A Few Links to Dispel Conservative Myths, Part 24: Transgender Athletes

In a recent debate for this November's South Carolina Senate race, appointed incumbent Senator Darline Graham Nordone was asked about her stance on security concerns in the South China Sea. Her response was, "I'm not that informed on national security." Attempting to clarify this baffling statement, Graham later said, "I think people in South Carolina are more worried about making ends meet, they’re concerned about boys in girls’ sports. One lady talked to me extensively about that today."

I appreciated this response to Graham from Alex Bollinger of LGBTQNation: "This raises more even questions. South Carolina banned trans kids from participating in sports teams matching their gender in 2022. There are no known trans girls playing school sports on girls’ teams in the state. The NCAA now bans trans athletes in college sports, and the president has pressured the Olympics and other amateur sports leagues to no longer let trans women participate. So in what world are South Carolina Republicans "concerned" about trans athletes? What was that "one lady" – if she even exists – talking to Graham Nordone "extensively" about? Like, what could she actually say on the matter? The right won, at least in South Carolina. They banned trans people at every level in the state from playing sports. What more could they want?"

I think what Graham and other Republicans want is to milk the transgender athlete issue for all it's worth, for the simple reason that it's just about the only issue about which Americans agree more with Republicans than they do with Democrats. Sadly, only one in four Americans agree with trans women participating in female sports in a yes/no question.

Meanwhile, President Trump's approval rating is polling in the mid-30s, and he's 19 to 40 points underwater on the economy, the war with Iran and even on immigration. 

Furthermore, Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post noted in late 2024 that two-thirds or more of Americans favor:
* Green energy subsidies
* Increased wealth taxes
* Protecting and expanding both Obamacare and Medicare
* Providing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children
* Reaffirming our commitment to NATO
* Protecting abortion rights
* Gay marriage
* Expanded infrastructure spending
* Banning assault weapons
* Reforming the Supreme Court
* Teaching black history
* Stopping book bans
* Legalizing marijuana

So expect Republicans to continue to talk a whole lot about the tiny number of transgender girls and women in girl's and women's sports. Also expect them to continue to spread a lot on untruths to get political mileage. Here are three.

1. From Chase Strangio and Gabriel Arkles of the American Civil Liberties Union:

Myth: Trans athletes’ physiological characteristics provide an unfair advantage over cis athletes.

Fact: Trans athletes do not have an unfair advantage in sports.

"A person’s genetic make-up and internal and external reproductive anatomy are not useful indicators of athletic performance," according to Dr. Joshua D. Safer. "For a trans woman athlete who meets NCAA standards, "there is no inherent reason why her physiological characteristics related to athletic performance should be treated differently from the physiological characteristics of a non-transgender woman."

The Transgender Initiatives Office of San Francisco's city government also notes that, "A 2024 study, funded in part by the IOC and published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, concluded that transgender women athletes may actually have several physical disadvantages when competing with cisgender women." Some of the study’s key findings were that transgender women performed worse than cisgender women and men in tests measuring lower-body strength, lung function, fat-free mass and handgrip strength. Transgender women’s bone density was found to be equivalent to that of cisgender women, which is linked to muscle strength and there were no meaningful differences found between the two groups’ hemoglobin profiles (a key factor in athletic performance).

2. Also from Strangio and Arkles of the ACLU:
Myth: Sex is binary, apparent at birth, and identifiable through singular biological characteristics. 
Fact: Trans girls are girls.
"A person’s sex is made up of multiple biological characteristics and they may not all align as typically male or female in a given person," says Dr. Joshua D. Safer. Further, many people who are not trans can have hormones levels outside of the range considered typical of a cis person of their assigned sex."

3. I recently had a lengthy argument with some MAGA types regarding transgender girls and was repeatedly told:
Myth: A DNA test can determine from birth whether every person is a boy or a girl.
Fact: From Jeffrey Kluger of Time: "Decades of scientific research have shown, that kind of test does not remotely exist. It likely never will.

It’s easy enough to determine basic physical sex with a quick scan for X and Y chromosomes. That can also determine some gender disorders, most commonly XXY—or a person who is superficially male, but carries an extra X, or female, chromosome. The condition, known as Klinefelter syndrome, can result in a range of problems, including delayed or incomplete puberty, comparatively weak bones and undescended testicles. X and Y chromosomes, however, tell you absolutely nothing about gender identity, which is a vastly more complicated matter.

The genes that live on the chromosomes may play some role in determining gender identity—just as they do in determining height and weight and heart disease and athleticism—but it’s a limited one. For example, identical twins share effectively identical genomes, but there are nevertheless cases in which one twin is transgender and the other is not. (It does appear to be likelier that identical twins will have matching gender identities, and the small sample group of ones who are mismatched makes it hard to establish conclusive answers.) In all transgender people, twins or not, womb environment, hormonal factors and differences in brain architecture may be involved as well."

My home state of Washington still allows transgender girls to play girls sports. But that may change. From LaVendrick Smith of the ACLU: "Instead of focusing on solutions that keep kids safe and engaged in the classroom, the group Let’s Go Washington is sponsoring ballot initiatives that invite bullying and discrimination into our children’s schools.

Washington voters will see two of these harmful initiatives on their ballots this fall. One initiative, IL26-638, discriminates against transgender girls by banning them from playing girls’ sports in public schools. The other initiative, IL26-001, seeks to partially repeal a key student privacy law that protects students’ access to counselors and health care."

I'm praying the blue wave this November will keep these initiatives from passing. Things are currently pretty bleak in this country for transgender people. But progressive action had brought positive change before. And as Dr. King said the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice.

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A Few Links to Dispel Conservative Myths, Part 23: Dr. Anthony Fauci and COVID

Here's what Rockefeller University has to say about Dr. Anthony Fauci M.D.

"Through seven presidential administrations, Dr. Fauci has provided guidance on public health and medical issues to the U.S. population and its presidents. During the COVID-19 pandemic, NIAID investigators made critical contributions to development of the safe and effective vaccines against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Dr. Fauci earned the nation’s trust by providing clear, compassionate advice rooted in the available facts through the rapidly evolving pandemic. He is revered for his insistence on the pursuit of truth, and the distinction between what is known and what is not, serving with unwavering dedication despite an extremely challenging political environment."

A brief list of Dr. Fauci's accomplishments as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) during the COVID pandemic include (copied from Google AI):

• mRNA Research: Supported decades of prior National Institutes of Health (NIH) research that built the foundation for safe, fast mRNA vaccine development.

  Trial Partnerships: Directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to collaborate directly with private companies on vaccine design and clinical testing.

  Financial Risk Strategy: Backed the bold federal strategy to fund large-scale manufacturing concurrent with early clinical trials to save months of pandemic response time.

• Safety Validation: Championed independent data boards and FDA authorization steps to protect scientific integrity.

  Public Advocacy: Publicly credited government-private framework investments for the ultimate success of the accelerated vaccine timeline.

I consider Dr. Fauci one of America's greatest heroes for his leadership in the development and distribution of the COVID vaccine. More than one million Americans died of COVID, and more than 99% of those Americans were unvaccinated. 

However, for reasons I don't entirely understand, last week Dr. Fauci was forced to appear before a Senate hearing led by Senator Rand Paul. Here are the attacks Republicans directed to Dr. Fauci during and after the hearing:

Myth: Under Fauci's leadership, NIAID made a grant to a Chinese lab that ultimately aided that lab in developing and subsequently leaking the 2020 COVID pandemic virus. Dr. Fauci's private diary reveals that he knew that the COVID virus originated from a lab and not from a public "wet market". (This claim is most of the basis for Senator Rand Paul's hearing this week.)

Fact: NIAID did give money to the the US-based EcoHealth Alliance, which collaborated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China to look into possible coronaviruses from bats. However, the scientific evidence regarding COVID supports a natural spillover from an infected animal to humans rather than a leak from a lab.

