California Republicans appear energized heading into the state’s closely watched June 2 primary, holding an early turnout advantage as Democrats scramble to unite behind a candidate in multiple key races. The Golden State sends every registered voter a mail-in ballot, arguing that the policy gives voters ample time and access to make their voices heard. With a few weeks until Election Day, more than 900,000 have returned ballots in California’s primary, which features a contentious gubernatorial race plagued by scandals and stumbles and the Los Angeles mayoral contest.  The data, compiled by Political Data Intelligence, paints an encouraging early picture for Republicans. As of May 15, statewide Republican turnout stood at 6%, compared to 4% for Democrats. Despite trailing Democrats nearly 2-to-1 in voter registration, Republicans remain competitive in the total vote share. California Early Voting Now vs at this point in 2022 At this point in 2022:

The FBI is offering a $200,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of a former U.S. Air Force intel specialist charged with defecting and sharing American secrets with the Islamic Republic of Iran.  In February 2019, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia indicted Monica Witt, a former U.S. service member and counterintelligence agent, on charges of espionage, including transmitting national defense information to the government of Iran. Witt served in the U.S. military from 1997 to 2008 and later worked as a U.S. government contractor until 2010, according to the FBI. Her combined military and private-sector experience reportedly gave her access to classified information at the “SECRET” and “TOP SECRET” levels, including the identities of undercover personnel within the U.S. intelligence community. In 2013, Witt defected to Iran and provided classified information to the government of Iran, according to the FBI. The Texas native is said to have defected after being invited to two all-expense-paid conferences in Iran that the Justice Department says “promoted anti-Western propaganda and criticized American moral standards,” according to the Associated Press.  Witt is accused of intentionally providing information that endangered U.S. personnel stationed abroad. Authorities also allege she researched on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran to help identify and target her former colleagues in the U.S. government. “Witt’s defection to Iran has benefitted the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which has elements responsible for intelligence collection, unconventional warfare, and providing direct support to multiple terrorist organizations targeting U.S. citizens and interests,” the FBI said in a statement.  Despite the indictment and pending charges, Witt remains on the run, and the federal government is unable to locate her.  “Monica Witt allegedly betrayed her oath to the Constitution more than a decade ago by defecting to Iran and providing the Iranian regime National Defense Information and likely continues to support their nefarious activities,” Daniel Wierzbicki, special agent in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office’s Counterintelligence and Cyber Division, said. “The FBI has not forgotten and believes that during this critical moment in Iran’s history, there is someone who knows something about her whereabouts. The FBI wants to hear from you so you can help us apprehend Witt and bring her to justice,” he added.  Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI.

Louisiana Republicans voted to oust Sen. Bill Cassidy on Saturday, rejecting the incumbent who voted to convict President Donald Trump on impeachment charges. With more than half the vote counted, Cassidy is trailing his conservative primary rivals, Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) and State Treasurer John Fleming. Trump-backed Letlow, buoyed by the president’s endorsement, currently leads the race with 45% of the vote. With no candidate clearing the 50% threshold, Letlow and Fleming will advance to a June 27 runoff. Decision Desk HQ called the race 9:56 p.m. ET. Cassidy’s fall from grace is another sign of Trump’s enduring grip on the Republican base, as the president continues flexing his political clout to target GOP lawmakers he views as disloyal to his agenda. Trump took one last shot at Cassidy as Louisiana headed to the polls on Saturday, urging voters to throw their support behind the incumbent Republican’s primary challenger. “Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana is a disloyal disaster,” the president wrote on Truth Social, noting that the two-term senator voted to impeach him after the January 6, 2021, Capitol riots. “Bill Cassidy is a sleazebag, a terrible guy, who is BAD FOR LOUISIANA. Now he’s going to get CLOBBERED, hopefully, in today’s BIG election, by two great people!!!”  