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This is a lightly edited transcript of the August 5 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.

Perry Bacon: I’m Perry Bacon, the host. Two great guests. Julia Azari is a political scientist at Marquette University. Seth Masket is at the University of Denver. They’re former colleagues at FiveThirtyEight, and they’ve been guests here at Right Now before. So Julia and Seth, thanks for joining me.

Julia Azari: Thanks for having us.

Seth Masket: Thanks for having us.

Bacon: These guys were on a couple weeks ago. We were talking about the big primaries in Michigan and Wisconsin, and now we’ve had one of them in Michigan—and one in which I pre-wrote my piece assuming a resounding El-Sayed victory, and then at one in the morning had to write a Haley Stevens won piece, because I genuinely was not sure what the results were.

It’s now about ten AM Eastern. The decision desk, NBC News, I think The New York Times—I think it now has been called by a lot of places. It appears that El-Sayed has won by around, looks like about one and a half percent right now. So it appears he is the victor, but it was a very close race.

And I’m going to talk about the race and what happened. So I’ll start off with talking about the map itself—because I think we get these election results, and I think it’s important to look at. And what I see is, I looked up the Detroit results, which is different than Wayne County, and it appears that, let’s see here, that in Wayne County, I think Stevens got sixty-one percent, and Abdul received thirty-three percent, I think.

So again, a proxy for the—and Detroit’s about seventy-five percent Black—getting at the idea, we’ve seen in the past that progressive candidates have struggled with Black voters in these primaries. That’s a good proxy for—we don’t have exit polls, but the Detroit results probably are a good proxy for that: Haley Stevens probably won the Black vote is my guess.

There’s one thing I wanted to see. Otherwise, looking at the map, it looks like Stevens won a lot of the smaller rural counties. In Wayne County overall, they were almost close to tied, suggesting Abdul won maybe areas that are not Detroit in Wayne County. Abdul did very well in Ann Arbor, which is not surprising. That’s kind of the college-educated base of the state. That’s kind of my general thoughts. Any thoughts about the results you all saw, in terms of, like, where each candidate did well?

Azari: I haven’t had a chance to dig into the geography. I have an anecdotal data point, which is that my husband is from Michigan, and he spent the weekend in Western Michigan, and he saw a lot of ground game, where it appears that El-Sayed did pretty well, which is the western part of the state. It was actually a much more conservative part of the state.

But I want to use that as my jumping off point, to talk about how, when we talk about how candidates do, we should talk about not just who lives there, but what the campaign looked like.

The other thing that jumped out at me was—my observation, I got the election night kind of jones, and so I was following The New York Times rather obsessively in the early evening. Then I went to sleep. I was not up at 1:00 AM writing. But during the time that I was following—and it seems like this is true in the final vote count—the percentages changed, but actually El-Sayed’s vote lead remained about the same, between 20 and 25,000 votes. Which I don’t really know, I haven’t really had a chance to think about whether that’s significant, but it struck me as a kind of interesting thing, that it was really steady throughout the night, the difference between the candidates.

Masket: The one thing I would add to this—again, I also haven’t had a chance to really pore through the maps, but some of the demographics you’re describing and the votes—there’s been a lot of talk of, like, this is a very new type of primary, and this is a radically new type of moment for the Democratic Party.

But in some senses, this is a very sort of standard establishment versus progressive setup that we’ve seen in state races, that we’ve seen in presidential races, going back decades, where you have a progressive of some sort candidate who does pretty well among, you know, university towns, does well among college students and professors, can be in some ways like a media darling. And then you have the more establishment Democrat that does very well among, particularly, like, just very longstanding Democratic constituencies like Black Americans.

So we’re seeing kind of that. I think the one difference is that also the sort of establishment Democrat usually does very well among labor unions, and that might be more split this time around, potentially, given El-Sayed’s labor history.

Bacon: Yeah, I wish we had an exit poll. I know we’re going to have a debate about polling being bad, because the polling was off in terms of the results. But we have this big youth divide in the Democratic Party right now, and we can’t see that by looking at a map, because on a map there’s no college towns or younger. In general, we can’t tell—we don’t have good age data, and that’s a limitation here.

So I guess big picture, what does this result tell us about the Democratic Party? I think whether he won by fifteen or one, Abdul won. So I think that is worth noting. So talk about what this tells us about where the party is.

We’re in this latest, in the slate of primaries where the kind of insurgents, outsiders, anti-establishment, progressive, socialist—pick your term here—have won some races. At the same time, my guess is the average Democratic member of Congress still sounds more like Joe Biden than Bernie Sanders. So talk about where we are right now. Julia—

Azari: Oh, yeah. I have a lot of thoughts here. I think what it tells us is that this anti-incumbency vibe is certainly ascendant, and that’s not terribly surprising, given the last administration didn’t end terribly well. The timing of this all makes a lot of sense, and so I think that’s what we’re seeing with the Democratic Party. I think overreading the ideological valence is a little bit of a danger.

And one thing I want to say about primaries, just reading what people are saying in different primary contests, is that I think we don’t have a really neat and packaged way to talk about how cross-pressured your average primary voter is, where they’re likely going to see things that they like about both candidates. And so their considerations are going to be really affected by the political environment. And I think for us as sort of big picture political geeks—

Bacon: In other words, the average primary voter is not Hasan Piker, who hates Haley Stevens and loves Abdul. It’s probably somebody who has more—it’s probably a Black mom who likes both candidates, is, like, more likely, yes.

Azari: Exactly. And those different considerations might not map on neatly to ideology, because it doesn’t tend to be how most people operate, and also because the differences even between a pair like Stevens and El-Sayed is going to be a lot smaller than the sort of full range of the larger political spectrum. And so they might think, I’m pissed at the establishment. Sorry, can we say pissed on this podcast?

Masket: Do it.

Azari: And—yeah, you need to send me a swear sheet before we do these.

Bacon: The banned words are—although I know you don’t like the word establishment. So that’s why I’ve been trying to avoid that word, actually, since you said it that way. But yes.

Azari: But I think there is this anti-incumbency vibe, and I do think that one thing it tells us is, states like Michigan have been hit very hard with the worst parts of the status quo. So I think that’s what it tells us about the political environment in general, and by extension, the Democratic Party.

Bacon: OK.

Masket: I’ll go with hardly the hottest take, but a lot of the similar matchups that we’ve seen so far this year with progressive insurgents, left insurgents in Democratic primaries, have been in places—some districts in New York, California, Colorado, mostly very blue areas—where—

Bacon: Seth—so you live in Denver, we’ve met earlier, so you’ve witnessed this personally.

Masket: Yes, I literally live in Diana DeGette’s district. And she just lost by double digits to Maliek Kirvas. And the one thing that sort of establishment Democrats have had, the one argument they’ve been using, is, this type of stuff is not electable. Voters won’t like this in November, so don’t go that way. That hasn’t carried a lot of weight in contests so far.

Michigan, of course, is different. Michigan has voted two out of three times for Donald Trump. It’s much more of a wild card for the November election, and so that’s where people—I’m throwing another banned word, electability—that’s where this has really come in a lot, in this argument. And it’s a question regardless of whether it’s correct, right?

Regardless of whether we can actually tell which candidate’s going to do better in November, I’ve been curious to see how much voters actually listen to that. How much voters who are really on the fence between these two candidates, and aren’t really following the ideological splits, don’t really understand the policies too well, are receptive to the idea that maybe one of these people has a better chance of winning in November. One of these people—this race could make or break Democrats controlling the Senate next year. That adds a lot to it. The polling isn’t showing a huge advantage for Stevens on that—but, and also, the polling hasn’t been great on the outcome of this race so far.

Bacon: I was going to talk about electability later, and I want to come back to that, but I want to talk about this perception of it with you specifically. Because I was out in 2019, talking to voters all the time, particularly female voters who would say, I love Senator Warren. I love Kamala Harris. I cannot vote for her, because only Joe Biden can win. Only a man can win, etc. And Seth, you wrote a book that made a lot of these arguments—about the 2020 primary was very much shaped around these perceptions of electability: Hillary lost because she’s a woman, the party must pick a man. Are voters still thinking that way? Because I guess you haven’t gone out and—you haven’t flown to Michigan and asked everybody. But are voters still confident they know who’s electable, in the way they seemed to be in 2019 and 2020?

