The Read | $32 Million to Take Out Massie
Plus: DOJ builds a $1.776 billion fund with no oversight, California's shared-podium Title IX workaround, and primary night results across six states.
It’s Wednesday!
Apparently, I am in a mood. 😉 I get a little ranty in some of today’s Reads, and did a little rage baiting on X this morning.
Let’s get into it.
Today’s edition:
Trump just spent $32 million to take out the one Republican asking the Epstein questions. Plus a primary-night recap callout with prelim results from all six states that voted Tuesday.
DOJ stood up a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” inside a Trump IRS settlement. Even Republicans are squinting at this one.
California made a girl share her gold medal with the biological male who beat her. They’re calling it “inclusion.” Her mother isn’t.
Massie Got 14 Years, One Bill, and a Goodbye From His Own Party
The Story
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) lost his GOP primary Tuesday night to retired Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, the Trump-endorsed challenger the president personally recruited. The final margin (with about 72% of the vote counted): Gallrein 54.4%, Massie 45.6%. An 8.8-point loss. The race cost a combined $32.6 million in ad spending, making it the most expensive House primary in U.S. history. Trump's aligned super PAC dropped $16.4 million on Gallrein. The Massie-aligned side raised about $10.1 million. Massie has held the seat for 14 years.
Trump went scorched-earth on Truth Social in the final week. The greatest hits: “the Worst ‘Republican’ Congressman in the History of our Party.” A “disloyal, ungracious, and sanctimonious FOOL.” A “moron,” a “nut job,” a “major Sleazebag.” On primary morning, the president posted: “Kentucky, get this LOSER out of politics.”
What did Massie actually do to earn it? Three things. He voted against the House GOP budget in February 2025 (the only Republican to do so) and against Trump's big beautiful bill in June. He voted against the administration’s strikes on Iran. And led the House push along with Democrat Ro Khanna to force the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Massie’s reaction Tuesday night was characteristically dry. “I think that’s going to help my fundraising,” he told The Hill when asked about Trump calling him a moron.
Primary night, in one paragraph. Five other states voted Tuesday. Here’s what’s called and what’s still settling.
Pennsylvania: Reps. Fitzpatrick, Mackenzie, Bresnahan, and Perry all coasted unopposed on the GOP side. Chris Rabb won PA-3 by nearly 15 points, becoming the newest DSA-endorsed member headed to Congress. Summer Lee held off Will Parker in the PA-12 primary; she’ll face Republican James Hayes in November.
Georgia: Big runoffs on the GOP side. The Senate primary ended Mike Collins (41%) vs Derek Dooley (30%), with Buddy Carter knocked out at 25%. The governor primary ended Burt Jones (38%) vs Rick Jackson (33%). Both head to June 16. Keisha Lance Bottoms won the Dem governor primary outright with 56.2%, dodging a runoff.
Alabama: Tommy Tuberville won the GOP governor primary; he’ll face Doug Jones in November, a rematch of their 2020 Senate race. The Senate primary to fill Tuberville’s seat is headed to a runoff, with Trump-endorsed Barry Moore leading and AG Steve Marshall narrowly ahead of Jared Hudson for the second spot.
Idaho: Sen. Jim Risch easily fended off three challengers. Reps. Russ Fulcher (77%) and Mike Simpson (62%) defended their House seats.
Oregon: Christine Drazan won the GOP gubernatorial primary with 44.5%, setting up a 2022 rematch against Gov. Tina Kotek, who cruised on the Dem side. Janelle Bynum took 84% in OR-5; Val Hoyle won the OR-4 Dem primary with 78% and will face Republican Monique DeSpain (87%) in November.
The Left is calling it “Trump’s revenge tour.” Axios used those exact words. The Washington Post calls Massie “the latest casualty of Trump’s wrath.” The ideological-purity-test angle is the spine. They want you to read this as Trump punishing a man for the crime of having his own opinions.
The Right is celebrating it as a purge. Fox News leads with the loser-out-of-politics quote. The Hill calls it a “major victory” for the president. The framing: a RINO got disciplined by the base.