In last week's hearing, Senator Paul focused on a Jan. 26, 2020, diary entry in which Fauci stated that "the first infection was in early December and was not connected to the market. … Now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier." Factcheck.org notes, "This is not the "gotcha" that Paul makes it out to be. Citing this one passage removes critical context for Fauci’s statements and falsely implies that if the pandemic didn’t originate in the one market (the Huanan seafood market), that it couldn’t have had a natural origin." "There’s overwhelming scientific evidence that COVID emerged from an animal market in Wuhan, which was miles away from a virology lab," Gigi Gronvall, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, told us for a previous story."

Myth: Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville said that week regarding Dr. Fauci, "We’re going to go after the guy with everything we’ve got because the guy killed, or had something to do with killing, 9 million people," because, Fauci was, "in on the gain-of-function".

Fact: "Gain-of-function" is an attempt to enable an organism to develop new abilities. This can happen in nature, or it can be achieved in a lab, when scientists modify the genetic code or place organisms in different environments, to change them in some way.  From the BBC: "For example, (gain-of-function research) might involve scientists trying to create drought-resistant plants or modify disease vectors in mosquitoes to make them less likely to pass on infections. With viruses that could pose a risk to human health, it means developing viruses that are potentially more transmissible and dangerous." 

The claim here is that the research described in Myth #1 above included gain-of-function and that the research went awry, releasing the deadly COVID virus. From the BBC article linked above, "Dr Fauci told the Senate hearing the research in question "has been evaluated multiple times by qualified people to not fall under the gain-of-function definition". He also said it was "molecularly impossible" for these viruses to have resulted in the coronavirus." "The NIH and EcoHealth Alliance have also rejected suggestions they supported or funded "gain-of-function" research in China."

Myth: "Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, proposed that the pulmonary infarction Fauci experienced in 2021—the details of which were revealed in the pages from Fauci’s private diary that Paul released last weekend—may have resulted from COVID vaccination and booster shots. More than 39,000 deaths had resulted from COVID-19 vaccination, he said, and although Facebook had censored his supporters when they tried to share that fact, "this wasn’t disinformation, this was the truth." - The Atlantic
Fact: (Also from The Atlantic) "Fauci only sat there with his fingers clasped. He did not point out that this was not the truth at all, and that Johnson’s data—derived from unvetted, user-submitted information in the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System—are likely to overestimate the real total by about 1,000 times."
In terms of the COVID vaccine causing deaths, a comprehensive scientific literature review published by the National Library of Medicine identified only 38 to 55 deaths globally among the more than 8 billion doses administered by 2022.

Myth: Peter Navarro, who was the Trump White House defense policy coordinator during the pandemic said last week: "I had a million doses of hydroxychloroquine in warehouses as the defense policy coordinator for the DPA that I was trying to distribute to hospitals, and he got the FDA to stop me from doing that. Thousands of people could be here in this country right now alive if I had been able to distribute that, take that to the bank. That's what the science says."
Fact: The scientific community has, with no uncertain terms, rejected hydroxychloroquine as a valid COVID-19 treatment. After reviewing dozens of trials involving more than 10,000 patients, the World Health Organization concluded that hydroxychloroquine:
*Does not reduce deaths.
*Does not reduce the need for mechanical ventilation.
*Does not provide meaningful clinical benefit for treating COVID-19.
*Carries risks, including heart rhythm abnormalities in some patients.
The NIH likewise concluded that it did not improve outcomes in hospitalized patients.

Myth: Prior to last week's hearing, Senator Paul suggested that natural immunity gained from contracting COVID is more effective in protecting a person's health that getting vaccinated, writing, "Remember: Anthony Fauci was all about 'following the science,' until it came to vaccines. He was all about forcing you into compliance, even though we all knew infection was the best protection."
Fact: A 2021 CDC study, "found that those who were unvaccinated had 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with those who were fully vaccinated.  The findings suggest that among people who have had COVID-19 previously, getting fully vaccinated provides additional protection against reinfection."

Note: There is strong evidence that Senator Rand Paul has been vaccinated against COVID.

In conclusion, Dr. Fauci offered no testimony during the Senate hearing, other than to offer a brief initial statement, in which he referred to Chairman Rand Paul’s "unhinged obsession" with slandering his reputation and putting him in prison. I think that sums up this entire witch hunt quite well.

 

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A Few Links to Dispel Conservative Myths, Part 22: Larry Schweikart's "48 Liberal Lies About American History"

My series of blog posts on myths that American conservatives believe is now twelve years old, dating to this 2014 post of untruths told about Obamacare. It's been my experience that conservatives live largely in a bubble that cannot be penetrated by facts and what facts mean. President Trump and other Republican leaders still consider climate change to be a “hoax" even as scientists agree that industrial pollutants will cause enough global warming to raise sea levels enough to inundate the entire southern third of Florida within the lifetimes of today's young adults.

Are American liberals also guilty of believing myths to support their worldview? At least occasionally, yes. For example, I've been told by many Bernie Sanders supporters that the 2016 Democratic Presidential nomination was rigged and stolen for Hillary Clinton. That is false. But in my estimation conservatives are orders of magnitude more likely than liberals to believe and espouse a lot of comforting dogma that can be disproven by objective reality.

But what if I'm wrong? What if liberal pundits and historians are actually as prone to believing and propagating lie as conservatives are? To find out more, let's consider the 2008 book, 48 Liberal Lies About American History (That You Probably Learned in School) by Professor Larry Schweikart. The premise of this book is explained by the title. 

First some context. Two of the most influential history books written in recent decades are Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. A People's History is an outstanding text on American history that focuses less on our traditional elite heroes and more on the struggles of America's marginalized groups - women, factory workers, African-Americans, Native Americans, the working poor, and immigrant laborers. In Lies My Teacher Told Me, Loewen concludes that American history textbooks commonly propagate false, Eurocentric, and mythologized views of American history. For example, Loewen notes that history textbooks typically include hundreds of words on Christopher Columbus. Putting aside that these textbooks often have the facts wrong regarding what Columbus was trying to and did or did not accomplish, Loewen deconstructs how strange it is that Columbus is usually described in heroic terms when actually his "discoveries" were not particularly significant and his chief legacy is the genocide of the indigenous people he encountered.

Larry Schweikart has published a series of books essentially waging a one-author campaign against both Zinn and Loewen. In 2004, Schweikart co-wrote a direct counter-point to Zinn titled, A Patriot's History of the United States. I have not read this book, but I understand it was written to emphasize that the history of America shows it to be a force of good in the world while minimalizing the bad things America has done. Some people believe that a lot of unquestioning, nationalistic flag-waving make a person a "patriot".

48 Liberal Lies is then Schweikart's answer to Loewen. From his point of view, America's history textbooks have not erred in overemphasizing the contributions of our white male heroes at the expense of everyone else. On the contrary, Schweikart believes that textbooks are full of liberal nonsense and flat-out untruths.

I'll cut to the chase right now: Spoiler alert! 48 Liberal Lies is a terrible book for two reasons:
First, virtually none of this book's 48 chapters, or "lies" supports the book's premise that American history textbooks and/or books commonly assigned to students in history classes contain misstatements of fact or specious reasoning written from a liberal point of view.
Second, as we will see, the scholarship in this book is atrocious. The liar here is Schweikart himself.

I'm not going to comment on all 48 "lies". But I do want to discuss many of them. Most of the 48 fall into one of two categories:
One: Straw man arguments: Things that are not true, but not things that liberals believe and that do not appear in books taught in school.
Two: Schweikart's terrible scholarship and/or refusal to see objective reality. The "lie" is actually true.

