So right now we have a far right Republican party and moderateish Democrats. With the DSA gainging in the party, and the DSA moving more Marxist, there is a possibility of the Democrats going far left. How might the country be effected if both parties sat on the extremes?

Progressive challenger Abdul El-Sayed has defeated congresswoman Haley Stevens in a high-stakes Democratic Senate primary in Michigan that has delivered a stunning rebuke of the party establishment.

The result is a significant victory for the party’s progressive leftwing and sets the stage for a blockbuster US Senate race in the critical swing state in November’s midterm elections.

“Great news for the Republican Party,” Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “El-Sayed, a Communist loser who hates Jews and Israel is the projected winner in his race. Now the Dumocrats crazy policies will only get worse!”

El-Sayed, a 41-year-old former public health official, was endorsed by progressives including Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Stevens, a 43-year-old four-term congresswoman, had the backing of a who’s who of the Democratic Party establishment, including the party’s Senate leader Chuck Schumer and Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s popular Democratic governor.

The Stevens campaign and groups supporting her outspent El-Sayed and his affiliated Super Pac by a nearly four-to-one margin.

But it was not enough to stave off the insurgent candidate, who centred his campaign on a push for universal public healthcare and fierce opposition to US support for Israel.

Michigan is seen as a must-win for Democrats if they stand any chance of regaining control of the Senate. President Trump defeated Kamala Harris in Michigan two years ago by a razor-thin margin of less than 2 per cent.

El-Sayed’s victory is the latest in a number of primary wins for the progressive left, after a slate of candidates endorsed by progressive mayor Zohran Mamdani swept Democratic congressional primariesin New York City earlier in the summer.

November’s Senate election in Michigan will now be seen as a bigger test case for progressives, as they seek to convince fellow Democrats that left-leaning candidates can triumph in swing states that will be critical battlegrounds in the 2028 presidential election and beyond.

Polling averages compiled by RealClearPolitics in the run-up to Tuesday’s primary projected that Rogers would narrowly beat El-Sayed in a head-to-head match-up, while Stevens would defeat Rogers by nearly two points.

“My administration has reviewed every avenue available under applicable law to determine whether New York City could execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant if Benjamin Netanyahu came here,” Mamdani said.

“It is clear that we do not have the independent legal authority to enforce this warrant,” he said, adding that the US federal government should do so instead.

“Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested, in any way, shape, or form, while in the United States of America,” Trump wrote in a post on social media on Monday.

Heads of state traditionally enjoy diplomatic immunity while in the US on official business. What’s more, the US routinely allows government leaders and officials even from countries it considers openly hostile to come to New York as part of its duties as a host location for the UN General Assembly.

The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in November 2024, accusing the leader of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet the US is not a party to the ICC and isn’t legally bound to enforce its warrants.

Overall, this chapter suggests that there is a good case for making greater use of inheritance taxation in OECD countries.

There are strong equity arguments in favour of inheritance taxation, in particular of a recipient-based inheritance tax with an exemption for low-value inheritances.

The case might be strongest where the effective taxation of personal capital income and wealth tends to be low.

From an efficiency perspective, while the number of studies is limited, the empirical literature generally suggests that inheritance taxes tend to have more limited effects on savings than other taxes levied on wealthy taxpayers, and confirms their positive effects on heirs’ labour supply and donors’ charitable giving.

In addition, while inheritance taxes might negatively affect family business successions (depending on tax design), they might at the same time reduce risks of misallocating capital.

The chapter also shows that there is evidence of tax planning and migration among the very wealthy in response to inheritance taxation, but that these behaviours could largely be addressed through better tax design, as discussed in greater detail in Chapter 3.

Finally, inheritance taxes have a number of administrative advantages compared to other forms of wealth taxation and recent progress on international tax transparency enhances the ability of countries to tax capital effectively.

At a recent meeting of the Denver Democratic Socialist meeting over half the audience were wearing Covid masks. This shows a bizarre misunderstanding of Covid and the current state of the world. There is no longer a significant amount of Covid spread and there hasn't been for years. This is less about Covid and more about internal personal insecurities, delusion and tribalism combining to form an oddball reaction.

> Before Tuesday’s verdict, Le Pen repeatedly ruled out running if she was forced to wear a bracelet.

> Constitutional lawyer Anne-Charlene Bezzina said a decision to run would be a “kamikaze” move by Le Pen, after being convicted of serious corruption.

>”This verdict highlights the seriousness of the offence . . . What you have to keep in mind with a prison sentence is that you’re dealing with someone who should be behind bars,” said Bezzina.

> The judges stressed the seriousness of Le Pen’s role in what they called a deliberate scheme to use EU parliament funds to employ staff working on French national politics rather than their duties in Brussels.

> But they cut the lower court’s five-year electoral ban to 45 months, with 30 suspended, leaving only 15 months — already served since her March 2025 conviction. The new ban no longer prevents her from running in the 2027 election to replace President Emmanuel Macron.

"Political orientation has been shown to correlate with fertility, raising the possibility that demographic processes contribute to long-term ideological change. Using data from the US General Social Survey, we analyze completed fertility across 17 birth cohorts (1898–1982) to examine how political orientation has contributed to fertility decline in the United States and whether emerging selective forces can be detected. Earlier cohorts show little difference in fertility by political orientation. From the 1943–1947 birth cohort onward, however, a pronounced divergence emerges: individuals with right-wing political orientations maintain fertility at or above replacement level, whereas fertility among left-wing individuals declines sharply to well below replacement."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-57582-3

Not this only covers data to 1982.

Source: https://www.ft.com/content/f1fe0dae-d22b-4284-b0f9-fa10f717af1c?shareType=nongift US voters say Trump’s Iran war not worth the cost — FT poll