$43.6 billion.

That’s how much American taxpayers have spent on the war in Iran so far.. while families here in Michigan are watching gas, groceries and just about everything else get more expensive.

And the bill isn’t done growing.

Michigan has already been hit with THE biggest gas-price increases in the country, and if supply-chain disruptions and tariff fuckery keep getting worse, Americans could be paying even more for increasingly scarce basics.

Meanwhile, William Lawrence, the Democratic nominee in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, has made ending America’s cycle of endless war a central part of his campaign, calling for an end to “25 years of impunity” for America’s political elite.

“Spending $43.6 billion on a war started for the sake of Trump’s ego while Michiganders can’t afford the basics is a travesty,” said Lawrence. “The American people deserve real security: housing and healthcare they can count on, not endless wars.”

Which got us thinking:

What could Michigan actually do with $43.6 billion if we spent it on people instead?

So Distill caught up with Lawrence and asked him for 10 better ways to spend $43.6 billion, all focused on making Michiganders’ lives more secure, affordable and livable.

Here’s his list:

1. Give every Michigander $4,360. ( Still not enough to make up for the $5600 republican policy’s have cost us in the last year.)

2. Make 8,843,813,387.42 gallons of gas free for Michiganders.

3. Restore Trump’s $380 million cuts to Michigan’s health care grants 114 times.

4. Restore Trump’s Medicaid funding cuts to Michigan hospitals seven times.

5. Re-open the four Planned Parenthood clinics in Michigan forced to close because of Trump’s cuts.

6. Restore the nearly $42 million in funding Trump cut from Michigan schools 1,038 times.

7. Build 55 Veteran’s Affairs residential rehabilitation treatment facilities across Michigan.

8. Restore two full years of Trump’s cuts to SNAP nationwide.

9. Repave every road in Watersmeet Township 2,691 times.

10. Restore the $200 million in federal research funding Trump pulled from Michigan 218 times.

In Michigan’s 7th district, Lawrence is running against Representative Tom Barrett who voted in support of the Iran war three times, voted to gut VA healthcare and who has never held a single in person town hall.

Just last week, veterans in Michigan’s 7th district held a protest about the Iran war, exploding gas prices, and Washington’s endless appetite for military spending.

At the protest, Distill spoke with Steven Monti, a veteran from the greater Lansing area who lives in Tom Barrett’s district. Monti said he feels betrayed by his congressman, specifically pointing to what he described as Barrett’s actions cutting VA healthcare. ( Clip of our conversation below 👇)

This war, undertaken illegally by Trump, is in violation of international law and was functionally unprovoked. It doesn’t serve the American people in any way.

The United States has been entangled in seemingly endless conflicts in the Middle East for decades. Throughout this endless war, America’s leaders have put oil executives and egomanics ahead of the American people.

Distill has our own ideas about a better way to spend $43.6 billion. We could buy 1.9 trillion pieces of sidewalk chalk to terrify Tom Barrett. He would be too scared to leave his office though, it’s not like he shows up in the 7th district anyway.

Super scary Tom, we know…. Happy October everyone! 👻

On a final note..

Last week at a protest in district, a local veteran, US Army Main Sgt Retired, Duane Kleinhardt, who served alongside Tom Barrett is now calling him out over his votes in Congress, saying Barrett has made life harder for working people and veterans while backing a costly war many Americans never wanted.

For this retired Army Sgt Major, service means accountability. He has yet to have an opportunity to speak to his congressman.

Sounds like the veterans have spoken, Tom and they’ve decided two years with you was more than enough. ( We hope he reads this!)

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Women are furious, and this last week gave them plenty of reasons. Not abstract reasons, not academic reasons, but the same ugly lesson delivered over and over again: women get violently harmed, men look away, and institutions immediately start negotiating down the consequences to in some cases nearly nothing.

Let’s get into it.

Last week a man masturbated beside a woman on a United flight while looking at her. She reported it, and instead of removing him from her space or making sure police met the plane, United eventually made her return to the seat next to him for landing and later offered her a travel credit.

• At Cornell, it was reported that seven fraternity members drugged and gang-raped a student for hours while someone advertised “free pussy” to the fraternity. No frat member tried to stop this. According to her lawsuit, some of the university discipline imposed involved writing essays, which is an astonishingly tidy academic response to organized gang rape. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. This is how we ended up with Trumps, Kavanaughs and Epsteins.

