Hello and welcome to Sunday, July 12, 2026. My calendar says it’s National Pecan Pie Day, National Different Colored Eyes Day, National Eat Your Jell-O Day, Paper Bag Day, Etch A Sketch Day, Simplicity Day, Malala Day, and International Town Criers Day — so go bake a pie, embrace your mismatched irises, wobble down some Jell-O, doodle on an Etch A Sketch, and keep it simple, declutter your desk, and maybe read up on Malala Yousafzai while you’re at it, because apparently today wants you to be both nostalgic and enlightened at the same time.
Today in History:
1543: King Henry VIII marries his sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr.
1812: Henry David Thoreau, essayist and naturalist, is born.
1806: The Confederation of the Rhine is established in Germany under Napoleon’s influence.
1862: The U.S. Army establishes the Medal of Honor, its highest award for battlefield bravery.
1904: Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet and political activist, is born.
1933: Buckminster Fuller’s three-wheeled Dymaxion car makes its debut in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
1962: The Rolling Stones give their first public performance at the Marquee Club in London.
1967: Race riots break out in Newark, N.J., following the arrest and beating of a black cab driver.
1975: São Tomé and Príncipe gains independence from Portugal.
1979: Disco Demolition Night erupts at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, ending in a forfeited game and a symbolic death blow to disco’s mainstream reign.
1984: Walter Mondale selects Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate, making her the first woman nominated for vice president by a major U.S. party.
Birthdays Today Include: Buckminster Fuller inventor and architect behind the geodesic dome and the Dymaxion car; Kristi Yamaguchi figure skater; Malala Yousafzai activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her advocacy of girls’ education; Michelle Rodriguez actress (Girlfight, The Fast and the Furious, Resident Evil); Cheyenne Jackson actor with Broadway credits (Xanadu, All Shook Up) and TV shows (30 Rock, American Horror Story); Shai Gilgeous-Alexander NBA guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder and reigning league MVP; Kimberly Perry frontwoman of country trio The Band Perry with songs (“If I Die Young”, “Better Dig Two”); Kyrsten Sinema former senator from Arizona.
If today’s your birthday too, happy birthday!
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Before I begin, I screwed up yesterday. I attributed John Adams’ vice presidency to his son, John Quincy Adams. Mea culpa. Wouldn’t it have been simpler to simply name him “Junior” and let it go at that? Anyway:
I wrote the other day regarding conspiracy theories. I will today as well, with a focus on last night’s news.
So, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is gone. I note with interest that he just celebrated a birthday the other day.
I’ve carried problems with Graham for years, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise now that he’s dead. I still laugh remembering Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg calling him one of the “Women of the Senate” during a speech at Allegheny College back in April 2017. His endorsement of Jeb Bush never sat right with me. And more recently, he racked up serious mileage in the RINO club — his balking at Pete Hegseth’s nomination for Secretary of Defense put him in the same tent as the usual suspects: Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, John Curtis, Mitch McConnell, and John Thune. None of that improved my opinion of him one bit. It would perhaps be most accurate to say he was less than predictable.
I’ll set those long-documented misgivings aside for a moment, though, because my usually suspicious nature cranked itself to eleven, when I heard the news about Graham before I even got out of bed this morning. (Alexa plays the top-of-the-hour news from Fox when I tell her I’m awake.)
I’ll fully admit my suspicions run on speculation. At this point, that’s all they can run on. With that admission sitting right out in the open, I’ll say it anyway: the timing on this one has my senses tingling harder than usual. But let’s ride this logic train together and see where it drops us off, shall we?
Chatter’s circulating in some of the channels I monitor about the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps calling for Graham’s assassination. The chatter, in most cases, seems to find the claims to be false. I am skeptical right along with them. The IRGC, in its current condition — broken and bleeding is probably the kindest description available — doesn’t strike me at the moment as an organization with the operational capacity to turn a wish list into a body count. They want plenty of things. Wanting and having are different animals. Based on what we have now, it seems safe to ignore Iran’s posturing.
Here’s what I can’t un-see, though: the Senate sits at a razor-thin 53-47 split favoring the GOP right now. And a faction willing to take shots at both a presidential candidate and a sitting president isn’t the type to suddenly develop restraint over a mere senator if it serves their goals. That points to a greater chance of any conspiracy being a totally domestic one, particularly when one looks at the rest of what’s gone down in the last month or so.
Layer Graham’s sudden death on top of what’s happening with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Even granting that McConnell’s still alive (itself a proposition I find increasingly shaky; nobody’s seen him in over a month), my read is he’s already cast his last Senate vote, regardless of how his fight for life plays out.
Kentucky’s legislature stripped Governor Andy Beshear of the power to appoint a same-party replacement, so that seat goes to a special election instead, possibly timed alongside the midterms. That’s a smaller headache for the GOP than losing the appointment power outright would’ve been, but it still means actually winning a race—a race that gets considerably harder to win if voters conclude McConnell’s health/life/death has been managed for political convenience rather than reported honestly.
Then there’s Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). Back in 2020, she pulled roughly 51% of the vote against Democrat Sara Gideon’s 42%—a win she notched with Trump out of the White House, in a race a lot of people treated as a lukewarm backstop against the incoming Biden administration. How she performs this time is anyone’s guess, now that Graham Platner’s out and Trump’s very much still in office, and nobody yet knows who Democrats will run in Platner’s place. That’s the wildest card in the whole hand.
So, tally it up. What do we actually have?
Collins looks like the likely winner in Maine, at least as of today. Graham’s seat will almost certainly get temporarily filled by a Republican appointee. Kentucky’s been a lock for the GOP since the 2000 election. Barring some revelation that McConnell’s condition has been gamed for political timing, that isn’t changing either. So it seems likely that a Republican will fill McConnell’s seat.
This is why I always run these things through the logic tree. Call it a suspicious and skeptical nature if you like; I won’t deny it. But having done so in this case, I’m somewhat less concerned about all this than I would be if I hadn’t thought it through. It seemed logical to bring you along for the ride.
Sorry if you were hoping for a dramatic story: none of these events, on their own, threaten the GOP’s grip on the Senate any more than the situation already did a month ago. Which, of itself, would seem to cast doubt on any conspiracy.
Relax.
That’s not to say I totally discount an active conspiracy in all this. It’s possible. But at the moment, the trajectories of these events would seem to speak against it.
Thought of the Day: The absence of evidence for a conspiracy is not, itself, evidence of nothing happening—it’s just evidence you haven’t found the right thread yet. Pull carefully.
VIP members: What are your thoughts on these topics? Let’s hear from you. While you’re at it, hit the heart, will you? Thanks, it really helps.
Have a peaceful Sunday, Gang. I’ll see you here tomorrow.
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