◼ Socialist Francesca Hong lost Tuesday’s Democratic primary for Wisconsin’s gubernatorial election to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. Crowley will now face off against GOP Representative Tom Tiffany in November. Hong, who had endorsed canceling the Thanksgiving holiday and abolishing the police, caused panic among Democrats as she surged in the polls. In a desperate gambit, incumbent Democratic Governor Tony Evers endorsed and campaigned with Crowley, bluntly telling reporters that he did not think Hong could win in November. His bet paid off. Crowley is no moderate: He wants Medicaid to enroll even more Wisconsinites, and he co-sponsored legislation declaring abortion a form of health care. But he is much more of a standard-issue Democrat than Hong. This represents the second polling miss of the month in the Midwest. In the Michigan Senate race, Abdul El-Sayed was expected to crush Representative Haley Stevens, only to barely hang on come Election Day. Perhaps pollsters are talking to too many people with graduate degrees, and perhaps the strength of the Democratic Socialists has been greatly exaggerated.

◼ In other races this week, progressives maintained their winning streak. They notched three victories in Minnesota alone. Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, who won the Senate primary, endorses nationalizing the health insurance industry, abolishing ICE, and overriding the Citizens United decision to give the government more power over political speech. In his race for Congress, the progressive Matt Little will advance a similar platform, adding a little fashionable anti-data-center Luddism to the mix. Representative Ilhan Omar didn’t even face a competitive primary this year. Some Democrats cite longtime Connecticut Congressman John Larsen’s primary defeat to a youngish upstart as evidence that the socialist takeover isn’t about socialism at all. Rather, it’s about voters’ hunger for a generational turnover. So far, however, the generation to whom Democrats are handing power is dominated by socialists.

◼ In a jocular back-and-forth on the set of ABC News’s This Week, co-anchor Jonathan Karl pressed Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for her take on Hong’s brand of leftism. AOC insisted that Hong’s views had evolved from the heady days of 2020 without explaining how or why. “I have a local city councilman that has this saying, ‘Woke 1 was crazy,’” she said with a giggle. Karl laughed, too. But it’s not clear what’s so funny. The earliest iterations of “wokeness” prescribed codes of conduct and abuses of law that produced hundreds, perhaps thousands, of victims. People lost their jobs over imagined social offenses or behaviors that were deemed—sometimes years after they had occurred—impermissible. Businesses were lost to the same phenomenon. Local, state, and federal officials violated the 14th Amendment in the pursuit of “equity,” which prescribed racial discrimination as a remedy for past racial discrimination. Crimes were prosecuted based on the assumption that the cosmic circumstances in which the criminal gestated sometimes rendered him, in his own way, a victim. It was an age of lunacy, one that is by no means wholly behind us. It really was a crazy time, and we might expect AOC and other disciples of “wokeness” to repent. That they have not tells us something about their sincerity, as does her use of a numbering system.

◼ Some Republicans have been dismissing concerns about affordability. But conservatives, more than most people, should recognize that modern government makes it harder to make ends meet. We should insist that the Federal Reserve take its inflation target seriously—and write into law a tighter mandate for the central bank to produce macroeconomic stability. Conservatives should legislate against the overregulation that has increased housing prices via zoning, building codes, and rent controls. The expense of health insurance, meanwhile, eats into paychecks. Conservatives should advocate lifting regulatory barriers to the sale of renewable insurance policies that protect owners from the risk of high medical costs. One weak point for Republicans is that two of the major policies associated with the GOP this election year—the on-again, off-again prosecution of the war in Iran and President Donald Trump’s obsession with tariffs—are contributing to high prices. Many Republicans will, unfortunately, balk at breaking with Trump on trade. But they ought at least to refrain from dismissing voters’ unhappiness with prices as Democratic propaganda. Unless, that is, they want the voters to conclude that keeping Republicans in office is unaffordable, too.

◼ Vaccines save countless lives, but they have long given rise to episodes of quasi-superstitious dread. In recent years, such fears were boosted by the arrogance of the public-health world during the Covid-19 pandemic—and by unmerited speculation linking the mumps, measles, and rubella vaccines and some other childhood vaccines to autism. The latter has proved to be an unusually popular blend of conspiracism and pseudoscience promoted by, among others, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Trump administration’s new “gold standard” recommendation that the vaccines for mumps, measles, and rubella are best administered separately reflects this thinking. And since there are no approved single-shot vaccines for these scourges, the results could be literally sickening.

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◼ The U.S. economy shed 23,000 jobs in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment has not seen sustained growth since 2024, before Trump imposed his costly and haphazard tariff regime. Yet the unemployment rate still ticked down, from 4.2 to 4.1 percent. This apparent contradiction is partly explained by more workers’ leaving the labor force entirely as they stop searching for new jobs. Some may be discouraged by a lack of opportunity; others are simply retiring. Employment figures also mirror the country’s stagnant working-age population, with new entries flattened by lower birth rates and reduced immigration. Absent a significant change in economic conditions, companies might soon need to adapt to a shallower labor pool.

