Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Sophie Park/Getty Images and Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images.
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Welcome to this weekend’s edition of the Surge, which wonders why there was no speculation about whether the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner attack was a conspiracy to secure more material for political newsletters. And now we’re not even writing it up!
What do we write up instead? Another American right was lost to the pen of Samuel Alito. Jim Comey spent a day at the beach, and you won’t believe what happened next. Trump is mad at Germany and so may remove American troops from there. (Don’t you usually keep troops around the people you don’t like?)
Let’s begin with a double dose of the sudden political developments in Lobster Country.
1.
Janet Mills
A shocking upset.
Last fall we described the Maine Democratic Senate primary between Gov. Janet Mills and oysterman Graham Platner as the “marquee” and “blockbuster” Democratic primary of the cycle. We do stand by that! We did, however, expect the race to at least last until primary day. Instead, Mills dropped out this week, citing a lack of “financial resources” needed to keep the campaign going. Were the race close, maybe those resources could’ve materialized. It never was, though, with Platner leading her roughly 2-to-1 in public polling ahead of the June primary. Her more recent attack ads against Platner’s poor choice of tattoos and history of dumb comments on Reddit had gone nowhere, just as they made no dent in his support last fall when stories about them were first published.
This is unheard of in recent Senate Democratic races. Typically, in competitive seats where Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer personally recruits a candidate and lines up party resources behind that candidate, Democratic party voters—innately anxious about blowing a winnable race—fall in line. But Mills found herself on the losing end of every post-2024 trend in Democratic Party politics: Too old, too establishment, too nice to Sen. Susan Collins, too uncombative—and too close to Schumer, whose numbers among Democrats have tanked. She may have known it might go this way, having had to be dragged into the race by Schumer in the first place. What a flop.
2.
Graham Platner
Now, the real test.
The great news for Platner is that he won a Democratic Senate primary against the governor and the national party a month before the primary was even going to take place. What a sensational feeling! The bad news is that he now needs to defeat Susan Collins—the literal Susan Collins—in order to take a seat that Democrats sorely need if they want any hope of taking back the Senate and restraining an imperial president. Collins has not lost an election since the 1994 governor’s race. Her mystique of invincibility accomplished legendary status in 2020 when, after not leading in a single public poll all cycle, she cruised to victory by 9 points in a state that Trump lost by 9 points.
The long-standing Surge position on Collins is that we’ll believe she can lose only when it happens. We’re clinging to that belief but will concede that it may be irrational. This isn’t 2014, when Collins won amid a Republican wave, or 2020, when Collins’ reelection coincided with a close presidential election that drove turnout among lower-propensity GOP voters. If there’s going to be a wave this year, it will be blue, and MAGA voters may be less inclined to turn out if Susan Collins is the main course on the ballot. Once again, the polls consistently show Collins losing in a head-to-head matchup against Platner, and Platner’s biggest vulnerability—a history of dumb comments and body art—have been pretty well aired already. Maybe it’s time to believe the polls? (DON’T BELIEVE THEM, THEY LIE.)
3.
Samuel Alito
Welcome to gerrymandering hell.
A lot of people spilled a lot of blood for the Voting Rights Act, one of the most important pieces of legislation ever passed, only to see it get torn apart, brick by brick, by a handful of justices who think anti-racism measures now mostly discriminate against whites. In a 6–3 opinion this week, the Supreme Court took its latest whack at the VRA by eliminating protections for predominantly minority districts. Alito’s argument is that it’s not racist for Republicans to break up predominantly Black districts; they only want to do it because Black voters mostly vote Democrat, and this Supreme Court has no qualms with partisan gerrymander. Alito, in particularly seems to adore partisan gerrymandering.
And that’s just what he’s going to get. Republicans across the South have the opportunity and the desire to gerrymander away a dozen or so seats mostly held by Black Democrats, although they won’t be able to get most of it done this late in the 2026 cycle. By 2028, though, they will, and it will set off another wave of counter-gerrymandering by Democrats in states like Colorado, Washington, New York, Illinois, and wherever else Democrats can find the numbers. The net result will be a catastrophe for American representative democracy, even if it nets out, and finding a way to achieve a national gerrymandering ban ought to be the highest of legislative priorities now.
4.
James Comey
Playing on the beach, are we? Book ’em.
