A Man Packed Firebombs to Kill Scott Bessent. The Media Called Him a Troubled Woman.
Plus: Florida runs its first election on the new GOP map and both parties tell on themselves, and Jon Ossoff decides the way to beat Trump is to smear a 35-year-old aide.
Some days the intro writes itself. This is not one of those days. It’s been pretty basic around here, wonderfully unexciting. My biggest accomplishment yesterday was moving the laundry before it soured. I am, however, reading a wonderful book, The Remains of the Day, which is a treat after the weird one I finished last, White Noise. Coming soon on The Bookie.
Anyway, I will not bore you with my boringness.
Let’s get into the news!
In today’s Read:
A man who plotted to firebomb Scott Bessent, Pete Hegseth, and Mike Johnson got six years. The wires filed it under “troubled woman,” and the left-wing violence nobody wants to name keeps stacking up.
Florida voted on a map Republicans drew to win. It’s going to help them win. Then look at who the Democrats nominated to stop them.
Ossoff went looking for a laugh line at a rally and found Natalie Harp’s name. It’s sexist, it’s borrowed from Bluesky, and I don’t think he even believes it.
Quick Rundown: the Supreme Court closes the book on E. Jean Carroll, Canada gets 72 more hours, and the world’s ugliest dog has a backstory.
A Man Packed Firebombs to Kill Scott Bessent. The Wires Called Him a Troubled Woman.
The Story.
Riley Jane English, a 26-year-old biological male who identifies as a woman, was sentenced Tuesday to six years and one month in federal prison for plotting to assassinate Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. In January 2025, the day of Bessent’s confirmation, English drove from South Deerfield, Massachusetts to the U.S. Capitol carrying two Molotov cocktails made from vodka bottles and a folding knife, and told Capitol Police the plan was to firebomb or stab Bessent over “trans rights.” English also told investigators the trip was meant to take out Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Speaker Mike Johnson, and to burn down the Heritage Foundation.
Prosecutors asked for at least 10 years. Judge Rudolph Contreras, an Obama appointee, gave six. English pleaded guilty to a federal firearms and incendiary-device count, cited a mental-health crisis and drug abuse, and told the court “I’m so sorry.”
The Left’s read. A troubled ”woman” in a mental-health crisis, sentenced. The AP copy that ran in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, and a wall of NBC stations leads with “woman,” foregrounds the drugs and the “I’m so sorry,” and makes a point of noting the Molotovs “probably would not have ignited.” The politics that drove the plot, and the string of Republican targets, get a paragraph near the bottom.
The Right’s read. A trans terrorist got a sweetheart deal. Fox, RedState, and WLT Report run English as a biological male radicalized on “trans rights,” list the full target set, and stack the six years against the ten prosecutors wanted. The through-line: a plot to firebomb three officials draws a single-digit sentence, and the wires launder it into a bad-day story.
What both sides are skipping. The comparison case, and it’s a receipt. English’s own prosecution drew a direct line to Sophie Roske, another biological male identifying as a woman, sentenced last October to about eight years for plotting to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Prosecutors wanted no less than 30 there, and appealed the sentence as unreasonably lenient. Two assassination plots, two trans-identifying defendants, two sentences at a fraction of what the government asked.
Read the two headlines side by side. One says “woman sentenced.” The other says “trans terrorist.” Same guy. He built Molotov cocktails out of vodka bottles, drove to the Capitol to kill Scott Bessent on the day he was confirmed, and told police that Hegseth, Johnson, and the Heritage Foundation were on the list too. That is not a bad day. That is a hit list.
This was a plot by a man to kill Republicans. Not the first. Sophie Roske, who drew only eight years for a plan to assassinate Kavanaugh when prosecutors wanted thirty. Now this dude gets only six years.
