THE ATLANTIC – Politics | Politics & Government

Mitch McConnell has not been seen in public in almost a month. The senator from Kentucky and former majority leader was hospitalized on June 14, and his staff has declined to elaborate, instead recycling the same statement: “The Senator continues to improve, and is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters while the Senate is out of session.” Speculation, theories, and questions have filled the void this week, prompting McConnell’s allies to share that they had recently spoken with him. But they’ve faced a deluge of doubts themselves. Yesterday, the Kentucky governor sent a formal letter requesting a health update from the senator, while President Trump told reporters he had “no idea” how McConnell was doing.McConnell is hardly the first member of Congress to go MIA. Representative Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey, a Republican running for reelection in a highly competitive district, disappeared for nearly four months this year and missed 142 House roll-call votes before resurfacing in late June. Kean explained that he had been receiving treatment for depression. In 2024, then-Representative Kay Granger of Texas, a Republican and former chair of the House Appropriations Committee, was absent from Congress for months before The Dallas Express reported that she was living in “a local memory care and assisted living home for some time after having been found wandering lost and confused.” Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who died in 2023, remained in office as her health rapidly deteriorated and her staff downplayed her condition.Although a seat in Congress comes with baseline expectations of being on the job when the House or Senate is in session, there are no formal rules governing disclosure of medical conditions for lawmakers and no official procedures for declaring a member medically incapacitated and removing them. The norm on the Hill is to fiercely shield and protect the private lives of legislators—especially on matters as sensitive as mental or physical health. But in recent years, with Congress ruled by shifting and often thin majorities, it quickly becomes obvious when someone is missing, especially for key votes. And then the theories spread on social media.[Read: Mitch McConnell and the president he calls ‘despicable’]McConnell’s absence has prompted a flood of memes, some involving Ouija boards, AI-generated Mitch-zombies, Weekend at Bernie’s–inspired scenes, and reports of the kid from The Sixth Sense having reached the senator. The leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker challenged McConnell to… [TheTopNews] Read More.

The Nazi tattoo wasn’t bad enough to force Graham Platner to abandon his Senate bid, his defenders argued earlier this year. Any young Marine, under the powerful influence of alcohol and immaturity, might see a skull and crossbones and think: Badass. The now-deleted Reddit posts mocking rural white people, insulting cops, and making light of assault? Well, chalk that up to the same. Extramarital sexting is not ideal, of course, but then there was Platner’s wife assuring us that the couple had healed. And never mind the allegations of volatile behavior from a couple of past girlfriends; one of them is a Republican activist.But when Politico reported on Monday that a woman had accused Platner of rape, even his most steadfast supporters began to call for his exit. And tonight, the oysterman finally gave in: “For the movement to continue, it can’t be me. For that reason, we are suspending campaign operations,” he said in a video posted to social media. But Platner added to the problems facing Democrats as he exited the race. He fervently denied the sexual-assault allegations—and seemed to imply that the party establishment was somehow responsible. “We did it the right way. We did it the way that we were told we are supposed to make change,” he said. “And now they are not going to let us have it.”Democrats were never going to win easily in Maine, where for nearly 30 years the electorally sturdy Susan Collins has hung on to her Senate seat. But pile up all of Platner’s baggage, and defeating her might have been an especially difficult project. Now Democrats have a chance to replace Platner with a new candidate—someone who is, perhaps, less encumbered—and redouble their efforts to flip Collins’s seat.But each silver lining has its corresponding cumulonimbus, and in this case, it’s that Platner has assembled a powerful grassroots coalition in Maine that may or may not be transferable. It depends on whom the party replaces him with—and how. “They may get a mulligan,” the political analyst Charlie Cook, who lives in Maine, told us. “That doesn’t mean they’ll hit it well.”The implosion of Platner’s candidacy—first bit by bit and then all at once—has Democrats nationwide throwing up their hands in exasperation. The party must flip at least four GOP-held Senate seats in November to capture the majority, and this particular seat has long been considered the party’s most important,… [TheTopNews] Read More.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old construction contractor and father of three, was a “man of routine,” according to his sons. He woke up at 5 a.m. every day, ate a big breakfast prepared by his wife, and left home at sunrise to build houses in the Houston area. Salgado Araujo came across the border from Mexico as a teenager and had been working without legal status for 35 years. Yesterday he left in his work van to pick up his brother and two other men en route to a job. A team of ICE officers, traveling in two unmarked SUVs, was looking for one of the men. Exactly what happened next is unclear.As the officers attempted to stop the van, according to the Department of Homeland Security, Salgado Araujo ignored their commands and smashed into their vehicles. An officer drew his weapon and shot Salgado Araujo in the stomach. A video posted to social media showed a man face down in the street and moaning in pain, with his hands behind his back and two officers over him. Salgado Araujo died at a Houston hospital hours later.DHS, in a brief statement, said that Salgado Araujo “rammed an ICE law enforcement vehicle, refused to follow multiple verbal commands, and weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.”The killing was the first fatal shooting by ICE officers since the death of Renee Good in Minneapolis on January 7. (Another protester, Alex Pretti, was killed by border agents two weeks later.) This time, Trump-administration officials did not rush to blame the dead for acts of “domestic terrorism,” as they did following the Good and Pretti shootings. They have announced an internal DHS investigation into the ICE officer’s actions, as well as an FBI probe to determine whether Salgado Araujo committed assault before he was shot.Senior ICE officials I spoke with said they have received few details about what happened. The ICE officer who shot Salgado Araujo was a veteran with more than two decades’ experience, a senior ICE official told me. DHS did not respond to questions about the officer’s identity.Immigration advocates and Democratic officials in Houston said today that they don’t believe DHS’s claims, and some groups are offering a cash reward for video footage. “Remember Minneapolis? Remember Renee Good? Has ICE learned nothing from that experience?”… [TheTopNews] Read More.

