Community leaders in Ohio are calling for police to bring charges against a white man seen slapping a black man and using racial slurs right before last month’s viral melee in Cincinnati.
“The video speaks for itself,” Ohio State Rep. Cecil Thomas said at an event Tuesday, WLWT reported.
“The method by which this situation has been handled raises serious questions as to whether there is bias involved in this investigation. It also brings into question the lack of integrity and whether there is something else to hide,” the lawmaker said.
Members of the community held a discussion over the city’s handling of the brawl.Jay Black
The portion of the video referenced by Thomas shows a white man slapping a black man in the face, sparking a chaotic scene.
Thomas is among several black politicians and religious officials in the Buckeye State calling for equal justice following the arrest of six black people for their involvement in the violent pandemonium last month that sent two people to the hospital.
Footage of the assault shows the white man allegedly hitting a black man in the face.Jay Black
In a separate video from before the brawl obtained by Fox News Digital, a white man is seen repeatedly using racial slurs directed at the group which would become violent.
The six people charged in that case are each facing aggravated riot and felonious assault charges.
“Our community is restless and they’re watching,” Pastor Leslie Jones said Tuesday.
If convicted, the suspects each face the possibility of up to 29 years in prison.X
“I agree with everyone’s frustration. I have been clear about my expectations that, in order to preserve both public safety and fairness, anyone involved in perpetrating the violence should be charged,” the mayor said in a statement to WLWT.
“Until all participants are held accountable, justice hasn’t been fully served. And I’m grateful that community leaders and residents are continuing to come together to make their expectations clear.”
The mayor further said that it was his “expectation” that additional charges will be filed “as soon as possible,” according to the statement.
Last week, Patrick Rosemund, 38, Jermaine Matthews, 39, Montianez Merriweather, 34, Dekyra Vernon 24, Dominique Kittle, 27, and Aisha Devaughn, 25, were hit with charges for their part in the brawl that left a Cincinnati mom brutalized.
“I don’t even know how I’m not dead,” the woman identified only as Holly said last week on C-Span’s “The Benny Show.”
The first 2026 midterm primaries are more than 200 days away, with Arkansas, North Carolina, and Texas kicking off inter-party preliminaries on March 3, 2026, but many congressional races are taking shape as incumbents and challengers launch campaigns.
Among the most closely-watched contests will be for supremacy in the House of Representatives, where Republicans now hold a 220-213 advantage.
Democrats believe they can flip the chamber while the GOP is gunning to increase its majority in the Nov. 3, 2026 election.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has identified 35 Republican-held congressional districts “in play,” while the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has a “target list” of 26 “vulnerable” incumbent Democrats it believes GOP challengers can unseat.
Among these races are 13 House seats Democrats won in districts President Donald Trump captured, and three Republicans won in districts then-Vice President Kamala Harris secured in November 2024.
These 61 House contests include anticipated tight tussles in eight of California’s 52 House seats, with the NRCC putting the bull’s eye on five incumbent Democrats, and the DCCC spotlighting three Republicans. Democrats now have a 43–9 bulge in California’s congressional delegation.
Other states with multiple House races that could be 2026 dogfights include five each in Florida and Ohio. In both states, the NRCC believes it can knock off two incumbent Democrats, and the DCCC is targeting three sitting Republicans.
Four New York House incumbents are in hot seats with the NRCC confident it can defeat three sitting Democrats—two on Long Island—and the DCCC targeting Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) in the lower Hudson Valley.
Once again, the NRCC will attempt to win at least one of three Democrat-held Nevada seats in the Las Vegas area.
The sitting president’s party has lost House seats in every midterm but two since 1950.
Of course, with Texas lawmakers set to redraw the state’s 38 congressional districts and California legislators threatening to do the same, the playing field could be significantly altered by the end of thr year. Stay tuned.
Here are 16 prospective 2026 midterm House races listed chronologically by primary date that could determine which party controls the chamber when the 120th Congress convenes in January 2027.