Masket: 2019 was a very particular environment, in which Democrats were still smarting from Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump, which was a huge surprise to the political system. She had been polling well ahead of him, and all the evidence suggested she could win, and then she didn’t.

They were really going through it at that time, and a lot of them were willing to just throw out ideas about who they thought could win, and they were going back to, We got to go with the old, safe, tried and true sort of candidates. I don’t know that the party is still in that place. That said, they are still thinking about what happened in 2024. There’s plenty of theories about it.

They are concerned that, OK, maybe Kamala Harris seemed too out there on some dimension, or just the fact that she was a Black woman or South Asian woman was a little too much for the electorate. And it’s hard to say what’s actually in their head about that, or what’s operating at the background level. I think electability does carry some weight there.

Bacon: 49 percent of people in Michigan voted for a man named Abdul, who’s Muslim, so those people are maybe not—those people maybe have changed their views, electability, or don’t care about it, right? We have to—or don’t care about it the way we thought about it in 2019, at least. Maybe put it that way.

Masket: Yeah, I would say that’s accurate. I think there’s a fair number of voters now who just say, people keep telling us who’s electable and who isn’t. I’m not really sure I buy those arguments anymore.

Bacon: Julia?

Azari: I think there’s a dimension too there, that is that the Biden presidency really brought to light what happens when you have the electable candidate, that person wins the election, and then you don’t feel like your life changes. And this is not an assessment I necessarily agree with. I actually think that Biden had a lot of legislative accomplishments, but obviously the kind of general sense was, people’s lives did not materially change.

And that’s where—the other thing, if I can just wrap up, back to the previous question about what did we learn about the Democratic Party. I want to go back to something I’ve kind of been saying in these discussions about the rise of the left and the Democratic Party, which is that it’s a complicated coalition.

And I think what you learn in Michigan is that what you can do there is put together a coalition of the kind of college students, educated people who are drawn to these types of candidates, people who are ideologically left, and then people who feel like they’ve been left out of the progress that the country’s made, or whatever, however you want to define that.

And the data point I kind of want to remind people of is that Bernie Sanders won the primary, surprisingly, in 2016. It was one of—

Bacon: In Michigan, just to be clear.

Azari: In Michigan. Yeah, sorry. In Michigan. Yeah, it was one of the bigger kind of polling earthquakes of that cycle. And that could’ve been for any number of reasons, but I think one is that coalition is live. Until we think about the left part of the Democratic Party spectrum as just one thing—we’re going to miss important parts of the story. I think we need to think about it as a complicated coalition in and of itself.

Bacon: Seth, you said something about how these results are not that unusual. You were alluding to, these coalitions are traditional. Everything else in the world is changing—I do interviews with people on my phone now as part of my job. So why are we still in a place where, let’s be blunt, older African Americans vote for the establishment candidate, and college professors and college students vote for the insurgent candidate?

When I started doing—covering Howard Dean, it was the same dynamic. Can Howard Dean win the Black vote? No, he couldn’t. And so can Abdul? Apparently not last night. And so why are these coalitions so set, in a certain sense, where I can often tell you—I think Julia’s right, there is some diversity here and some shifting here, but some of these coalitions have been set. As you said, like, nothing has changed. Why is that so set?

Masket: In some sense, it’s just because party coalitions are extremely durable things, right? They’ll shift around a little bit, and sometimes you’ll have pockets of the electorate that are more active in some years than others. But I don’t know that the Democratic Party is that hugely different as a structure, as a coalition, than it was, like, 40 years ago or so.

I do think you see particularly some minority communities becoming more prominent, growing in numbers. I would think particularly relevant for Michigan is the growth of an Arab American community, the growth of Muslim voters. It was particularly salient in Democratic primaries in Michigan, and that adds a considerable wrinkle to that math, right?

And that was a population we totally weren’t sure how they were voting in 2024. The fact that Israel and Gaza has become a really live wire issue within the Democratic coalition, it adds to that. So I think that has shaken things up a little bit. But until we have a—I don’t know, a realigning issue or some sort of smashup of the party coalitions—they still look roughly like they looked a number of years ago.

Bacon: I will admit I have not looked up the data for the Dearborn election, the one in Dearborn. That’d be helpful to know, because I think that’s a big Arab American population. My understanding, from looking on Twitter and social media, is that Abdul overwhelmingly won in Dearborn, but the turnout was not what they hoped it would be. But I want to look into that a little more carefully, because I think that’s an important indication about, as you said, the demographics of the party are not just Black and white, and that’s obvious to everybody listening here.

I want to talk about the groups that were involved here. So AIPAC is on Haley Stevens’ side very aggressively, obviously. So is Gretchen Whitmer, so is Gary Peters, the outgoing senator, and so is a lot of the elected official base in Michigan. And also Chuck Schumer, and really nationally are involved—really the Michigan part is really on Stevens’s side. AIPAC, Stevens’ side, versus Bernie Sanders, AOC, a lot of the sort of more progressive wing of the party really made winning this primary a big deal.

So what does that mean for the sort of people who are not in—I guess Whitmer lives in Michigan, but what does it mean for people who are not Stevens and Abdul, like the other groups and politicians? What does this thing mean for them? Is this good for AOC, that she went in hard for somebody and they won? Is it—say she should run for president? Is it a sign that AIPAC is in decline? Is it a sign that Gretchen Whitmer shouldn’t run for president, for sure? Or are there any conclusions about groups or other individuals you all want to weigh in on here?

Masket: I have thoughts.

Bacon: Go ahead.

Masket: Just, as you’re describing it, the establishment party was very clearly for Stevens in this. Everything that we would define as the party insiders, all the major elected officials, all the major interest groups, the major party money, was really leaning toward her. And in most years, that is how you win a Democratic primary, right? This is not most years. And to some extent you could say this is partially enthusiasm for progressives, enthusiasm for AOC and Bernie, but also I think just being the establishment is a real negative right now.

As Julia was describing before, it is just, like, this anti-incumbent strain in the electorate is really powerful right now. It’s become the major dividing issue within the Democratic Party, and that’s really, I think, kind of the ascendant idea, the motivating issue within Democratic primaries this year.

I’m again applying things to Colorado, but we had this governor’s race between Michael Bennet and Phil Weiser, and Michael Bennet by far had the Democratic Party establishment behind him. He had all these, like, major institutional incumbents, popular people. The national party were all backing him. That wasn’t enough, and he loses by double digits to Phil Weiser, who somehow became the outsider as the sitting attorney general.

Bacon: The sitting attorney general.

Masket: Yeah. But yeah, it’s usually very good to have the whole establishment behind you. Not this year.

Azari: Yeah, I agree with that. I think, again, it’s important to be cautious in how we interpret election results, and I think if we’re looking at these results in Michigan, what we’re finding is, this is a coalition, or a part of the party, that’s ascendant, not that’s dominant. And if you’re Gretchen Whitmer, or you’re one of these more establishment figures, I think you’re not experiencing this as a complete defeat, right? We’re in a moment where public sentiment is pretty negative, and yet the establishment candidate is still getting roughly half the vote.

But at the same time, I think we are seeing some rules having the potential to be rewritten. I don’t want to infer too much from any one election data point. One of the things that I have seen online was just the spending differential between the two candidates, which is quite dramatic. And—

Bacon: Total, like, sixty million to ten million, something in that range, or thereabouts spending, yes. For Stevens, like a big ratio for Stevens. Yeah, go ahead.

Azari: Yeah, she had a huge advantage. And so I’m seeing some of that, and I think, again, we ought to really think about the importance of campaigns, especially in a primary where you don’t have partisan cues, and the importance of what seemed to me like actually really strong emphasis on the economic part of the message. And how that is—one thing I also am keeping an eye on, that’s still in progress, is how the left wing of the Democratic Party is integrating the cultural messages, especially around Israel and Gaza, with the economic messages. And there are some actual efforts to tie those together, about the spending of public money and tax money.

But also there’s, like, both parties always have to be in this constant negotiation between those two dimensions of their party, and the different parts of the coalition that they attract and repel. And that’s just—again, I don’t think we got any definitive data points here, but I think this is additional data to understand that dynamic process.