What both sides skipped: Why was this race the most expensive House primary in history? Where did the $16.4 million in super PAC money come from? The Intercept was the only outlet to name AIPAC’s heavy spending against Massie because of his Iran vote. Most of the post-mortems quietly scrubbed the Epstein angle too. Massie was the lone Republican in the House publicly forcing the document release. He’s gone now.
Being principled and being effective are not the same thing. Massie was the first. He was not the second. In Washington, the second gets legislation across the line.
For years Massie cited that he voted with Republicans 90% of the time. Pull the receipts on the 119th, and that number has slid closer to 78. Heritage Action had him at 96% in the 117th. Quick context, because this is the part the cable shows skip. Most of Congress votes bipartisan 90% of the time. The bulk of the House calendar is naming post offices and renewing routine appropriations nobody fights over. The 10% that decides whether a Republican or a Democrat agenda actually moves is where the floor fights happen. That’s the 10% where Massie has been quietly siding with the Democrats.
A congressperson represents their district. Yes. They also have to make legislation move. The way you do that in Washington is by making friends, the kind of friends who pick up the phone when your district needs a favor. Massie didn’t have any.
What did Massie actually pass in 14 years? The Epstein Files Transparency Act. One piece of legislation. And he didn’t pass it through his own conference. He passed it through a discharge petition with Ro Khanna and all 215 House Democrats. The thing he’s most famous for getting through is the thing he had to leave his own party to do.
The 10% that decides whether a Republican or a Democrat agenda actually moves is where the floor fights happen. That’s the 10% where Massie has been quietly siding with the Democrats.
And about that bill. I have said this on the podcast and I will say it again here. Dumping 100,000 pages of documents on the public with no context, no curation, no understanding of why a name appears in a witness photo lineup versus a flight log is exactly how guilt by association turns into a witch hunt. Khanna stood on the House floor and named six “co-conspirators.” Four turned out to be random men pulled into an FBI photo lineup during the original investigation. Zero connection to Epstein. “This should not be a witch-hunt,” Khanna said after the fact. Cool. Tell that to the four men whose names are sitting on the open internet because two congressmen wanted a headline.
And about Hegseth. Pete Hegseth, the sitting Secretary of War, showed up Monday in Hebron, Kentucky at an America First Works rally to campaign against Massie. "Too much grandstanding, too few great votes," he said about a sitting member of Congress. That's a real break from Pentagon norms. Yes, Massie's exit benefits Hegseth specifically because Massie voted against the Iran strikes. That doesn't make it appropriate. I want my Department of War running operations, not running congressional primaries. Stay in the Pentagon.
And spare me the left-media framing that Tuesday night was “Trump’s loyalty test” against an honest dissenter. As if party discipline were invented in 2024. Pelosi got “strategic genius” coverage for the exact behavior Trump gets “authoritarian” coverage for. The rest of the media is like, cool.
Watch whether Massie runs again in 2028 or pivots to a Senate run or the podcast circuit.
Being a martyr is not the same as being effective. Massie chose the first. Kentucky’s 4th chose the second.
$1.776 Billion. No Oversight. No Cap. No Recipient List
The Story
On Monday, May 18, Trump dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. In the same motion, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order creating a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” inside the Department of Justice. The fund will be financed by the federal Judgment Fund, a permanent Treasury appropriation. A five-member board (four appointed by the Attorney General, one chosen in consultation with congressional leadership) will hear claims from people who allege they were victims of government “weaponization” and issue both formal apologies and monetary awards.
The number, $1.776 billion, is a wink at 1776. Subtle.
Trump is technically not eligible. Blanche told reporters that Trump’s family won’t receive money from the fund. But his orbit can apply. That orbit, per CBS News reporting, reads as the obvious shortlist: the roughly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants, Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Trump’s lawyers, and others targeted under Biden-era DOJ. James Comey could apply. So could everyone who has been a victim of lawfare.