1. North Carolina Congressional District 1
Two-term Rep. Donald Davis (D-N.C.), defeated Republican challenger Laurie Buckhout by 1.7 percentage points—6,300 votes—in the 2024 North Carolina Congressional District 1 (CD 1) race.
Davis might be hard-pressed to retain his seat in a district that was once a Democratic stronghold but, following post-2020 Census redistricting, is now rated as a “toss up” by The Cook Political Report.
To win a third term, Davis must fend off Rocky Mount Mayor Sandy Roberson, who enters the race with $2.2 million in his war chest, according to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), a more than $1 million edge over the incumbent.
Roberson, who owns home-care, hospice, and nursing home operations, ran for the seat in 2022 but lost the GOP primary by 2,000 votes.
North Carolina CD 1 is among the 13 congressional districts where voters selected Trump in 2024, but sent a Democrat to the House. The president won the district by 3.1 percentage points, meaning Davis outperformed Harris by 4.8 percentage points while squeezing past Buckhout.
While The Cook Political Report rates the race as a “toss-up” district, Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball gives it a “Lean Democratic” classification.
As of Aug. 1, neither Davis nor Roberson face challengers for the March 3, 2026, primary.
2. Texas Congressional District 34
At least five Republican challengers will vie in the March 3, 2026, GOP primary for the party nod to take on two-term Rep. Vicente Gonzalez Jr. (D-Texas) in Texas Congressional District 34.
This is a seat Gonzalez retained by fewer than 5,000 votes—2.6 percentage points—in 2024, despite Trump winning by 4.4 percentage points.
The 2024 election marked the second time Gonzalez edged out former Rep. Maya Flores (R-Texas), after ousting her in 2022 from the seat in the Gulf Coast district, which stretches from Brownsville to Corpus Christi. It was the tightest margin of victory in Texas’s 38 congressional district elections in 2024.
Gonzalez will first need to brush aside a primary challenge from Brownsville policy researcher and rock musician Etienne Rosas before facing the winner of the GOP primary.
As of Aug. 1, at least five Republicans have declared candidacy with the Dec. 8 primary filing deadline still months away.
They are: Keith Allen, retail manager, ordained minister, and podcast host; Joshua Cortez, former senior advisor to Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-Texas); Eric Flores, Army infantry veteran and former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas; Mauro Garza, teacher and entrepreneur; and Bam Morales, Army veteran and law enforcement officer.
As of June 30, Gonzalez’s campaign had more than $932,000 in its FEC campaign kitty while challengers had amassed nominal contributions.
The Cook Political Report and Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball rate Texas’s CD 34 as a “toss-up” district, while Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales gives it a “Tilt Democratic” rating.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) has been on the GOP’s target list since she succeeded 14-term Rep. Thomas Ashley (D-Ohio) in 1982. In 2026, Republicans feel confident they can flip Ohio’s Congressional District 9 for the first time since 1930.
The state’s longest-serving member of Congress is seeking an 18th term in the northwest Ohio district that Trump won by 7 percent and Kaptur retained by 1,382 votes—0.7 percentage points—over business owner, realtor, and former state representative Derrick Merrin.
Merrin is among four Republicans who will contend for the party berth to challenge Kaptur in the May 5, 2026, GOP primary. The others include Alea Nadeem, an Air National Guard officer who has been a national security policy advisor at the Pentagon and the National Security Council; attorney and Ohio state Rep. Josh Williams; and Air Force veteran Wayne Kinsel.
Kaptur, as of Aug. 1, does not have a primary opponent. She does, however, have a big fundraising advantage with nearly $950,000 in her FEC campaign fund. By contrast, of her opponents, only Nadeem has reported contributions—less than $86,000—as of June 30.
The Cook Political Report and Crystal Ball rate Ohio’s CD 9 as a “toss-up.”
Newcomer Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R-Pa.) in 2024 knocked out three-term incumbent Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.) by 4,062 votes—1 percentage point—in their Pennsylvania Congressional District 7 race.
Wild, as of Aug. 1, is not among the three Democrats who have declared their candidacies for Pennsylvania’s May 19 primary for a space on the ballot opposite Mackenzie in 2026. The state candidate-filing deadline for the party preliminaries is March 10, 2026.
