Trumpolitics: The shadow of Donald Trump hangs over Republican politics. Candidates who did best had his endorsement, modeled his politics, and most importantly, espoused the big lie that Trump won the 2020 election.

  Doug Mastriano, a Republican candidate who’s Trumpier than Trump, won his party’s nomination to become governor of Pennsylvania, a critical event not just for his state, but the whole country. If he wins in November, he wins the power to appoint the Pennsylvania secretary of state who could exercise enormous power in the 2024 presidential election.

  Mastriano is a retired Army colonel, two-term state senator, and Bible citing denier that Joe Biden won the 2020 election. He was present at the January 6^th insurrection. During the pandemic he campaigned against mandatory mask wearing and vaccines. He says God intended the US to be a Christian country. The 58-year-old is so extreme he could drive some moderate Republicans to vote Democratic in November.

  In the fall, Mastriano will face off against Democrat John Fetterman, the hoodie-wearing Lt. Governor who had a stroke last week and won his party’s nomination from a hospital bed.

   In the Pennsylvania race for US Senate, Trump’s candidate, the television doctor Mehmet Oz, is in a dead heat with Dave McCormick. Kathy Barnett, the extremist who was surging, failed to deliver.

  In North Carolina, Rep. Ted Budd, also a carrier of the big election lie and endorsed by Trump, won the Republican nomination for US Senate.

  Also in North Carolina, Chuck Edwards edged out the troubled incumbent Madison Cawthorn for his congressional seat. 

The War Room: The bloody defense of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol has ended after the army ordered its fighters holed up inside a giant steel production plant to give up. Russia says nearly 1,000 Ukrainian fighters have surrendered.

  While there’s talk of trading captured Ukrainians for Russians prisoners, some Russian officials have called for to putting the surrendered soldiers on trial as terrorists. The Russians have said the steel plant soldiers are “surrendered militants” and that they will be interrogated.

  The end of the fight for the destroyed city of Mariupol gives Russian President Vladimir Putin control over a swath of southern Ukraine stretching from the Russian border to Crimea, a “land bridge” to the Black Sea. The next step might be to claim it as part of Russia. Russians troops are already digging into defensive positions, installing proxy governments, and starting to “Russify” the population.

  Toward the center of Ukraine, as many as 10,000 citizens have returned to the city of Bucha, one of the spots hit hardest early in the war and the site of multiple atrocities wrought by Russian invaders. The NY Times reports that streets are being swept of debris and repaired, while internet, telephone, water, and power services are getting restored while the population returns to normal life.

Blunt Talk: In a surprisingly blunt assessment of the Ukraine situation during an interview on the Russian equivalent of 60 Minutes, retired Soviet colonel Mikhail Khodaryonok said of Russia’s current position in the world, “We are in full geopolitical isolation,” adding that, “However much we would hate to admit this, virtually the entire world is against us.”

  As for the Ukrainian army fighting Russian conscripts, he said, “A desire to protect one’s homeland, in the sense that it exists in Ukraine, it really does exist there, they intend to fight to the last man. Ultimately victory on the battlefield is determined by a high level of morale among personnel, which sheds blood for the ideas which it’s prepared to fight for.”

  Khodaryonok  said, “Sooner or later the reality of history will hit you so hard that you’ll regret it.”

The Shooting Gallery: President Biden was in Buffalo yesterday, where he spoke about each of the dead in Saturday’s mass shooting. Biden called on Americans to “take on the haters” and “reject the lie” of racial replacement that motivated the shooter.

  Payton  Gendron, 18, who identified himself as a white supremacist, is accused of targeting black shoppers. The adherents of “replacement theory” hold that elite liberals are trying to replace the political power of white Americans with immigrants and people of color. 

  Biden called it “A hate that through the media and politics, the internet, has radicalized angry, alienated, lost and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced.”

  It’s been reported this morning that 30 minutes before he attacked, Gendron opened an internet chat room inviting a small group of people to see his plan.

  He also wrote on the internet back in April that, “I literally can’t wait any longer, my parents know something is wrong.” Gendron wrote in February; “My parents know little about me. They don’t know about the hundreds of silver ounces I’ve had, or the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent on ammo. They don’t know that I spent close to $1000 on random military shit. They don’t even know I own a shotgun or an AR-15, or illegal magazines.”

  Buffalo is far from an isolated incident. In Dallas,  a suspect was arrested in the shooting that wounded three women in a hair salon last week in the city’s Koreatown. That shooting may be linked to other shootings in the Asian neighborhood that authorities have described as hate crimes.

The Spin Rack: The FDA has authorized the Pfizer Covid booster for children 5-11. — The Michigan Court of Claims granted a preliminary injunction that stops enforcement of the state’s 1931 abortion ban if Roe v. Wade is overturned by the Supreme Court. — The Justice Department asked the House committee investigating the January 6^th insurrection for transcripts of interviews conducted in private, including some with associates of former President Donald Trump, The NY Times reports.

Cover Granny: Seventy-four-year-old Maye Musk, mother of Tesla founder and billionaire Elon Musk, is on the cover of one of the editions of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. It’s not a bikini.

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