• At LSU, the university’s own Title IX process found a football player responsible for rape. His original punishment was a one-year suspension, he appealed, the finding remained, and the punishment got lighter. That tells women something very clear about whose future institutions instinctively protect: the woman gets the trauma, while the athlete gets another round of procedural concern about what consequences might do to his life.

• Then there is the teenage girl who rejected a boy, was stalked by him and later stabbed by him 10 times. Again, the girl gets the terror and the lifelong memory, while everyone else gets to calmly discuss what level of punishment would be ok here. Guess what. There was no real punishment but she was granted a restraining order.

There is another detail running through these stories that deserves far more attention: in the reporting, not a single man who was present is described as stepping in and stopping the abuse while it was happening. That matters because violence against women does not survive on perpetrators alone; it survives on bystanders, silence, male loyalty, cowardice and the endless social instinct to avoid making things uncomfortable for another man. How is it that every woman knows another who has been abused but most men don’t know male abuser? Weird huh?

Women are taught the rules almost from childhood. Watch your drink, share your location, park under a light, text when you get home, do not walk alone after dark, do not make him angry, do not reject him too harshly, do not trust the guy who seems off, and always have an escape route.

Reporting this week also revisited FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s years inside a cult-like AA offshoot where former members described sexual exploitation of children, girls. Carr himself has not been accused of sexually abusing those girls, but the story still raises uncomfortable questions about how thoroughly the environments surrounding powerful men are examined and how easily disturbing histories can be treated as irrelevant until someone finally forces them into public view.

Women have spent years being told they are overreacting when they talk about the culture that protects abusive men. Then a week like this comes along and gives them an airline making a woman sit beside the man who masturbated at her, a university responding to gang rape with essays, another university reducing punishment after its own finding of rape, and another case in which a girl is stalked and stabbed.

We know exactly how fast female rage gets policed. Distill Social called Donald Trump a pedophile on live Fox 2 News earlier this year, and we have not been invited back. The host’s objection was that he had not been adjudicated (like he was for E Jean Carrolls rape) as if women need a judge’s permission slip before they are allowed to read the Epstein files, listen to survivors, connect the dots and say what they believe.

That is the scam. Men get the benefit of euphemism. Women get lectured about tone.

Women are expected to watch powerful men skate through scandal after scandal, watch institutions protect them, watch survivors beg for accountability, and then somehow choose words soft enough not to upset the men in the room.

Fuck that.

They do not need permission to be furious. They do not need a television host, a dean, a lawyer or a political consultant telling them which words are acceptable.

Women need justice.

And if your first instinct is to police the language of angry women instead of the men who keep harming them, congratulations: you are part of the fucking problem.

Last week the Epstein Files Bookmobile came to Michigan and we visited it. It’s a traveling bookmobile carrying 3.5 million printed and bound pages of public Epstein files across the United States.

Watch our video and see curated gallery inside the Epstein Bookmobile below:

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It’s officially voting season, Michigan.

And the good news is that voting here no longer requires you to arrange your entire life around one random Tuesday in November.

Want to vote from your couch? You can.

Want to personally feed your ballot into a machine a week before Election Day? Also an option.

Want the classic Election Day experience? Michigan has you covered there too.

So welcome to Choose Your Own Voting Adventure: Michigan Edition.

OPTION ONE: The “Please Just Mail It to My House” Voter

Beginning Thursday, September 24, absentee ballots are available for Michigan’s November 3 election. Every registered Michigan voter has the right to vote absentee, no excuse required. How fortunate that this article goes out the same day that absentee ballots do. It’s like we planned that.

If you’re already on Michigan’s permanent absentee-ballot list, congratulations: your clerk automatically sends you a ballot for every election and yours is automatically being mailed out to you today.

Then comes the best part: voting from your kitchen table, where there are snacks and absolutely no line.

Fill it out. Sign the envelope. Mail it back, take it to your clerk, or put it in an official secure drop box like the one below.

And then?

Track that sucker. 👈 Just click there and track your ballot on Ballot Power!

You can check your ballot status online instead of spending the next three weeks wondering whether your envelope has disappeared into the electoral Bermuda Triangle. Democracy, but with package tracking.

OPTION TWO: The “I Want to Watch My Ballot Go Into the Machine” Voter

Maybe mailing a ballot makes you nervous.

Fine! Michigan has an option for you too.

Beginning Saturday, October 24, Michigan’s mandatory statewide early-voting period begins. It runs through Sunday, November 1, and some communities may offer even more early-voting days.

This is real, actual voting.