Bacon: So the polls coming into this is tricky, because there are a lot of polls that are released by each campaign, and it’s not clear there were a lot of objective, quote-unquote, polls. That said, most of the surveys coming to this showed a double-digit lead for Abdul, which led a lot of people, including me, to think he was going to win, and maybe win pretty resoundingly. So I’m always going to want to read polls, because I think that’s better than, like, look, counting streets, counting yard signs. But that said, how should we feel? We’ve had a lot of polling misses that have been major, 2016 being the big one. How should we feel about polls right now?

You guys are political scientists. You guys worked at FiveThirtyEight with me. I assume you guys are going to keep reading polls, but maybe we shouldn’t. So how should we feel about polls today? Reassure me that polls are worth reading. Or tell me that maybe I should read fewer polls per hour, if I would just phrase it. Either one of you.

Masket: I’ll jump in on that and just say that, OK, this is a big polling miss. And yeah, Julia was referring also to the polls 10 years ago between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, where they missed wildly. They predicted a strong victory by her. You get a strong victory by him. I would say generally primaries are much harder to poll in than general elections. It looks like Michigan primaries in particular are harder to poll.

But also, it’s a state with open primaries. Anyone can vote in these, so it becomes much harder to figure out who the likely voters are. That can switch around a lot at the last minute, depending on some campaign spending or whatever last-minute news story activates people to vote. And also, suddenly this race, just in the last few weeks, gets national attention, which it was not, until fairly recently.

Bacon: They’ll drive up turnout, probably.

Masket: Yeah. So there’s a number of things that can change at the last minute. But this is a point that Elliott Morris made online this morning, that if all our electability calculations are, like, two- or three-point differences, and we have a poll that’s been missing by 10 to 15 points—we should take all of that with a huge chunk of sand. Or salt, rather. Sand, salt. Go ahead, Julia.

Bacon: Yes. Sand, salt.

Azari: Yeah. So I think I agree that it’s always better to have some data and some understanding of the data than to just make stuff up. I think that my sense, given all the different theories around why the polls have been off at different elections, has mostly been about the likely voter screen. And as Seth points out, that’s especially kind of a wild card in a primary election. So I would not stop reading the polls, but I do think it’s something to pay attention to, that we seem to have polls that consistently overcount.

The thing about this is that they weren’t wrong in a bunch of different directions. They were generally wrong in the same direction.

And that indicates there are a number of maybe fairly predictable things that happen, that certain people were over-polled. I guess there’s a possibility there were, like, Shy Stevens voters. I don’t know why that would’ve been the case. I’m really skeptical of that theory for the 2016 general election, but in the interest of exploring all things.

So I wouldn’t stop reading polls, but I would kind of have a sense that it’s especially worth paying attention to when the polls are all wrong in the same direction, that something systematic may be happening.

I guess the last thing I’d point out is that people who really do this—which is not me, remember, I was at FiveThirtyEight as the politics and history person—people who really do this, they’ll point out that response rates are just really low.

So that’s another kind of obvious culprit. So when thinking about how polls are wrong, I think we need to be kind of systematic and cautious, and not wildly swing into crazy explanations.

Bacon: So we haven’t fully engaged electability, so let’s do that now. So I can be honest with my own politics. I would’ve voted for Abdul over Stevens, because I’m more ideologically left than center, for lack of a better way to say that. That said, I’m open to the idea of an electability that maybe Joe Biden would’ve been a better electoral candidate than Senator Warren. I’m open to the idea that might be the case.

And so let’s talk about this. In this case, I think a good faith argument might be, it might be that the kinds of voters that the Democrats have to win in a general election—and the kinds of voters they struggle with are rural voters in small towns, voters without college degrees. And the data we have available to us suggests Haley Stevens won more of those people, based on the map showing her winning the rural counties, than Abdul did.

And so if the pool of people you need to win the general election looks more like Stevens’ voters than Abdul’s, isn’t Stevens potentially the better candidate for the general election? Let’s discuss that. I may be wrong. I just want to discuss that openly, though. Either one of you.

Azari: So I’ll say three things about electability. Look, if I can narrow down my electability thoughts to—

Bacon: No, that’s good. Yes.

Azari: Yeah. I think there are three things. One is that I think the Democrats’ vision of what electability is, was basically trained on Bill Clinton in 1992 and has never been fully updated. And so it’s very heavily about a very specific kind of moderation, along with some implied demographics.

Bacon: Some of which I just named, by the way, in my question. I’m not denying, yes.

Azari: And I noticed this with my students when we were talking about—we were talking about the Texas race, I think. And so I’m pointing this out because we don’t live in Texas, and we don’t necessarily know a ton about Texas. They’re just getting national news, and they’re saying, The electable candidate is Talarico. And I’m like, “The electable candidate is no one. This is Texas, and this is a Democratic primary.” The difference between the two candidates versus the broader political spectrum. The second thing is that—

Bacon: They mean Talarico is white and Crockett is Black, basically. Is that what they were saying, with code words? Probably. Or is it—OK, got it.

Azari: Yeah, probably. And it was—you know what I mean? We didn’t have a chance to follow up.

Bacon: OK.

Azari: Yeah. The second thing is, I think electability really speaks to the fundamental problem of our system, which is the weak parties and strong partisanship. So it tells you, on the one hand, voters, it’s now your job to coordinate. The party can’t do it, so now you need to figure out what millions of other people are thinking on the fly, while doing your regular life. So weak parties, and then also strong partisanship, because what it tells you is that the stakes are really high. And that you need to be thinking about this for those reasons.

And the third thing is, I have no idea who I would’ve voted for in the Michigan primary, because by the end of this primary, both candidates seemed so irritating, and I was so irritated with both of them. And I think that maybe is an indicative data point about the nature of primary campaigns. OK, that was my three points. I’ll let Seth talk now.

Masket: I have 29 points about electability here. Let me think about this. So—

Bacon: But think about the question I laid out a little bit, which I think was a useful question to bring about. The assumption is, the pool of people you need to win a general election looks like the people Stevens won. I think there’s a reason, and I think that might have some validity. Go ahead.

Masket: Yeah. But also I think Julia’s point about, we’re trained on the Bill Clinton era—

Bacon: Yeah, I agree with that too.

Masket: I think has some relevance here. It’s interesting, because electability usually doesn’t rely on a ton of data. To the extent it did this year, where we have polling matchups, I think those are probably not very useful, considering the polling misses this year. So we tend to fall back on some basic beliefs, or myths or stereotypes that we have about who the swing voters are in a given state, which tends to fall back on the rural whites. Maybe, right? But that’s not the only model for what a general election can look like.

There’s been some longstanding belief that ideology imposes a cost on votes. If you’re too far to the left or too far to the right, people won’t vote for you. That’s a model. I think there’s lots of evidence for that in the 20th century. More recent scholarship on this is finding that those beliefs matter less and less to vote shares in November. There was just a recent paper I was looking at, Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach, where they tried to look within both parties: like, does being a further left candidate or a further right candidate cost you votes in November? And they really had a hard time finding any effect at all, and in fact, sometimes the more extreme candidates actually get kind of an enthusiasm boost in turnout.

So a lot of this just may be a wash. And thanks to that, and thanks to polarization and a lot of other things, you’re going to get a Democratic vote no matter who the Democrat is. And this is a pretty good year to be a Democrat. Now, we’ll get an interesting test of that this year. But in the end, we still won’t know, like, how Haley Stevens would have done.

Bacon: Julia, I can ask you this. I can’t believe I haven’t had this kind of thing before. How should we discuss—my actual concern is that a person named Abdul El-Sayed, who is Muslim, may lose some voters in Michigan who maybe don’t love Muslims, and who maybe don’t describe themselves as racist, but who are, like I said, not outright bigots, but who might prefer a white guy like Mike Rogers. That’s my—I actually think a lot of this is coded around. The actual thing is not that he supports Medicare for All, which most people are able to support, but that his name and background and so on.

And I know Barack Hussein Obama won two elections, but that was an unusual situation—even he was not Muslim, which he would tell you himself all the time, because he seemed to think that might be a downside. And so that’s my—how do we talk about that? Which is the actual issue, I think, is that a lot of people, particularly people who are being honest, worry that maybe Michigan is not ready for a Muslim candidate who also is progressive and married to a Muslim woman.

