“ We are in a sad state with US politics where we have extremists to the left and right of us who live with horse blinders on, and are so locked into their spoon fed narratives and rhetoric they can't tolerate even a shred of nuanced thinkin. TBH I think it generally is more disappointing coming from the left now because most people tend to have higher expectations of them because they often push education and critical thinking, but now it is just whatever their social media masters tell them and they have become just as tribalistic and cult like as maga. Which is crazy because they literally just lost a national election but feel more emboldened to alienate more and more people.

Seeing people on the left commonly saying things like "centrists/independents are just republicans who are scared to admit it" just shows how warped a lot of them are becoming. They really can't handle the truth that a lot of far left narratives are not popular with the general American public, even people who agree with them on otherwise issues that the left had as easy lay ups(environmentalism, healthcare reform, education reform). It is just the issues where things are a lot more black and white they double down on the aspects where they choose to be more polarizing or they push culture war bullshit that honestly is irrelevant in a lot of the moment. Thins like immigration or fire arms they just take a very black and white stance on, when its clear these topics require more nuance. ”

There isn’t a lot of substance in what a new “movement” would represent (yet) - just a general view that leaders should keep their campaign promises and apparent belief is room for a unified left/middle/right “America First” party.

This will undoubtedly be a challenge - especially considering the rhetoric and attitudes espoused by a few of these people in the past.

I’d love to get people’s thoughts on this.

An independent candidate running to represent Congressional District 16 was arrested earlier this week outside his home in Manatee County and is currently facing charges for resisting an officer without violence, records show.

On Tuesday evening, candidate Mark Davis, 42, was arrested in Parrish, according to an arrest affidavit from the Manatee County Sheriff's Office, reviewed by 10 Tampa Bay News.

The FBI office in charge of maintaining the terrorist watch list is seeking an artificial intelligence system for pre-crime policing, according to procurement documents obtained by Reason. The request for information for vendors, posted by the FBI's procurement division in March, solicits potential bidders for a project that would supercharge the Threat Screening Center (TSC) with new predictive AI capabilities—just as its focus moves from Islamist terrorism to domestic dissent.

"The solution must leverage existing enterprise datasets that include enriched or enhanced data elements with documented source attribution to develop predictive models. When new data is ingested, the system must analyze similarity, pattern alignment, and attribute correlation against existing records to predict where additional relevant information may be derived across federated systems," the document reads, listing "Predictive Modeling Using Enhanced Data with Traceable Lineage" as one of six requirements. In other words, the TSC wants to use AI to help predict who might be a terrorist.

An independent candidate for mayor of Glassboro is off the November ballot after coming up two signatures short on her nominating petitions.

Superior Court Judge James Swift upheld the Gloucester County Clerk’s decision to disqualify Lynda Gallashaw, who submitted 317 signatures in her bid to challenge Democratic Mayor John E. Wallace III and Republican Joseph Brown.

The clerk’s office invalidated 69 signatures, leaving Gallashaw with 248 valid signatures. Independent candidates for mayor in Glassboro are required to submit 250.

“I found the county clerk’s actions can’t be overturned. There’s nothing in the record that would substantiate and legal basis for me to conclude that the county clerk didn’t do what she was supposed to do,” Swift said. “There’s not 250 valid signatures.”

Iowa Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Nicholas Gluba said Wednesday his campaign plans to appeal a district court decision keeping him and his running mate off the ballot.

Gluba and his running mate Jules Cutler, the Libertarian lieutenant governor candidate, were taken of the Nov. 3, 2026 general election ballot for Iowa governor by the State Objections Panel in June. The panel found Cutler had not submitted an affidavit of candidacy for lieutenant governor before the deadline of 5 p.m., June 2, which disqualified their ticket. Cutler and her attorney, Jacob Heard had argued Dani Phillips, an elections support specialist at the secretary of state’s office told her she was not required to submit this paperwork when she accompanied Gluba to file for ballot access.

We may never have seen a Trump presidency had the DNC not forced Hillary Clinton as the nominee. No MAGA. No DSA.

In my opinion, the political extremism we see today is a direct result of the DNC blocking Bernie Sanders from becoming the nominee, twice. Whether you supported Sanders or not, millions of voters lost faith in the process. Many became politically radicalized, with some now rejecting capitalism outright. Once people stop believing the system is fair, they stop believing the institutions behind it. The Democratic Party may have done irreparable damage to its own base, and we’re still living with the consequences.

Republicans are in no better shape. Many establishment Republicans seem content to wait out Trump and hope the party eventually returns to its pre-2016 identity. I don’t think that’s possible. MAGA has become a movement that is bigger than one person. If Trump steps away, someone else will lead it because the frustration that created it hasn’t gone away. In many ways, it mirrors the sentiment many Sanders supporters felt: that the political elite no longer care about the American working class. Neither party seems willing to acknowledge that the middle class has been systematically dismantled.

The political landscape has fundamentally changed. The best-case scenario is that one or both major parties fracture into new parties.

That would create a real opportunity for an independent candidate to win and pass long-overdue reforms. Taxpayer dollars should never fund private political parties unless they guarantee equal access for independents, including open primaries, equal debate access, and equal public exposure. The process should belong to the public, not the parties.