Country music is having a moment. For the first time in history, all five of the top songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart are in the country genre. Ella Langley’s meteoric hit “Choosin’ Texas,” the biggest single of 2026 so far, is still hanging onto the #1 spot as of Monday. It’s followed by Morgan Wallen’s new single, “Been by Now” at #2. In the third spot is Taylor Swift’s “I Knew It, I Knew You,” which she penned for “Toy Story 5.” In the fourth position is a duet between Langley and Wallen, “I Can’t Love You Anymore.” Rounding out the top five is “Boston” by Stella Lefty.  Langley’s other single, “Be Her,” is in the #9 spot. Non-country songs in the top 10 include Tame Impala and Jennie’s “Dracula” at #6, Olivia Dean’s “So Easy (To Fall in Love)” at #7, Ariana Grande’s “Hate That I Made You Love Me” at #8 and Dean’s “Man I Need” is at #10. “Choosin’ Texas” made history already by surpassing Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” and Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together” as the longest-running non-holiday #1 one songs by female solo artists without male-billed acts, as Variety reported.  Now, many wonder whether Grammy voters will finally recognize country after snubbing the genre for years. Last year, zero country artists received nominations for major categories including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. The snub was a surprise for fans and industry experts, especially as country music continues to have massive commercial dominance. After voters rejected country’s dominance, big stars such as Miranda Lambert, George Strait, and Morgan Wallen skipped the Grammys earlier this year. “I really hope it doesn’t turn into that type of dialogue based around politics Right or Left, because it really is not that; it’s really about what the voters choose to vote for any given year, and it is cyclical,” Grammy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. said earlier this year of country getting shafted. 

The WNBA’s double standard on free speech is officially out of bounds. Women’s sports advocate Riley Gaines pulled no punches on Monday night, telling Fox News that league handlers tried to silence her support for Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham. Appearing on “Hannity,” Gaines said that arena officials asked her to put down a benign, completely non-political sign praising Cunningham while Left-wing propaganda was prominently displayed on the arena’s Jumbotron. “The league often says they have a problem with people like Sophie bringing politics into sports. The league doesn’t have a problem with politics in sports. They have a problem with conservative politics in sports,” Gaines told host Sean Hannity. Gaines recounted sitting in the Target Center during a Minnesota Lynx home game holding a small poster that simply read, “Sophie, thank you — a girl mom.” Despite strictly adhering to arena rules, an official approached Gaines and requested that she put the sign away. Yet, as Gaines pointed out, Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve strolled the sidelines wearing a “Trans Kids Belong” shirt while others wore pro-trans shirts featuring an image of a knife even as the arena’s Jumbotron repeatedly highlighted fans draped in Pride and trans flags. “If Protect Women’s Sports is deemed political like they say, then so is Trans Kids Belong,” Gaines slammed. After Gaines pushed back, she said she was ultimately allowed to keep the sign displayed, and the arena staffer returned and apologized. The WNBA finds itself engulfed in an explosive culture war sparked by Cunningham, who has spoken out against allowing men to compete in women’s athletics. Cunningham ignited the firestorm by telling ESPN she wants to “protect young girls in a locker room,” later doubling down on Instagram with a blunt message to her critics: “I said what I said.” While Cunningham’s common-sense stance has earned her praise from high-profile figures, including Gaines and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, it has drawn intense hostility from leftist fans and league insiders. Gaines noted that Cunningham was relentlessly booed by the Minnesota crowd every time she stepped onto the hardwood. Meanwhile, WNBA leaders continue to hide behind corporate double-talk. Asked point-blank about men in female sports, Fever head coach Stephanie White offered a classic corporate dodge, claiming she wasn’t “educated enough from a scientific standpoint.” The hostility has even boiled over into the stands. During a recent Fever road trip to Seattle, Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton was suspended from attending her team’s next five home games after launching an expletive-laden tirade against two 16-year-old female fans wearing gear in support of Cunningham’s position. Despite the intimidation tactics, Gaines insists that Cunningham remains unshakable and uncancelable.

