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The New York Times spends a weekend documenting a broke, paranoid DNC; Minnesota (who else?) builds a barely legal classroom doll with interchangeable private parts; more.
JUL 27READ IN APP
Good morning, C&C, it’s Monday! Welcome to a fresh week of coffee drinks and bizarre antics. Thanks to an early court hearing this morning, your slightly reduced roundup includes: $16 million in the bank, $18 million owed, and a national party headquarters pledged as collateral — the New York Times spends its weekend cataloguing Democrat finances and its chairman’s temper; the formal HR complaint nobody wants to discuss; why the long knives are out 100 days before the midterms; and Minnesota’s new taxpayer-funded classroom teaching aid for four-year-olds, which ships with interchangeable private parts and a legal loophole.
🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🇺🇸🌍
🔥🔥🔥 Over the weekend, the New York Times ran a remarkable, above-the-fold, 2,000-word story on page A-1 that dunks on Democrats and reads less like a political news story and more like the script for a streaming network tragi-comedy. The headline announced, “Inside the Phone-Throwing Drama at the Troubled, Broke Democratic Party.”
The article detailed the escalating chaos surrounding the DNC’s new Chairman Ken Martin, who took over in early 2025 promising to rebuild the party from the grassroots up. Instead, he appears to be rebuilding it into a smoking crater.
According to the Times, which seemed oddly exuberant in describing Democrats as “troubled” and “broke,” the DNC is currently $18 million in debt, with only about $16 million in cash on hand. For context, the Republican National Committee is sitting on a Scrooge McDuck-style vault containing $128.5 million in cash, with zero debt, and that’s not even counting the super PACs that engorge the GOP war chest to just south of $700 million.
In June, 2025, Chairman Martin gushed to Axios, “Powered by our grassroots community, the DNC has just set a new record for most money raised in the first four months under a new Chair — ever.” Thirteen months later, he’s mortgaging the office equipment.
Literally. The financial situation is so dire that the DNC has been forced to put up its own Washington D.C. headquarters as collateral for a $15 million line of credit. They are actually mortgaging the furniture. They have also started asking vendors to hold all bills until after the midterm elections, an advanced financial maneuver that CPAs refer to in technical terms as “hiding from the repo man.”
But if Martin was right, and the DNC raised tons of money early last year— where did it go? That’s murky, but we do know that the DNC bought Kamala Harris’s mailing list for $7.5 million— even though she lost.
But the most telling part of the story wasn’t the “broke-ness”. The real story was the “troubled-ness.” Paranoia!
🔥 But first, let’s learn a little more about how the journalistic sausage gets made. The same two reporters from this story’s byline —Shane Goldmacher and Reid Epstein— are also the primary authors of a running series of at least five major hit pieces against Chairman Martin in the Times starting back in June 2025. And in May, seasoned Times hit-lady Michelle Goldberg published an op-ed that flatly stated, “After this fiasco, Ken Martin should be replaced.”
So the Times’ editorial perspective is not exactly a mystery.
But there’s a problem. Martin won his four-year term as DNC chair over the explicit opposition of party bigwigs Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and Nancy Pelosi, who all backed Martin’s main opponent, Ben Wikler. The Washington establishment wanted Wikler. The 448 state-level voting members distrust DC, and wanted Martin. Martin won on the first ballot.
Headline from Wisconsin Public Radio, January 2025:
These politics are a particularly delicate part of the polycrisis, pitting state Democrats against their national leaders, right as “moderates” are warring with DSA-style hyper-progressives. The party as a whole is trying its best to keep the simmering conflicts contained to conference rooms, but meanwhile the Times is jabbing its rhetorical shiv into Martin at every chance.
But, right on brand, they’re jabbing in a passive-aggressive, “mean girls” kind of way. The lack of a physical shiv matters little. Ken Martin is still bleeding out. Headline from the Daily Beast, yesterday:
The DNC has now halted all traditional transfers to House and Senate campaign committees. Less than 100 days before the midterm election. So.
🔥 According to the Times’ colorful description, Chairman Martin is “increasingly isolated, gripped by the fear that he will lose his job and relying on a vanishingly small circle of people he trusts.” His nerves are apparently so frazzled that earlier this month, the mild-mannered Minnesotan ‘furiously’ threw his cellphone at the desk of a junior aide while screaming at her.