Azari: I think there’s sort of two ways to think about this, as far as the Michigan electorate, which is: are you going to win the election on the swing voters who somehow have made it to the year 2026 not having a strong party preference, but nevertheless cast ballots? These people exist, and they decide the fate of the world.

Bacon: Yes. The fate of the world, literally true right now. Yes. Quite literally.

Azari: Yes. Who might—who are like, “I vote for the person and not the party.” So my disdain for this perspective has no limits. But that person versus—you’re a young person who’s unhappy with the economy. You’re probably going to vote Democratic if you vote, but you often don’t vote. And there’s political science research around this, that actually the big swing constituency is people who do or don’t vote and who are in the sort of demographics that are not super consistent. Added to that in Michigan is a substantial Arab and Muslim population. And so—

Bacon: Who might be more excited about the candidate instead of less. Which—yeah, that’s the point. Yes.

Azari: So that’s one way to think about it. And then the second way to think about it—I am making the two- and three-part comments, that’s happening—the other way to think about that is, there’s sort of limited data about, we’ll call them non-traditional candidates, right? Women, ethnic or religious which is tricky. There’s people who’ve done experimental work on this, and there are people who have done observational work with the candidates that we do have. And the trick is, there is a penalty.

There’s evidence that Obama paid an electoral penalty for his race in 2008. There’s evidence that sexism affected evaluations of Sarah Palin in 2008. So we do see that, and we nevertheless see that Obama won twice, and we nevertheless see that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, and we don’t have a lot of examples of high-level Muslim candidates. We have some survey data that suggests, of course, this is not the most popular group, and that there is some penalty.

So there’s sort of two separate dimensions there. We know that non-traditional candidates pay some electoral penalty, but we don’t know if that’s going to make the difference for whether or not they get elected. And we also know that if as a country we keep in those confines, then we’ll never break out of them, right? And we’ll have a country where a lot of people aren’t really seeing themselves represented politically, and that’s—I think that’s not sustainable. And the work that I’ve done in my recent book, which I unfortunately don’t have to wave around conveniently, suggests that’s not really sustainable. So those are the ways that I think about it.

Bacon: Two final questions. We’re going to bridge a little bit away from Abdul and Stevens to talk about—so a lot of other primaries last night, the sort of anti-establishment, progressive, whatever term we’re using here. There was a DSA candidate who beat an incumbent in Michigan’s Thirteenth District. Let me not mix them—hold on one second, I might be getting my numbers wrong, because I’m a little tired. So there were a couple primaries last night.

In the Seventh District, the Working Families candidate won. His name is Will Lawrence, and he defeated two kind of more centrist candidates. In the Thirteenth District, the DSA candidate defeated a Democratic incumbent. So two places where the sort of more progressive candidate won. In Missouri, Cori Bush, progressive, who had been in Congress before, was the leader of the Ceasefire movement in Congress, actually lost to Wesley Bell. Cori Bush was the progressive, lost to Wesley Bell. So you had mixed results. So I think last night is worth noting. Sometimes progressives won, sometimes centrists won. I think the point Julia made earlier is, we’re not seeing one clear-cut story here, that things are going in both directions. Any other primary results you all want to talk about, or we want to mention? If not, we can move on.

Azari: Yeah, that was all last night. There were those two referenda in—what was it, Missouri and Kansas?—on judicial issues. Those weren’t primaries, but it was conservative states rejecting the conservative perspective.

Masket: Those are important too, yes.

Bacon: I will finish with Wisconsin, where two things I did not love happened on Tuesday. The first was Governor Evers, asked about Francesca Hong, the person leading the polls right now at least, predicted that she would not win the general election, which I don’t know that is overly helpful. And then, if he wants her to win—which hopefully he does, I know he’s for another candidate right now—but I’m not sure how useful that comment is.

And then I guess Hong was interviewed, and was asked about some—I think it was a tweet, but maybe it was something else—where she had questioned the virtues of the Thanksgiving holiday, and she didn’t necessarily walk that back. And while I might think the creation of the Thanksgiving holiday is maybe not perfect, I’m not sure the Wisconsin general election is the perfect time to litigate that. Julia, discuss what you think is happening in Wisconsin.

Azari: So I think the important thing to know about Wisconsin is that, as far as I can tell, talking to people close to politics, people who study politics here, is that no one has any idea what the hell is going on. And no one has. So as near as I can tell, just to give the state of the race: Hong came in as this sort of unlikely DSA candidate. She’s in the state legislature. The rest of the field refused to consolidate. The two major candidates who were assumed to be front-runners crashed and burned in different ways. The state—

Bacon: Mandela Barnes and Sara Rodriguez?

Azari: Sarah Rodriguez. Yeah. Who, the former and the sitting lieutenant governor. The sitting governor—who has declined to run for re-election, he’s not term limited—declined to endorse either of them, his two lieutenant governors, and then endorsed David Crowley, the county executive in Milwaukee, who re-entered the race when Rodriguez dropped out. So they unconsolidated the field.

Also, during this period from, like, March to June or something along those lines, there was very little polling. So no one really knew what was going on. And then my colleagues in the law school at Marquette released a poll last week that suggests that Hong is pretty much running away with it. That David Crowley, as the Milwaukee County Executive—he was the one who was endorsed by the sitting governor—that’s not really bearing out in the results.

There are two other candidates, Joel Brennan and Kaldar Royce, who also have some support, but not enough. So no one knows what’s going on, and Hong is really benefiting from this sort of party lack of consolidation. And then Hong has these weird liabilities, like these weird tweets. And so I think there’s a kind of—

Bacon: Are we calling them—you and just people—are we calling them weird, or are we calling them ideologically consistent and morally courageous, but elector—are they weird, or are they morally courageous? This is a serious question.

Azari: Is it morally courageous? I think it’s weird, honestly.

Bacon: OK, all right. I’m just going to ask you too. OK.

Azari: All right. I think Thanksgiving is a weird hill to die on. Although—I should note, Hong works in the food industry, and this was somehow in the context of the food industry. But yeah. There’s a political scientist at University of Wisconsin, Nathan Kalmoe, who wrote a piece yesterday for a very good local Wisconsin site called The Recombobulation Area—named after an area in our airport. And it really lays out the case that electability is not really a concern in a year where Democrats have a kind of generic advantage.

I think that’s really the question. And then the finer point question with Hong is, are people going to vote based on, did this person say they are morally opposed to Thanksgiving? Or are people voting based on this sort of sense that seems to be driving Hong, which is that she is talking about economic issues and about doing something different in a period where the state has been in a kind of partisan stalemate, has been hit very hard by—basically whatever happens economically, it hits the upper Midwest really hard.

That is a question. I don’t know the answer to that question. I don’t have a lot of evidence that this opposition to Thanksgiving is like a core element of what she’s running on. It struck me more as, I’m riffing on food politics, but I might be wrong.

Bacon: My impression is she made a lot of comments in 2020, in that period, about police abolition. She made a lot of the same comments—a lot of it Zohran, or else a lot of people have made those comments. It’s my impression, and you live there and I don’t, is that she’s a little more reluctant to walk them back than Zohran was, Whatever, I said that and now I’m done with it. Because Zohran—I feel like she’s more reluctant to walk those things back, which I would argue might be a great, morally correct position that may also not be useful exactly right now. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to ask about. Yeah, I don’t—I guess we don’t know her.

Azari: Yeah, I don’t either. Although she materialized at a coffee shop I was at once, so I guess I’ve seen her in person. But just randomly, one Saturday afternoon. I think what we’re seeing is—I don’t know if I would call it morally courageous, but I would call it consistent. She’s running on a sort of consistency around, I’m not going to play the electability game. I’m just going to be who I am. To use another word that is banned, it might be part of the authenticity appeal, but I do think that’s something that’s driving her. I’m just trolling Seth at this point. That is what’s driving it.

So anyway, that’s the view from the ground with Hong. I think it’s hard to translate, and it’s hard to explain, because the way the race has gone down has been so strange and so bizarre, and the logic of it has been so unclear.

Bacon: Because she’s the person who’s opposing data centers, because she came—the first one—and that also came from a position of, I’m not an insider. And I think a lot of her views are coming from, she’s not an insider, she’s not trapped by what the insiders think. And on policing, that may be a bug. And on data centers, that’s probably a feature. And it’s interesting to figure out where she ends up.