The Senate race in Maine looks significantly different than it did 48 hours ago. Yesterday, Politico reported a credible allegation of sexual assault against the Democratic nominee, Graham Platner. In a video posted after the story broke, Platner denied the accusation but said that his campaign would explore the best way forward, opening the door to what seems like an inevitable withdrawal from the race.Now the voices that had most vehemently defended Platner during previous scandals or vouched for the necessity of his folksy progressivism have withdrawn their endorsements, one after another, and called for him to drop out. Among those voices are Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Representative Ro Khanna, and Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau. No doubt, none of these Democratic politicians, party power brokers, or podcasters were aware of the alleged rape when they made and maintained their endorsements. Nearly everyone who previously supported Platner seems to have since reversed course. Credible allegations of sexual assault do, indeed, go too far.But the question remains: Why was this horrific allegation the threshold when Platner had so obviously transgressed so many times before? Perhaps Platner’s Nazi tattoo should have been a sufficient indicator that he lacked the character to be a senator. Perhaps maintaining that SS logo for two decades, covering it up only when it became politically inconvenient, demonstrated that he lacked the judgment for national office. Perhaps a multiyear history of not just having abhorrent views about women and minorities, but feeling the need to post them for the world to see, could have told us that he is not the person to be Maine’s voice in Washington. Maybe a well-documented history of contemptible behavior in his personal life should have been enough, when taken with everything else, for Democrats to conclude that Platner was exactly the person he appeared to be.[Jonathan Chait: With Graham Platner, Democrats got drunk on the beer test]When Platner emerged last year as the Democrats’ shiny new object—DSA sensibilities with a gruff voice and working-class clothes—many who favored his brand of leftist populism rallied to help him defeat Democratic centrism. He managed to do so when his primary opponent, Governor Janet Mills, suspended her campaign before votes were cast. Platner’s backers hoped that he could do the same against Susan Collins this fall. But when a clear pattern of Platner’s bad behavior and bad judgment emerged, these Democrats held firm, using… [TheTopNews] Read More.

Photographs by Houston CofieldFrom the outside, the church looked like a plain brick storefront, the mirrored windows peeling, a sign above painted white with blue letters. THE WELL, it read, and underneath, REVIVAL HUB.There were older and grander churches in Maryville, a college town in East Tennessee where you could barely drive a minute without passing a cross or a sign about Jesus. But when Mike and Andrea Brewer established the Well, in 2016, they understood themselves to be part of something more mystical and revolutionary than any existing denomination—a charismatic-Christian movement that has drawn millions of Americans with the promise of supernatural encounters with God and visions of cosmic battle.By his own account, Mike had been an exhausted factory worker and a lapsed Pentecostal addicted to pornography when one night, at home and praying for a better life, he heard an unfamiliar voice calling out to him and believed that it was God. At church a few days later, he would write, he felt a “tangible explosion” in his chest, followed by “the purity and righteousness of God moving through me in waves.” He came to believe that a demon had exited his body and that the Holy Spirit had taken its place. He decided that God had chosen him for a divine assignment.The Brewers began attending conferences with names such as “Voice of the Prophets” and “Voice of the Apostles” in places like Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Springfield, Missouri. At one gathering, Mike claimed to have seen an actual angel, and at another, a manifestation of the Holy Spirit that he described to me as “like five fog machines, like a cloud just rolling into the room.” He and Andrea came to believe that God was unleashing new signs and wonders and raising up modern-day apostles and prophets, including, it turned out, them.Houston Cofield for The AtlanticAndrea and Mike Brewer, the founders of the Well, consider themselves hardened spiritual warriors.They went abroad as missionaries to India and Haiti, which only confirmed their emerging understanding of a universe with three distinct realms—the heavenly, the earthly, and the underworld, with the Earth being the realm of spiritual warfare. On one side, the Holy Spirit, angels, and believers comprised an army of God. On the other were the forces of Satan—legions of demons with names, ranks, and personalities that could inhabit people, geographical regions, and entire nations. In India, the Brewers claimed… [TheTopNews] Read More.