You go to your early-voting site, get your ballot, fill it out and personally put it into the tabulator. But wait, where do I go vote? Find out here: Michigan.gov/Vote.

Done.

Sticker acquired.

Civic duty completed.

You can now spend Election Day smugly watching everyone else remember at 6:47 p.m. that they still have to vote.

OPTION THREE: The Election Day Traditionalist

You enjoy tradition.

You enjoy seeing your neighbors.

Perhaps you enjoy fluorescent lighting in elementary-school gyms.

Your day is Tuesday, November 3.

Michigan polls are open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. If you’re in line when the polls close, stay in line.

Before you go, check Michigan.gov/Vote.

That’s where you can confirm your registration, find your polling place, locate your early-voting site, view your sample ballot and get absentee-voting information.

Because nothing kills the Election Day vibe quite like confidently strolling into the wrong middle school.

WAIT — I’M NOT REGISTERED

Still fixable. Sorry friends, Michigan makes it really hard to NOT VOTE. Literally, you have no excuses.

The deadline to register online or by mail is October 19.

After that, Michigan allows eligible voters to register in person at their city or township clerk’s office through Election Day, with the required proof of residency.

So no, October 19 does not mean the door slams shut forever.

THE THREE DATES TO BURN INTO YOUR BRAIN

Here’s the entire article condensed into the part you screenshot and text to your family:

SEPTEMBER 24: Absentee ballots become available.

OCTOBER 24: Statewide early in-person voting begins.

NOVEMBER 3: Election Day.

That’s it. Send them this link too.. Help Me Vote

Michigan has made it possible to vote from your couch, at a drop box, at your clerk’s office, during early voting or the old-fashioned way on Election Day.

Pick whichever option works for your life.

Then check it off the list and enjoy the greatest feeling of election season:

Already voted.

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With Election Day now just over 40 days away, Abdul El-Sayed got two major boosts today from two different corners of the Democratic coalition.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris came to Detroit to campaign with El-Sayed at Birth Detroit, a Black-led maternal and birth center on the city’s west side, where the conversation focused on Black maternal health.

Harris and El-Sayed already had a political relationship, he endorsed her presidential campaign in 2024, but her appearance in Detroit matters now because El-Sayed still has work to do building support in Michigan’s largest city.

Standing in a room of Black women, discussing an issue that disproportionately affects Black women, alongside one of the most prominent Black women in American politics sent a clear message: Detroit is central to this campaign.

As the roundtable wrapped, El-Sayed said he wanted to take these kinds of conversations to Washington “as a team.”

The room responded with snaps and claps. It was a clear show of support but also one that will include accountability.

At an NAACP event in Detroit this evening, Kamala Harris told the crowd: “We have got to turn out the vote in numbers so large that we will be too big to rig. Too big to rig.”

If Harris represented one part of the Democratic coalition coming together, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel represented another.

On today’s episode of For the Sake of the Argument with Lori Goldman, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel made her position clear while appearing alongside El-Sayed.

“Yes, I’ll be voting for Abdul.” ( Watch a clip from the podcast below 👇 )

Nessel said she believes El-Sayed will fight the Trump administration and protect Michiganders’ “security, our safety, our health, and our futures,” adding:

“I am going to say there is no choice, and that’s why I’m supporting Abdul for the United States Senate.”

El-Sayed acknowledged that the two have not always agreed and will not always agree, but said they share a commitment to fighting for Michigan families.

That is what makes this moment notable.

Nessel is one of Michigan’s most prominent Jewish Democrats. Harris remains one of the country’s most recognizable Democratic figures and an especially important voice among Black voters.

Both made their support for El-Sayed unmistakable on the same day.

The post-primary divide inside the Michigan Democratic Party is clearly narrowing. Democrats who disagree on plenty are lining up behind the same Senate nominee and making those disagreements secondary to the general election.

Call it something Democrats have not been accused of nearly enough lately:

Dems in array. 💙

And with roughly 40 days left, the contrast inside Michigan politics is getting harder to miss. All GOOD VIBES on our side though. 😜

We encourage you to listen to the full episode with Attorney General Dana Nessel and Abdul El-Sayed. It’s a nuanced conversation, and no single clip can fully capture the context or substance of the discussion.

Listen for free here:

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

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At the Labor Day parade, we saw Haley Stevens and went over to say hello.

Why? Because the primary is over. Stevens lost, she has been gracious about it and working hard to unify the party, and we believe there is value in Democrats acting like adults, accepting the voters’ decision and moving forward together.