First, let's look at some of the straw man arguments. The most representative example is:
#3 FDR knew in advance about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
In 1999, a man named Robert Stinnett wrote a poorly-researched book called Day of Deceit that suggested that President Roosevelt was secretly aware of Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor. Serious historians found Stinnett's claims to be baseless and the book is now more or less forgotten. In no way does Day of Deceit qualify as a liberal lie and it certainly has never been taught in American schools.

Some of the other straw men in the book:
#10 September 11 was not the work of terrorists: It was a government conspiracy.
This is not something that liberal historians argue, and Schweikart does not cite any who do. He does cite actor Charlie Sheen, who is certainly not a historian, or even liberal as far as I know. Schweikart mentions Hillary Clinton discussing the fact that President Bush had been warned of possible terrorist attack. But that of course does not suggest that 9/11 was not the work of terrorists or that it was any kind of conspiracy. It merely suggests that Bush was incompetent.

#12 The founders envisioned a "wall of separation" between church and state, keeping religious influence out of government.
Did the founders envision a wall of separation between church and state? Yes, and they said so quite clearly in the first amendment to the Constitution. The founders did not however mean to keep all religious influence out of government, and Schweikart doesn't cite historians who claim they did. Schweikart also goes on a bunch of weird tangents about how much state-sponsored religion there was in colonial America. Are the Puritans of 17th century Massachusetts now considered part of "the founders" of the United States? Because that would be news to me.

#14 Women had no rights in early America.
No historian, liberal or otherwise has even made this claim to my knowledge, and surprise surprise, Schweikart doesn't cite any.

#15 Restrictions on the right to vote kept voter participation low.
This is another one where I'm not sure where Schweikart is coming from. Yes, in the days of Andrew Jackson most white males Americans did vote. Virtually all other Americans were not allowed to vote. I've never seen anyone suggest otherwise.

#16 Prohibition was unpopular from the beginning and failed in all its objectives.
The laws making alcohol illegal were quite popular when first passed, even among people who ignored them and continued to drink. And at least for a while, consumption of alcohol declined. Another example where no historians, liberal or otherwise, are making the argument Schweikart suggests they are making.

#19 The Rosenbergs were not spies and were wrongfully executed.
Schweikart actually begins this chapter with two quotes from other authors that admit Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were guilty of espionage on behalf of the USSR. So... not a lie then? The real substance of this particular chapter is the claim that yes, despite some gross violations of the Rosenbergs' rights by the government the two really did provide significant intelligence to the Soviet Union and thus deserved to die. Schweikart doesn't bother to mention that according to Julius's Soviet contact, the Rosenbergs did not provide the Soviet Union with any useful material about the atomic bomb: "He [Julius] didn't understand anything about the atomic bomb and he couldn't help us."

#24 Abraham Lincoln only freed the slaves to beef up his troop strength.
Again, no historian is making this suggestion, and Schweikart does not cite any. Lincoln freed the slaves for moral reasons, to gain favor with other countries, to deprive the south of labor and for troop recruitment. Nothing is particularly controversial about this.

Note this chapter includes some of the worst scholarship in book. Schweikart writes, "A largely forgotten fact of the Civil War is that a large number of free blacks and slaves served in the Confederate Army, with slaves promised their freedom in exchange for service. Some fought because the South was their home, even if as slaves." "A handful actually did see combat."

Some free blacks took jobs as laborers and musicians with the Confederate Army. These men were not enlisted "in the Army". Many masters brought their slaves with them when they went to war. There was no policy of promising slaves freedom "for service". The idea that some slaves were eager to defend the Confederacy is ridiculous. The Confederacy only made it legal for free blacks to join the army one month before the war ended. Only a few joined, and no black Confederate unit ever saw combat. 

#32 The news media is objective, fair, and balanced - and always has been.
Even the most casual fan of American history has heard of "yellow journalism" and the era of hyper-partisan newspapers like the Hearst network. And no reasonable person would suggest Fox News is objective, fair or and balanced. One more time - it's not a "liberal lie" if no liberals or anyone else is making the claim.

#39 Northern capitalist greed -not slavery- drove the civil war
This chapter does a fine job of explaining that the southern states seceded and fought the civil war over slavery. But it's conservatives, not liberals that claim that the American Civil War was not fought over slavery but as a defense of constitutional liberties. In fairness, Schweikart wrote this chapter so he could take issue with the book, The Rise of American Civilization by Charles and Mary Beard, written all the way back in 1927, which suggested that the south was concerned about being overwhelmed by northern economic dominance. But that is most definitely true. In the state of Georgia's Articles of Secession it directly addressed its concerns regarding the tendency of, "the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests of the North... to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests."

Category Two: Schweikart Has the Facts Wrong And/Or Simply Makes No Sense

#2 The Mexican and Spanish-American wars were imperialist efforts drummed up by "corporate interests".
According to Schweikart, since the US only kept half of Mexico after the 1846 war, and because the US allowed a puppet government to exist in Cuba while we occupied it militarily, and because we granted the Philippines independence only five decades after conquering it, the United States cannot be said to have have imperialist ambitions.

#6 Richard Nixon expanded the Vietnam War.
Schweikart admits that Nixon increased the bombing of North Vietnam while invading neutral Cambodia. So... doesn't that mean Nixon expanded the war? No, according to Schweikart, because Nixon eventually withdrew from Vietnam when forced by Congress. Also I believe that Schweikart is the first person I've ever seen who described our hopeless quagmire as, "very nearly won on the battlefield" as of 1969.

#8 Ronald Reagan knew Star Wars wouldn't work but wanted to provoke a war with the USSR.
Schweikart begins this chapter by saying, "Probably no lie is taken for granted more in college textbooks than the notion that "Star Wars won't work."" But that is not a lie. The SDI "Star Wars" program was always a pipe dream. The United States did not develop a program of space-based, laser-firing weapons platforms. Here Schweikart makes the oh-so-clever argument that because decades later the US developed land-based missile defense systems, Star Wars did work.

#11 No terrorists or weapons of mass destruction were hiding in Iraq
This one starts with three excellent quotes: One from Frank Rich of the New York Times about the deliberate falsehoods about Iraq and WMD offered by the Bush administration, a quote about the fact that no WMD were ever found and a quote about disproven claims by the Bush team that Iraq was working with al Qaeda. 

The things get weird. Schweikart says, "the lie is that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was no threat to anyone prior to the U.S. invasion." Here Schweikart is attempting to obfuscate the entire matter. This was never an argument about whether Saddam Hussein or anyone else in Iraq might in theory be a threat to other nations. It was about whether the Bush Administration was justified in launching a "preemptive strike" and invasion of Iraq without specific UN authorization.

The Bush administration claimed that despite the fact that no WMD had been found by UN inspection teams, team Bush nevertheless had irrefutable evidence of Iraqi WMD stockpiles, mobile chemical weapons labs, a reconstituted nuclear weapons program and direct links with al Qaeda. Because those things would be violations of the resolution rammed through the UN by the US, we were therefore justified in invading Iraq. Of course in reality the Bush administration was lying about everything. Schweikart also belongs to what is essentially a weird religion that believes that the Bush team was right about WMD, but Iraq managed to spirit them out of the country before we could get there. The Iraq Survey Group investigated this possibility and found no evidence it is true.

#18 Senator Joseph McCarthy concocted the "Red Scare" and there was nothing to fear from communist subversives.
This one might belong more in the straw man category. No one argues that McCarthy invented the Red Scare witch hunts or that Soviet spies were not a serious threat to America's nuclear program. But according to Schweikart, it is an, "absurd lie that McCarthy never exposed a real communist in government." Consider, Schweikart says, Gustavo Duran, Mary Jane Keeney, Edward Posniak, John Carter Vincent and Owen Lattimore. The truth is that McCarthy uncovered none of those people as communists. Duran, Keeney and Lattimore had been identified years before McCarthy came on the scene and his charges against Posniak and Vincent were never substantiated.