This predictably resulted in a formal human resources complaint against the Chairman of the Democrat National Party. Irony alert. There’s zero public reporting about what kind of anger management or woke re-education Martin was forced to attend. Things are not going swimmingly.
Things are clearly non-jubilant at DNC HQ. The man running the national party apparatus is throwing phones at his staff like a temperamental Hollywood actress who got the wrong kind of sparkling water. Opinions vary about who or what was the actual target of the hurled phone. Team Martin doesn’t deny it happened; they claim it was only heaved at the desk.
Coincidentally, this is exactly the same excuse used by Maine’s replacement Senate candidate Troy Jackson, who claims that when he was once righteously enraged about politics and hurled a water bottle, it was only against the wall and not reallytoward state senator Heather Sanborn.
So now we have two male Democrats with anger issues. Two objects thrown in temper tantrums toward women in private meetings. Two lame excuses about the “direction” of the toss. And now, an excuse parade. She was never in any real danger.
In an all-hands meeting in May, Martin reportedly complained about leaks to the press. “It pisses me off when I see leaks out of this building,” he told his staff. “No more of that sh—t.” He then added, in a statement that surely inspired boundless confidence: “My success is your success. So the weaker I am, the weaker all of youare.” Then, as if sensing the awkward moment needed a little encouragement: “Keep your head up. Keep a smile on your face.”
The DNC’s leader has not addressed the entire staff since.
🔥 These colorful stories from inside Martin’s office were decorated with the Times’ best creative writing. The article deployed an armory of loaded, highly suggestive words and phrases like: “fraying nerves showing,” “a pique of frustration,” “upbraiding,” “a new gambit to mask the severity,” a “growing sense of paranoia,” “macabre jokes about how long he will remain,” “a budding coup,” “paralyzed by the idea of leaks,” “a vanishingly small circle,” and skeptically, “standard negotiations with vendors.”
When the Times runs what amounts to a recurring, yearlong column airing the DNC’s internal dirty laundry —complete with details about phone-throwing tantrums and a mortgaged headquarters— it means the long knives are out. The establishment has decided that Ken Martin is expendable, and they are either preparing the narrative battlespace for his removal, or plotting to blame him for Democrat underperformance in November. Or both.
In other words, with a little help from the Times, there is now a well-developed record of excuses if things go sideways in November. It was Ken’s fault.
This is the Democrat Polycrisis in action, the Grand Unraveling. The party is fracturing, money has dried up, leadership is panicking, infighting is rampant, blame shields are rising, and the media apparatus that usually protects them has turned its guns sideways down the line.
Maybe this kind of intraparty conflict and infighting happens a lot, and is a “healthy part” of the democratic process. But this time they are doing it just 100 days before the midterm elections. That can’t be good.
As Chairman Martin himself wrote in a defensive 3,000-word Substack posted early last week: “We must measure success by power built, not simply dollars retained.”
Well, Ken, right now you have neither. But at least you still have your cellphone. Try not to throw it at anyone today. And tell Nancy we said, “hey.”
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On Saturday, the UK Telegraph ran a story below the clinically insane headline, “Minnesota to hand out taxpayer-funded trans dolls in classrooms.” You aren’t going to believe this one, but I swear it is true.
Congratulations to Minnesota Democrats, university professors, and to Governor Tim “Free Tampon Dispenser” Walz for the latest innovation in education: a teaching toy for kids. It’s like Mr. Potato Head, except instead of interchangeable plastic arms, legs, hats, and mustaches on a potato, it features realistic private parts on realistic paper dolls of children.
In other words, it’s Child Porn Potato Head.
Technically, MyGender Dolls was a University of Minnesota “science” project (now commercialized) developing customizable paper-style dolls and related materials as “therapeutic tools” for transgender and “gender diverse” children— children aged 4–10. The project was first excreted from U. Minn.’s Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health, and “emphasizes gender-affirming approaches” in which “identity” is considered independent from biological sex or anatomy.
🔥 Needless to say, the notion to teach 4-10-year-olds about gender dysphoria is, well, a minority position. Consistently, 75% of parents and educators say sex education for children under 10 should be left to parents. 72% say schools should not teach young children that gender is something they can choose or declare. Even among teachers —hardly a right-leaning group— majorities oppose teaching gender identity in elementary school.