Haley was perfectly nice to us.

Then, our our reporter began speaking, a person marching with her supporters started screaming:

“FUCK GINA.”

Then:

“FUCK JULIE.”

And finally, to Julie:

“GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM.”

Julie is an immigrant.

We want to be very precise here: we are not blaming Haley Stevens for something another person yelled. In fact, Stevens’ own behavior toward us that day was very respectful.

But that makes what happened worth talking about.

Because Democrats cannot spend years correctly condemning “go back where you came from” rhetoric when it is aimed at immigrants and then shrug when somebody on our own side uses it against a person they don’t like.

And we cannot talk endlessly about “party unity” if unity means only one faction is expected to swallow its anger.

This was an extraordinarily expensive and contentious primary.

That election is over.

Nobody has to like Distill Social. Nobody has to like Gina or Julie. Nobody has to agree with our politics or our coverage.

Tell us we’re wrong. Criticize our work. Hell, yell “fuck Distill” if that makes you feel better.

But telling an immigrant to “go back where you came from” because you are angry about politics crosses a very different line.

If Democrats are serious about unity, then the standard has to be incredibly simple:

The xenophobic shit we condemn when it comes from the other side doesn’t magically become acceptable when somebody wearing our team’s shirt says it.

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Watch the exchange here, because he yelled it straight into the camera:

Do divisive losers bother you too?

Donate To Cancel Out Zach's Hate

Or since airfare is super expensive you can also donate to send Julie back to where she came from. 😜

Donate To Send Julie Home ; )

In all seriousness, this man’s behavior was unhinged and bordered on violence. Political rhetoric that dehumanizes or threatens people creates the conditions for political violence and activists cannot do our jobs if we do not feel safe enough to show up, ask questions, organize, and speak freely. We thank Congresswoman Stevens for condemning his behavior to us off camera.

If unity means anything, it means drawing that line clearly before intimidation becomes something worse.

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The waiting is over: Michigan’s 2026 general election ballot is officially set, and voters statewide will see two proposals this November. And these aren’t really left-versus-right issue, they’re about who gets to write the rules and how much influence powerful interests should have over our government, things most of us will agree on! Proposal 1 asks whether Michigan should open its Constitution to a broad rewrite, while Proposal 2 would restrict certain political contributions from regulated utilities and major government contractors and increase campaign-finance transparency. Whatever your party, these are questions about accountability, transparency and keeping political power in the hands of Michigan voters.

Proposal 1: Opening Michigan’s Constitution Comes With Enormous Risk

Proposal 1 asks Michigan voters whether they want to call a Constitutional Convention, commonly called a Con-Con, to undertake a general revision of the Michigan Constitution. This question automatically appears on the ballot every 16 years, and Michigan voters have repeatedly declined to call a convention, including in 1978, 1994 and 2010.

And this is not a proposal to fix one outdated sentence or make one narrowly defined change.

A “general revision” means opening Michigan’s foundational governing document to potentially sweeping changes. A convention could revisit provisions dealing with voting and elections, reproductive freedom, civil rights, taxation, property rights, public pensions, collective bargaining, the powers of state government and much more.

That is what makes Proposal 1 so consequential.

If it passes, Michigan would hold partisan elections for 148 convention delegates — one from every state House and state Senate district. Those delegates would then meet in Lansing, choose their own leadership, establish their own rules and decide what changes to include in a proposed new constitution. The current Constitution does not set a fixed length for how long that convention could operate.

Voters would ultimately have to approve any revised constitution before it took effect. But by that point, the convention would have already determined which existing protections stay, which change and what new provisions voters are asked to accept as one constitutional package.

That creates a very different process from the way Michigan normally changes its Constitution.

Right now, voters can consider constitutional amendments one issue at a time. Michigan has repeatedly used that process to make targeted changes to voting rights, redistricting, term limits and other provisions without reopening the entire document. In 2022 we enshrined reproductive freedom into our state constitution this way.

A Constitutional Convention is the opposite: instead of fixing one provision, virtually everything can become part of the conversation.

That includes provisions Michiganders may currently take for granted.

The Citizens Research Council notes that a convention could debate issues involving equal protection, reproductive freedom, firearms regulation, voting rules, taxation, pensions, eminent domain and collective bargaining for state employees, among many others.

There is also a substantial financial cost. Independent estimates from the Citizens Research Council put the likely cost of a modern constitutional convention and related elections at roughly $70 million to $90 million, depending partly on how long the convention lasts.