Quick context. The Judgment Fund is a real thing. It exists to pay court-ordered settlements against the federal government. It doesn’t normally cut $1.776 billion checks to a board with no judicial review, no defined evidence standard, and no requirement to disclose who gets paid. There is no rule requiring DOJ to tell you who got the money.
Sen. Ron Wyden on X called it a “$1.7 billion slush fund for right-wing political violence.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren called it “an insane level of corruption.” 93 House Democrats filed an amicus brief opposing the settlement on self-dealing grounds.
The Left is calling it a slush fund. Time magazine walks through the structural problem. CBS asks who actually gets paid. WaPo’s editorial board says “bad precedent.” The Democratic talking point is corruption.
The Right is running cover. Fox News headlined it “apologies, cash headed to alleged weaponization victims.” Blanche insists the fund is “not limited to Republicans, not limited to Democrats, not limited to January 6 defendants.” Even Deseret News (Utah, Mormon, Romney-coded but mainstream right) reports congressional Republicans are skeptical.
Restitution funds for government overreach are not new. The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 paid out $20,000 each to 82,219 Japanese Americans wrongfully interned in WWII, financed through Treasury and administered by a defined Office of Redress Administration with criteria published in the Federal Register. Pigford v. Glickman put $1.25 billion through Congress in 2010 to compensate Black farmers the USDA had discriminated against, with a two-track claim system and court supervision. The principle that a federal government should pay people back when it crushed them is settled in American law. Start there.
Lawfare against Trump and his orbit was real: the Letitia James prosecution, the Mar-a-Lago raid, the Manhattan DA case run on charges no predecessor ever brought against a former president. And it didn’t stop at the top of the org chart. It went down to grandmothers who walked into the Capitol on January 6 and got plea-bargained into felonies by a DOJ that left half the Antifa docket on the table. The process was the punishment. For ten years. “That’s a slush fund for his circle!” Yeah, his circle. The circle that was specifically targeted by the previous DOJ for ten years. Don’t act surprised that’s where the claims line up.
A discretionary fund administered by political appointees with no published criteria is the same mechanism that produced the original problem.
So I get the impulse. Make people whole, show that it happened, use the resources of the state to acknowledge what the state did. The history says the state can do that without it being corrupt, if the state is honest about how.
Here’s where I’m not loving it.
Where is the oversight? A five-member board appointed by the Attorney General, with no Senate confirmation requirement, no published evidence standard, and no requirement to release the list of who gets paid. Every prior restitution fund of comparable scale in U.S. history had either judicial review or legislative oversight baked into the founding document. This one has a board the AG picks and a Treasury fund that empties whenever the board says yes. No likey.
Where’s the cap? The number $1.776 billion is a wink at 1776. Cute. We are $39 trillion in debt as of today, gas is climbing past four-fifty a gallon, and DOJ just picked $1.776 billion out of the branding department. The fund quantity should be tied to what the country can afford and what the claims actually justify, not to a Founding Father math joke that fits on a Truth Social post. Pick the number from the evidence. Don’t pick it from the branding department.
What’s the process? Who decides what makes a valid claim? Are these board members nonpartisan? Is nonpartisan even possible anymore? The claims themselves are going to be partisan by nature. Picture the room. So what happens when the Democrats run DOJ in 2029, stand up a “Restorative Justice Fund” with $1.776 billion of their own, and decide that everyone harmed by Trump-era DOJ deserves a payout? Conservatives would lose their minds. They would be right to lose their minds. And we would be the ones who set the precedent. The right’s instinct used to be limited government with rule-of-law guardrails. This is the opposite of both.
I am not running cover for Letitia James. The lawfare was real, the victims were real, and the principle of restitution is right. But the implementation is not it. A discretionary fund administered by political appointees with no published criteria is the same mechanism that produced the original problem.
Watch which Republican senators ask for oversight language before this fund cuts a single check. Watch what Judge Williams does at the May 27 hearing in Florida. Watch who the AG names to the board and how many of them have ever drawn a paycheck outside a political appointment. Watch whether DOJ ever tells you the name of the first recipient.
I get the idea, but this is not it.