Azari: Or what people are weighing. Because the chances that we’re going to abolish the police in Wisconsin are quite small. Everyone’s got their eye on a state that borders Lake Michigan when it comes to a data center. And I think an interesting data point there is that she’s been the strongest among Democrats on that, but actually the Republican candidate has taken a pretty—

Bacon: Oh, sure.

Azari: —cautious stance on data centers as well.

Bacon: Seth, since you’re really close to Wisconsin—I know you’re not—but what are you seeing? Because I guess part of the issue is, like, Hong is having some of the same... Now Abdul just barely won. So I think now all the attention is going to be on, can Hong win this race? Are the polls off with her? I assume the centrist establishment’s going to really try to beat her in this next week. So I’m curious what you think, what you’re seeing there.

Masket: Just to follow up on what Julia said, for one thing, just following that race from afar—I’m really glad I’m not a Wisconsin pundit. That just seems—it’s a lot of work just tracking that one race. So my hat’s off to you, Julia.

Also, like, with Hong specifically, I think there’s one thing that we’ve seen in a lot of these candidacies, these progressive or DSA candidacies this year. What seems to be mobilizing a lot of their supporters, their donors, the people who turn out to vote for them, are a couple of issues. I think Israel-Gaza is a big one, and US support for Israel. And the other is just a general sense of, we don’t think the Democratic Party is pushing back hard enough. They’re not being strident enough against Donald Trump. And that’s a very vague thing, but it’s a consistent thing, and that seems to be mobilizing people with a lot of energy.

And I think people who are looking for that—the number of people who even know that she had a tweet about Thanksgiving, no less will actually change their primary vote because of it, I think is very small. I think they’re more mobilized by, like, they see her as the one who is going to shake things up, who is going to stand up to Donald Trump, and do these heavily symbolic and more bombastic things than other Democrats will. And everything else is just kind of noise.

Bacon: All right. Julia and Seth, tell everybody where they can read you, in short form and in long form.

Masket: Oh, yeah. Let’s see. I’m doing a lot of my work on my Substack these days. It’s called The Smotus Report, S-M-O-T-U-S. That’s Seth Masket of the United States. You can find me at smotus.substack.com. I can also be tracked on Bluesky, also under the name Smotus. And I have a new book out that I hope you’ll check out if you’re interested in seeing more. It’s called The Elephants in the Room. It’s all about the Republicans’ decision to nominate Donald Trump in 2024.

Azari: I do most of my blogging on Good Politics, Bad Politics, also on Substack. It’s a group blog, so you get a couple different perspectives on there. I’m also on Bluesky, just my name, just Julia Azari. And I have a book out about a year ago from Princeton University Press—it keeps, I think, getting more relevant—called Backlash Presidents, and it is a historical deep dive into the connection between race and presidential impeachment.

Bacon: Julia, Seth, thanks for joining me. Good to see you. Bye-bye.

Azari: Thank you.

Masket: Thanks so much.

On July 18, Mother Jones published an exhaustive article on a number of assault and domestic abuse allegations swirling around Ohio Republican Rep. Max Miller. 

The report was based on more than 2,000 pages of court filings and police records, including a 48-page investigatory file relating to possible child abuse after their toddler experienced a broken collarbone. This file included numerous troubling allegations from Emily Moreno—Miller’s ex-wife and the daughter of US Sen. Bernie Moreno—who accused Miller of throwing scalding water at her, shoving her against a wall during a heated custody exchange, and holding a gun to her head while she was trying to change their daughter’s diaper. Other public records accused Miller of drug abuse and threatening behavior.

Today, we’re publishing a video that includes select clips from seven hours of police interviews and bodycam footage related to the child abuse probe. This adds to interview footage CNN published in June relating to the same investigation.

Police ultimately concluded that a finding of child abuse was “unsubstantiated.” That means there was not sufficient evidence to prove abuse or neglect occurred. 

Nonetheless, the clips we are publishing show a child protection specialist indicating the collarbone injury was accompanied by a bruise resembling a handprint. Emily Moreno also tells police that their daughter expressed fear of her father.

This week, Sen. Moreno weighed in on the personal drama roiling his family, calling it the “seventh circle of hell.”

“My daughter lives in constant fear of this man,” Sen. Moreno continued.

Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas and comedian Janesh Rahlan are back to roast Andrew Tate’s arrest outfit, while digging into the right-wing manosphere machine on this week’s episode of the “Room Temp” podcast. “If you saw the outfit that Andrew Tate got arrested in,” Janesh said. “Oh my God.” “People are comparing him to Peggy from ‘Married with Children,’” Markos responded.

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President Trump on Wednesday filed an emergency motion to stop the British Broadcasting Company from gaining broad access to intimate details about his finances. 

The emergency stay is the latest development in how Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC, triggered by a 2024 episode of Panorama titled “Trump, a Second Chance,” is backfiring. Last month, U.S. Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett allowed the BBC to move forward with gaining access to the finances of at least  400 business entities owned by Trump’s family trust. Lett set a Thursday deadline for the BBC to get a hold of his finances.

Now, Trump is scrambling to stop what he started from blowing up in his face. 

“The BBC’s motive could not be more transparent—to wrongly exploit this litigation for its own political benefit, as well as the benefit of President Trump’s other political opponents,” the deposition read. “The moment those records reach the BBC, the injury is complete and irreversible.” His lawyers also accused the BBC of having “clearly political motivations.” 

Trump’s legal team is asking Lett to allow Trump to go back and change the language of the suit, so that his lucrative business dealings as president are not subject to public scrutiny. 

The BBC has yet to respond. 

It seems obvious that Trump bit off more than even he can chew here. If his plea to change the discovery parameters fails, we may see him drop the lawsuit entirely. 

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is here, and with it Sony and Marvel may have just solved their Spider-Man problem. Kyle Anderson swings into action to take a closer look at the new film and what it could mean for Peter Parker’s future on the big screen.

The post The Spider-Man Problem SOLVED appeared first on Nerdist.

A cartoon by Clay Bennett. Related | Todd Blanche promises national abortion ban as attorney general…

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⚡ Quick Take

• We’ve heard about the Great Conversion a few times in Interview with the Vampire, and it became incredibly important in The Vampire Lestat.
• The Great Conversion appears to be a movement by vampires to grow their numbers and take power in IWTV and The Vampire Lestat.
• The Vampire Lestat saw Lestat become the leader of the Great Conversion, but it was really his mother Gabriella who wanted the vampire movement to grow.

The Great Conversion. We’ve been hearing about it distantly in Interview with the Vampire for two seasons. And the phrase was included in the synopsis for The Vampire Lestat… Which is fitting, because The Great Conversion turned out to be a big deal in this season of the show. But the Great Conversion is not a storyline from Anne Rice’s books, so there’s not exactly a direct analog we can turn to as we examine this Vampire phenomenon in Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat. So, what is The Vampire Lestat‘s the Great Conversion, and what do we know about it from Interview with the Vampire and the current season? Let’s dive in.

AMC Table of Contents; Jump To:

• The Great Conversion in Interview with the Vampire
  • Louis Introduces The Great Conversion as a Vampiric Movement
  • Raglan James Adds in a Few Details About The Great Conversion
• The Great Conversion in the Synopsis for The Vampire Lestat
• The Great Conversion in The Vampire Lestat
  • Armand Confirms the Great Conversion is Real and It Is Dangerous
  • Gabriella Is Really Pushing for the Great Conversion, and She Wants Lestat to Lead It
• Will the Great Conversion Happen in The Vampire Lestat ?
• The Great Conversion in Queen of the Damned
• So, What Is the Great Conversion?

The Great Conversion in Interview with the Vampire

In Interview with the Vampire, the Great Conversion was mentioned twice. Once by Louis de Point du Lac in his interview with Daniel Molloy. And once by Talamasca Agent, Raglan James. Here’s what we learn about The Great Conversion in these instances.

Louis Introduces The Great Conversion as a Vampiric Movement

Louis shares the following in Interview with the Vampire season one, episode two, in response to a question from Daniel about whether the vampires in the world have mastered their instincts, “Just the opposite, most of them are slaves to the blood… Exhausted from decades, centuries, of hiding, giddy to increase their numbers.” And then adds that this spurred by the “Pandemic, the unraveling of geopolitical foundations…” And notes, “One of them a brute in Madagscar called it the Great Conversion.”

