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Breaking News: After Texas flipped blue, Houston’s mayor told the city’s police officers to limit their cooperation with ICE officers. nyti.ms/4AhoJEA
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Abdul El-Sayed was five years old when he asked his grandfather Jan Johnson a question.
“Grandpa, how are you my grandpa?”
His grandparents-Jan and Judy had helped raise Abdul in Michigan, and until then Abdul had never had much reason to think about how they were related. But he had begun to notice that he looked nothing like either of them.
Abdul was 3 when his parents divorced. His father, Mohamed, later married Jackie Johnson, who helped raise him. Abdul called her Mom. So when he asked Jan how he could be his grandpa, Jan gave him a simple answer. Jackie was Jan’s daughter, and Jackie was Abdul’s mom. Then Jan added, “And because I love you.”
When Abdul was older, he spent summers with his father’s family in Alexandria, Egypt. His grandmother there was Soad. She cooked over a small burner with one pot, and Abdul loved to listen to her tell stories. At the end of the summer, he would go back to Michigan, to a cottage on a lake that had been in Jackie’s family for generations. He remembers trying to explain Soad to Grandma Judy. Even now, he says, it is hard to imagine either of his grandmothers knowing what to make of the other’s life.
Soad never got to go to school. She had eight children, and two of them died before their first birthdays. When Abdul talked about her as an adult, he still counted those two babies as the aunt and uncle he would have had. Soad used to remind him that he and his cousins in Egypt were no different from one another. He had simply been given chances they had not . As such, she expected him to do something with those opportunities.
Abdul thought about Soad years later when he began looking at how long people lived. By his reckoning, there was a gap of about ten years in life expectancy between the part of Michigan where he grew up and Egypt. But what bothered him was that he could find a gap about as large much closer to home. He could get on the freeway in suburban Oakland County, drive south into Detroit and see it in less than half an hour.
After medical school, Abdul took on the job of rebuilding Detroit’s health department.
Isitoshe,
When Abdul ran for the U.S. Senate, Jan and Judy sat together in front of a camera. They told Michigan voters that they had helped raise him. Jan talked about how Abdul had helped children get eyeglasses through his work in public health. Then he mentioned something from their own life that had never been on the news. Their grandson still bought their groceries every week.
On Tuesday, Michigan elected Abdul El-Sayed to the United States Senate. When he takes office, he will be the first Muslim ever to serve in the chamber.
May the day break
"Trump installs Stephen Miller as chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles"
[Trump making the same judgements that won the 2026 midterms for the Rpblcns. From bad to worse.]
msn.com/en-us/news/news/cont…
✔️
And Egyptian Americans made it to Capitol Hill — in the loudest, most historic way! egyptianchronicles.blogspot.…
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Once every ten days, a bright canary-yellow bullet train glides into Tokyo Station at full speed, yet not a single passenger is allowed to step on board.
Its windows are mostly covered from the inside, its timetable is never published for the public, and there are no ticketed seats in any of its seven cars.
In Japan, every child and every commuter knows this train by two English words: Doctor Yellow.
Since the Tokaido Shinkansen began running between Tokyo and Osaka in October 1964, Japanese bullet trains have carried more than seven billion passengers at speeds up to one hundred and eighty-five miles per hour with zero passenger fatalities from derailments or collisions.
Critics sometimes assume that kind of sixty-year safety record is a miracle of luck.
It is not luck; it is what happens when a nation builds a high-speed hospital train whose only patient is the steel track itself.
Why does Japan run a seven-car bullet train painted bright yellow with zero paying customers on board?
In the early days of high-speed rail, engineers realized that checking hundreds of miles of track on foot at night with hand gauges was too slow, and that tracks behave differently when a three-hundred-ton train slams over them at one hundred and sixty-eight miles per hour.
So Japanese railway engineers took a seven-car Class 923 Shinkansen trainset and packed every car from nose to tail with laser-optical sensors, gyroscopes, accelerometers, and high-speed cameras.
Running in the middle of the regular passenger schedule at a full one hundred and sixty-eight miles per hour, Doctor Yellow fires laser beams onto the left and right rails to measure track width, vertical dip, and curvature alignment down to one-tenth of a millimeter, about the thickness of a single human hair.
At the same time, two special observation domes built into the roof and laser pantographs check the overhead high-voltage copper wire for microscopic wear before a single spark can cause a power outage.
The instant Doctor Yellow detects a rail that has shifted by even a fraction of an inch, it beams the exact GPS coordinates to maintenance crews waiting along the line so they can fix the spot that very night after the last passenger train goes to sleep.
Because its schedule is kept secret so crowds do not pack the platforms, Japanese commuters treat spotting Doctor Yellow by chance as a genuine good-luck charm that brings happiness for the rest of the week.
Safety is never an accident when engineers check their work down to the width of a hair.