Erin Brockovich has found a sequel. The legal activist, made famous by Julia Roberts in the 2000 film bearing her name, recently described America’s data center boom as “Hinkley on fricking steroids.” Her new website tracks data centers alongside anonymously submitted complaints about water, electricity, noise, and utility bills. The script writes itself: another environmental catastrophe is unfolding, and Erin Brockovich is here to expose it. The legal case that made her famous involved groundwater in Hinkley, California, contaminated with hexavalent chromium. Residents were awarded a $333 million settlement. A data center is not a toxic-waste site. It is an industrial warehouse full of servers whose principal byproduct is heat. It’s true that data centers can impose costs on a community without adequate planning for power, water, or ratepayer protections. Some data centers use gas turbines, which are loud and annoying. Communities have complained about power lines going over their neighborhoods. Those are infrastructure failures but not evidence of impending environmental disaster. Nationally, direct water use by all U.S. data centers in 2023 was roughly 17.5 billion gallons: American farms used more water for irrigation every six hours than data centers consumed directly over the entire year. The figure is projected to rise, yet it remains a fraction of 1% of total U.S. freshwater use. A data center that uses less water in a year than a medium-sized farm does in a day is not a national emergency. The American answer to rising power or water demand should be to expand supply, not a halt to the infrastructure that needs them. However, New York has imposed the country’s first moratorium on new data centers, citing the usual worries about water and electricity. Anti-data-center backlash has united the anti-capitalists, environmentalists, and the populist Right. The Bernie Sanders and Tea Party coalition shares little beyond suspicion of the elite, and the belief that corporate profit equals public loss. Data centers have become scapegoats on which Americans project their economic resentments. The moratorium in New York is a political choice, encouraged by a professional class that gains more from prolonging disputes than solving them. I have seen this argument unfold in Loudoun County, Virginia, where my family has lived for more than 20 years. Loudoun has transformed from a wooded exurb of Washington, D.C. to the “Data Center Capital” of America. Data centers generate 38% of Loudoun County’s revenue while occupying 4% of commercial parcels. This financial windfall has allowed the county to lower its property tax rate as its population and property values have risen. It has also generated disputes over transmission lines, utility costs, and land use. Virginia’s answer to these local concerns was better than New York’s: a new tax on data center electricity use. Hoover Institution scholar Dan Wang describes China as an engineering state and America as a state of lawyers. Beijing does not treat data, power generation, large-scale infrastructure, and artificial intelligence as separate conversations. For China, they are interlocking parts of national policy. Chinese companies, backed by that national policy, are building data centers, computing clusters, and power plants at full speed. Together, they form the industrial base China needs to export its version of the AI economy and challenge American dominance in an AI-driven future. America is still ahead in advanced chip design, and its AI companies have the most capable models. But not for long. Chinese open-weight models are already competing closely with leading American systems, often at far lower prices. By May 2026, China’s electricity-generating capacity surpassed 4 terawatts, roughly three times the U.S. total. That capacity is giving China a boost in building new AI infrastructure. Hinkley made Erin Brockovich’s career; the film made her a household name. Today she runs a consulting firm and works as a sought-after professional speaker. Earning money through litigation and advocacy is a time-honored profession. But the incentives to cast data centers as the next great villain all point in one direction. Once an issue enters the grievance industry, activists need a campaign, lawyers need a case, consultants need another study, and politicians need a cause to raise their profiles. A manageable local dispute offers neither the attention nor the prestige of a national campaign against Big Tech. “Another Hinkley” gives her a proper sequel. Republicans would be fools to let a growth-oriented agenda be captured by this conspiratorial mood. A party that promised to return manufacturing to American shores should not oppose the infrastructure required by the AI economy. Data center construction creates demand for transformers, cooling systems, electrical components, construction crews, engineers, and skilled trades. The data centers themselves provide computing power to the medical, defense, and energy sectors. Each lawsuit, moratorium, or