When Daniel expresses some dubiousness about whether humans would want to be converted, Louis scoffs, “Yes, what on earth would a meth-addicted son of a coal miner in West Virgina want with eternal life? Or the Arab youth whose family were wiped from existenced from a Western drone?”

AMC

In all, this makes us feel like the Great Conversion is a vampiric movement to well… convert humanity to vampirism. And well, we feel like if we were vampires, always forced to hide our true nature, we might not be so opposed to it either. And to Louis’ point, wouldn’t eternal life be of interest to many mortals?

But the way Louis describes, the Great Conversion is a loose collection of disgruntled vampires, trying to push vampirism forward. Is the Great Conversion actually a meaningful movement in the world of Interview with the Vampire/The Vampire Lestat? We guess we need a bit more information to know the truth about that.

Raglan James Adds in a Few Details About The Great Conversion AMC Networks

And when one needs information, the Talamasca is a pretty good place to start. In Interview with the Vampire season two, Talamasca agent, Raglan James (who we see lurking in the first episode of The Vampire Lestat) offers us a few more details about the Great Conversion. He reveals in season two, episode three, “We were tracking 900 of them a month ago.. We’re tracking 1,600 now. The Great Conversion. It’s real, it’s happening.”

Okay, a near doubling of Vampires in the matter of a month does seem more serious than just errant grumbles in the night. As we mentioned, The Great Conversion is not a part of Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, or any other of Anne Rice’s books. But in the context of the series, it does feel like the vampires are gathering, amassing numbers in a purposeful way, to the end of… a vampiric world order? The decimation of mortals? It’s hard to say as of yet.

The Great Conversion in the Synopsis for The Vampire Lestat

In the plot description for The Vampire Lestat, we learn, “In the new rock and roll centric season, the Vampire Lestat goes on an electric multi-city tour while being haunted by ‘muses’ from his wild and rebellious past. As his band’s popularity and star power rises, so does Lestat’s influence over vampires and humans alike, leaving others to contend with Lestat’s power in the face of the Great Conversion, an unnatural surge in the vampire population. In addition to Reid, The Vampire Lestat stars Jacob Anderson, Assad Zaman, Eric Bogosian, Delainey Hayles and Jennifer Ehle and is executive produced by award-winning producer Mark Johnson, creator, writer and showrunner Rolin Jones, Hannah Moscovitch, along with Christopher Rice and the late Anne Rice.”

RELATED ARTICLE

THE VAMPIRE LESTAT Is Unlike Anything Else on TV (Review)

But what is Lestat’s power in the face of the Great Conversion? We know Lestat is singing songs about being a vampire, more specifically, his life as a vampire. Could these songs serve to make mortals interested in vampirism? Or conversely, will they give humans too much knowledge about the vampire, perhaps enough to make them dangerous? Here’s what goes down.

The Great Conversion in The Vampire Lestat

The Great Conversion was only brought up minimally in The Vampire Lestat‘s first episodes. In episode one, Lestat listens to the vampire voices discussing his tour. Some of them seem to echo the sentiments of the Great Conversion as they consider his music, calling for vampires to “make more.”

In episode two of The Vampire Lestat, Gabriella tells Lestat that she fancies one of the strippers she kissed in an Ohio bar. “Predatory spirit. A good candidate for the Great Conversion.” Seems like the Great Conversion is on someone’s mind… Very curious. Then, in episode three, Gabriella tells Daniel to ask Lestat about the Great Conversion for his documentary. That’s twice now she’s brought it up, which certainly perks up our ears.

Daniel finally asks Lestat what he thinks about the Great Conversion, but he’s not particularly impressed. He says, “Oh, the vampire thing? Vampires taking over the world, collaborating? Fucking stupid.”

Armand Confirms the Great Conversion is Real and It Is Dangerous AMC

In The Vampire Lestat episode three, Armand confirms that the Great Conversion is a real thing, and it is dangerous. Armand tells Daniel, “You are courting great danger with Lestat… There are nearly enough of us now. Each a body a night, each turning one a week. More deaths than births. The Great Conversion. It’s happening, Daniel. And he’s going to lead it and get us all killed.” And, honestly, we can kind of see his point. If vampires need humans to feed and exist, then making so many vampires that the human population can no longer sustain them… seems like a bad idea.

Gabriella Is Really Pushing for the Great Conversion, and She Wants Lestat to Lead It AMC

After bringing it up subtly throughout The Vampire Lestat, Gabriella finally reveals some of her true motivations for being at Lestat’s side. She wants him to continue writing and performing his songs to fuel the Great Conversion. And it turns out, this is a dream that The Vampire Lestat‘s Gabriella has held for a very long time.

In the past, she tells Lestat her dream is to scorch the world, bring an evil to it that answers goodness. “Decimate it. Brothers impaling brothers, mothers throttling their babes, all writhing on the ground. Till no light remains, no hope of light, and, then, we, the devils, rule.”

And in the present, just as Lestat is ready to give up his rock band and his overt presence as the world’s vampire, Gabriella arrives to convince him to do otherwise. She says she has been “with the voices” of other vampires, all of whom call to Lestat. “You’ve been hearing them,” Gabriella tells Lestat, “You’ve been reaching them. They are lost and angry and tired of enduring. Your music speaks to them. They long for communion.” And it’s clear she wants Lestat to bring them that communion, that Great Conversion.

And Lestat, it seems, allows himself to be swayed. In The Vampire Lestat episode five, we see that he’s working on an album to reach the other vampires living in the world, a “soundtrack for the revolution,” as Armand puts it. Lestat’s work even includes a song that appears to be titled “Make More,” which is quite on the nose. He insists to his human band that their sounds need to transcend mortal instruments and become appealing to vampire ears. In his voiceover, Lestat notes that this album would create “clearly attributable devastation.”

Will the Great Conversion Happen in The Vampire Lestat?

In episode six of The Vampire Lestat, we see that Lestat’s music is having a big impact on the Great Conversion. Montreal is full of vampires, and they all seem to view Lestat as something of a celebrity/hero/leader. Although Lestat insists he rejects that role and doesn’t want to be a Dark Monarch, we feel like that’s easier said than done once thousands of vampires are looking to you to lead them. And apparently, 50,000 vampires have come to see Lestat perform. GULP. In season two, there were only about 1,600 vampires in the world. But we guess “Make More” has really gotten through.

Before we got to see what happens when Lestat takes the stage in front of all these vamps, Lestat lost his head to Armand and Daniel in The Vampire Lestat. He does manage to get it back in the finale, though. And he no longer wants to sing for the vampires. But Gabriella has brought him to the belly of the beast. The Vampire Lestat concludes with Gabriella insisting that Lestat play the concert, and Lestat insisting he won’t, as a thousand angry vampires jostle the tour bus.

The Great Conversion in Queen of the Damned

So what will the events of The Vampire Lestat mean for all the gathering vampires and The Great Conversion in season four of the series Queen of the Damned? Only time will tell. But we do know that Lestat does eventually perform his “ill-fated” concert and, in doing so, likely triggers Akasha to wake up and unleash a wave of devastation across all of vampire-kind. That probably won’t be good for numbers… But it may save the world.

So, What Is the Great Conversion? AMC

Ultimately, The Vampire Lestat‘s Great Conversion appears to be a quickly growing, somewhat organized movement/effort by vampires to increase their numbers and find more of a footing in this world. Undoubtedly, Daniel Molloy’s book, which flagrantly reveals truths (and untruths) about vampires and The Vampire Lestat’s musical tour, had a great impact on the number of other vampires who wish to join them in the metaphorical sun and how humans come to see vampires, whether as real or extra false.

In The Vampire Lestat book, the Vampire Akasha is awakened by Lestat’s music, and she holds devastating plans for both vampire and humankind. As mentioned, the Great Conversion is not a part of the books’ plot… But perhaps here, something about the mass formation of new vampires will not please the Queen. Could the vampire Gabriella drive the world to its end with her desire to inflame the Great Conversion through Lestat?