So the question behind Proposal 1 is bigger than whether Michigan’s 1963 Constitution could be modernized.

It is whether the potential benefits of rewriting it justify opening decades of existing constitutional protections, governmental structures and voter-approved provisions to a broad political convention when Michigan already has a process for amending the Constitution one issue at a time. We say NO.

Proposal 2: Should the Companies We Regulate Be Funding the Politicians Regulating Them?

Proposal 2 targets a familiar problem in Michigan politics: companies that depend on decisions from state government can also spend money influencing the people making those decisions.

The proposal would restrict certain political contributions from regulated electric and gas utilities, including DTE and Consumers Energy, as well as companies receiving more than $250,000 a year in government contracts. The restrictions would also reach certain executives, board members and others closely connected to those companies.

The argument from supporters is simple: the companies being regulated shouldn’t be financially supporting the politicians responsible for regulating them.

That concern is especially relevant with Michigan’s monopoly utilities, which rely on state regulators for major decisions involving rates and investments while remaining deeply involved in state politics.

Proposal 2 also takes aim at political spending voters often can’t easily trace. It would expand disclosure requirements for certain “issue ads” that mention candidates or ballot proposals close to an election, even when they avoid explicitly saying “vote for” or “vote against.”

It would not eliminate all dark money or outside political spending. Instead, it focuses on pay-to-play concerns and greater transparency around who is spending money to influence Michigan elections.

Opponents have raised First Amendment objections to some of the contribution restrictions, particularly those affecting individuals connected to regulated companies, and those questions could ultimately be tested in court.

At its core, Proposal 2 asks a pretty straightforward question:

Should companies that rely on government contracts or government regulators also be allowed to financially influence the officials on the other side of the table? We say NO!

Here’s the good news: these aren’t red-team-versus-blue-team issues. Nobody likes special interests messing with the rules, and pretty much everyone is tired of powerful corporations having an outsized voice in Lansing. So send this to your mom, your neighbor, your Republican cousin, your Democratic group chat and that one independent friend who complains about all politicians. Prop 1 and Prop 2 are exactly the kind of ballot questions we should all be talking about before Election Day. Finally something we can all agree on! Except DTE and a few other billion dollar corporations. 🤷

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We’ve been asking when Trump would make his move to suppress voting in the midterm elections. A USPS whistleblower may have just given us the answer.

According to information provided to Congress this week, changes implemented after Trump’s March executive order could create chaos for mail-in voting nationwide. The whistleblower describes a verification system so unforgiving that a single failed scan could jeopardize an entire batch of ballots. In an election where turnout could determine control of Congress, that isn’t some minor bureaucratic glitch. It could become a voter-suppression machine.

After Trump’s executive order, the USPS was told to create a master voting list of every registered American and only send ballots to those individuals. Here’s the problem, according to the whistleblower, the systems used to verify those ballots when they are sent back are completely broken. The anonymous tipster said that when the ballots are scanned for verification, they can have “zero-percent failure”. This means that if there’s a batch of 500 votes, if even one fails the scan, the entire batch is thrown out. That could invalidate the votes of MILLIONS of people.

Imagine if one iPhone screen was slightly cracked at the factory process. But instead of fixing that one phone, you tossed out millions of the other phones right behind it, even if they were perfectly fine and functional. That is what this policy means. It’s flat out voter suppression. Creating an intentionally busted system that WILL invalidate the political voice of millions of Americans.

But That’s Only Half The Issue…

The other problem is the clear violation of the Constitution that this presents. Trump has no authority on how individual states conduct their elections; this has been enshrined as law for 250 years. With the EO, Trump would be effectively telling every state in the union that this is the new standard. Meaning, there’s bound to be ballots that fail in every state…it’s inevitable. All of this is made to placate the ego of Trump and to rig the game in favor of election deniers nationwide. Including the GOP Secretary of State candidate, Anthony Forlini who’s already bowed down to Trump’s election fraud falsehoods. And on top of all this now DHS Secretary, Markwayne Mullin, says that ICE agents could potentially go into polling places. Which is not typically legal, but the law has never mattered to these people. Listen below as LG and Democratic nominee Garlin Gilchrist describes how his GOP opponent hired J6ers to be republican poll watchers below and how that should be completely disqualifying for the job to lead Michigan’s elections.👇

And here’s the tell: confident parties don’t rewrite the rules when they think they’re winning. They persuade more voters.