California Made a Girl Share Her Gold Medal to Save Its Federal Funding
The Story
At the California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section finals on Saturday, May 16, AB Hernandez (a biological male, 17, Jurupa Valley High senior) won the girls' high jump, long jump, and triple jump. He beat second-place Gwynneth Mureika in the high jump by two inches. In the long jump, he outperformed Gianna Gonzalez by more than a foot. CIF, anticipating the politics, had pre-baked a workaround: any female athlete finishing behind a "trans athlete" gets bumped one spot up the podium. So Mureika and Hernandez both received gold medals in the high jump and stood next to each other on the top step. Some of Hernandez's female competitors iced him out. Others skipped the medal ceremony entirely.
Riley Gaines went on Fox & Friends Monday and called the shared podium “a public humiliation ritual for the girls. It’s probably one of the most abusive things you can do to a young woman.”
Hernandez’s own mother criticized the policy. She told Breitbart that the shared podium is humiliating for the girls and unfair to her son.
The Left is framing this as Hernandez being forced to share what was rightfully his. PinkNews ran 800 words about Hernandez’s feelings and didn’t quote one girl who lost. The Mirror US ran the same angle. Yahoo Sports called the rule a compromise. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office released a statement Monday saying he “rejects the right wing’s cynical attempt to weaponize this debate as an excuse to vilify individual kids,” and that his position is to “stand with all kids and stand up to bullies.”
The Right is letting the image speak. Fox, Breitbart, Newsbusters, OutKick. The framing is photographic. A 17-year-old biological male next to a 16-year-old girl on a girls’ gold medal podium. Both wearing first-place medals. The argument writes itself.
What got skipped: This isn't a kindness policy. It's a federal-funding workaround. Trump's February 2025 executive order threatened to pull federal education funding from any state allowing biological males in girls' sports. The DOJ sued California in July 2025 for Title IX violations; California countersued first in June to keep state law in place. CIF's shared-podium pilot rolled out in the middle of that active legal fight, with the stated purpose of letting "cisgender female athletes qualify for first place, even if they don't win, while still allowing transgender female athletes to compete." Translation: we will not deny the girl gold, so technically not Title IX, and we will not stop the boy from competing, so technically still California law. The girls on the second step are not props for inclusion. They are props for a federal-funding argument California needs to keep alive in court.
Remember the entire pro-trans-athlete argument? There is no significant biological advantage to being male in women’s sports. That was the line for years. Hormone suppression, estrogen levels, leveled playing field, just let them compete. So somebody tell me why CIF needs a shared-podium workaround at all. If there’s no advantage, just hand the boy the gold and move on. The workaround is the confession. Every shared podium is California’s school board whispering: we know, we know, we know.
Real question I haven’t seen anyone ask. What happens at nationals? If a trans athlete wins a California state qualifier, does CIF send both the boy and the girl to the regional meet? And does whatever federation hosts that meet even allow him to compete with the girls? CIF didn’t think this through past the local press cycle.
And the girls. Gwynneth Mureika cleared that bar. Gianna Gonzalez ran that long jump. They trained for years and showed up to that finals meet to compete against girls because the bracket said girls. A biological male shows up and wins. CIF puts one of those girls on the top step next to him and calls them co-champions. Give me a break!
That’s a state with a deathgrip on an ideology and a deathgrip on its federal funding spigot trying to keep both. Pick one.
If California believes this position so passionately, then stand on business and take the consequences. Fight the Title IX lawsuit on the merits, lose the federal funding if that’s what conviction costs, and make the public case that biological males belong in girls’ sports. Instead California built a workaround that contradicts its own argument, still violates Title IX in substance, and is crossing fingers that a court sides with the technicality. That isn’t conviction. That’s a state with a deathgrip on an ideology and a deathgrip on its federal funding spigot trying to keep both. Pick one.
Newsom calls it “cynical” to ask the question and says people raising it are “bullies” trying to “vilify individual kids.” He’s the governor of California telling Gwynneth Mureika her gold medal isn’t worth talking about. Bro, shut up.
