Editor’s note: This is republished for the Daily Wire with the author’s permission from her Substack, Batya Ungar-Sargon. Yet another socialist has unseated a longtime Democratic incumbent, making this the fifth victory for the Democratic Socialists of America in recent weeks; last week, socialist Melat Kiros defeated a 15-term incumbent, Congresswoman Diana DeGette, in Denver. The socialists want you to believe these victories are the result of working-class people flocking to their candidates. They want you to believe they are “fighting the oligarchy!” and taking on the billionaires and special interests and bringing back an agenda focused on the multi-racial working class. Alas, this is a load of malarky. As Thomas Edsall noted in the New York Times, a 2021 survey of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members found that 85% were white. Just 9% were Hispanic and just 4% black. Even Trump got 25% of black men to vote for him, and he won Hispanic men outright. As for a working-class organization, just 4% of DSA members had blue-collar jobs, while six in 10 had professional jobs and the remainder were unemployed or students. Over 80% had a college degree. Of course, not everyone who votes for the DSA is a member. But the people voting for these candidates have a similar profile. In Maine, Republican Susan Collins is polling 21 points ahead of democratic socialist Graham Platner. 21 points! So why is Platner ahead of her by two points overall? Because he is cleaning Collins’s clock with the college educated – by 34 points. In New York, Darializa Chevalier, the DSA candidate who ousted a two-term incumbent, lost the Hispanic vote by 16 points. She lost the Bronx by 30 points, while winning the more affluent areas of Manhattan. The DSA’s Claire Valdez crushed Brooklyn borough president Antonio Reynoso by beating him 62 to 28 in the district’s high-income neighborhoods, while Reynoso carried low-income areas 63 to 31. The DSA is running and winning with over-credentialed college elites, over the candidates chosen by the working class they pretend to represent, whose views are often diametrically opposed to those of the DSA. The socialists support abolishing ICE, while 60% of working-class Americans support building a wall. The socialists support allowing trans athletes to compete against women, while 72% of working-class Americans oppose it. The socialists routinely smear America, while Americans without a college degree are deeply patriotic. It’s true that working-class people of all political persuasions support Medicare for All. But so do the incumbents ousted by the DSA! If your real goal is Medicare for All, why are you spending all this money ousting candidates who support it? It’s all so fake. These candidates don’t care about Medicare for All. The bulk of their campaigns are devoted to the things that make the college-educated feel morally superior: Free Palestine and Abolish ICE. “Free Palestine” is the new land acknowledgment — a virtue signal one throws out to avoid being called racist and curry favor with a youth radicalized at fancy universities. If they were being honest, they would just admit that they don’t care about the working class. They care about being seen as more anti-Israel than the other guy, just as in 2020, they cared about being seen as more anti-racist, and in 2022, they cared about being seen as more worried about climate change, and in 2024, more worried about trans rights. This isn’t a working-class agenda. It’s trust-fund socialism. *** Batya Ungar-Sargon is a NewsNation weekend anchor and the author of the recently released book “The Jews and the Left” from Harper Collins. Subscribe to her daily newsletter at batya-us.com.

President Donald Trump said on Monday that he “relayed” to FIFA President Gianni Infantino that there would have been “a big stain” on the World Cup if U.S. soccer star Folarin Balogun was forced to sit out of the team’s game on Monday. During a gaggle with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump went into more detail about his phone call with Infantino, which took place just before FIFA announced that Balogun could suit up for Team USA’s Monday night round of 16 match against Belgium. “I didn’t tell [Infantino] what to do,” Trump said. “I can’t tell him what to do, and I don’t believe he made the decision. I believe it was a committee that made the decision, and they made the right decision.” “I didn’t think it was a foul. I thought it was two great athletes that crashed into each other and got entangled,” Trump said of the on-field incident last week that resulted in Balogun’s red card, which was only handed out after a video review. Balogun was handed a red card and one-game suspension after he made contact with a defender for Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the U.S. star’s cleat scraped the back of the defender’s ankle. “That was not a guy punching somebody in the face or anything that would be different,” Trump added. “I think the referee’s call was horrible,” the president continued. “Nobody talks about that. They talk about the red card like it’s fine. The referee’s decision to red card — I didn’t know what the hell a red card was — when I found out I said you’ve gotta be kidding. … Okay, your best player is not going to play next game. I said, wow that’s a lot of power. That’s terrible.” FIFA’s decision on Sunday to overturn Balogun’s suspension caused outrage among European soccer elites, including from Belgium. The country’s soccer officials said they were “astonished” by the reversal, and Belgium’s coach Rudi Garcia blasted FIFA. Belgium also reportedly “lawyered up” to fight FIFA’s decision to overturn Balogun’s suspension, and on Monday, Belgium was granted the right to appeal FIFA’s decision to allow the U.S. star to play. A decision on Belgium’s appeal could be handed down before the game between the United States and Belgium starts at 7:00 p.m. ET, but Belgium was not guaranteed that a ruling would come from FIFA before the game, The Athletic reported. FIFA reversed Balogun’s suspension after the White House put together a team of elite lawyers to look into challenging soccer officials’ use of replay review in determining Balogun’s red card last week, Outkick founder Clay Travis reported. The United States is looking for just its second berth into the World Cup quarterfinals in its history with a win against Belgium.