The confirmed three are: Marine veteran and former federal prosecutor Ryan Crosswell, Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure, and nonprofit executive Carol Obando-Derstine.
Mackenzie, who does not have a Republican primary challenger as yet, served on the Pennsylvania Economic Development Financing Authority before defeating Wild in CD 7, which includes all of Carbon, Lehigh, and Northampton counties in northeast Pennsylvania.
Mackenzie’s campaign had $1.2 million in its FEC war chest as of June 30, significantly more in contributions than any of his potential opponents.
The Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, and Crystal Ball all rate Pennsylvania’s CD 7 as a “toss-up” district.
This key Omaha-area House seat is wide open after five-term Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) announced on June 30 he is not seeking reelection in 2026, and Democrats believe they can win it.
Nebraska Congressional District 2 is one of three districts in the country that Harris won in 2024 while also electing a Republican to the House. Bacon, a retired Air Force general, defeated Democrat Tony Vargas by less than 2 percentage points in their rematch from 2022.
With Bacon out of the picture, four Democrats and one Republican have launched campaigns for the seat, which The Cook Political Report and Crystal Ball rate as “Lean Democratic,” and Inside Elections calls a “toss up.”
As of Aug. 1, state Sen. Brett Lindstrom and Omaha City Councilman Brinker Harding have thrown their hats in the ring for the GOP primary.
Vying for the Democratic nod are Kishla Askins, a former deputy assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs under President Joe Biden; state Sen. John Cavanaugh; Denise Powell, small business owner and former corporate executive; and Evangelos Argyrakis, immigration attorney.
The Nebraska State Legislature has not yet set a date for the primary, but it is typically in May.
6. California Congressional District 13
Although Trump lost California by 20 percentage points in 2024, he won Congressional District 13 by 5.4 percentage points.
Newcomer Rep. Adam Gray (D-Calif.) unseated one-term Rep. John Duarte (R-Calif.) by 187 votes in their 2024 slugfest—the closest House race nationwide—and Republicans will likely spend big to get the Central Valley seat back.
As of Aug. 1, Gray doesn’t face a party rival in the June 2 primary, but Republicans Ceres Mayor Javier Lopez and business owner Vin Kruttiventi will face off for the GOP nod.
Gray is one of 13 Democrats holding seats in crossover districts the president won.
The district garners a “toss-up” rating from the Cook Political Report, Crystal Ball, and Inside Elections.
7. New Jersey Congressional District 7
Two-term Rep. Thomas Kean Jr. (R-N.J.) does not, as of Aug. 1, have any opponents in New Jersey’s June 2 primary, but at least eight Democrats will battle for a Congressional District 7 ballot berth to dislodge him in November 2026.
The district, one of the most affluent in the nation, includes Hunterdon and Warren counties, and parts of Morris, Somerset, Sussex, and Union counties in north-central New Jersey.
Kean was reelected in 2024 by 5.4 percentage points over Democrat Susan Altman after wresting the formerly blue stronghold from two-term Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) by 2.8 percentage points—less than 9,000 votes—in 2020. It was a rematch from their 2020 race, which Malinowski won by 1.2 percentage points.
The son of former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean Sr., Kean is a former state lawmaker who worked in the Environmental Protection Agency during the George H.W. Bush administration.
The candidate-filing deadline for the primary is March 23, 2026, but the Democratic inter-party preliminary is already crowded.
Among contenders are Rebecca Bennett, criminal justice professor; Beth Ellen Adubato, former Navy helicopter pilot, Air National Guard officer, and health care executive; Valentina “Vale” Mendoza, an attorney; Michael Roth, an official in the Biden administration’s Small Business Administration; Felipe Santos, an entrepreneur; Tina Shah, a physician; Brian Varela, a marketing agency owner; and Gregory Vartan, Common Council of Summit councilmember.
Crystal Ball rates New Jersey CD 7 a “toss-up,” while The Cook Political Report classifies it as “Lean Republican,” and Inside Elections as “Tilt Republican.”