All happening as left-wing violence is on the rise. In September, CSIS reported that 2025 was on pace to be the most violent year for left-wing extremism in more than three decades, the first time in thirty years that left-wing attacks outnumbered those from the far right. The number the left throws back is that over the past decade, the datasets log 112 right-wing killings to the left's 13. But that gap is doing a lot of lying. These trackers count almost any crime by someone with right-wing views as "right-wing violence," politically motivated or not, while quietly leaving out things like the 2020 riots that killed people over a plainly political cause. If a guy's bar fight counts because he shared memes, the riot arson counts too. I am curious what would happen to these numbers if they were honest.
I think we know. The same desks that run a month of coverage on a right-wing threat took the CSIS finding and downplayed it. “From very low levels.” “Methodology questioned.” “Risks feeding a false narrative.” A man just told a federal judge he wanted to firebomb three cabinet officials, and the reflex wasn’t to report it. It was to pat his head and frame him as a disturbed “woman” while the rising numbers are a rounding error.
When the violence points right, the motive leads the piece. When it points left, the man becomes a woman having a hard time.
What to watch for. Whether DOJ appeals the English sentence the way it appealed Roske’s. Whether a single wire that ran “troubled woman” follows up on the Hegseth and Johnson targets it buried. And whether the next left-wing plot gets the motive in the headline or three paragraphs down under a softer noun.
Florida Ran Its First Election on the New Map.
The Story.
Florida held its first major primaries Tuesday under the GOP-drawn mid-decade congressional map, the one Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed toward 24-4 Republican. Trump-endorsed Rep. Byron Donalds won the Republican primary for governor with 47.8% and will face Democrat David Jolly, who took 61% of his own primary. One of them replaces the term-limited DeSantis as Florida’s first new governor in eight years.
A detail nobody’s putting in the headline: Jolly was a Republican congressman before he was an independent before he was a Democrat.
In the Senate special election, appointed Republican Sen. Ashley Moody won her primary. On the Democratic side, Democratic-socialist state Rep. Angie Nixon upset Alex Vindman —yes, that Vindman, the one who testified about the “very good Ukraine call”— and will challenge Moody in November.
The Left’s read. A rigged map, with one bright spot. CNN and Al Jazeera frame the night through the redistricting: Republicans redrew the lines mid-decade to bury Florida Democrats, and Tuesday just ratified the damage. Nixon knocking off Vindman plays as grassroots energy against a stale establishment. The message: Republicans didn’t win Florida, they engineered it.
The Right’s read. Trump’s Florida, and the Democrats nominated a socialist. Donalds’ endorsement romp and Moody’s clean win are proof Florida is red now, full stop. On the map, the counter is that Democrats gerrymander everywhere they hold power, so spare us the outrage. Donalds himself called the new lines a necessary answer to “radical” Democratic map-drawing in Illinois and California.
What both sides are skipping. The history Byron Donalds just made, and why neither party will say it out loud. He's the first Black Republican nominee for governor in Florida, and if he wins in November, he'll be the state's first Black governor, full stop. The right won't lead with that, because bragging on a candidate's skin color is the identity-politics game conservatives say they don't play. The left won't touch it either, because "Republicans would never elect a Black man" has been the script for a decade, and Donalds torches it. Rewind to 2018: Florida came within about 32,000 votes of electing Andrew Gillum, a Black Democrat, as its first Black governor, and missed. The party that sells itself as the only home Black voters have couldn't close it. The GOP is now one election from actually doing it, weeks after the Supreme Court's Callais ruling gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the decision the left swore would erase minority representation.
I know the left and the media cry “gerrymander,” but I don’t have a problem with what Florida did. The state took in a flood of new residents, and when the population moves, representation is supposed to move with it. You know, so it can represent the people.
Also, I am not grabbing for the “but California does it too” cover. California did do it, in Prop 50, except they have lost population, and to pull it off they held a statewide vote to suspend their own independent redistricting commission, the one their voters wrote into the constitution. Florida moved its map through the legislature. California spent more than $100 million to torch a good-government reform they used to brag about, then called it “fighting fire with fire.” Those are not the same thing.