additional permitting hurdle strengthens the corporations activists claim to oppose. Restrictions increase the value of existing data centers controlled by incumbent giants such as Blackstone and Amazon. The obstructionist impulse isn’t just restricted to data centers. The trial-lawyer lobby has spent years fighting autonomous vehicles such as Waymo because injury lawsuits net them billions in insurance settlements. Fewer crashes are good for the people and bad for the business of crash litigation. What kind of country do we want to be? A civilization that conquered the frontier and put men on the moon, or a nation of hall monitors billing by the hour while China commands the future? America still has the land, capital, and genius to overtake any rival. A national culture of delay, litigation, and rent-seeking will only hurt America and help our enemies. We need the courage to tell the grievance merchants to get out of the way. *** Anang Mittal is a Washington, D.C. based public affairs professional. He was a staffer for Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Democratic voters head to the polls Tuesday with an opportunity to deal a deathblow to their party establishment — or halt the socialist takeover of the party in its tracks. Far-left firebrand Abdul El-Sayed and establishment favorite Haley Stevens are competing for the chance to take on Trump-endorsed Republican Mike Rogers. Stevens, a sitting Congresswoman, has the backing of major Democratic figures like Gretchen Whitmer and Chuck Schumer, but El-Sayed has seen an infusion of energy from Bernie Sanders and “the squad.” The contentious election has become a microcosm of the ideological and racial divisions reshaping and causing headaches for the Democratic Party nationwide. Socialist supporters view El-Sayed as their best chance to prove the movement can win in a battleground state. Since President Donald Trump’s reelection, the Democratic establishment has watched a radical insurgency storm the country, racking up one victory after another. Socialist Zohran Mamdani’s upset in New York City’s mayoral primary became the movement’s biggest breakthrough, while three DSA-backed leftists in June upset longtime Democratic representatives. The socialist-aligned left also steamrolled its way through Washington, D.C., and Denver, then succeeded in nominating Bernie Sanders-backed Graham Platner for the U.S. Senate in Maine, before an intense pressure campaign forced him out of the race. With control of the Senate at stake, mainstream Democrats fear nominating El-Sayed could give Republicans a pickup opportunity in an otherwise wave year. Going into Election Day, El-Sayed holds a commanding lead in the primary, but could fare worse against Rogers according to the most recent polls.  Streamer Hasan Piker, who believes America deserved the September 11 terrorist attacks, has emerged as one of the movement’s most influential cheerleaders, using his enormous online following to rally support for DSA-aligned candidates. He’s campaigned with El-Sayed down the home stretch of the primary after making it his mission to oust as many establishment Democrats as possible. Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and other socialists have joined him. In many of those races, party leaders ultimately chose accommodation over confrontation, reluctantly uniting behind nominees they had once viewed as too extreme for the national brand. Michigan marked the first exception. With control of the Senate at stake, party heavyweights lined up behind Stevens, a four-term congresswoman from the Detroit suburbs, in an all-out effort to stop former Detroit public health director El-Sayed. If they fail, it will be the greatest sign yet that the Democratic establishment’s old guard is losing its grip as the socialist-aligned left gains ground nationwide. High-profile establishment Democrats, including Michigan Governor Whitmer and South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn, have endorsed Stevens. “Just like me, Haley will do whatever it takes to get things done for the people of Michigan, and we need her now more than ever,” Whitmer said in a video posted to X. The congresswoman, who recently went viral for her quirky “stick it to them” slogan, celebrated the endorsement, calling Whitmer “a champion for our state” who understands “the stakes of this race.” Meanwhile, Clyburn brought a racial component to the race. The South Carolina kingmaker who helped drag Joe Biden to his 2020 presidential nomination remarked that there aren’t many black folks at El-Sayed’s rallies. In July, a black school board member supporting Stevens told El-Sayed to stop speaking and playing Arabic music, a viral moment that inflamed racial tensions.  “The other candidate seems to be … doesn’t work a room. You have to know how to work the room. Don’t come out speaking only Arabic. Don’t come out with your Arabic music on,” Angie Smith said. “Represent everyone.” That line of criticism against El-Sayed — who is backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — infuriated leftists. “This is insanely racist,” left-wing commentator Mehdi Hasan wrote on X. “Not only should this Angie Smith be asked to apologize, but @HaleyforMI should be asked to disown and condemn these racist remarks about @AbdulElSayed and Arab-Americans.” If elected, El-Sayed would become America’s first Muslim senator. His parents are both Egyptian immigrants, and his father was a part-time imam. His father-in-law is a founding committee member of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, according to the federal government. His background and hard-left platform — which includes Medicare for all, abolishing ICE, defunding the police, restructuring the U.S. Supreme Court, and raising taxes on billionaires — has galvanized the Democratic Party’s far-left base. In the mold of other progressive primaries, Israel has emerged as the race’s defining issue. Stevens has embraced her identity as a “proud pro-Israel Democrat” and benefited from roughly $25 million in support from AIPAC and its allies, according to FEC filings, while El-Sayed has called Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide” and opposes U.S. military aid to the country.  At a recent debate, El-Sayed turned his ire on Stevens over a recent vote for U.S. military aid to Israel. “Just last week, our friend here voted to send $3.3 billion of your tax dollars to a foreign government. That is the pro quo that comes with a quid of $30 million spent by AIPAC,” El-Sayed said.  Stevens fired back, saying El-Sayed “attacked me by name for purporting that the people of Palestine and the people of Israel deserve to live side by side, peacefully,” she said. “The goal is always long-term peace, and also, the prime minister of Israel has attacked me by name. Let me just say this: that the only thing that ever motivates my work is the people of Michigan, the people who I hear from.”  No matter the winner, Republicans see the internal Democratic divisions as prime real estate come November.  “The socialist takeover has its sights set on Michigan. That much is clear. They just have one major problem: we won’t let them get away with it.” Rogers said in a statement. He reportedly believes his campaign is in “good shape” to win if El-Sayed captures Tuesday’s Democratic nomination.

A new law that went into effect on August 1 has changed the way you order takeout in New Jersey. Under the “Skip the Stuff” law, restaurants can no longer automatically pack single-use plastic utensils, straws, or condiment packets with to-go orders, and customers who want those items must now specifically request them. The law was signed by then-Democratic Governor Phil Murphy in January and took effect last week. Its purpose is to reduce plastic waste and limit the so-called environmental footprint of food businesses.  Officials touting the new law noted that approximately 95% of food packaging is discarded after a single use. In practice, this means plastic knives, forks, spoons, chopsticks, and individual packets of ketchup or other condiments will no longer appear in takeout bags by default. Diners can still receive them free of charge, but only if they ask. The same rule applies to online ordering platforms. Services such as DoorDash and Uber Eats must now default to withholding utensils unless a customer actively chooses to include them. The restrictions also cover restaurants that offer indoor seating for at least 10 people. These establishments may provide only washable utensils for diners eating on site. Condiment packets are no longer allowed; sauces and seasonings must instead come from full size bottles or other reusable containers. Some places are exempt. Public and private K-12 schools do not have to follow the law, nor do county or state correctional facilities or healthcare facilities. Food court restaurants have until August 1, 2028, before the requirements apply to them. Enforcement begins with a warning for the first violation. A second offense can bring daily fines of up to $100. Later violations carry higher penalties of as much as $250 per day. The measure stacks on earlier plastic reduction steps in New Jersey. In 2022, the state banned single-use plastic carryout bags and polystyrene foam food containers. In 2021, it placed restrictions on plastic straws. A similar “Skip the Stuff” law went into effect in New York City in July 2023. For customers, the most instantaneous change is a small adjustment in how they place an order. Whether ordering in person, by phone, or through an app, diners must now decide if they need utensils or packets and say so clearly.  Restaurants and delivery platforms are required to wait for that request before including the items. The law does not ban the items when asked for, it simply ends the previous practice of including them automatically with every order. The rules are now in effect for most restaurants and delivery services across New Jersey, with the noted exemptions for schools, institutional facilities, and food courts until 2028.