8. New Mexico Congressional District 2
Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.) edged out incumbent Rep. Yvette Herrell (R-N.M.) by 0.7 percentage points in 2022—the nation’s closest House race during that midterm election. He beat Herrell again by more than 4.2 percentage points in their 2024 rematch in New Mexico’s Congressional District 2.
As of Aug. 1, Vasquez does not face a challenger in the state’s June 2 primary, nor does Republican Eddy Aragon, although that could change by the Feb. 3 candidate-filing deadline.
The district, which spans southern New Mexico—including Las Cruces and the southern reaches of Albuquerque—is one of 13 districts Trump won in 2024 while a Democrat was elected to the House.
Vasquez, a former journalist, Hispano Chamber of Commerce de Las Cruces executive director, and field representative for Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), served on the Las Cruces City Council before challenging Herrell.
Aragon is CEO of Rock of Talk and a longtime Albuquerque radio broadcaster. As of Aug. 1, he had $3,000 in his FEC campaign fund compared to Vasquez’s $626,000.
The Cook Political Report rates New Mexico’s CD 2 as a “toss-up,” while Inside Elections gives it a “Tilt Democratic” classification, and Crystal Ball calls it a “Lean Democratic.”
9. Maine Congressional District 2
Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) is seeking a fifth term in Maine’s Congressional District 2, a district he won in 2024 by 0.6 percentage points—2,706 votes—and Trump won by almost 7 percent.
Next year, he’ll have to do that against former two-term Republican Gov. Paul LePage in the 27,326-square-mile district, the largest by area, east of the Mississippi River.
As of Aug. 1, neither face party rivals in the state’s June 9 primary, but that could change before the March 15 candidate-filing deadline.
Golden had $1 million in his FEC campaign fund as of June 30, while LePage had $527,781.
The Cook Political Report and Crystal Ball rate Maine’s CD 2 as a “toss-up,” while Inside Elections pegs it as “Tilt Democratic.”
10. Virginia Congressional District 2
Rep. Jennifer Kiggans (R-Va.) has survived two races in Virginia’s Congressional District 2, unseating incumbent Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) in 2022 by 10,000 votes—3.4 percentage points—and then fending off Democrat Missy Cotter Smasal by 3.8 percentage points in 2024.
Another tussle awaits if she’s to three-peat in the tidewater district, which has a strong military, primarily Navy, constituency.
Kiggans, a former Navy helicopter pilot and an adult-geriatric nurse practitioner, faces no GOP challengers in the June 16 primary as of Aug. 1, but party rivals could emerge before the April 2 candidate-filing deadline.
Three Democrats have declared candidacies. They are U.S. Naval Academy graduate and fast-attack submarine veteran James Osyf; Navy veteran and entrepreneur John ‘Burk’ Stringfellow; and data center project manager Nicolaus Sleister.
Kiggans had nearly $1.5 million in her FEC kitty as of June 30. The Democratic candidates had either nominal contributions or had not reported yet.
Virginia’s CD 2 is rated a “toss-up” district by Inside Elections and Crystal Ball. The Cook Political Report calls it “Lean Republican.”
11. New York Congressional District 4
First-term Rep. Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.) defeated incumbent Rep. Anthony D‘Esposito (R-N.Y.) by 2.3 percentage points in their 2024 Congressional District 4 race. It was a rematch, and a reversal, of their 2022 race that D’Esposito won by 3.6 percentage points.
As of Aug. 1, Gillen, the former Hempstead Town supervisor, faces two Democrat rivals in the party’s June 23 primary: real estate professional and veteran Democrat campaign manager Gian Jones, and artist and stagehand Nicholas Sciretta.
Americord founder and CEO Martin Smithmyer is the only Republican seeking the party nod to take on Gillen, although more are likely to join the race before the April 2 candidate-filing deadline.
Gillen has more than $1 million in her FEC campaign bank. None of her challengers in the Long Island district had significant contributions as of June 30.
The Cook Political Report rates New York’s CD 4 as a “toss-up.” Inside Elections calls it “Tilt Democratic,” and Crystal Ball rates it as “Lean Democratic.”