The national debt just blew past $40 trillion. Trump’s six-month war with Iran has helped drive oil prices back toward $95 a barrel and nearly bankrupted our Navy. Tariffs and energy prices are still hammering manufacturers with higher input costs. And while the administration boasts about “efficiency,” more than 15,000 USDA employees have already left through buyouts and early retirements as unions warn its reorganization could disrupt food-safety work. This summer alone, a Cyclospora outbreak linked to lettuce sickened more than 1,600 people and hospitalized 94.

That’s the agenda they’re asking Americans to reward: higher costs, another endless war, gutted public institutions and a government increasingly organized around billionaires, tech oligarchs and Trump’s political grievances. When you can’t make life better for voters, apparently the backup plan is making it harder for voters to throw you out. Republicans can’t win on merit, so they cheat.

But you can stop it, and ensure your voice gets heard at the ballot box. If you can, vote in person or drop your ballot off directly to your polling place. But if you have to vote by mail, save this tool so you can track your ballot in real time, and make your vote gets counted.

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Michigan families are worried about grocery prices, utility bills, housing and health care. Michigan Republican gubernatorial nominee John James, meanwhile, went on The Benny Show and started talking about circumcision, submitting to his Lord and Savior, and Satan.

No, seriously. James launched into a theological discussion about circumcision as a covenant with God and how Satan twists that message. This is the Republican nominee for governor of Michigan, not a guy yelling into a microphone outside a gas station. Watch this for yourself. Just don’t get second hand cringe.

The contrast could not be clearer. While James was talking about circumcision and Satan, Jocelyn Benson was campaigning on affordability and talking about lowering costs for Michigan families.

That is increasingly the choice Republicans are offering voters: endless culture-war obsessions and deeply weird conversations about your body and religion, while normal people are trying to figure out how to pay their electric bill.

Michigan voters need a governor focused on making life more affordable. If John James wants the job, maybe he should spend a little less time talking about foreskins and Satan and a little more time talking about why everything costs so damn much.

Now The Weirdos Are Cheering a Trade War Because Trump Renamed a Lake

Then there’s the Oakland County Republican Party, apparently thrilled that Trump is trying to turn Lake Ontario into another stupid culture-war prop. They’re cheering the name change like it’s some huge victory instead of what it actually is: petty nonsense happening in the middle of a trade war with Canada that is costing Michigan jobs and raising prices.

That’s the part they somehow never mention. Michigan’s economy is tied to Canada at the hip. When Trump slaps tariffs on Canadian goods, manufacturers pay more, businesses get squeezed, the auto industry gets hurt and those costs eventually land exactly where they always do: on you.

So imagine watching your own state take the hit and responding, “Hell yeah, rename the lake.” Are they really this desperate for a culture-war dopamine hit that they’ll cheer while Michigan families pick up the tab? Pathetic.

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We have plenty of more weird republican news coming your way! You think this is bad, wait until you hear about some of the stuff Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers is up to! At least he just put his Florida house up for sale. Maybe he wont move back after he loses the election this time.

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More than half a million Michiganders signed petitions supporting the Michiganders for Money Out of Politics initiative. Now it will be on the ballot in November.

They collected signatures, cleared the certification process and got ballot language approved.

Then Lansing got involved.

On Tuesday, the Republican-controlled Michigan House voted 77–26 to enact the MMOP citizen initiative before it could reach voters in November so they could adopt and amend it.

That sounds, at first glance to folks not deep in the trenches, like lawmakers simply agreeing with the proposal.

But there was a very important catch.

Under Michigan’s citizen-initiative process, lawmakers get 40 days after certification to enact a proposed law themselves. If both chambers approve it, it becomes law without a statewide election. If they don’t, voters decide the proposal at the general election.

And those two paths do NOT create equally durable laws.

If voters enact an initiated law at the ballot box, changing it later generally requires a three-fourths vote of both chambers of the Legislature. If lawmakers enact it themselves, a future Legislature can amend or repeal it with an ordinary legislative majority and the governor’s approval.

That distinction is why MMOP supporters viewed the House vote not as an embrace of the campaign, but as an effort to intercept it before voters could decide. This was not done in good faith or with the best of intentions in mind. This was in the simplest of terms, MAGA Matt Hall fuckery.

Democratic Reps. Carrie Rheingans and Betsy Coffia had warned before the vote that legislative adoption could keep MMOP off the ballot while leaving it more vulnerable to changes later. MMOP campaign manager Maura Cowley went further, calling the House maneuver “political gamesmanship.”