The gerrymander pearl-clutching from the left was never about principle. It’s about the scoreboard. When the map helps them, it’s democracy. When it helps Republicans, it’s a threat to it. Same act, different jersey.
And here’s the twist that has to sting. The candidate this supposedly racist, minority-erasing map just produced is a black Republican, one win from becoming Florida’s first black governor, the milestone Democrats came up short on in 2018. The right won’t brag about it because that’s identity politics. The left won’t admit it because it wrecks the story.
Then look at who the Democrats put up to stop him. For Senate, a democratic socialist over Alexander Vindman, the man they turned into a resistance action figure five years ago. For governor, David Jolly, a Republican congressman turned independent turned Democrat, depending on the year.
What to watch for. Whether Donalds runs on the Trump endorsement or widens the tent for the general. Whether national Democrats spend a dime on Nixon or write Florida off the way the map assumes. And whether anyone can call this governor’s race “competitive” with a straight face when the Democrat was a Republican congressman inside the decade.
Florida’s not a swing state anymore. It’s a place where one party grew, drew a map to match, and won with a candidate the other side swore it would never run.
Jon Ossoff Went Looking for a Laugh Line and Landed on Natalie Harp.
The Story.
At a Georgia rally Sunday, Sen. Jon Ossoff, up for reelection and collecting 2028 buzz, went after Trump over the long carrier deployments and then took a turn. Trump, he said, “wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.” The “Natalie” is Natalie Harp, Trump’s 35-year-old executive assistant, who was one of just three staffers on the secret July plane swap while Rubio, Bessent, and the press pool got left on the decoy.
The line did what it was built to do. It lit up the right, split the Democrats, and got Axios to file it under a high-minded headline about whether Democrats should “go low” in 2028.
Then Jen Psaki, of all people, pressed him on MS NOW, asking twice why he named Natalie Harp specifically. He didn’t answer. He pivoted to echo chambers: “I’ve heard this particular aide referred to as his security blanket... They’re not telling him what he needs to hear. They’re telling him what he wants to hear.”
The Left’s read. A strategy debate about whether nice guys finish last. Axios and the center-left treat the Harp line as a data point in a live argument over temperament: after a decade of Trump’s schoolyard taunts, do Democrats match the register or bet that voters want dignity? The insinuation about a named woman gets softened to Ossoff going “beyond cutting one-liners.”
The Right’s read. The party of believe-all-women just sexualized a female staffer for applause. The Daily Signal, Megyn Kelly, and the White House itself ran Ossoff’s “travel with Natalie” line as a smirking, sexist insinuation about a private citizen. The point: a Republican says this about a Democratic aide, and it’s a week of misogyny coverage, not a think-piece.
What both sides are skipping. Strip the 2028 gloss and a sitting senator floated an affair-shaped insinuation about a 35-year-old woman who holds no office and isn’t on any ballot. And here’s what even the right-side coverage skips: there is real reporting about Harp’s odd intensity around Trump, the personal notes she reportedly left in his private spaces, the Secret Service concern that Haberman and Swan documented. That’s a strange, one-sided devotion. It is not evidence of the thing Ossoff was winking at. He didn’t reach for the sourced story. He reached for the sex joke.
This was a performance. Red meat, tossed to a rally crowd that knew exactly what he meant, because the Natalie Harp innuendo has been marinating in the Bluesky and BlueAnon corners for months. None of it is new. What’s new is that a sitting United States senator with a 2028 folder dragged it out on the national stage. He didn’t break the story. He just laundered the group chat onto a public stage.
And I’ll be honest, the “yes-men” critique is fair game, and it’s exactly the case Ossoff retreated to the second Psaki cornered him. Except it’s also contestable, because we’ve had report after report of this cabinet actually fighting, with each other and with Trump, Rubio and Bessent and the rest going a few rounds in the room. “Nobody challenges him” is not the argument he was making at the rally.