In January, Trump endorsed Letlow (R-LA) to replace Sen. Cassidy, who was one of seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Trump after the January 6 Capitol riot. In a February 2021 column that has since come back to haunt him politically, Cassidy wrote that Trump was “guilty” of inciting the riot and “actively subverting the peaceful transfer of power.”  Ryan Girdusky, a conservative political consultant, called that vote the “ultimate betrayal.”  “The impeachment vote against Trump is really what did him in; had he not voted to impeach Trump, he wouldn’t be in this position,” Girdusky said. “If they successfully had a trial against him, he would have been ineligible to run for President. So maybe that’s what Cassidy was rooting for.” That reality, Girdusky said, pushed Trump to get involved.  ““Highly Respected America First Congresswoman, Julia Letlow, of the wonderful State of Louisiana, is a Great Star, has been from the very beginning, and only gets better!’ Trump said in a Friday Truth Social post. “Election Day is tomorrow, Saturday, May 16th. Vote for Julia Letlow — She has my Complete and Total Endorsement, and will never let you down!” In her campaign launch, Letlow said that in “a state as conservative as ours, we shouldn’t have to wonder how our senator will vote when the pressure’s on. Louisiana deserves conservative champions, leaders who will not flinch,” The Daily Wire previously reported. The congresswoman took office in April 2021, following a special election triggered by her husband’s death. During the campaign, Cassidy and Fleming targeted Letlow over past comments praising diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, questioning her conservative credentials. “She’s as moderate as Bill Cassidy is,” Girdusky told The Daily Wire. “So it’s not like they’re trading a moderate for a conservative. They’re trading a moderate for a moderate, but one that Trump approved versus one that Trump didn’t approve.”  Cassidy also faced heat for stalling some of Trump’s high-profile nominees, including Surgeon General pick Dr. Casey Means.  A physician and chairman of the Senate health committee, Cassidy stopped short of supporting her, effectively sinking her nomination prospects — a move that infuriated MAHA supporters and the president himself. “Bill Cassidy is a mindless avatar for his donors and a blind defender of the status quo system that is profiting from American sickness,” Calley Means, Casey Means’ brother, said on social media. The president piled on, calling Cassidy a “very disloyal person” who “stood in the way” of RFK Jr.’s preferred nominee. Trump, widely viewed as the GOP’s kingmaker, recently exacted revenge on a handful of Indiana Republicans who bucked his redistricting push. With Cassidy’s defeat, the White House is already shifting its attention to another bruising primary battle: backing Captain Ed Gallrein, a retired Navy SEAL, against Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District. “It shows that it’s really about Trump,” Girdusky said. “It shows that voters have this innate belief that he has their best interests at heart, and that he is feeling the anger that they’re feeling of betrayal from the elected officials.”

Editor’s note: This is the second in a four-part weekend series on the hunt for the Bismarck, coming up on its 85th anniversary this month. The short-lived “battlecruiser” concept involved mounting the biggest guns on the fastest hull — the idea being they could outrun heavy battleships while wielding enough firepower to destroy faster armored cruisers. Stretching 860 feet from bow to stern, Hood, the most famous of them all, displaced 46,000 tons and carried eight 15-inch guns. But the type’s speed came at a cost. To compensate for the immense weight of their guns, battlecruisers sacrificed armor protection, particularly deck armor. Though they may have looked like battleships, when put into the line at Jutland, three inadequately armored examples were blown apart, and 3,300 sailors perished; the design was effectively abandoned. Hood, already under construction, was still completed in 1920, but she became the last of her kind. Like the German battleship approaching over the gray horizon, Hood was arguably the most aesthetically pleasing ship in her navy. Throughout the interwar years, she toured the world as a floating symbol of British power, earning the sobriquet “The Mighty Hood.” Yet beneath the glamour she was, in the words of historian Iain Ballentyne, a heavyweight boxer with a glass jaw. Although plans existed to refit her with thicker armor, events overtook them. And so, in the