Candidate Drops Out After Remarks About Parkland Survivor

“I’m not supposed to speak ill of David Hogg because he is a ‘survivor.’ Apparently if you survive horrific events, that makes the stupidity spewing out of your mouth above reproach. I disagree. Hogg can burn in hell, I don’t care what he survived. Survivors who wage war on my country are my enemies.”

— Steven Baleshiski (R), a legislative candidate in Connecticut, who made harsh comments about Parkland High shooting victims, quit his race after losing town committee backing, the Hartford Courant reports. Republicans hope to find a new candidate.

Trump Is making Us Anxious

39%

“Empirical data bolsters the anecdotal reports from practitioners. The American Psychiatric Association in a May survey found that 39% of people said their anxiety level had risen over the previous year—and 56 percent were either ‘extremely anxious’ or ‘somewhat anxious’ about the impact of politics on daily life. A 2017 study found two-thirds of Americans’ see the nation’s future as a ‘very or somewhat significant source of stress.’”

Why Trump’s Rallies Are Worrisome

“Much of the coverage of these events tends to be theatre criticism, or news stories about a single inflammatory line or two, rating Trump’s performance or puzzling over the appeal to his followers. But what the President of the United States is actually saying is extraordinary, regardless of whether the television cameras are carrying it live. It’s not just the whoppers or the particular outrage riffs that do get covered, either. It’s the hate, and the sense of actual menace that the President is trying to convey to his supporters. Democrats aren’t just wrong in the manner of traditional partisan differences; they are scary, bad, evil, radical, dangerous. Trump and Trump alone stands between his audiences and disaster.”

Susan Glasser

Stephen Miller Was Already a Freak in Third Grade

“He was a strange dude. I remember he would take a bottle of glue — we didn’t have glue sticks in those days — and he would pour the glue on his arm, let it dry, peel it off and then eat it… he had such strange personal habits. He was a loner and isolated and off by himself all the time.”

— Teacher Nikki Fiske, quoted by the Hollywood Reporter, recounting having White House adviser Stephen Miller in her third grade class.

UPDATE: Fiske has been suspended by the Santa Monica–Malibu Unified School District for the “public release of student information,” NBC reports.

Georgia Governor Candidate Keeping 53,000 from Voting

53,000

“The Georgia NAACP is preparing to sue Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the Republican nominee for governor, in response to a report that Kemp’s office has put on hold tens of thousands of voter registration applications, most of them from African-Americans, ahead of the election,” Politico reports. “The injunction would seek to reopen voter registration in Georgia to ensure that 53,000 registrants on hold in Kemp’s office… would be allowed to register for the upcoming election.”