12. Colorado Congressional District 8
Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Colo.) defeated incumbent Rep. Yadira Caraveo (D-Colo.) by 0.7 percentage points in 2022 in Colorado Congressional District 8 and again warded her off in 2024 by 1.2 percentage points.
Evans will face a similar close race in 2026 if he’s to return to Congress for a third term representing Colorado’s newest district, which traces I-25 north of Denver in Adams, Larimer, and Weld counties.
Nearly 40 percent of CD 8 voters are Hispanic, and Democrats have a 3 percent registration advantage, which is why at least seven Democrats have launched campaigns to win the June 30 primary to take on Evans in November 2026—including Caraveo, a pediatrician.
The other six are: Amie Baca-Oehlert, executive director of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association; State Rep. Shannon Bird; Marine combat veteran and finance associate Evan Munsing; state Rep. Manny Rutinel; software management consultant John Szemler; and Colorado state Treasurer Dave Young.
Evans, an Army combat veteran, farmer, and former police officer, as of Aug. 1 does not have a GOP primary challenger, although there’s time for rivals to declare before the March 17 candidate-filing deadline.
He had $1.5 million in his FEC campaign kitty as of June 30, far more than the Democrat campaigns, although Rutinel had more than $800,000 in contributions.
The Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, and Crystal Ball all rate Colorado’s CD 8 as a “toss-up” district.
When students in Jamie Rector’s Energy and Civilization course at the University of California–Berkeley came to him with the idea for a project on California’s abandoned oil wells, he was intrigued.
The state has more than 120,000 abandoned oil and gas wells, as well as 30,000 idle wells and 70,000 active wells. Many were drilled or dug in the late 1800s, clustered in areas such as downtown Los Angeles and near present-day Dodger Stadium, where the California oil boom began.
The concern among some is that these wells might be emitting methane or other hydrocarbons. Older ones are likely to have been improperly or shallowly sealed.
The federal government has spent $4.7 billion to plug and reclaim abandoned wells. California has plugged about 1,400 wells at a cost of $29.5 million since 1977, and now requires operators to eliminate idle wells or face increasing fees.
As they researched California’s abandoned oil wells, Rector’s students discovered an abundance of natural oil seeps located above the same fields—and came to a surprising conclusion. According to them, geologically driven, natural oil seeps are a major contributor to California’s greenhouse gas emissions. And drilling—long seen as the problem, not the answer—might be a panacea for emissions.
Natural seeps occur when liquid oil and gas leak to the Earth’s surface, both on land and under water. California sits on actively moving tectonic plates, which create fractured reservoirs and pathways for the oil to escape.
Waters off Southern California are rife with seeps, and oil and gas fields, including the Salt Lake field beneath the La Brea Tar Pits, and the Coal Oil Point field off the coast of Goleta, have some of the highest natural hydrocarbon seep rates in the world, emitting gases such as methane, as well as toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
But these geologically driven seeps, Rector said, have been largely unaccounted for in assessing how oil production fields contribute to California’s greenhouse gas emissions.
“There are hundreds of studies linking oil and gas fields to greenhouse gas emissions, to cancer rates, to climate justice, to groundwater pollution and everything else,” said Rector, a professor in the University of California–Berkeley’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. “And yet none of these studies ever considered the possibility that it wasn’t from equipment or production, but natural seeps above the oil fields.”
Reviewing existing literature, Rector’s team calculated that natural seeps, together with orphaned wells, produce 50 times more methane emissions than oil and gas equipment leaks in Southern California.
If seeps are driving emissions above oil fields, Rector said, then plugging abandoned wells may do little to help pollution.
In fact, he said, the only demonstrated way to reduce natural seep emissions is by depleting underlying reservoirs—that is, by drilling.
Pointing to studies showing that oil production has reduced and even eliminated seeps, he suggested that California’s current regulatory environment may be counterproductive.
“The crazy thing is, by stopping oil and gas production in California, after we’ve regulated and really gotten equipment emissions way down, we may be increasing seep emissions,” Rector said. “Because these seeps come up through the oil and gas fields, and the only way to stop it is by producing oil.”