predawn darkness of May 24, 1941, Hood found herself steaming headlong toward the most powerful operational battleship in the world. Accompanying Hood was the 44,000-ton Prince of Wales. She carried 10 14-inch guns in a four-and-two-gun turret forward and another four-gun turret aft. A true battleship, she was well-protected. But she had troubles of her own. Commissioned only three weeks earlier, Prince of Wales was plagued by mechanical defects, including chronically malfunctioning turrets (civilian engineers even sailed with her), while her crew remained largely untested. Overall command of the British squadron rested with Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland aboard Hood. Holland intended to run straight in, presenting a narrow target before turning to “cross the T” — placing his ships broadside so all their heavy guns could fire while forcing Bismarck, presumed to be leading the German column, to answer only with her forward turrets. But during the night, the cruisers lost contact with the enemy. By the time the Germans were reacquired, Holland found himself badly positioned, approaching from the southeast at an oblique angle in a long, slow run-in. He knew the approach was perilous. Hood’s thin deck armor — only three inches — left her vulnerable to plunging fire. At long range, Bismarck’s shells would descend in steep arcs down onto the battlecruiser’s weak decks. The range had to be closed quickly so incoming shells would flatten their trajectory and strike Hood’s thicker twelve-inch belt armor instead. Compounding matters, Holland’s ships were positioned in a way that denied them use of their aft guns — the very predicament he had hoped to impose upon the Germans. From Suffolk, farther north, one sailor observed: “Against the light horizon were silhouetted the German ships, while away to port and barely distinguishable against the low cloud forming their background were Hood and Prince of Wales. As they tore along with their guns cocked up in the air, they were a gallant sight, and we watched with the feelings of a producer who has set his stage and now only awaits the rising of the curtain.” Then came the electrifying signal: FROM HOOD. ENEMY IN SIGHT. AM ENGAGING. At 5:52 a.m., with the range down to 14 miles, Holland calmly gave the command, “Open fire.” Hood’s forward guns erupted in flame, followed moments later by Prince of Wales. The massive shells took nearly 50 seconds to arrive, throwing up towering geysers around their target — Prinz Eugen. Holland had made a grievous, if understandable, error. In the skirmish with Norfolk the previous evening, the concussion of her own guns knocked out Bismarck’s radar. So during the night, the smaller cruiser moved into the lead. From a distance, Prinz Eugen had similar lines to Bismarck, which Holland assumed to be the lead ship. But she only displaced 18,000 tons and carried eight-inch guns. Skippered by Lindemann’s 1913 Naval Academy classmate, Captain Helmuth Brinkmann, she was a dangerous opponent…but not a battleship. Several British salvos landed near the German cruiser while Bismarck’s unmolested gunners impatiently awaited permission to fire. Realizing the error, Holland coolly ordered his crews to “switch target to the right.” However, in the confusion no correction was made and Hood continued firing on the smaller lead ship. Prince of Wales, recognizing the mistake earlier, had already shifted fire onto Bismarck. But they had lost the advantage of firing first to get the range quicker. Few experiences rival the terror of being on the receiving end of incoming heavy shells. Seaman 2nd Class Josef Statz remembered, “When the shells flew overhead, they literally ripped a scream from your body. It was indescribable.” For several minutes, British projectiles fell around the German battleship. Yet Bismarck still had not fired. Admiral Lütjens hesitated, mindful of his orders to avoid engagements with enemy warships. But as seconds turned to minutes, Captain Lindemann finally had enough. He snapped, “I will not have my ship shot out from under my ass!” before grabbing a phone and barking to the gunnery officer: “Permission to fire.” Suddenly, Bismarck’s eight 15-inch guns unleashed a full broadside, lighting up the dawn. The concussion staggered the ship itself. Machinist Mate 1st Class Heinrich Kuhnt remembered: “It felt like it was bending, pushed sideways in the water. It was amazing.” A sailor aboard Prince of Wales recalled seeing “a line of orange flashes right across her side, which meant she was using her fore and aft guns at us! Waiting… waiting…waiting. Range closing. And then presently hearing a WHOOOOOSH!!!” Ted Briggs, an 18-year-old signalman standing on Hood’s compass platform near Holland, and the ship’s