Watch which girls’ track team boycotts a meet next. Watch what happens when the first CIF trans-athlete winner advances to a regional event that doesn’t permit it. Watch whether any California Democrat running for governor in 2026 says one honest sentence about this.
The argument was always that there’s no biological advantage. The shared podium is California conceding there is.
Trump called off a “scheduled” attack on Iran at the last minute. The president said Monday he was “an hour away” from striking Tuesday morning when the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE asked him to hold off for two or three days because they think a deal is close. Trump postponed the strike but ordered Hegseth and the Joint Chiefs to be ready to “go forward with a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment’s notice.” The Strait of Hormuz remains closed. National gas prices sit at $4.52. A U.S. official separately denied Iranian and CNBC reports that Washington had agreed to lift its oil sanctions. CBS News
Trump endorsed Ken Paxton over John Cornyn in the Texas Senate runoff. The endorsement came Tuesday, one week before the May 26 runoff between the four-term incumbent senator and the state attorney general. Cornyn finished the March primary at about 42% to Paxton’s 41%, with neither clearing the 50% threshold. Trump on Truth Social: “Ken is a true MAGA Warrior who has ALWAYS delivered for Texas.” Senate GOP leadership had been quietly lobbying Trump to back Cornyn. Lindsey Graham warned the endorsement could make the general election “three times more expensive.” Democratic state Rep. James Talarico is the November nominee. Fox News
Three killed at Islamic Center of San Diego in suspected hate crime. Two teenage gunmen, identified as Cain Clark (17) and Caleb Vazquez (18), shot and killed three adult staff members, including a security guard, at the mosque Monday morning before turning their guns on themselves. The security guard was credited with helping contain the attack and saving lives. Police recovered a shotgun and gas can marked with the Nazi SS symbol, plus written hate-speech material and anti-Islamic writings in the suspects’ vehicle. Police are treating the attack as a hate crime. (Note on online rumors: there is no evidence either shooter was transgender. One had long hair worn in cornrows because he was a high school wrestler.) New York Post
TX-35 Democrat Maureen Galindo pledged to convert an ICE facility into an “internment camp for American Zionists.” Galindo, headed to a May 26 Democratic runoff against Johnny Garcia in Texas’s 35th Congressional District, wrote in an Instagram post that she would turn the Karnes County ICE detention center into a prison for “American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking,” and “a castration processing center for pedophiles, which will probably be most of the Zionists.” Former primary opponent John Lira rescinded his endorsement. Senate nominee James Talarico said he will not campaign with Galindo even if she wins the runoff: “This antisemitic rhetoric has no place in our politics.” The San Antonio Jewish Federation condemned the remarks. San Antonio Current
VP JD Vance confirmed DOJ is investigating Rep. Ilhan Omar for immigration fraud. Vance, the administration’s designated “fraud czar,” told reporters Tuesday that the Justice Department is actively investigating Omar (D-MN) over the long-standing allegation that her 2009 marriage to British citizen Ahmed Nur Said Elmi was a green-card arrangement with her biological brother. Vance: “It certainly seems like something fishy is there. If we think that there’s a crime, we’re going to prosecute that crime.” Omar’s husband’s companies reportedly grew from $51,000 in value in 2023 to as much as $30 million in 2024; Omar called it an accounting error. She has denied the brother-marriage allegations as “absurd and offensive.” Just The News
Shein bought Everlane for about $100 million. China's $100 billion fast-fashion giant acquired the San Francisco slow-fashion brand (known for pricing transparency and recycled-material lines like its 2019 DayGlove ReKnit shoes made from recycled plastic bottles), per Puck News reporting Sunday. Shein faces allegations of sweatshop labor, child workers in its supply chain, design theft from independent designers, and is currently under a Texas AG investigation by Ken Paxton over unsafe consumer products and labor practices. American textile manufacturing has declined more than 80% since its 1970s peak; roughly 98% of U.S. apparel is now produced abroad. Daily Wire
That’s The Read! See you Friday. Remember to share it with a friend.
If The Read is doing the cross-check work for you, send it to a friend who’s still chasing the framing instead of the facts.