Scientists at the University of Minnesota just did something huge: they built a cell completely from scratch using non-living materials — and it can actually act alive. The project, called SpudCell, comes from the College of Biological Sciences, led by Associate Professors Kate Adamala and Aaron Engelhart. In the past, scientists could only copy one small part of what a cell does at a time — such as copying DNA, or making a cell grow. SpudCell can do all of it together. It competes to survive, copies its own DNA, grows, eats nutrients, and splits into new cells. None of its parts came from a real living thing. Adamala says this is the most exciting project of her career. She believes it proves that life doesn’t need anything magical — just chemistry. Real cells use something like an internal skeleton to help them split into two. Although building that skeleton in a lab has proven difficult, the Minnesota team found a way around it. Instead of a skeleton, proteins pile up on the outside of the cell’s membrane. Eventually there’s so much pressure that the membrane just tears apart into two cells. The scientists changed one gene so the cells would make more of a certain protein. Those changed cells grew and reproduced faster than the normal ones; after just five generations, the faster cells had completely taken over. When food was scarce, the faster cells did even better. That’s basically natural selection — survival of the fittest — happening in test tubes. One of the most surprising parts is how small the cell’s genetic code is. Scientists used to think a living cell would need at least 113,000 DNA base pairs to survive. SpudCell only needs about 90,000. Instead of having its DNA in one long strand, it’s split into seven separate loops. This means scientists can change one part of the cell’s instructions without affecting the rest. The discovery could affect society in various ways: companies currently make many drugs using bacteria or yeast that weren’t really designed for that job; a cell built specifically to make one drug could make medicines like insulin or antibiotics cheaper. It could lead to totally new medicines made from molecules that don’t exist in nature. Instead of melting plastic in factories that use tons of energy, scientists might one day grow materials like packaging or fabric at room temperature. That could mean less pollution and lower energy use. Much manufacturing today uses extreme heat and harsh chemicals, but cells can do similar jobs using water at normal body temperature. This could someday lead to safer, less toxic ways of making substances such as fabric dye and plastic. Adamala and some of her partners are planning to start Biotic, an institution intended to share technical infrastructure for synthetic cell engineering. She stated, “This work is just the beginning,” adding, “We are showing it’s possible to engineer the basic functions of the cell. To fully realize the promise of this technology – to make it robust and practical – we need combined international effort. The role of Biotic is to focus engineering efforts and make them compatible with a shared chassis. SpudCell is that chassis, and with Biotic setting the protocols for collaboration, we are eager to start applying this technology to serious challenges.” Scientists compare SpudCell to the earliest computer transistors. When transistors were invented, nobody could point to a smartphone and say “this will lead to that.” But transistors became the building block for all kinds of future technology. 