Ira Leifer, a researcher in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California–Santa Barbara, said the argument is valid but that Rector’s analysis gets ahead of available data.
“The problem is that there is no statewide seep emissions estimate,” said Leifer, who studies marine seeps and oil field emissions. Arriving at a publishable estimate is “impossibly difficult,” he said.
Rector characterized the student project as a “skunkworks” effort without any funding, which he said he planned to submit for peer-review by August. Ideally, it will be followed by field research.
“We will have to go out and make measurements with the hypothesis that seeps are the principal cause rather than oil field equipment, and make measurements along traces of faults, above oil fields where faults intersect the surface,“ he said. ”That’s really the only way we’ll get to the bottom of this.”
Meanwhile, Leifer is working on his own forthcoming paper analyzing satellite data of methane anomalies. The strongest ones, he said, are associated with refining and other large infrastructure, and with natural faults that have been punctured by man-made wells—something he calls “anthropogenically amplified seepage.”
Of Rector’s paper, he said: “I fundamentally agree with their conclusion. I just don’t think it can be supported with data at this point.”
Leifer acknowledged that petroleum-related hydrocarbon emissions, including a “poorly understood” geological component, “clearly are extremely significant to overall California methane budget emissions,” based on spatial patterns from satellite data he has been studying for years.
Both Leifer and Rector agree that so far, emissions from orphaned wells and natural seeps have not been differentiated. Thus, the critical question remains unanswered: How much does natural seepage contribute to overall emissions?
While California has some of the highest concentrations of recoverable oil and gas in the world, it also boasts the most stringent oil and gas regulations in the country, and production has been in steady decline as the state aims for a 2045 “decarbonization” goal.
“If we’re really worried about emissions, pollution, disadvantaged communities, health—even fire danger, earthquakes and public safety—this is all affected by seeps,” Rector said.
By relying on studies that have broadly ignored them, he said, policymakers may have unknowingly implemented counterproductive policies.
Ancient Rocks, Modern Problems
Los Angeles sits atop one of the most petroleum-dense basins on the planet. Rector cited a 2015 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study estimating that there are still 1 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the Los Angeles Basin. This year, the USGS estimated that 61 million barrels of recoverable oil and 240 billion cubic feet of gas remain.
The organic-rich sediment beneath us is oil-prone and “relatively immature,” Rector said, and hydrocarbon generation is ongoing. Massive natural seeps such as Coal Oil Point off the coast of Santa Barbara, California—one of the largest seep fields in the world—continue to actively produce petroleum.
Seeps concentrated along the coast are fed by adjacent reservoirs deep within sedimentary rock beneath the region’s oil and gas fields.
California’s geology is also uniquely affected by actively shifting tectonics. Along with organic-laden sediment deposits, the shifting plates create conditions for rich petroleum accumulations, as well as natural seepage and hydrocarbon venting, Rector said.
Oil fields both in the Los Angeles Basin and throughout Southern California, he said, tend to concentrate along fault lines, allowing oil generated down deep to migrate into shallower pools and eventually make its way to the surface.
The La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles is one of the largest seepage sites in the state, and hydrocarbon gas emissions there are the highest on record for any onshore seepage site in the United States, according to a 2017 research article published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.
California’s bubbling tar pits have been part of human culture for millennia, their bitumen used by the Chumash Tribe as a sealant long before anyone showed up to drill for oil.
When they did, in the late 1800s, surface seeps and methane vents played a crucial role in the California oil boom, during which most of the state’s large oil fields were discovered, starting with the Los Angeles Oil Field.
“Back a hundred years ago, they had people, they were called ‘smells,' and they would smell the ground trying to see if there were oil seeps in an area,” Rector said, describing how early oil pioneers would decide where to dig.
More recently, trapped oil and methane have offered a pointed reminder of the city’s ancient subterranean history, including the mysterious 1985 explosion at a Ross Dress for Less store near the La Brea Tar Pits that sent 23 people to the hospital.
In a report the same year, a city task force noted that the source of the explosion was likely natural seepage of methane gas.