We’ll surely learn more about the Great Conversion as The Vampire Lestat/Queen of the Damned continues. The Vampire Lestat is streaming now on AMC and AMC+. You can also read The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice today as you wait for the next episode of the series to arrive.

This post has affiliate links, which means we may earn advertising money if you buy something. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, we just have to give you the heads up for legal reasons. Click away!

Originally published on June 14, 2026.

The post What Is the Great Conversion in THE VAMPIRE LESTAT? appeared first on Nerdist.

The serial entrepreneur joins the e-commerce company as CPO to lead its AI agents.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche gave a chilling message to U.S. attorneys across the country at a press conference Wednesday.

A reporter asked Blanche if he stood by D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s decision to drop the four cases of vandalism over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and what kind of message it would send if President Trump fired Pirro because she determined there wasn’t enough evidence to charge those people.

“Hypothetically, if the president chose to fire a United States attorney, it turns out he’s allowed to do that, because he’s the president of the United States,” Blanche replied. “And by the way, if the president wanted—if President Trump wanted to fire anybody, right, and within his administration, I mean, he understands he has the power to do that. So when he makes a decision about whether to fire a U.S. attorney or anybody else, that’s his.”

Q: What message does it send if Trump fires a US attorney because she determined there was not sufficient evidence to charge four people with a crime?

BLANCHE: If he fires a US attorney, it turns out he's allowed to do that because he's the president pic.twitter.com/divyxVxhZf

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 5, 2026

That’s not a ringing endorsement of Pirro, and it shows that Blanche, like Trump, doesn’t believe in federal prosecutors’ independence. If a U.S. attorney is given an order by Trump, they must fall in line regardless of the evidence, Blanche effectively said.

Pirro is either on the verge of being fired, or is on very thin ice after she refused to prosecute the Reflecting Pool vandalism cases. She reportedly got into a shouting match with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Trump in the White House Tuesday over the matter, and the president still insists that the pool was vandalized, citing nonexistent witnesses and video evidence. Every other U.S. attorney around the country is watching what happens to Pirro, because the message from Trump and Blanche is to follow orders, whether they make legal sense or not. Otherwise, you’re fired.

President Donald Trump’s racist anti-immigration policies are putting military families directly in the crosshairs and hurting the country’s ability to defend itself, a new report released on Wednesday has revealed. The Associated Press examined records of those being detained under the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant push and found that more than 50 parents and spouses of active-duty…

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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani held a press conference Wednesday to announce a series of policy proposals aimed at cracking down on illegal e-bike retailers and was asked about House Speaker Mike Johnson’s recent Twitter freakout over Abdul El-Sayed’s victory as the Democratic candidate in the Michigan Senate primary. Johnson’s post characterized progressives in the Democratic Party as…

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The legendary Google executive is joined by other outgoing Google execs in a joint mission to use AI to push forward the process of scientific discovery.

Temporary Protected Status has officially ended for Haitians, putting hundreds of thousands of people at risk of being deported—even though the United States still designates Haiti with a level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes of Washington, D.C. reversed her initial decision and ruled that TPS was “no longer in effect” for Haitians, following a Supreme Court ruling in June.

The final step puts more than 300,000 Haitians in this country at risk of deportation. Meanwhile, the U.S. tells its citizens not to travel to Haiti due to “the risk of crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest, and limited health care”—the same reasons thousands of Haitians were afforded TPS in the first place.

Haitians have been a constant target of racist animosity from the Trump administration, most notably from Trump himself, who claimed on the campaign trail that Haitians were eating cats and dogs in Ohio.

“The way this group has been specifically targeted is symbolic of the administration’s efforts to criminalize immigrants of color,” Advocates for Basic Legal Equality senior attorney Katie Kersh told The Washington Post.

Aside from being forced back into a dangerous and unstable environment, about 200,000 of potential deportees have jobs here, mostly in health care and warehouse jobs—leaving local economies in limbo, as business owners have already begun searching elsewhere for employees.

“This is an embarrassment for the United States of America,” Senator Chris Murphy said on Monday. “There is no safe place to return for TPS holders from places like Haiti and Yemen and Venezuela and Syria. In fact, in those places I just mentioned, the situation is not stabilizing, getting better, it is getting worse.”

A core feature of the modern GOP is the party’s open and obvious disdain for democracy. That’s not just meant to refer to how Republicans have tied themselves to the crumbling semi-sentient heap of fascism that is Donald Trump. They also loathe any uncertainty, and any situation where their objectively terrible, unconstitutional ideas have to withstand the scrutiny of courts or voters.

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⚡ Quick Take

• On AMC’s The Vampire Lestat, the Brat Prince’s backstory is told out of sequence, but we present to you Lestat’s history chronologically to help you make sense of this season of the show.

The Vampire Lestat has premiered its first episode on AMC, adapting Anne Rice’s second novel in her Vampire Chronicles series. This 1985 book truly made Lestat a star, elevating his undead status next to the likes of Dracula. Sam Reid reprises his role from Interview with the Vampire, with his backstory from the novel told largely in a non-linear fashion. So to help guide you through these tangled narrative vines, we present the undead rock star Lestat’s canonical history, as told by Anne Rice in The Vampire Lestat. We start with his birth in the 18th century and follow him until he meets Louis de Pointe du Lac in New Orleans.

Alfred A. Knopf/Ballantine Books The Mortal Life of Lestat de Lioncourt in 18th Century France

The mortal Lestat de Lioncourt was born on November 7, 1760. That’s the same birthday as Anne Rice’s husband Stan, who the character of Lestat is physically based on. (Louis shares Anne’s birthday of October 4.)  He was born the son of an aristocratic lord in the French countryside, in a place called the Auvergne. His family long ago had spent all their wealth. Lestat’s father was a cruel tyrant who married a much younger heiress from Italy named Gabrielle. She gave birth to several sons for him, many of whom died in childbirth. The youngest, and the only one who took after her (and not his father), was Lestat.

AMC Networks

Lestat aspired to be an artist and actor, completely different from his boorish brothers. Thus, he maintained a close relationship with his mother. When he grew to adulthood, he became the family hunter, protecting their ancestral lands. One day, when he was 21 years old (29 in the TV series), he saved the nearby village from a pack of eight wolves, who very nearly killed him. It was after this incident that Lestat discovered his mother was dying of consumption. As her last wish, she bequeathed all her jewels to Lestat, so he could run away to Paris and fulfill his dream of being an actor on stage.

AMC Networks Which Episodes of The Vampire Lestat Show This Part of Lestat’s Backstory?

Episode two of The Vampire Lestat reveals this part of Lestat’s life, showing his time in Auvergne and his killing of the wolves, which earns him the title “Wolf-Killer.”

Lestat’s Vampire Life Begins in Paris

Lestat and his childhood friend Nicolas de Lenfent, a cynical violinist who was now his lover, fled to the big city together. They both got work in a shabby theater in the heart of the city, where Lestat quickly became a rising star. Nicolas, meanwhile, sank further into depression as Lestat’s on-stage fame grew. One night, Lestat noticed a face in the audience stalking him, whispering the words “Wolfkiller” into his mind. One night, this being, who turned out to be a vampire, captured Lestat from his home and dragged him to his tower outside Paris. There, he forced him to become an undead being against his will. The Vampire Lestat was born.

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Lestat’s vampire maker, Magnus, was about 300 years old, and an outcast from vampiric society. He had grown tired of eternal life, and chose Lestat as his heir. In part because of his beautiful looks, but also for his bravery in killing the wolves. Once Lestat became a vampire, Magnus flung himself into the fire, ending his existence. Thus, leaving Lestat without a teacher. Lestat took to his vampire existence like a duck to water, killing the many thieves and scoundrels of Paris. He bought the theater he worked at, giving his fellow actors continued employment. But he kept his new vampiric nature a secret from his lover, Nicolas, and kept his distance.

Which Episodes of The Vampire Lestat Show This Part of Lestat’s Backstory?

Episode three of The Vampire Lestat reveals this part of Lestat’s life, showing his time with Nicki and his turning by Magnus.