◼ New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed the Delivery Protection Act, a bill recently introduced in the city council that would impose a licensing regime on package delivery services. Warehouse operators would have to abide by myriad safety, training, and employment requirements. Most disruptively, they would be forced to directly hire their drivers, which would prevent warehouse operators from contracting out last-mile delivery services. The bill would effectively abolish an entire thriving industry of delivery businesses and sole proprietors. Amazon and FedEx rely on these independent contractors to carry packages to doorsteps. The Delivery Protection Act threatens the fundamental model that customers have come to depend on for efficient service. Amazon warns that it may relocate its warehouses outside New York City limits, which would cause longer waits and pricier fees for residents. The jobs of Amazon’s 5,000 subcontracted delivery drivers, who earn $24 per hour on average, would also be put at risk. All the small businesses that now employ them would certainly be wiped away. New York has many problems. Convenient shipping isn’t one of them.

◼ A political fight is brewing over Washington State’s new “millionaires’ tax,” a 9.9 percent surcharge on incomes above $1 million. It would be the first income tax in Washington’s history since the state supreme court ruled that such measures would be an unconstitutional invasion of property almost a century ago. Fearing an exodus of productive residents and the businesses they fuel, enough citizens have signed a referendum to put the tax’s repeal on the ballot this November. But public sector labor unions are determined to secure the revenue they were promised. Consequently, they are now spending millions of dollars to oppose the initiative, aiming for a projected return of $3.7 billion in tax proceeds. Voters will have to decide whether to protect enterprise and innovation or government largesse.

◼ For years now, Russia has been battling Western nations in the “gray zone,” at the threshold between acts of war likely to trigger retaliation and deeds that fall just short of it. To take examples from a lengthy list, undersea cables have been cut, buildings have been torched, and GPS signals on flights have been jammed. Russia appears to be stepping up these efforts for three different but overlapping purposes. The first, perhaps best represented by “accidental” drone incursions, is to test Western responses. The second is to rehearse what Russia would do in the event of an actual war (cable-cutting, cyberattacks, etc.). Thirdly, acts of sabotage that cannot be provably linked to Russia are valuable tools to stir up fear. Detonating an explosive-laden drone next to a Ukrainian cargo plane—which was allegedly carrying ammunition—at Leipzig Airport in Germany fits that bill. Fortunately, a passing bus driver spotted the drone and knocked it out of the air, probably averting a major disaster. Later examination of the drone revealed clues connecting it to Russia. What to do now? And what would Germany have done had the drone exploded, destroying the plane as well as the possibly incriminating evidence?

◼ Given how underequipped the British armed forces are these days, the fact that the United Kingdom’s Special Forces have been making use of Royal Navy spy drones is good news. Unfortunately, those drones—intended for possible use in the Strait of Hormuz—had cameras that were sending information to China. The only information transmitted to China, as far as we know, was a signal confirming that the camera was still working properly. But even that could, under certain circumstances, be of use to a hostile power. The internet connection has now been cut. Better late than never. Making matters worse is the fact that the equipment was compliant with the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act. Eliminating reliance on China in key areas of our supply chain may be difficult. When it comes to the military, it is imperative.

◼ The Department of Health and Human Services has opened a civil rights probe into Kaiser Permanente. Its investigation stems from a complaint from Do No Harm, a conservative medical civil rights group, over the company’s Center for Black Health and Wellness. The group’s complaint alleged that Kaiser violated antidiscrimination law because the center’s branding implied that non-black patients were unwelcome to seek care there. Do No Harm also alleged that the center engaged in race-based hiring decisions because of its stated goal of matching black patients with black physicians. In response, Kaiser has emphasized that patients of all races and ethnicities are welcome to seek services at the center. The investigation is the latest welcome move by the Trump administration and conservative groups to use antidiscrimination law to fight DEI in American institutions.

◼ The Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard prohibited race-conscious admissions. Apparently, the leadership at Duke University’s law school took that as a challenge to discriminate in less obvious ways. The Department of Justice found that Duke Law School has intentionally discriminated to the benefit of black and Hispanic applicants, and against whites and Asians, since 2023. The law school’s staff emphasized “DEI” as one of their “most important values” in 2023, and they committed to “work even harder” to achieve “a racially diverse class.” The Department of Justice calculated that Duke Law School’s consideration of race gave a “black applicant a roughly 3.5x higher probability of admission than an equally strong Asian applicant with similar academic credentials.” As we know from previous DOJ investigations, Duke isn’t the only university that has refused to comply with the SFFA decision. Yale’s and UCLA’s medical schools have similarly evaded the law. The universities need a stiff reminder that the law is not a suggestion.