Oil production in Los Angeles County has declined dramatically since its peak in the 1920s, when it was one of the most prolific producers in the world.
But the infrastructure left in place—and whatever interaction it may have with naturally occurring seeps—remains vast and, in some ways, hidden in plain sight.
Health Impacts
In a 2023 paper exploring health impacts of oil and gas facilities on “cumulatively burdened” communities in Los Angeles County, researchers point to this hidden infrastructure.
“As government and industry negotiated to continue oil drilling within residential zones, oil extraction in L.A. County became increasingly hidden from public view, often by utilizing tall walls or hedges, and consolidating operations into fewer neighborhoods,” the authors and university researchers wrote.
In the brilliant book MASH, by Richard Hooker (real name H. Richard Hornberger), Captain Walter “The Painless Pole” Waldowski, a brilliant, handsome, and priapic surgical dentist, suffers from what today would be diagnosed as bipolarism, periodically becoming deeply depressed. His doctor friends offer him the ultimate suicide, complete with a huge party and a painless final shot. In fact, it’s a con, for they simply knock him out to help him sleep off his depression, and they even give the well-endowed dentist a blue ribbon award while he sleeps. All ends well.
The 1970 movie kept that scene, and even composed a song for it, “Suicide is Painless,” which went on to become a big hit, with the melody becoming the theme for the long-running M*A*S*H TV series. The lyrics were deliberately made banal and utterly stupid:
[The director, Robert] Altman attempted to write the lyrics himself, but, upon finding it too difficult for his “45-year-old brain” to write something “stupid” enough, he gave the task to his 15-year-old-son Michael, who reportedly wrote the lyrics in five minutes.
The chorus, which some of you probably remember, goes this way:
That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please
Nowadays, thanks to modern medicine, suicide really is painless. People are knocked out, given numbing agents to prevent even subconscious pain from the final shot, and then killed. However, unlike The Painless Pole, you can’t “take or leave it” as you please. Once you sign on, it’s a one-way ticket out of life.
And in Canada, where it’s been legal for nine years, euthanasia is extremely popular. In a chilling essay at The Atlantic, Elaina Plott Calabro takes us to the annual Euthanasia Conference, which has the cheerful normalcy of any other medical conference, complete with seminars and networking.
And no wonder it’s a cheerful place. It turns out that business has never been better, with MAiD (Medical Assistance in Dying) accounting for 1/20 deaths. Within a short time of passing its suicide law nine years ago, Canada changed the law so that it went from aiding terminal ill patients who were already in the final throes of dying to now making it available to just about everyone, with some doctors—the same people who once took oaths to “first, do no harm”—having killed hundreds of people.
Like The Painless Pole, the media was filled with reports of people preparing for their MAiD experience, throwing big parties for themselves, and even getting Catholic priests to administer last rites (a strange thing for a religion that once viewed suicide as a mortal sin). There’s also a big business growing around MAiD, with apps and podcasts.
The article discusses how Canada has addressed the ethical issues that arise and has consistently chosen outcomes that favor more deaths. One of those ethical issues was that Canada’s healthcare system has endless delays, with treatments for painful physical and mental issues taking up to or even over a year to be available. For many, suicide was the best option.
Canada also struggled with the fact that the big parties and loving relatives proved not to be the norm; they were just the white, upper-middle-class norm. And while whites make up the majority of MAiD deaths. Not all, though, have the wherewithal for a grand send-off, with many dying alone. However, now there’s a nice, communal house where they can experience something less austere than a bare mattress and a person with a needle.
The essay (well worth reading, and you can find it here if you can’t get past the paywall) is filled with anecdotes about doctors who enthusiastically embrace euthanasia and those who have pulled back. Those latter doctors are a problem because, “As Canada contends with ever-evolving claims on the right to die, the demand for euthanasia has begun to outstrip the capacity of clinicians to provide it.” (Emphasis mine.)
It turns out that, when suicide is painless, even if there’s no going back, people want it. And that brings us to one of the most profound and painful realities of life.