If one asks Google AI, "McCarthy never exposed a communist", the answer summarizes what really happened quite well: "Historical consensus strongly supports the claim that Senator Joseph McCarthy never successfully exposed a real communist or Soviet spy. During the "Red Scare," his sweeping accusations ruined innocent lives without producing any credible evidence of subversion within the U.S. government." "Senator McCarthy rocketed to national fame in February 1950 by claiming he had a list of 205 "known communists" working in the State Department. He constantly changed the number of names on his lists and never produced legitimate proof to the press or the Senate. The Senate eventually formed the Tydings Committee to investigate, which formally concluded that McCarthy's accusations were a "fraud and a hoax"."

#21 Columbus was responsible for killing millions of Indians.
In other chapters Schweikart strikes me as merely wrong, but here he seems to be dishonest. He selectively quotes Loewen in Lies My Teacher Told Me. "Estimates of Haiti's pre-Columbian population range as high as 8,000,000 people... When Christopher Columbus returned to Spain... [the census] of Indian adults in 1496 [was] 1,000,000." Schweikart then uses this quote to attack Loewen, calling his work "drivel" and mocking the idea that Columbus' crew of fewer than 1,000 men, "could kill seven million people in three years."

Loewen of course never makes such a suggestion. Here's what he actually wrote: "Estimates of Haiti’s pre-Columbian population range as high as eight million people. When Christopher Columbus returned to Spain, he left his brother Bartholomew in charge of the island. Bartholomew took a census of Indian adults in 1496 and came up with 1.1 million. The Spanish did not count children under fourteen and could not count Arawaks who had escaped in the mountains. Kirkpatrick Sale estimates that a more accurate total would probably be in the neighborhood of three million. "By 1516," according to Benjamin Keen, "thanks to the sinister Indian slave trade and labor policies initiated by Columbus, only some 12,000 remained." Las Casas tells us that fewer than two hundred full-blooded Haitian Indians were alive in 1542. By 1555, they were all gone."

In other words, Loewen suggests that at the time of Columbus' arrival there was a population of three million or more indigenous persons in Haiti. Thanks to the genocidal policies of the Spaniards, combined, no doubt, with the spread of European diseases, that population of three million was exterminated withing six decades. So it's true that Columbus was responsible for killing millions of indigenous people.

#22 The Early Colonies were intolerant and racist.
Given that America's early colonies imported slaves from both Africa and Caribbean nations, and that they considered Native Americans to be ignorant savages to be excluded from white society, is it not reasonable to suggest that those colonists were intolerant and racist? No, says Schweikart, "the colonists were remarkably tolerant of the natives, where virtually any other kingdom or empires - Mongols or Muslims come to mind- would have simply wiped them out completely or subjugated them." So apparently nothing short of killing or enslaving an entire populace is "intolerant and racist".

#30 George W. Bush was selected, not elected, in 2000, and votes were stolen on his behalf.
Schweikart has a lot to say about the 2000 Presidential election, but never gets to the substance of the argument being made by those who know that more ballots were cast for Gore. Unfortunately, rumors had circulated before the election in minority communities that voters should mark their ballot for Al Gore and also write in his name on the write in line. These votes were thrown as as "overvotes". Studies show that Gore likely would have won a statewide recount of all undervotes and overvotes.

#33 Native Americans were great environmentalists, while white settlers destroyed the buffalo.
In the 19th century, Euro-American expansion and industrial-scale commercial hunting decimated the American bison population. An estimated 30-50 million buffalo were reduced to just a few hundred wild survivors by the late 1880s. This is not controversial among historians, and is thus not a "liberal lie." Schweikart tries to support his position here with the baseless claim that the Indians would have eventually killed off the buffalo themselves.

#35 The "robber barons" pillaged the land and destroyed the environment.
As this book goes on, the chapters become less discussions on history and more a lot of political ranting. Here Schweikart argues that it's just fine for Americans to live unsustainably, because we're so darn productive. He again attacks James Loewen, this time for Loewen's concern regarding Americans' overconsumption of resources as Loewen writes, "we can only hope other nations will never achieve our standard of living, for if they did, the earth would become a desert." Schweikart argues that poorer nations, "need us to export more capitalism to them." He never explains how the world is supposed to survive further adoption of America's unsustainable practices.

#36 Federal regulators have protected the public's health by identifying harmful products.
The Food and Drug Administration has protected the public health by banning many chemicals, dyes and other substances known to cause cancer or to otherwise by highly toxic. This is inarguable. So where's Schweikart coming from here? He cherry-picks a few old cases where the FDA did something controversial and call them over-zealous.

#37 Global warming is a fact, and it's a man-made, American-driven problem.
When this book was written almost 20 years ago, there where still a few studies being talked about that suggested causes for global warming other than greenhouse gases released by industrial sources. Today that is no longer the case. In this chapter Schweikart grasps at any straw he can, citing a 1991 study from the Danish National Space Center, which suggested that solar activity is the main forcing agent in global climate change. Numerous leading experts have concluded that the work of the authors of that study (Friis-Christensen and Svensmark) showing apparent correlations between global warming, sunspots and cosmic rays was deeply flawed. 35 years later, no study is making any similar claim.

#43 The income tax was created to make the rich pay their fair share, and tax cuts only benefit upper-income Americans.
and
#47 The Reagan tax cuts caused massive deficits and the national debt.
The real purpose of chapter #43 is for Schweikart to show off his worship of Ronald Reagan. He says, "Tax cuts always yield more revenue from the wealthiest groups," and "for those obsessed with Reagan-era "deficits," they certainly did not come from the tax cuts." That is wrong. Federal revenue as a percentage of GDP rose under President Carter, reaching 21% in 1981. Under Reagan federal revenue as a percentage of GDP fell substantially, and did not reach 21% again until the Clinton years.

In #47, Schweikart makes a number of false claims:
1. "What caused the deficits? The Democratic Congress, with its pork-barrel spending." Republicans controlled the Senate all but the last 2 years of Reagan's presidency. Reagan was all for increasing federal spending and growing the federal government; he never saw an expensive defense program he didn't like. And he did not veto congressional spending.
2. "The tax cuts generated the most remarkable boom in American history." What boom? Under both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, the economy grew at more than 5% per year. Under Reagan, it grew 3.6% per year, barely exceeding the anemic growth of the Carter years. And in the 4 years after Reagan left office, it grew at only 1.9%. Job growth under Reagan was actually worse than under Carter.

#44  Business failure and tax cuts combined to cause the Great Depression.
This chapter is interesting in that it discusses a number of things that contributed to the Great Depression, but then we get to the big rant attacking the New Deal at the end.
1. "The public hoopla of "jobs programs" barely dented the unemployment numbers." Unemployment fell from 25% to 10% during FDR's first two terms. That's "barely a dent"?
2. "Modern economists are almost unanimous that the New Deal programs hindered recovery." This claim is definitely false, although economists are divided on the issue.
3. "State bank deposit laws, such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, actually contributed to bank weakness in the 1930s." This is nonsense. Federal Deposit insurance was created in 1934. During the first 4 years of the depression, 9000 banks failed, representing more than one-quarter of the banks in the US. In the year following creation of the FDIC, only 9 failed.

#45 LBJ's Great Society had a positive impact on the poor.
Schweikart claims that between 1961 and 1977, "there was no appreciable change in the poverty level." That is false. Federal welfare as we know it is generally understood to have begun with President Kennedy's New Frontier program in 1961 and to have continued with President Johnson's Great Society, or the "war on poverty". These were a series of comprehensive programs to create jobs, improve education and build the country's infrastructure. Under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, the poverty rate fell from 23% to 12%. And even as the poverty rate stagnated in the 1970s (and federal welfare programs were curtailed) the minority high school graduated rate continued to climb.

#48 Alger Hiss was innocent.
State Department Alger Hiss was innocent of spying for the Soviet Union, and Schweikart provides nothing to prove the contrary but the same illogical, unprovable accusations that have been the basis of the charges against Hiss for most of a century.

