Still the Kingmaker
Plus: Surrogacy case, pied-à-terre tax, AI op-eds, and more...
Darline Graham won her Senate primary: Down in South Carolina, Darline Graham—the sister of recently deceased Lindsey Graham—just won the Republican Senate primary, overcoming her dearth of experience (and probably being helped by President Donald Trump's aggressive endorsement).
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"Despite being a political unknown, Graham bested some of South Carolina's top political names in the special election spun up after Lindsey Graham's sudden death last month," reports the Associated Press. "She was appointed by Gov. Henry McMaster to serve out the remaining months of her late brother's current term and swiftly won an endorsement from Trump, who encouraged her to enter the race for a full term and campaigned for her in the state last week."
Graham has positioned herself rather beautifully as a sycophant. She has "repeatedly stressed to voters her intent to support Trump's policy positions and often referenced in particular her co-sponsorship of a voting bill that's become a key priority for the president," notes the A.P. It turns out Trump can still be a kingmaker, and pledging fealty to him is seen as the price of admission in several key races. It's impressive that someone with so little political experience was able to beat sitting U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman, but I suppose that's just the power of MAGA.
Surrogacy case divides: Baby Gabriel, or baby Rumi—depending who you ask—was born earlier this month, having been diagnosed with a serious heart condition in utero at the 20-week scan. He's undergone the first of several surgeries he'll need in his childhood and is recovering at a hospital in Texas. But here's the twist: It's not really clear who his parents are. Gabriel/Rumi was born via a surrogate, McKenna West, who traveled from her home in Alaska all the way to Texas to have him. His biological parents, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, of Los Angeles, had asked West to abort him when the heart condition was diagnosed, per the terms of their surrogacy contract. West refused.
"Upon learning this devastating news [the hypoplastic left heart syndrome diagnosis], A.B. [Omar Ahmed, the intended father] and C.D. [Nausheen Gilkar, the intended mother] consulted with health care providers and researched the quality of life associated with this dire diagnosis to understand the future their child faced. After thoughtfully doing so, they made the agonizing and difficult decision to terminate the pregnancy," wrote the intended parents' attorney in a court filing. "It is undisputed that West initially agreed and that she herself made the initial appointment."
Then, it's not totally clear what happened: "West alleged Ahmed and Gilkar pressured her to have an abortion against her wishes and refused to commit to providing life-saving care for the baby, should it be born, according to court documents," reports CNN. "Ahmed and Gilkar say West cut off communication with them shortly after agreeing to terminate the pregnancy. Then, rather than pressuring West to have an abortion, they said they pivoted to arranging medical care for the baby in California, the documents state."
West is a nurse with two children of her own, whom she moved down to Texas temporarily so that she could give birth at a hospital that could appropriately provide for the baby's care. West has gone viral across right-wing media and was able to get connected with both Live Action and the Alliance Defending Freedom to be able to afford representation in court. "They were treating her baby like a product," Live Action's Lila Rose told The New York Times. "The product had a defect, and so they were trying to send it back." Ahmed and Gilkar seem to want custody now, and have allegedly agreed to provide medical care for Gabriel/Rumi, but are also suing West for damages.
Scenes from New York: Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration has earned plenty of ire over the past few months as it has totally botched the rollout of the pied-à-terre tax. "Last month, the Finance Department notified about 17,000 property owners that they might be subject to the tax—a levy on high-end 'pieds-à-terre'—unless they could prove that the dwelling was their primary residence," reports the Times. This would apply to second home condos and co-ops with a value of at least $1 million or more, and single-family homes with a value of $5 million or more. The only trouble: A new lawsuit "argues that the city sowed chaos by sending out the 17,000 notices without first determining that the property owners were not full-time residents, and by releasing a list of nearly one million 'properties that may be subject to the charge' that included the owners' names."
QUICK HITS
- "To almost everyone in this world, outside the AI bubble of Silicon Valley, the idea of scooping up property rights outside of Earth might sound improbable. But in [Leopold] Aschenbrenner's world, that sort of fervent belief was among the reasons the 24-year-old investor was hailed as a visionary," write Berber Jin, Ben Cohen, and Anissa Gardizy for The Wall Street Journal. "Since graduating from Columbia University in 2021 as the class valedictorian at age 19, he has worked his way into the upper echelons of technology. He spent time working out of now-convicted crypto founder Sam Bankman-Fried's compound in the Bahamas and then at OpenAI in San Francisco. Even as he drew attention as a troublemaker among some of his bosses, according to people who worked with him, he grew close to the industry's top players. Two years ago, he made bold predictions about the impending arrival of superintelligence, writing in a 165-page manifesto called 'Situational Awareness' that AI would lead to one of the 'most intense and volatile moments of human history.' He quickly turned that interest into money for a hedge fund that eventually managed $45 billion in assets, backed by investors who believed in his prophecy—or his ability to profit from it."
- Speaking of The Wall Street Journal: That Stanley Druckenmiller piece I quoted from yesterday? Apparently it was AI-written. The interesting thing is that neither Druckenmiller nor his editor appear to care all that much:
In a statement, WSJ opinion editor Paul Gigot defends Druckenmiller's use of AI to write Monday's op ed, saying "AI is a fact of modern life," and "nobody can doubt that his op-ed is his genuine opinion." https://t.co/p6Sueft0EW pic.twitter.com/a7WcJIOkeX
— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) August 25, 2026
- Semi-related: Are whole books disappearing from middle- and high-school curricula, replaced by excerpts? The Washington Post has more. I've got to say: I hate this. Building some intellectual stamina and discipline, not to mention being able to grasp deeper themes, seems really important. I'm sure most kids don't read all the books they're assigned, but keeping standards reasonably high strikes me as important.
- "Two people have died in Pennsylvania from measles, the state health department said Tuesday. Both individuals from Lancaster County were unvaccinated," reports ABC News. "These [are] the first deaths related to measles within the state in 35 years, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, and the first deaths reported this year in the U.S."
- Interesting point:
Everyone knows there hasn't been some kind of big jobs wipeout yet. But there's less appreciation of the fact that the job market (by most metrics) has improved noticeably in 2026, with the unemployment rate falling from 4.5% late last year to 4.1% as of the most recent report.
— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) August 25, 2026
- RIP Dolly:
After less than a month as President, Ronald Reagan watches Dolly Parton at Camp David in "9 to 5" on Valentine's Day 1981, and writes one complaint into his diary: pic.twitter.com/VuaZ55y9Eq
— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) August 25, 2026