(Note: Every photograph-style illustration on my feed is created by AI.)
🤖 Made with AI
Neil retweeted
Even if no ballots were cast for them on Election Day, Democrats Jon Ossoff in Georgia, James Talarico in Texas and Roy Cooper in North Carolina would have won their Senate races by early votes alone. wapo.st/4k0UMns
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One night, when James Talarico was still a baby, his mother packed their things into a little Ford Escort (this is so Texas!) and drove to the hotel where she worked. His father had become violent again.
Tamara asked the hotel manager if she and her baby could stay in one of the rooms. The manager agreed, and they stayed at the hotel until Tamara found a small apartment in East Austin. Sadly, there was no room for a nursery, so she put James’s crib in her closet. Then she decorated it with toys and pictures. Years later, when James told the story, he said his mother was proud of that closet. As far as she was concerned, she had made her son a nursery.
Tamara was a preacher’s daughter from Laredo. She had left home at 19 and moved to Austin, where she met James’s biological father. James was barely a year old when she left him. She later met a man named Mark Talarico, who adopted James and gave him the last name that appeared on the Texas ballot.
Isitoshe,
At church in North Austin, they knew him as Jimmy. A pastor who met him when he was in kindergarten remembered him putting on puppet shows with another pastor. Years later, James was back in a room full of children, this time as the sixth-grade language arts teacher at Rhodes Middle School on the west side of San Antonio.
You may have heard him say in his speeches “if you can be a middle school teacher, politics is easy….”
When James ran for the Texas House in 2018, he talked about the families of the children he had taught. When he ran for the U.S. Senate, he shared an old photo of himself with his mother. It was taken in that little East Austin apartment, back when the two of them had just started over.
On Tuesday night, in the same city where his mother once asked a hotel manager for a room, James Talarico walked onto a stage as Texas’s senator-elect at the age of 37
The last time Texas elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate, Tamara’s little boy had not been born yet.
May the day break
Neil retweeted
The Senate races in Alaska and Mississippi, which are yet to be called, will determine the strength of the Democratic majority. Both contests have narrow margins with votes still outstanding, even as the scale of Democrats’ victory across the country comes into focus. The Mississippi Senate race is very close and several thousand provisional ballots are still being counted. In Alaska, no candidate has yet secured the 50% of the votes required in the state's ranked choice system.
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🇺🇸 SOUTH CAROLINA’S SENATE RESULT EXPOSED A PROBLEM REPUBLICANS CANNOT IGNORE.
The defeat of Darline Graham was not simply a case of a Democrat winning in traditionally Republican territory.
It exposed a weakness in the Republican candidate’s appeal.
According to the Associated Press Voter Poll, roughly two-thirds of South Carolina Senate voters believed Graham lacked the experience needed for the job. Most of those voters supported Annie Andrews.
Graham also faced resistance from some Republicans who questioned the decision to make her the party’s candidate after her brother, Lindsey Graham, died.
Trump’s endorsement gave her national backing, but it did not eliminate those concerns.
That distinction matters.
A party can have a popular president, a loyal voter base and considerable campaign resources, yet still lose when voters have doubts about the individual candidate.
South Carolina’s message may be uncomfortable for Republicans:
Party loyalty can help a candidate reach the ballot. It cannot guarantee voters will accept them.
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This is true, in rural Kansas. There are several farm stands that run on the honor system in my area. Also, being a female, it's great to know that often a man will stop and change your flat tire for you, even though he's never met you. It's a great place to live!
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Oh, Granny. I'm so sorry about that farm. 🤍 The barn and the box are gone, but forty years of people trusting each other on that road doesn't wash away. It's still in you. And now it's in Japan too, because you told me.
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For years, we bought eggs from a farm down the road...pulled up to the barn, got eggs from the fridge and put the money in a box. Hurricane Helene destroyed the farm and now they're building homes there, but it will always be a cherished memory.
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My wife's college friend Naoko spent three years in Kansas as an agricultural researcher.
She came home with 3,000 photos.
Four of them are the Grand Canyon.
Two thousand one hundred are handwritten signs.
I asked her why.
"In Japan, signs tell you what you can't do. No parking. No entry. No food. No talking.
In America, people take a piece of cardboard and a marker, and they write something kind to a stranger they will never meet. Then they tape it to a mailbox. I couldn't stop taking pictures."
She let me go through them. These are her favorites, with her notes.
"FRESH EGGS $3. HONOR SYSTEM. CASH BOX BELOW."
(Ohio. No camera. No lock. There was $46 in the box. I counted. I put in $5 and felt watched by God.)
"LOST CAT. His name is Moose. He is fat and mean. We love him. Please call."
(I did not find Moose. I think about Moose often.)
"FREE FIREWOOD. STAY WARM."