But finally... Schweikart gets one right:

#27 Richard Nixon sent burglars into the Watergate Office Complex.
Schweikart quotes two authors who write that President Nixon authorized the Watergate break in. That is false. To this day, no one knows who in the White House thought up the Watergate break in. Attorney General John Mitchell authorized it.

Congratulations, Mr. Schweikart. You went 1 for 48.

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A Review of Rewriting Hisstory: A Fifty-Year Journey to Uncover the Truth About Alger Hiss by Jeff Kisseloff

 Thirty years ago I was watching the PBS panel show the The McLaughlin Group one lazy Sunday morning. A gleeful Pat Buchanan mentioned on air that a recently declassified decrypt of an old Soviet communication had finally proven that US State Department employee Alger Hiss was guilty of being a Soviet spy in the 1930s. Buchanan had worked in the Nixon White House. Richard Nixon had become prominent while still a young Congressman partially as a result of his dogged pursuit of the case against Alger Hiss.

Some background. In 1948, American journalist Whitaker Chambers testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee that he had been a Soviet spy in 1930s. While doing no useful work for Russia, he was glad to take their money. Chambers made the explosive charge that a prominent State Department official named Alger Hiss was also part of Chambers' spy ring. Hiss admitted being briefly acquainted with Chambers in the 1930s but denied charges of espionage before Congress. Hiss was ultimately convicted of perjury on the basis that he had lied to Congress about the nature of his relationship with Chambers.

Many books have been written about the Hiss case in the past seven decades attempting to convince the public that Hiss really was guilty of spying. These books, such as Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case by Allen Weinstein, Alger Hiss: Why He Chose Treason by Christina Shelton and Alger Hiss's Looking-Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy by G. Edward White all use the same approach of guilt by association. They can all be summarized as follows: “Alger Hiss was kind of a lefty in his politics, so you should be convinced he was guilty of being a Soviet spy.”

Now at last after 77 years we have a book about Hiss worth reading: Rewriting Hisstory: A Fifty-Year Journey to Uncover the Truth About Alger Hiss by Jeff Kisseloff. The author was part of Alger Hiss’ legal team as far back as the 1970s when Hiss was seeking to clear his name. After fifty years (!) of dogged pursuit of the evidence in the Hiss case, Kisseloff has brought to light a great deal of new material including previously unreleased FBI files and what might be called the case’s “smoking gun”: Woodstock 230099, the typewriter that the government claimed was used to type the copies of State Department documents placed in evidence against Hiss.

In Hisstory, Kisseloff dismantles the case against Hiss piece by piece:

He first reminds the reader that Whitaker Chambers was a man who could not tell the truth if his life depended on it. He lied constantly. He perpetually contradicted his own lies with other lies. He made easily disprovable claims about his own life, the lives of others and objective reality in general. He cheerfully admitted lying under oath to Congress.

So why did the Hiss case ever gain momentum in the first place?

Whitaker Chambers produced a trove of documents to bolster the case against Hiss. These included:
1. Public domain government documents regarding (for example) various countries’ tariff payments.
2. Some 35mm camera film containing US Navy instructions on painting fire extinguishers and handling life rafts.
3. Some undecipherable notes in shorthand written by Hiss.

These documents were not anything that any sane spy would think might be useful to a foreign government. Despite the fact that any reasonable person could see that Chambers’ charges against Hiss were a lot of nonsense, and despite the fact that (as Kisseloff demonstrates through newly revealed documents) the FBI didn’t believe Hiss was a spy, the Justice Department, with a lot of encouragement from congressman Richard Nixon, pressed forward with the case against Hiss any way.

On the government’s second attempt to convict Hiss of perjury, it got the guilty verdict it wanted. The case turned on a typewriter. Woodstock 230099 was entered into evidence at the trial as the typewriter that had once been owned by Hiss family and that had been used to type copies of some of the documents Chambers had allegedly received from Hiss. But as Kisseloff explains the Woodstock in evidence was manufactured too late to be the Hiss machine.

So what really happened? During the trial, the Hiss family went looking for their old typewriter which they no longer owned as they believed they could demonstrate that it was not the machine used to type the documents in evidence. Kisseloff suggests that Hiss’ enemies found or modified a typewriter that the prosecution could use to convince a jury that it was the Hiss machine. They then made sure that this was the machine that the Hiss team found and entered into evidence themselves hoping that it would exonerate Hiss.

Hisstory also does a fine job debunking the “revelations” of the Soviet decrypts of the 1990s that Hiss detractors would have the public believe convicted Hiss once and for all. The most famous of these decrypts described (in a third-hand conversation) an American spying for the USSR who attended the 1945 Yalta Conference and who went by the code name ALES. Although what is known about Hiss and ALES eliminates the possibility that they were the same person, that hasn’t stopped many people (remember Pat Buchanan) from declaring case closed on Hiss’ guilt. Kisseloff also discusses the authors who have unconvincingly attempted to further convict Hiss in the court of public opinion through other Soviet records by arbitrarily declaring that the agents discussed in those records were Hiss going by still other code names beside ALES.

In summary, the “forgery by typewriter” conspiracy suggested in Hisstory seems bit outlandish (as I think even the author admits). But in the end, it doesn’t matter. Alger Hiss was innocent and Jeff Kisseloff has done history a great service in writing a book that closes the case.

 

 

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A Few Links to Dispel Conservative Myths Part 21.2: Red State "Freedom" - Idaho

In a post last year I commented on the phenomenon of conservative folks who are moving to red states because they say they enjoy greater freedom and safety in MAGA America. In reality this "freedom" and "safety" are illusory. For example, columnist Glenn H. Reynolds of the New York Post said of new arrivals to the state of Tennessee (where he lives), "They come seeking a place where they are free from tyrannical governments, where their businesses and money are safe from destruction and confiscation, where they and their families feel safe and included." In reality, Tennessee government is downright draconian in many ways, has one of the most regressive taxation systems in the country, and is plagued violent crime.

I'd like to visit this topic one more time, as I was intrigued by this Fox News article about conservative Americans moving to Idaho, "Why are Americans fleeing the West Coast for this deep red state? Freedom and Friendliness". (The article may require a Fox News account to read, so I've pasted it in its entirety below.)

The article is actually, dare I say it, reasonably fair and balanced. It points out repeatedly that in a number of ways Idaho is NOT any more "free" than the blue states of the west coast. But let's sift through what immigrants to the Gem state are said in the article.

"COVID restrictions, and Idaho’s lack thereof, were major factors that drove all the former West Coast residents Fox News spoke with east. But additional freedoms they found in Idaho won them over, and they weren't bothered by new restrictions, like prohibitions on marijuana."

"Nick Kostenborder and Ashley Manning, formerly of Portland, had a baby on the way in summer 2020 and were deeply unhappy with lockdowns and masking requirements. Government-imposed mask mandates didn’t end in Oregon and Washington until March 2022. Schools in all three West Coast states were among the last to re-open for in-person instruction.

By contrast, Idaho approved reopening plans in July 2020 and never had a statewide mask mandate. Lawmakers twice tried to pass legislation explicitly barring the government from ever requiring face masks in the future.

Manning recalled visiting North Idaho in November 2020, a couple of months after the couple’s son, Taylor, was born. Businesses were open. People were out in public, laughing and talking without anything obscuring their faces. It seemed so alien nearly nine months into the pandemic."

OK, let's break down a few things. To read this article, you'd think that due to COVID restrictions businesses on the west coast were closed and people required to mask outdoors in the fall of 2020. Neither of those things is the case. And it's not as if no one in Idaho was masking in public. Here's the Idaho state government itself encouraging masks in 2022. Schools in Idaho were still mostly distance-learning and/or in-person learning with masking and social distancing in 2020, the same as other places. And of course to me, preference for a world with no safety measures and poor adoption of vaccination during a pandemic is a strange kind of "freedom". A year after widespread vaccination for COVID became available, the rate of COVID deaths per capita in Idaho were nearly double that of Washington state.