At the exact same age when kids still treat a stick as a rifle or a cardboard box as an impenetrable fortress, MyGender Dolls invite them to treat realistic child genitalia as interchangeable accessories and to explore “all the different options that exist for who they can be—regardless of their body parts.”
Nobody thinks that is a good idea except a hardened cadre of gender activists. Yet in 2026, Minnesota has decided to try to change everyone’s minds, whether they like it or not. Helpful timing, too, hitting Minnesota public schools right before the midterms, in case anyone was still wondering what the ballot choices are about.
Governor Walz, reeling from widespread welfare fraud, already dropped out of politics. He’s done this year, leaving Minnesota Democrats trying to defend the wreckage.
“Minnesota is going to continue to be a refuge,” Walz said recently, “for people who seek to provide and to receive gender affirming health care services.” So.
🔥 It used to be a “fun and therapeutic” app. Now they’re making physical dolls, and the good news is that the dolls are inclusive —all having gender-neutral names— and super diverse, with all races, colors, nationalities, and body types all included in a wonderful rainbow of conduct illegal in most states.
This bold initiative is definitely not meant to confuse anybody, especially kids who still use magical thinking, since in real life, people swap private parts all the time, without any consequences, pain, cost, or regret. Well, maybe not everybody agrees.
Dr. Quentin Van Meter, former president of the American College of Pediatricians (historically critical of trans ‘care’ for minors), called the dolls “just a grooming tool” with “no place in an ethical medical care world.” Conservative media, Republican influencers, and social media commentary have pointed out how Governor Walz is turning Minnesota into the “San Francisco of the Midwest.” They’ve called for his resignation, described the project as “disgusting,” “perverted,” and a revolting “obsession with little children.”
“Offering dolls where children mix and match genitals and internal organs with various ‘gender identities’ encourages kids to chase a fantasy that their bodies can never deliver – the ‘transition’ to an opposite-sexed body,” Katy Faust explained. Katy leads Them Before Us, an organization that advocates for children’s rights in marriage and family issues.
“This disconnect between mind and body is one reason why transgender youth experience such high rates of mental health problems,” she added, pointing out the obvious.
Meanwhile, co-founder Prof. Dianne Berg, who created the MyGender Dolls and “instructional” materials, says they are only meant to reassure children, like young girls anxious that “I’m not a ‘real’ boy because I don’t have those private parts,” and to provide therapists with tools that counter “shame-inducing societal messages.” You’re only one operation away from having a pickle, dear. (PS— no takebacks.)
U. Minn.’s gender-bending brochure, channeling an American Girl catalog, explained, “With over 100 different clothing, accessory, and hair options, kids will have a lot of choices for self-expression through their doll.”
They aren’t really trying to hide the fact this is really a surgical advertisement disguised as a horrifying kids’ toy. “We were able to explore and brainstorm not just what our bodies are able to do now but what we want our bodies to do and look like in the future,” reported therapist Elizabeth Panetta, who participated in the project trial.
After U. Minn received withering criticism in early 2025, it deleted most of the related web pages, temporarily went dark, and now the gender dolls have resurfaced under a private company called MyGender Dolls. Ta-da! No more risk of pesky FOIA requests.
The dolls evade child pornography laws because they were initially described as meant for “therapeutic” use with kids alreadytrans-identifying. The PROTECT Act excludes from child porn laws explicit anatomical drawings —including of children— if they have a serious scientific, artistic, or political purpose. It’s a loophole.
That’s how the slippery slope works: this month, Minnesota public schools announced plans to start rolling out the grotesque materials more broadly, in normal, grade-school classrooms starting in the Fall term.
“We make gender fun!” claims the new product website. Or, maybe not completelyfun. According to the Telegraph, neither Walz, U. Minn., nor MyGender Dolls responded to requests for comment. Weird! It’s almost like they are experiencing shame.
Shame is corrosive. Maybe some paper dolls would help alleviate their ‘stigma.’ They could have diverse outfits like orange jumpsuits and trendy accessories like handcuffs.
Have a terrific Monday! We’ll be right back here in the morning tomorrow, with an all-new roundup of essential news and caffeinated commentary. See you then.
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