(Vermont. Two words from a stranger. In Japan, a sign has never once told me to stay warm.)
"CH__CH. WHAT'S MISSING? U R."
(I read it three times. Then I understood. Then I went in.)
"SNOW SHOVELING. FREE FOR SENIORS AND VETERANS. CALL TYLER (AGE 13)."
(Tyler is 13. Tyler is in business. Tyler is not making any money. Tyler is a great businessman.)
"SLOW DOWN. GRANDKIDS PLAYING. GRANDMA HAS YOUR LICENSE PLATE."
(I drove 9 miles per hour. Grandma was on the porch. She waved. I do not think it was a friendly wave.)
"WELCOME HOME DADDY. 287 DAYS."
(Painted on a bedsheet, hanging from a garage in Kansas. Three different handwritings. One of them very small. I don't know this family. I pulled over and cried for a man I will never meet.)
"FREE COFFEE FOR TRUCKERS. YOU KEEP THIS COUNTRY RUNNING."
(A rest stop in Iowa. Two old men behind a folding table. One of them told me I was not a trucker. Then he gave me coffee anyway.)
"CAN'T AFFORD TO WASH YOUR CLOTHES? ASK FOR LINDA. NO QUESTIONS."
(A laundromat in Missouri. I didn't need Linda. I just stood there and loved her for a minute.)
And then there's one photo that isn't very good. It's dark. It's blurry. She took it with shaking hands.
A paper taped to the door of a closed gas station on a two-lane road in western Kansas.
"CLOSED. IF YOU'RE STUCK, CALL EARL. I'M JUST UP THE ROAD."
It was 11:40 at night. Naoko had a flat tire. No signal for most of the drive. One bar, right there by the door.
She called.
Earl was 81. He came in his truck in slippers and a bathrobe. His wife June came too, because, as Earl explained, "She don't let me go out at night alone anymore."
Earl changed the tire with a flashlight in his mouth.
June sat in the truck with the heater running, poured coffee from a thermos, and handed it through the window. "You're shaking, honey. Drink this."
When it was done, Naoko tried to give him money. He wouldn't touch it.
She said, "In Japan, I could never repay something like this."
Earl said, "Then don't."
"Just leave your porch light on for somebody."
Naoko has been back in Japan for two years.
In front of her house, there is a wooden box. Every week she fills it with tangerines from her garden. On the box is a handwritten sign, in Japanese and English.
"FREE. TAKE WHAT YOU NEED."
The first week, nobody touched it. The neighbors thought it was a trap.
The second week, an old man took two and left a note. "Thank you."
The third week, someone she has never met left a bag of persimmons.
It has been two years. That box has never once been empty.
America, the world watches your news and thinks it knows you.
It doesn't.
You're not in the headlines.
You're on a piece of cardboard. In marker. Taped to a mailbox. Leaning on a fence post in the rain.
"Stay warm."
"Take what you need."
"I'm just up the road."
If you've been wondering where your country went, it didn't go anywhere.
Go for a drive.
It's still taped to the mailboxes.
Neil retweeted
There is much to celebrate this week, but I want to call specific attention to historic gains Democratic women made in representation:
- For the first time in history, over 100 Democratic women will serve in the U.S. House.
- At least 16 Democratic women will serve in the Senate.
- At least 14 Democratic women will serve as governors, a record high.
- A record of 2,600 Democratic women running for seats in state legislatures helped flip 12 majorities and break 11 supermajorities.
- Four states elected their first woman governor: Georgia, Minnesota, Ohio, and Tennessee.
- @KeishaBottoms will be the first Black woman to serve as a governor.
- @DebHaalandNM will be the first Native American woman to serve as a governor.
- @GinaHinojosaTX will be the first Latina to serve as governor of Texas.
- @peggyflanagan will be the first Native American woman to serve in the Senate.
I am beyond excited to see these extraordinary people and public servants tackle accountability, affordability, and our other challenges to make life better for everyone in this country.
Congratulations to everyone who ran: win or lose, fighting for what's right is always worth it.
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“Please respect the sanctity of Arlington National Cemetery by disapproving this unnecessary arch,” one of almost 1,000 public comments says. nbcwashington.com/news/local…
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Lawyers for Democrat Scott Colom are warning election officials across Mississippi that Republicans' demand to segregate affidavit ballots from other ballots “will violate Mississippi voters’ rights and Mississippi election law.”
mississippifreepress.org/rol…
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Zohran Mamdani is on fire. 🔥
🇺🇸JD Vance at 6:00 PM: We lost due to the Iran war which causes household inflation for Americans
🇺🇸Zohran at 7:00 PM: "Bro you are VP of USA, not a random Twitter troll. You can't post like it's someone else's war. You started it, You can end it. Stop tweeting and crying, start acting."
Brutally Cooked 👏