All of us must die, and many of us cannot count on dying peacefully in our sleep or, as Bing Crosby did, suffering a massive heart attack playing his beloved game of golf on a beautiful Spanish golf course overlooking the sea. Instead, the transition can be painful because our bodies are unforgiving, because of terrible accidents, or because of evil people.
What this means is that much of what fuels us in life is avoiding death. We bend our efforts to creating societies where we will not die from famine or excessive heat or cold, where our environments are safe enough that grotesque accidents are rare, where we’re protected from wild animals and evil people, and where our medical system can save us from many of the ways our bodies betray us, whether a childbirth gone bad or the extreme pain of cancer. And of course, by having children, we ensure that, in some way, we continue to live through them, even after we are gone.
If death is easy, the vast individual and societal effort we put into avoiding it becomes unnecessary. And the fact that people in Canada are embracing death over unhappiness, loneliness, the unpleasantness of cancer treatments, etc., tells you that euthanasia, by promising that “suicide is painless,” is making most of life so unnecessarily painful that one shouldn’t even bother.
Many years ago, I read a biography of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first, cast-off wife. Her final years were miserable because Henry did everything he could to make her suffer in an already cold, damp, hard world. Then, she got breast cancer, causing excruciating pain. And yet the book said she never called for an end to it all, for she felt that her travails were preparing her soul to meet God.
Canada, however, is doing its best to defeat that force, whether of living or meaningfully dying, by reducing us to something less even than animals, which will always fight to live.
For most of us, the huge revisions in Bureau of Labor Statistics standards was reason enough for President Trump to fire its director.
After all, the Federal Reserve sets its benchmark interest rates, affecting the entire economy, based on this data. It really needs to be something close to accurate.
Being a survey, it isn't always perfect. But it ought to be close. Pollsters, after all, can get pretty close. IBD/TIPP always gets close.
Turns out BLS hasn't been close, not by a longshot, according to historic research dating to 2009, from Issues & Insights, who are my old colleagues from the Investor's Business Daily editorial page, when they had one:
We decided to find out and reviewed the BLS’s monthly jobs data going back to 2009. What we found was deeply troubling.
We compared its initial report on jobs each month to the actual figures released months later. Our conclusion: its initial jobs reports have been absolutely and completely unreliable for years – often wildly optimistic or wildly pessimistic – regardless of who was president.
In the 199 months we examined, the BLS’s initial estimate of jobs gained or lost missed the mark by an average of 49.6%!
Only 15 times did its initial estimate come within 3% of being right. (Given the huge sample size, you’d think its margin of error would consistently be tiny.)
Some months, the miss was staggering.
In August 2011, to cite one example, the BLS said no new jobs had been created. Zero. Turns out, 132,000 were created that month.
In September 2017, it first said that the economy lost 33,000 jobs – which made big news because, as Politico put it at the time, it was “the first time in seven years” that had happened. In fact, the economy had created 88,000 jobs that month.
In January 2021 – the last month of Trump’s first term – the BLS initially reported that the economy had added a mere 49,000 jobs. The actual number was 365,000.
The report cites example after example. Nobody should be that inaccurate. Obviously, there was a problem with their methodology, including their capacity to get businesses to respond, as the report notes. Some of the worst, the very worst revisions happened during the Biden administration, tending to make him look good when he should have looked bad.
Last August – when Biden was president – the BLS said that it had overcounted new jobs by an eye-popping 818,000 between March 2023 and March 2024. That’s a massive mistake that should have caused heads to roll.
But then six months later, it issued a revision to that revision, saying that it had only overcounted the number of jobs created in those 12 months by 598,000. That a difference of 27%.
No one at the BLS lost their jobs over that screw-up, either.
The report notes that this kind of inaccuracy would not be tolerated in the private sector.
Combine it with the massive number of potential inside trading case scandals at that agency, where data was released to privileged outsiders ahead of everyone else, as I wrote here on August 4, along with bizarre subjective data added in, such as 'equivalent to rent' and it doesn't take long for data released to be utterly meaningless because it simply isn't true. The private sector indeed would not tolerate this culture of failure, who would want to pay for it? But government does, and Trump is changing government.