The Justice Department successfully got together some of the fellas (a grand jury) in North Carolina to indict former FBI Director James Comey, again, this time for posting a photo of seashells on the seashore. Really. In the May 15, 2025, Instagram post, Comey shared a photo of seashells spelling out “86 47” with the caption “Cool shell formation on my walk.” According to the indictment, by posting this, Comey “did knowingly and willfully make a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States.” But “86” is slang originating from bars and restaurants around getting rid of or nixing something, such as the 47th president, and wanting to get rid of Donald Trump as president is a common feeling held by a great many Americans who are not making murder threats. So what do you even say about this? If you were on the grand jury, can you blink twice if you were under duress? It’s hard to picture a world where this makes it to trial; once it’s dismissed, maybe they can try to get Comey for jaywalking, but all terrorist-like.
Why did this happen? Pam Bondi was fired as attorney general after not prosecuting Trump’s enemies well enough, and acting AG Todd Blanche wants the gig permanently, so here we are. Also, FBI Director Kash Patel needs to show something if he wants to keep his job, so you bet your bottom dollar he was at the press conference following the indictment. Here’s what he had to say: “This has been a case that’s been investigated over the past nine, 10, 11 months. These cases take time. Our investigators work methodically.” It took nearly a year and the best team of G-men Uncle Sam’s got to look at a picture of seashells, but they finally nabbed the SOB. Boys, treat yourselves tonight.
5.
Brendan Carr
Another round of the Jimmy Kimmel wars.
Where were you last fall when Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr pressured Disney to suspend late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel after a joke? Now that you mention it, we’d forgotten about it too … until this week, when Carr returned to and escalated the feud. Kimmel had told a joke last week about how Melania Trump had “a glow like an expectant widow.” While quite obviously a joke about the couple’s age disparity, Melania tweeted that this was “hateful and violent rhetoric” for which ABC should punish him.
Her husband concurred.
The following day, the FCC announced that it would conduct an early review of ABC’s broadcast licenses. That means it would both continue investigating Disney’s DEI practices, as Carr said the FCC had already been doing, and look into whether the network “has been meeting its public interest obligations more broadly.” Disney and ABC, so far, have not buckled; the suspension of Kimmel last fall, after all, prompted a significant backlash against the company. This time, hopefully they have a little more faith in their lawyers, because allowing any president and first lady to get TV shows that make fun of them canceled would be, you know, antithetical to the entirety of the American experiment.
6.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
A 2028 Democratic dividing line appears.
A wave of Democrats in recent months, including some of those considering 2028 presidential bids, have introduced proposals that eliminate income taxes on households making around $100,000 and less. Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen has introduced such a bill with numerous co-sponsors in the Senate; New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker has floated an exemption somewhat lower. In California, gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter has proposed a similar plan with state income taxes. Slate’s Ian Prasad Philbrick wrote a fine piece about how this latest fad is dicey on both policy and political grounds. We’d agree, but with meaner words. With the structural deficit at historically shocking levels—more and more because of interest paid on the debt—and interest rates still high, further zapping the tax base for a sugar boost that voters won’t feel is both reckless and depressingly void of imagination.
But it’s not just us! New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez fired back at these plans directly this week. “When you actually look at the totality of what’s being put forward, we are seeing a total gutting of a resource base,” she told NOTUS. “If people want to choose between whether they want guaranteed health care or a 5% tax rebate, people are going to want guaranteed health care.” She further told NBC News that “this race to try to see who can be exempt from participating in society is not a conversation that I’m interested in” and that “the discourse around ‘Everyone, let’s all be like billionaires and opt out of our taxes,’ I don’t find it an inspiring message.” We don’t know if AOC will run for president in 2028, and she probably doesn’t know either. But this shows a useful advantage she could bring to the table. She has enough credibility among progressives to be a responsible voice who wouldn’t be swept downstream by the latest, bad trend.
7.
Friedrich Merz
A top European leader finally willing to roast Trump.
Trump’s Vengeance Tour Is Opening the Door to Something More Terrible
The German chancellor was talking some real shit about Trump’s war on Iran this week. “The Americans clearly have no strategy, and the problem with conflicts like this is always that you don’t just have to go in; you also have to get out again,” Merz said Tuesday. Hmm. “The Iranians are obviously negotiating very skillfully—or, rather, very skillfully not negotiating and letting the Americans travel to Islamabad only to leave again without any results.” Hmm. “An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian state leadership.” HMMMMM!
We’re used to seeing European leaders try to maintain polite, diplomatic language regarding Trump, even when disagreeing, so he doesn’t pull the plug on NATO and trans-Atlanticism generally. And here goes this guy, this Merz, straight-up saying Iran is “humiliating” Trump. Trump reacted about how you’d expect, trashing Merz’s leadership and the leadership of Germany in general. He then threatened a reduction of the United States’ nearly 40,000 troops in Germany, as he has also threatened the American presence in Spain and Italy after its leaders also refused to help him in his war. “Humiliated”! Ouch.