At the rally, he picked Natalie. Not the policy. Not the sycophancy. Her. Because the innuendo was sitting right there, and it’s the cheapest shot at Trump going, and taking it costs him nothing and costs a 35-year-old woman her reputation. That’s not strategy. That’s sexism with a poll-tested smile. You don’t get to spend ten years as the believe-all-women party and then giggle about who the president “travels with” for a cheer.
And I don’t even think he believes it. That’s the tell. When Psaki asked him point-blank, twice, why Harp specifically, a man who actually thought he’d exposed something, would have said so. Ossoff dodged and hid behind “security blanket.” You only run from your own line when you know it was cheap. He knew.
Criticize the ballroom. Criticize the Qatar jet. Criticize every aide who ever nodded along. Invoking Natalie with a wink and a smirk is a cheap shot.
What to watch for. Whether a single Democratic woman who spent 2018 lecturing about respecting women says one word about this. Whether Ossoff ever answers Psaki’s question instead of reframing it. And whether “going low” becomes the house style of the 2028 field, with Gavin Newsom already parked at that end of the pool.
The Supreme Court is done with E. Jean Carroll, and so is Trump’s checkbook. The Court declined Monday to hear Trump’s appeal of the civil sexual-abuse and defamation judgment, closing the case after he’d already paid Carroll $5 million on the earlier verdict. No noted dissent, no path left. The case he called a hoax is now, legally, over.
Canada gets 72 more hours. Trump paused the 50% tariffs set to hit Canadian goods, extending the trade-deal deadline by three days. Same pattern every time: name a wild number, run the clock, extend at the buzzer.
DOJ is sending a thousand poll monitors this fall. The Justice Department plans to deploy roughly 1,000 monitors to polling places in November, which one official called “probably going to be a historic number for a Republican administration.” Supporters call it election integrity. Critics hear intimidation.
Trump hosted the lifeguard, then stepped on his own photo op. The president welcomed 16-year-old Ryder Williams to the Oval Office Monday, the Santa Cruz lifeguard who dove into pounding surf to save a 10-year-old at Seabright Beach. Then Trump offered that he wasn’t sure he’d have jumped in himself, and the press ran with the aside instead of the kid.
The White House@WhiteHouseA truly inspiring American story, and an honor, to welcome HERO lifeguard Ryder Williams to the Oval Office. "I hope that everybody can take away from this and try to help more people." - Ryder Williams 💙1:10 AM · Aug 18, 2026 · 398K Views762 Replies · 3.6K Reposts · 21.3K LikesThe world’s ugliest dog is a rescue with a comeback arc. Jinny Lu, a 6-year-old pug found abandoned in a shack in the mountains of South Korea, won the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest at the Sonoma County Fair, took home $5,000, and did the TODAY show in pearls. She placed second last year. Redemption season.
New York Post@nypostRescue pug who escaped South Korea’s dog meat trade crowned ‘World’s Ugliest Dog’ trib.al/CcDiVyd8:16 PM · Aug 17, 2026 · 20K Views7 Replies · 18 Reposts · 95 LikesBeth is dead. Long live Beth 2.0. Sen. Chuck Grassley eulogized Beth, his red-and-cream Hoover vacuum of 49 years, named after a former aide, after electrical damage finally retired her. The New York Times ran an actual obituary. Then a fellow Iowan came through with Beth 2.0, a spry 17-year-old Hoover ready to carry the family tradition. Only Grassley.
Chuck Grassley@ChuckGrassleyMy friend in Sioux City met me in Fort Dodge to deliver his 17 year old Hoover vacuum I thanked him and appreciated his gift. After I get chance to use it I will report on how Beth 2.0 compares to Beth 1.01:28 PM · Aug 19, 2026 · 116K Views352 Replies · 186 Reposts · 1.57K Likes
That’s The Read.
See you Friday.
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