Lestat Turns His Dying Mother into a Vampire AMC Networks

Eventually, Lestat’s mother, Gabrielle, came to Paris to see her son one last time and to spend her final nights there. On her deathbed, Lestat revealed his true nature to her, and turned her into a vampire. Gabrielle became his first fledgling and companion in immortality. The two made Paris their hunting ground, although they’d often hear the telepathic voices of other vampires in the city calling them outcasts and blasphemers. Eventually, these Parisian vampires attacked them directly.

Which Episodes of The Vampire Lestat Show This Part of Lestat’s Backstory?

Episode two of The Vampire Lestat reveals this part of Lestat’s life, bringing to life Gabriella’s turning—but changing its occasion and consequences from the books.

Meeting Armand and the Children of Darkness AMC Networks

These vampires were cultists, who lived in the nearby cemetery of Les Innocents. They believed what their mentor, the ancient vampire Armand, had taught them. They considered themselves the Children of Satan, and they had to live among the dead, stay away from mortals (except to feed), and run from crucifixes, as Satan commanded. But Lestat didn’t obey any of those rules. And because of his and Gabrielle’s presence, they knew the “rules” Armand had been feeding them for centuries were all lies and superstitions. Lies Armand told them to keep the coven under his thumb.

With his hold of the coven shattered by Lestat, and its members fleeing, Armand tried to become the new companion of Lestat. He told Lestat how an ancient Roman vampire named Marius had transformed him when he was a slave boy in Renaissance Venice. The Satanic vampires of Italy set Marius on fire for living against their dogmatic rules, leaving him for dead, and they kidnapped the young Armand. They brainwashed him into believing in their religion, and Armand became a leader among the Children of Darkness. He never truly believed in their ways, but used their dogma to control his Satanic coven in Paris.

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The Weird History of Anne Rice’s Vampires in Comic Books Which Episodes of The Vampire Lestat Show This Part of Lestat’s Backstory?

We haven’t yet specifically seen these events in The Vampire Lestat, but we see glimpses of the events that directly follow them, with Nicki, Armand, and Lestat together in Paris in The Vampire Lestat episode three.

Lestat Helps Create the Théâtre des Vampires

Ultimately, Lestat rejected Armand, and transformed his lover, Nicolas, into a vampire. He did this despite Armand and Gabrielle warning him against it. Nicolas almost instantly went mad from the vampiric blood, and told Lestat that he resented and hated him for ever keeping it from him. Lestat and Gabrielle decided to leave Paris, but they left the theater he had bought to Armand and what remained of his coven. They transformed it into the Théâtre des Vampires, where they acted out vampiric plays for Parisian mortal audiences who believed it all to be fake.

AMC Networks

Nicolas remained at the Théâtre des Vampires, in Armand’s care, while Lestat and Gabrielle searched for Marius, Armand’s maker. Even though Armand told them he was killed by the Children of Darkness centuries earlier, they didn’t believe a vampire that ancient could be destroyed so easily. They searched together for years, and found no sign of Marius de Romanus anywhere on Earth. After Nicolas finally threw himself into the flames, and Gabrielle decided to leave her son to be a lone wolf, a despondent Lestat buried himself in the Earth, where he remained for years. In the books, Gabrielle would leave Lestat on his own much more regularly than we see in the series, but only truly left when he ordered her to go in a fit of anger. In the series, Gabriella dances away of her own accord.

Which Episodes of The Vampire Lestat Show This Part of Lestat’s Backstory?

We haven’t yet specifically seen these events in The Vampire Lestat, but we see glimpses of the events that directly follow them, with Nicki, Armand, and Lestat together in Paris in episode three. In episode four of The Vampire Lestat, we see Gabriella deciding to leave Lestat to exist on her own.

Lestat Meets the Vampire Marius, Keeper of Akasha, Queen of the Damned Warner Bros.

Eventually, Marius chose to reveal himself to Lestat, and pulled him out of the ground. This is after his mother Gabrielle abandons him, and he buried himself in the earth in Italy. He fed him his powerful blood and nurtured him back to health. He revealed himself as the keeper of “Those Who Must Be Kept,” also known as Queen Akasha and King Enkil of Egypt. Nearly 2,000 years prior, the scholar Marius was transformed into a vampire in ancient Rome, only to become the new caretaker of Those Who Must Be Kept. This 6,000-year-old royal pair were the ancient progenitors of the vampire species, and all vampire bloodlines came from them. They no longer drank blood, or spoke, or moved, frozen like statues.

Which Episodes of The Vampire Lestat Show This Part of Lestat’s Backstory? AMC

We see these events in The Vampire Lestat episode five. Marius and Lestat don’t spend as much time with one another in the show as they do in the books. Additionally, in the books, Lestat drinks of Akasha’s blood but never becomes her sole caretaker. We are fascinated by these changes in the series.

Lestat Arrives in New Orleans, Creates Louis and Claudia AMC Networks

Since their destruction meant the entire species would be destroyed, they needed to be kept secret and safe. Marius had been their keeper for millennia and entrusted Lestat with this knowledge. But he made him swear to never tell a living soul. When Lestat played Nicolas’ violin for Akasha, she awoke momentarily and let Lestat drink her powerful and ancient blood. This made the young Lestat one of the most powerful vampires on Earth, despite being so young. Marius then told Lestat to flee to the New World, someplace where barely any vampires existed. Someplace that even Akasha could not find him. And that’s when Lestat wound up in New Orleans, and met his fledgling Louis, and the events of Interview with the Vampire began.

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THE QUEEN OF THE DAMNED Book Elements That the TV Series Needs

If you’ve seen seasons one and two of Interview with the Vampire, or the 1994 film adaptation, you probably know what became of Lestat next. Of course, many things happen to Lestat after the events of book two, and in season four of The Vampire Lestat, titled Queen of the Damned, we’ll see some of those unfold. But we do hope the series makes time to return to the parts of Lestat’s book timeline we didn’t yet see in The Vampire Lestat.

The Vampire Lestat is now streaming on AMC and AMC+. You can also read The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice today as you wait for the next episode of the series to air.

Eric Diaz is a staff writer at Nerdist and a life-long Anne Rice fan. Yes, he is a member of the OG fan club.

This post has affiliate links, which means we may earn advertising money if you buy something. This doesn’t cost you anything extra, we just have to give you the heads up for legal reasons. Click away!

Originally publishe in June 2026.

The post THE VAMPIRE LESTAT’S Backstory, Explained in Linear Fashion appeared first on Nerdist.

Four decades ago, 2.5 million people in 400 communities in 23 states throughout the U.S. took part in the first National Night Out, an event created to bring together emergency responders and the residents they serve. 

The annual event on Tuesday in Watsonville drew hundreds of neighbors to take part in games,  arts and crafts, share meals, and enjoy staged performances by local dance and folk groups, while engaging with local police.

Since its creation, National Night Out Against Crime has become a venue for people to meet their local police officers and city officials, and to learn how to organize against crime.

The night has also become a way for communities to show criminals that they are organized.

More than 37 million people from more than 16,000 communities throughout the U.S. and Canada celebrated the event last year, in addition to military bases worldwide. 

Watsonville residents took up the tradition 17 years ago, and the city now boasts events at nearly two dozen locations throughout the city.

This year, Watsonville Police joined the California Highway Patrol, Fire Departments, Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s deputies, Cal Fire, American Medical Response and scores of other first responders in the three-hour event around the county. Numerous other agencies and groups also set up tables including the YMCA, Monarch Services, Watsonville Public Library, Jovenes Sanos and many more.

#tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item1 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Nat-Nite-1-MAIN-1-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } #tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item2 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Nat-Nite-3-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } #tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item3 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Nat-nite-4-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } #tdi_1 .td-doubleSlider-2 .td-item4 { background: url(https://pajaronian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Nat-Nite-5-80x60.jpg) 0 0 no-repeat; } 1 of 4 COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT Salvador Gonzalez-Fernandez, 3, tries his skills at lifting fingerprints at a table set up by Watsonville Police Tuesday in downtown Watsonville during the annual National Night Out. CREATIVE Paloma Espinosa, 4, enjoys creating a drawing with chalk at the Youth Center. FREE BITES Members of the California Conservation Corps hand out strawberries with whipped cream at Pinto Lake County Park as part of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s hosting of National Night Out. ON TARGET During National Night Out the boy tests his soccer skills with the aid of a giant target at the Gene Hoularis and Waldo Rodriguez Youth Center in Watsonville.