The nation’s largest teachers union — which is also the largest labor union in the United States — has unveiled a wish list of new business items so far Left that even some of its own members might raise an eyebrow, including a formal push to oust President Donald Trump before the midterms, taxpayer-funded “reparations” initiatives, and a plan to hand out cards instructing members how to stonewall ICE agents. Item 10 on the wish list, backed by 50 delegates out of California, calls on the National Education Association to demand Trump’s “impeachment, conviction, and removal” from office and to organize a mass march on Washington to force him out before November’s midterms, school choice advocate Corey A. DeAngelis reported on Sunday. The rationale warns darkly of a “MAGA mob” staging another “coup attempt” if Republicans lose badly at the polls — a hypothetical scenario used to justify a real-world call to remove a sitting president. The price tag on the wish list item is a jaw-dropping $5.2 million. “The National Education Association will call for the impeachment, conviction, and removal of Donald Trump from the US Presidency.” They want a “National March on Washington D.C. to remove Trump before the November 2026 midterm election” The business item would cost $5,236,193. pic.twitter.com/46kwokpA4m — Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) July 6, 2026 Item 24 has the National Education Association president lobbying the Congressional Black Caucus to push “Educational Reparations,” which backers claim would wipe out student loan debt, funnel cash to HBCUs, and blow up property-tax-based school funding entirely. Then there’s Item 46, which would have the union print and distribute so-called “Red Cards” — multilingual materials designed to help educators and students’ families evade Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The union frames it as protecting scared families, but critics are likely to see it as an official taxpayer-adjacent institution instructing staff on how to obstruct federal immigration enforcement. Cost: nearly $219,000. The union isn’t shy about wading into foreign policy, either. Item 85 would have NEA Today, the union’s official magazine, publish articles defending teachers who bring lessons on “genocide in Palestine” into their classrooms, complete with language about “generational trauma” — a $222,000 initiative delegates say is necessary because educators are being “disciplined, doxxed and fired” for airing their views on the Israeli-Hamas war. Gender ideology also gets heavy play. Item 20 would rewrite the union’s family emergency planning guides to include instructions for transgender individuals on legal name changes and “affirming healthcare,” while Item 78 would post state-by-state “legal risk” maps for transgender people and promote a “Trans Youth in Sports Conversation Guide,” at a cost of $12,500. Rounding things out, Item 42 asks the union to build a $314,000 “Culturally Responsive Teaching” library pushing “gender equity matters” and multilingual instruction into classrooms nationwide. All told, the proposals would cost the union more than $6 million combined — money delegates admit isn’t in the current budget — while pushing the 3-million-member organization deeper into hot-button political territory far removed from the classroom basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic.

A Christian pastor imprisoned for months reunited with his family after the Chinese Communist Party released him following pressure from President Donald Trump.  Pastor Mingri “Ezra” Jin, the leader of one of the largest underground church networks in China, landed in the United States on the Fourth of July and was greeted by his family. Trump pushed Chinese President Xi Jinping to release Jin during his trip to China in May.  “We truly witnessed a miracle and we are feeling so overwhelmed with joy. We thank God for this tremendous miracle,” Jin’s family said in a statement. “We also thank President Trump and his administration for their tremendous leadership.” Jin and a number of other church leaders connected to Zion Church, an independent Protestant church, were rounded up and thrown into a detention center in southern China in October 2025. In January 2026, more Christians associated with Early Rain Covenant Church, an evangelical Presbyterian church, were targeted by the CCP.  Jin was accused of disseminating illegal information online.  Grace Jin Drexel, who has fought for months to raise awareness about her father’s case, previously told The Daily Wire her father became a Christian after the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. “When the country betrayed them in such a brutal way, it really was shocking, and they lost a sense of direction for my dad,” Grace said. “He then found the sense of purpose and direction in Christianity, and he turned to Christ, and he realized that was the firm foundation that he needed in order to build his life upon.” In 2007, Jin started Zion after years of theological training in the United States. By 2018, the government had cracked down on Zion by closing its physical location and freezing the church’s assets.  During his trip to China, Trump pressed Xi on the imprisonment of Jin and Hong Kong businessman Jimmy Lai.  “I think he’s giving very serious consideration to the pastor,” Trump said after the trip. “He said he’s giving very serious consideration to that.”  Lawmakers praised Trump for advocating for Jin’s release.  “I am profoundly grateful that Pastor Ezra Jin has been released and reunited with his family. I especially thank President Trump for personally raising Pastor Jin’s case with CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping and for ensuring that U.S. diplomats remained committed in pressing for his freedom,” said Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), the co-chair of Congressional-Executive Commission on China.