To continue with the article: "My daughter’s educational health, my daughter’s mental health …. was being affected by just the garbage that is being taught in the public schools in Washington," he said."

What garbage? The article doesn't say. And of course the primary focus of Idaho's freedom is about guns.

"You go to Walmart, you're going to run into 15, 20 people that are open carrying," Zielinski said. "It's awesome. You know what we don't have here, is we don't have all the goofy crime that you see in western Washington."

Gun deaths per capita are far higher in Idaho than in Washington. Personally, I feel freer here in Washington where I'm less likely to get shot.

Just one more observation, this one not discussed by the article. Idaho's state income tax is a flat 5.7%. Washington state has no income tax. Which state's population do you think is freer from "tyrannical government"?

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Why are Americans fleeing the West Coast for this deep red state? Freedom and Friendliness

California, Oregon and Washington families who moved to Idaho share what they love most about their new home

 By Hannah Ray Lambert Fox News

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho — North Idaho can bring a bit of culture shock for new arrivals. Walking around Coeur d’Alene, Seth Horst was amazed by how many people made eye contact, smiled, and said, "Hi." Many would even strike up a conversation.

"People want to interact, people want to engage with you," he said. "I think that’s what’s missing in a lot of society, and I think that’s why people like it here so much."

Horst, a former California Highway Patrol officer, and his family made that first trip to Coeur d'Alene in September 2020. Within three months, they sold their Chico home and moved to Idaho.

The Gem State's population has grown more than 12% since 2018 as thousands of families, primarily from the West Coast, have made similar moves. 

Families who left California, Oregon and Washington for Idaho all echoed similar sentiments when speaking with Fox News. They wanted to leave behind what they viewed as oppressive policies in their home states and live in a place where they could be "left alone," as Bryan Zielinski put it.

"It’s a very American culture," said Zielinski, who left the Seattle area last year and recently opened a gun store in Post Falls, Idaho. "It’s a culture of the West. Of extreme freedom and prosperity."

"We don't need to impose California, Oregon and Washington garbage into Idaho," he added. "We don't need it. We're perfect as we are." 

Schools, Second Amendment and safe communities: "Where they could be free"

COVID restrictions, and Idaho’s lack thereof, were major factors that drove all the former West Coast residents Fox News spoke with east. But additional freedoms they found in Idaho won them over, and they weren't bothered by new restrictions, like prohibitions on marijuana. 

Nick Kostenborder and Ashley Manning, formerly of Portland, had a baby on the way in summer 2020 and were deeply unhappy with lockdowns and masking requirements. Government-imposed mask mandates didn’t end in Oregon and Washington until March 2022. Schools in all three West Coast states were among the last to re-open for in-person instruction.

By contrast, Idaho approved reopening plans in July 2020 and never had a statewide mask mandate. Lawmakers twice tried to pass legislation explicitly barring the government from ever requiring face masks in the future.

Manning recalled visiting North Idaho in November 2020, a couple of months after the couple’s son, Taylor, was born. Businesses were open. People were out in public, laughing and talking without anything obscuring their faces. It seemed so alien nearly nine months into the pandemic.

"We were just blown away by how awesome it was," she said. "That was what we were hoping for, but we didn't know it was actually possible."

They moved to Sandpoint the next April and soon befriended several other ex-West Coast residents.

"They wanted to be somewhere where they could be free," she said. "And we just hope it stays that way."

Educational policies served as major catalysts for Zielinski, a conservative who previously lived in the Seattle area.

"My daughter’s educational health, my daughter’s mental health …. was being affected by just the garbage that is being taught in the public schools in Washington," he said. The family moved to Idaho last June and Zielinski said his daughter, now 13, is getting great grades. More importantly, she's happy again, he said.

Gun laws were another motivating factor for Zielinski, a vocal Second Amendment advocate who previously managed a large gun store in Washington, and opened his own a couple of months ago.

Washington has banned the sale of magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds, as well as "assault weapons" — primarily semiautomatic rifles — and many of the parts used to build them.

Idaho, meanwhile, is one of nearly 30 states with constitutional concealed carry, has no laws regulating high-capacity magazines or so-called "assault weapons," and even allows residents to own a machine gun as long as it’s registered, according to an NRA overview.

It’s common to see people around town with guns prominently holstered on their hips.

"You go to Walmart, you're going to run into 15, 20 people that are open carrying," Zielinski said. "It's awesome. You know what we don't have here, is we don't have all the goofy crime that you see in western Washington."

He added, "Everybody's happy. Everybody's nice."

Idaho has also tried to cash in on businesses and entrepreneurs fleeing its neighbors to the west. The Mercatus Center, a free market think tank at George Mason University, dubbed Idaho the "least regulated state" in 2020, after Gov. Brad Little announced the state had cut more than 1,800 pages of regulations.

"Idaho has been cutting regulations statewide while other states such as Washington [and] Oregon have been adding regulations," Sandpoint Mayor Jeremy Grimm said. "Although many regulations are good intentioned, they kind of live on forever."

 There are plenty of areas where Idaho is less free than its neighbors, but those are tradeoffs many movers either agree with or are willing to overlook.

While West Coast states have passed sweeping mandates surrounding transgender kids, Idaho lawmakers instead enacted a ban on transition drugs and surgeries for most minors, which the U.S. Supreme Court last month allowed officials to enforce.

The U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing Idaho's abortion ban, one of the strictest in the nation. And possession of more than 3 ounces of marijuana remains illegal in the Gem State, punishable by thousands of dollars in fines and up to five years in prison.

Such restrictions don’t bother Kostenborder, even though he identifies as a libertarian.

"The last thing I'm going to do is be the libertarian from Portland, show up here and be like, ‘Hey man, this place is way better than where I came from. Now, you know what you knuckle-draggers need to do is start doing things the way we did them in Portland,'" he said. "I'm not pushing for legal pot in Idaho. I don't care. If they want to keep it illegal, that's fine with me."

"I see the Democrats as being far more oppressive than the conservatives," he added.

Much of Idaho's allure lies outside of politics, according to families Fox News spoke with. It's in the clean sidewalks and graffiti-free neighborhoods. The friendly banter with strangers and breathtaking scenery. The gut feeling one gets driving across the bridge spanning nearly two miles over the northern end of Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho’s biggest lake.

That last one is referred to as the "Long Bridge moment," Grimm said.

"You drive across this bridge on a beautiful day, and you see the Selkirk and Cabinet mountain range and the lake," he said. "And it's one of those moments of arrival."

Manning missed some elements of Portland after the move, particularly the food and abundance of entertainment options. But during the family’s most recent trip back to Oregon in April, she looked around and came to a realization.

"These aren’t our people anymore, because we feel so at home here and just like we belong," she said. "In Portland, it’s just not the case anymore."

Now, she commutes 10 minutes to a job she loves, where she feels free to share her opinions and be proud of her faith. She and Kostenborder have made friends with fellow expats, including those living right on their street.

"We felt like we had a family just within our own neighborhood," she added.

 

 

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2026 Senate Race Predictions

Most recent updates: 8/24/26: AL, AK, FL, GA, IA, KS, ME, MI, NE, SC, TX
 
Current Senate: 53 R, 47 D

Overview, 5/18/25: In 2005, Republicans controlled the Senate 56 to 44. Then Democrats netted 8 seats in 2006 and another 8 in 2008 for an incredible 60 to 40 majority. Alas, nothing like that is going to happen in the next four years. Even if the blue team does well, there are very few Republican Senate seats that will see competitive races. The goal of course is to net at least 3 seats in the next two elections so as to have a 50 to 50 majority with the vice presidential tie breaker in 2029, assuming the Democratic nominee wins the Presidency.

