris], wasn’t that they were women, it’s that they were both kind of urban, highly credentialed people whose whole public persona and manner was like, “Look, I have all these wonky technical plans, and I’ve workshopped everything I said with seven different committees before it comes out of my mouth.” If [Democrats] nominate a man who’s like that, that man is not going to succeed in Maine, either.