House Speaker Matt Hall rejected that characterization because it was true and made him look bad. (This happens a lot)

But the House could not make that decision alone.

Enter Democratic Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks.

After the House vote, Brinks announced that the Democratic-controlled Senate would NOT take up the initiative.

Her reasoning was straightforward: more than half a million Michiganders had signed petitions, and she believed voters should be the ones to decide.

“The message from Michiganders is clear: They want this on the ballot in November.”

Brinks, who Jocelyn Benson has chosen to run as her lieutenant governor, said the Senate would not use the legislative process to “subvert the will of the voters.”

And without Senate approval, the House vote cannot enact MMOP. Hat tip to Brinks on that one.

So what would MMOP actually do?

The proposal would impose new campaign-finance restrictions on businesses whose financial relationship with state government creates obvious questions about political influence.

It would prohibit certain political contributions from:

• regulated electric and gas utilities, including companies such as DTE Energy and Consumers Energy;

• companies receiving more than $250,000 annually in government contracts; and

• certain people and organizations with substantial connections to those companies.

It would also expand disclosure requirements for political communications, including online communications and spending that clearly identifies candidates or ballot questions even when the communication stops short of explicitly saying “vote for” or “vote against.”

That would represent a significant change in a state where regulated utilities and major contractors have long been substantial political spenders.

A MAGA group funded by out of state money called Protect MI Free Speech has asked the Michigan Supreme Court to overturn the Board of State Canvassers’ certification of the petitions, arguing that election officials did not properly apply signature-verification procedures. The Board of State Canvassers certified the initiative after determining that MMOP had submitted enough valid signatures. This will likely fail.

Barring unlikely intervention by the Michigan Supreme Court, one of Michigan’s biggest fights over corporate political spending is now poised to end where its organizers intended:

with Michigan voters on the ballot November 3.

Special thanks to the legislators who stood with MMOP in the House yesterday.

Michigan Representatives who stood with MMOP:

Rep Kelly Breen

Rep Erin Brynes

Rep Brenda Carter

Rep James (Jim) Desana

Rep Emily Dievendorf

Rep Kimberly Edwards

Rep Morgan Foreman

Rep Kristian Grant

Rep Kara Hope

Rep Jason Hoskins

Rep Matt Koleszar

Rep Matt Longjohn

Rep Sharon MacDonell

Rep Donavan McKinney

Rep Reggie Miller

Rep Jason Morgan

Rep Tonya Myers Phillips

Rep Veronica Paiz

Rep Laurie Pohutsky

Rep Natalie Price

Rep Carrie Rheingans

Rep Dylan Wegela

Rep Regina Weiss

Rep Jimmie Wilson Jr

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The Callaway–Good Good disaster is what happens when the attention economy discovers misogyny sells.

There is something deeply wrong with the fact that a room full of adults apparently looked at an advertisement in which a man charges at a woman, shoves her to the ground, stands over her and warns her not to touch his golf club—and decided: Yep. That’ll sell drivers.

That is essentially what happened with the new Good Good Golf and Callaway campaign.

In the 15-second ad, Good Good co-founder Garrett Clark sees fellow golfer Alexis Miestowski reaching for his Callaway driver. He rushes over, knocks her to the ground and looms over her while warning her not to touch it. The closing message: “You have been warned.”

This wasn’t some rogue TikTok accidentally uploaded by an intern. Callaway has acknowledged that it approved the advertisement before it went live. Both companies pulled it after the backlash and apologized.

And that distinction matters.

Because the defense here cannot simply be that nobody realized what the video looked like.

What it looked like was the joke.

The entire premise requires the audience to recognize a familiar image: an angry man physically intimidating a woman over something she has done that displeased him. Without that recognition, there is no punchline.

Except violence against women isn’t an edgy cultural reference.

Nearly one in three women worldwide will experience physical or sexual violence during her lifetime, most often at the hands of an intimate partner. WHO estimates that roughly 840 million women and girls have experienced partner or sexual violence.

Against that reality, watching a huge golf brand turn male violence into a cute way to communicate this club is so awesome you’ll attack a woman who touches it doesn’t feel like an isolated advertising mistake.

It feels like another mile marker.

The manosphere escaped the manosphere

For years, misogyny online could be dismissed as something happening in dark corners of Reddit, incel forums or Andrew Tate videos.

It isn’t staying there.