Races are categorized as either likely or unlikely to be competitive. This post will be updated continuously through election day.

Competitive and open seat races:

Alabama
Rating: Likely Republican hold
Republican: Congressman Barry Moore (Tommy Tuberville incumbent retiring)
Democrat: Perennial candidate Everett Wess
Overview (5/18/25): Tommy Tuberville isn't just the stupidest Senator, he's possibly the stupidest person alive. This race will not be competitive unless Republicans nominate pedophile Roy Moore again.
(4/19/26): Someday a Democratic will win something in Alabama. But not in 2026.
(8/24/26) Democrats have declined to even try. Someday...

Alaska
Rating: Leans Democratic pickup
Republican: Dan Sullivan incumbent
Democrat: Former congresswoman Mary Peltola
Overview (5/18/25): Alaska's ranked-choice voting system narrowly survived a challenge in the 2024 election. In theory, ranked-choice give Democrats a shot in any statewide race in Alaska in the same manner as Democrat Mary Peltola scored an unlikely win there in 2022. If only one Democrat enters the race, and multiple Republicans do, some Republican voters are likely to vote for the Democrat rather than another Republican as their "second choice". But more likely is an easy win for Sullivan in this race.
(4/19/26): Polls suggest Peltola is winning this race. I like her chances.
(8/24/26): Jungle primary results: Peltola 48.1%, Sullivan 42.7%. The two of them and the 3rd and 4th place candidates move on to the November ballot. I am very happy with the primary results - all indications are Peltola will win with room to spare.

Florida 2026 Special
Rating: Likely Republican hold
Republican: Ashley Moody (appointed incumbent)
Democrat: State Representative Angie Nixon Former
Overview (5/18/25): Incumbent Marco Rubio left this seat to join the Trump cabinet and Ashley Moody was appointed for the last two years of Rubio's term. She is running in 2028 for a full term. The chances of a Democrat winning in Florida any time soon are negligible.
(4/19/26): Polls suggest this race is within the margin of error. Of course that always seems to be the case in Florida, then the Democrat gets crushed. This could be the sleeper race of the year.
(8/24/26) Presumptive democratic nominee Alex Vindman raised $16 million and lost the primary to lefty candidate Angie Nixon, a virtual unknown who raised almost no money at all. Well, that just goes to show that winning statewide in Florida has become a fool's errand for Democrats. We might as well nominate the democratic socialist candidate. As least she'll get some people excited before she goes on to lose by double-digits.

Georgia
Rating: Likely Democratic hold
Democrat: Jon Ossoff (incumbent)
Republican: Congressman Mike Collins
Overview (5/18/25): Georgia is a reddish-purple state, but Ossoff has gotten lucky in that Republican Governor Brian Kemp has declined to run in this race.
(4/19/26): Ossoff is looking good while several Republicans tear each other to pieces in the GOP primary.
(8/24/26): Ossoff is leading by about 8% in the polls. The fact that this race is nowhere near competitive is a good sign for Democrats.

Illinois
Rating: Guaranteed Democratic hold
Democrat: Lt. Governor Juliana Stratton (incumbent Dick Durbin retiring)
Republican: Former Republican state Party Chairman Don Tracy
Overview (5/18/25): The Republicans looking at this race are all minor-leaguers. I'm not worried about this one.
(4/19/26): Stratton is a lock.

Iowa
Rating: Toss up
Republican: Congresswoman Ashley Hinson (incumbent Republican Joni Ernst retiring)
Democrat: State Representative Josh Turek
Overview (5/18/25): Republican Joni Ernst incumbent. I grew up in Iowa. It's unrecognizable to me now. No matter how disastrous Republicans policies are for the state, the GOP just keeps winning. There actually is some hope for the gubernatorial race in Iowa in 2026. But Iowans love them some Ernst for some reason.
(4/19/26): Ernst is out thank God. On the one hand, the polls show Republican Hinson with a slight edge. On the other hand, red-state Iowa seems somewhat tired of its incompetent Republican leadership. Over in the Iowa gubernatorial race, state Auditor and Democrat Rob Sand is polling a considerable lead over Republican Congressman Randy Feenstra. If Sand wins that race by 8 points, there might be enough coattails to carry Zach Wahls to victory in this Senate race.
(6/4/26) The biggest development here is actually in the gubernatorial race. Presumptive GOP nominee narrowly lost to "some guy" from Kansas, an anti-vaccine nut named Zach Lahn. If Democrat Rob Sand crushes Lahn at the top of ticket, Democrat John Turek will probably win this Senate race.
(8/24/26) Polls show Hinson leading by about 1%. Meanwhile, over in the gubernatorial race Democrat Rob Sand is leading crazy Kansas Republican Zach Lahn by about 5%. It's hard to believe that we could get a "split decision" on those two races, but it wouldn't surprise me. This race is too close to call, but if nothing changes I'll call it for Turek.

Kansas
Rating: Likely Republican hold
Republican: Roger Marshall (incumbent)
Democrat: Adam Hamilton, Methodist Minister
Overview (5/18/25): Quiz question: Who was George McGill? Answer: Mr. McGill was the last Democrat elected to the Senate from Kansas. That was in...get ready...1932!
(8/24/26): A recent poll shows Marshall winning this race by only 1%. Marshall is very, very likely to win. But it's fun to have this race on the competitive list.

Kentucky
Rating: Likely Republican hold
Republican: Congressman Andy Barr (incumbent Mitch McConnell retiring)
Democrat: Charles Booker
Overview (5/18/25): Popular Democratic Governor Andy Beshear is not running in this race, so there's about a 99% chance the Republican nominee will win.
(4/19/26): Andy Barr has the charisma of pond scum. Democrats should be running a competitive race here, but it ain't gonna happen.

Maine
Rating: Leans Democratic pickup
Republican: Susan Collins incumbent
Democrat: Former state Senator Troy Jackson
Overview (5/18/25): In one of the most frustrating races of all time, Democrats were very confident of beating Susan Collins in 2020. Polls showed Democratic nominee ahead by about 5%; she lost by 8.6%. This race will attract a lot of attention and money, but Collins is likely unbeatable.
(4/19/26): After getting off to a slow start, it looks like Democrat Graham Platner is going to defeat Governor Janet Mills in the primary. Polls show Platner leading incumbent Susan Collins comfortably. Of course we've been burned by that before. I'll probably end up predicting a Platner win then not being surprised when Collins holds on. Again.
(8/24/26) Jackson is ahead by around 3% in the polls. Nate Silver is currently given him a 70% likelihood of winning. 

Michigan
Rating: Leans Democratic hold
Democrat: Former Wayne County Health Director Abdul El-Sayed (incumbent Gary Peters retiring)
Republican: Congressman Mike Rogers
Overview (5/18/25): Democrats managed to elect Elaine Slotkin to the open Senate seat here despite Trump's narrow win in 2024. The blue team has the edge in this race, but a win is far from guaranteed.
(4/19/26): Polls show the race for the Democratic nomination to be very close. Same goes for the general election. But it's hard to be believe the Republicans could flip this seat this year.
(8/24/26): Certainly the weirdest phenomenon this year is out-of-nowhere, lefty Muslim candidate winning the Democratic primary. The blue team is lucky Mike Rogers is just not a good candidate. El-Sayed is ahead in the polls and Nate Silver gives him a 68% chance of winning.

Minnesota
Rating: Likely Democratic hold
Democrat: Congresswoman Angie Craig (likely) (incumbent Tina Smith retiring)
Republican: Journalist Michele Tafoya
Overview (5/18/25): I'm encouraged by the fact that the Democrats will probably have a top-tier candidate in this race while the Republicans will not.
(4/19/26): Thanks to the ICE invasion of Minnesota this year, the Republican party is toxic there.

Mississippi
Rating: Likely Republican hold
Republican: Cindy Hyde-Smith (incumbent)
Democrat: District Attorney Scott Colom
Overview (6/4/26): Do I think Democrat Scott Colom will win? No. But just the fact that Republicans have to make a serious effort this year to defend seats like Florida, Nebraska and Mississippi means they have fewer resources to spend on the close races in other states. 

Nebraska
Rating: Likely Republican hold
Republican: Pete Ricketts (incumbent)
Independent/Democrat: Retired Naval Officer Dan Osborn
Overview (5/18/25): In a state that just passed a constitutional amendment severely limiting abortion, I'm not sanguine about the Democratic party's chances, or about an independent candidacy threatening Ricketts.
(8/24/26): Though there are no recent polls, Dan Osborn is keeping this race close. Like Kansas, this race is another headache for Republicans when it should be a piece of cake.

New Hampshire
Rating: Leans Democratic hold
Democrat: Congressman Chris Pappas (incumbent Jean Shaheen retiring)
Republican: Former Senator John Sununu
Overview (5/18/25): Yet another Democratic retirement. Sigh. OK, well, Chris Pappas has the edge here over the second and third-tier Republicans looking at this race.
(4/19/26): Former Senator Sununu coming out of retirement to try to win back his old seat is a bit of a curve ball for Democrats. But I like Pappas' chances.

North Carolina
Rating: Likely Democratic pickup
Republican: Michael Watley (incumbent Thom Tillis retiring)
Democrat: Former Governor Roy Cooper
Overview: Democrats saw crushing disappointments in North Carolina in 2020, including losing a Senate race that every poll said they would win. The blue team starts the 2026 election cycle with some hope here, as Democrat Josh Stein just won the gubernatorial election by 15 points. Any hope of winning back the Senate goes through North Carolina.
(7/2/25): Tillis is out. If the Democrats have a good nominee, and the Republicans anything less than a near-perfect nominee, this race will lean blue.
(8/14/25): Cooper is in. I like his chances.
(4/19/26): This race will not be close.

Ohio:
Rating: Toss up
Republican: Jon Husted (incumbent)
Democrat: Former Senator Sherrod Brown
Overview (5/18/25): Republican Jon Husted was appointed to this seat. Appointed incumbents don't have a particularly good track record when it comes to winning a full term in the next election. Sherrod Brown had a kind of magic, winning three races in red-state Ohio before losing by 3 last year as Trump carried the state by 11 points. It will take a blue wave and then some for Brown to complete a come back.
(4/19/26): Nominating MAGA lunatic Vivek Ramaswamy for Governor will probably turn out to be a bad move for Ohio Republicans. I think Democrat Amy Acton is going to win that race. That means Democrats also have a good chance in this Senate race. The polls are close, but Brown is running a great campaign while Husted is being dragged down by a bribery scandal.
(6/4/26) A new Fox poll shows Brown leading by 8. If that's true in November, I'll be calling this race for Brown.

Oklahoma
Rating: Guaranteed Republican hold
Republican: Appointed incumbent David Hern (incumbent Markwayne Mullin retired)
Democrat: ?
Overview (5/18/25): Senator Markwayne Mullin's biggest accomplishment is trying to start a fistfight with the President of the Teamsters in a congressional hearing. Great job, Oklahoma.
(4/19/26): Mullin has quit the Senate to run DHS. Some other right-wing nut will win this race; I'm not going to bother writing any more about it.

South Carolina
Rating: Likely Republican hold
Republican: Appointed incumbent Darline Graham or Congressman Ralph Norman
Democrat: Doctor Annie Andrews
Overview (8/24/26): Suffice to say that I don't miss the last Senator Lindsey Graham. "National security is not my thing," says his sister Darline who was appointed to this seat. She'd rather talk about transgender athletes, though there are no transgender athletes in South Carolina. Democrat Annie Andrews is a fine candidate and this race could maybe, possibly be close by election day.

Texas
Rating: Toss up
Republican: State Attorney General Ken Paxton (defeated incumbent John Cornyn)
Democrat: State Representative James Talarico
Libertarian: Ted Brown
Overview: (5/1/25) Democrats will tell you they are playing the long game in Texas. A very, very long game. Population demographics keep changing in ways which would seem to favor Democrats, and Beto O'Rourke keeping registering new voters, yet the blue team just keeps getting stomped. And frankly, Democrats are getting tired of trying to get excited about statewide races in Texas (and Florida) only to lose every time. I would not even be writing about this race except for the fact that it looks like relatively-sane incumbent John Cornyn is going to lose a primary challenge to criminal nut-job Ken Paxton. In theory, this means Democrats have a chance. But come on, it's Texas.
(4/19/26): "Republicans are speeding toward doomsday scenario in Texas". That's the headline on Dailykos, and I happen to agree.
1. Republicans Cornyn and Paxton are locked in a bitter runoff.
2. Neither is raising a lot of money, and what they are raising they have to spend fighting each other.
3. Paxton seems to be the favorite to win the runoff, and "Most concerning of all is that, if Paxton were the nominee, a whopping 24% of Cornyn voters said they would be either very or somewhat likely to vote for Democratic candidate James Talarico."
(6/4/26) Polling shows Talarico with a small lead over Paxton. Libertarian Ted Brown may play the spoiler. He also ran for Senate in 2024, taking 2.4% of the vote.
(8/24/26) Nate Silver is showing Talarico 59% likely to win this race. Paxton is not raising any serious money. If nothing changes, I'll be calling this one for the blue team.

Races unlikely to become competitive:

Arkansas: Republican Tom Cotton incumbent. An age may unfold ere there is another competitive statewide race here.

Colorado: Democrat John Hickenlooper incumbent. Colorado is surrounded by seven very red states, but I expect no trouble in this race.

Delaware: Democrat Chris Coons incumbent. At a time when transgender people are hated in America, it was nice to see Delaware elect Sarah McBride to Congress. This seat is safely blue.

Idaho: Republican Jim Risch incumbent. I've been to Idaho, it's beautiful. Let's quit while we're ahead.

Louisiana: Republican Bill Cassidy incumbent defeated by Julia Letlow for the GOP nomination. Elections in Louisiana used to be interesting affairs with colorful candidates. Not any more.

Massachusetts: Ed Markey incumbent. Nothing to see here.

Montana: Republican Steve Daines incumbent. (5/18/25): Montana used to be a somewhat purple state. Not any more. 4/19/26: Five minutes before the filing deadline, Steve Daines dropped out and former US Attorney Kurt Alme jumped in. Whatever. Alme will win. While the Democratic party has shown signs of life in many red states this year, in Montana it has not.

New Jersey: Cory Booker incumbent. Trump got 46% in New Jersey, good grief. Nevertheless, I don't think Booker is in any trouble.

New Mexico: Ben Ray Luján incumbent. The New Mexico Republican party is pretty weak stuff. They didn't mount much of an offense in the 2024 Senate race there even though Trump made the race fairly close.

Oregon: Jeff Merkley incumbent. Merkley is probably running and thus will win another term.

Rhode Island: Jack Reed incumbent. Reed is running and will win another term.

South Dakota: Republican Mike Rounds incumbent. The Dakotas just keep moving to the right.

Tennessee: Republican Bill Hagerty incumbent. Outlook: The Democratic party doesn't even bother to try to field serious candidates in statewide races any more. They might as well go with the strategy of letting Hagerty run unopposed, hoping that reduced Republican turnout will help Democrats in other races.

Virginia: Democrat Mark Warner incumbent. Virginia's not all that blue, but I anticipate no trouble here. Trump trying to hurt Virginia's large federal worker population isn't doing the GOP any favors.

West Virginia: Republican Shelley Moore Capito incumbent. The Republican will win another term with about 70% of the vote.

Wyoming: Republican Cynthia Lummis incumbent. Republicans control the Wyoming state Senate 29 to 2 and state House 56 to 6. So yeah.

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