The aesthetics and assumptions of the manosphere are increasingly bleeding into mainstream culture: women are annoying. Women are manipulative. Women are preventing men from succeeding. Feminism ruined everything. Masculinity means dominance. Relationships are a power struggle. Cruelty is funny as long as everyone agrees afterward that it was “just a joke.”

And increasingly, boys are encountering those ideas before they have even figured out what being a man means.

Research published in 2026 involving 601 American boys ages 13 to 17 found that following manosphere figures was associated with stronger beliefs that ideal masculinity requires dominance, toughness, emotional detachment and antifemininity.

Other research has demonstrated how recommendation systems can push young male users toward increasingly misogynistic content. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue found experimental YouTube accounts representing boys and young men were repeatedly recommended anti-feminist and manosphere material, with YouTube Shorts moving toward more extreme content particularly quickly.

So when a golf company trying to reach young men suddenly decides a little violence against a woman makes for provocative advertising, it isn’t occurring in a vacuum.

It is speaking a language the internet has spent years teaching young men.

Why does the internet keep feeding men this stuff?

Here is where we think we should be careful.

We don’t think there is evidence that a collection of tech billionaires sat around a conference table and decided, Let’s make men hate women.

The economic incentives can produce something frighteningly similar without a conspiracy.

Social platforms make money by holding attention. Anger holds attention extraordinarily well. Fear holds attention. Humiliation holds attention. Tribalism holds attention.

A 2025 study auditing Twitter’s engagement-based ranking found that it amplified more emotionally charged, partisan and out-group-hostile material than a chronological feed, including substantially more anger. Researchers specifically noted the tension between engagement-driven algorithms and the advertising businesses that benefit when people stay on platforms longer.

That creates an incredibly simple machine.

Tell a lonely or economically anxious young man:

Your life is difficult.

He listens.

Tell him housing is unaffordable, wages aren’t keeping up and adulthood feels impossible.

You’re still describing reality.

Then tell him:

And women did this to you.

Now you have a villain.

And villains are fantastic for engagement.

The manosphere takes legitimate male pain; loneliness, insecurity, dating frustration, economic instability, fear about the future and redirects it toward women.

Instead of asking why a 25-year-old can’t afford a home or obtain decent healthcare, he is encouraged to obsess over whether women have become too independent.

Instead of questioning concentrations of wealth and power, he can watch another four-hour podcast explaining that feminism is why he can’t get a girlfriend.

That is enormously useful to anyone benefiting from the status quo.

And then there is the strange billionaire contradiction

There is another piece of this culture that deserves scrutiny.

Parts of Silicon Valley have simultaneously developed an intense fascination with pronatalism—the belief that society desperately needs more babies—and with extending human life.

Elon Musk has become one of the loudest advocates for higher birth rates, but he is hardly alone. Across Silicon Valley, a growing pronatalist movement embraced by figures including Sam Altman, Peter Thiel and JD Vance, has centered on fears of population decline, fertility technology and, in some cases, embryo selection. At its most extreme, that worldview veers into explicitly eugenic territory: not just encouraging people to have more children, but debating which people should be reproducing.

At the same time, many of the same tech elites are pouring enormous sums into longevity research. Thiel, Altman and other billionaires have funded companies and scientific efforts focused on slowing aging, rejuvenating cells and dramatically extending human lifespan.

Those things do not prove some unified plot to turn men against women.

But the cultural contradiction is worth noticing.

The rest of us are being fed an internet increasingly built around isolation, resentment, competition and gender warfare while some of the richest people on Earth are preoccupied with optimizing reproduction, extending their own lives and building personal legacies that stretch generations into the future.

Maybe the connecting ideology isn’t hatred of women so much as hierarchy.

A worldview where everything can be ranked.

Men over women.

Winners over losers.

High-value people over low-value people.

The genetically desirable over everyone else.

The billionaire founder as visionary and the rest of humanity as users, consumers, workers and data points.

That worldview is practically tailor-made for the manosphere.

Which brings us back to the golf club

That is why we can’t look at the Good Good advertisement and dismiss it as one tasteless joke.

It is small, but revealing.

Maybe the most disturbing part isn’t that the ad existed.

It’s that somewhere along the way, this idea became normal enough to pitch.

We should be asking how that happened.

Because algorithms don’t merely show us culture anymore. They help manufacture it.

And after years of rewarding the loudest men telling boys that women are their enemies, perhaps we shouldn’t be shocked when that worldview eventually escapes the podcast studio and shows up somewhere as ordinary as an advertisement for a golf club.

What kind of society are we building when contempt for half the population has become a viable marketing strategy?

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