captain, Ralph Kerr, described the surreal horror of watching the shells approach: “The first thing I saw were four red stars with a gold center coming from her. And I suddenly realized they were fifteen-inch projectiles coming towards us. Then we heard this scream like an express train going overhead.” Prinz Eugen was by now firing her eight-inch guns, shifting targets as the situation required, augmenting Bismarck’s firepower. A second German salvo bracketed Hood as the battlecruiser charged ahead, desperate to get inside the “zone of immunity” re: plunging fire. The Germans then unleashed a third broadside. A shell from Prinz Eugen struck Hood aft, detonating anti-aircraft ammunition below and setting fires, killing and maiming several crewmen. Through the voice pipes Briggs could hear the screams of wounded men. While the German cruiser peppered her opponents, Bismarck found the range. She fired a fourth salvo. One shell smashed through Hood’s observation deck above the compass platform. A shaken crewman sent to inspect the damage returned to report that above them was a veritable charnel house; one officer was unrecognizable, missing both face and hands. Only five minutes into the battle, Hood was in trouble. By now Holland had closed the range to seven miles, which he hoped placed him inside the zone of immunity…but he was wrong. He then ordered a turn to port so both Royal Navy warships could finally bring their aft turrets to bear. It was during this fatal maneuver that Bismarck fired her fifth salvo. After a 30-second trip, a 15-inch armor-piercing shell screamed down and plunged through Hood’s vulnerable deck armor, smashing deep into the ship’s vitals and then detonating her magazines. All at once, an immense superheated sheet of flame ripped upward through the center of the battlecruiser until it resembled a gigantic acetylene torch rising hundreds of feet into the air. Then Hood blew apart in a colossal fireball that left both British and German sailors aghast. Within seconds, her stern disappeared beneath the sea while flames and smoke engulfed the ship. Hood’s bow reared up vertically before beginning its terrible descent into the Atlantic. As she went under, a forward turret fired in a final act of defiance from a doomed gun crew. In just a few seconds, the most celebrated warship in the world was gone. All that remained of “The Mighty Hood” was a flaming patch of oil and debris on the surface of the ocean. Out of a crew of 1,418, only three survived: Ted Briggs, Bob Tilburn, and Bill Dundas. It is believed that an exploding boiler beneath them hurled the trio upward on a rush of air and water, saving them from the suction dragging the rest of the ship downward. Every man who witnessed the explosion was stunned. Zimmerman recalled hearing the news as it spread through Bismarck: “The Hood sunk? It was such a shock. At first there were smiling faces everywhere, but that didn’t last long. As there was a strange feeling in our stomachs that tomorrow that could be us.” Sensing blood, Bismarck and Prinz Eugen now trained all their guns on Prince of Wales — whose own turrets were malfunctioning. The Battle of the Denmark Strait, barely five minutes in, had become a catastrophe for the Royal Navy. *** Brad Schaeffer is a commodities fund manager, author, and columnist whose articles have appeared on the pages of The Wall Street Journal, NY Post, NY Daily News, The Daily Wire, National Review, The Hill, The Federalist, Zerohedge, and other outlets. He is the author of three books. You can also follow him on Substack and X. His latest book, “A War For Half The World: Why the Real Battle for the Future was Fought in the Pacific,” will be released in February 2027.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you. *** There are few annoyances worse than when a nice young man flips around a tiny virtual tablet that reads “add tip” after he did all the work of rotating his body 75 degrees to grab you an $18 beer from a fridge. It’s true: Tipping culture has gotten out of hand in the United States. I try to tip generously because I used to work as a delivery driver. I know the struggle of trying to scrape together some cash at the mercy of strangers who are tasked with making up the difference between the cost of living and your poverty base wage. That only applies to actual services, though: waiting, bartending, delivery, etc. There are plenty of cases (such as the stadium beer kiosk) where the expectation of tipping is wrongly bleeding Americans dry. And don’t get me started on communal tipping. I can’t think of anything more demoralizing than getting a fat tip due to your excellent service, only to be forced to pool it with the rest of your coworkers who didn’t do a thing to earn it. My disdain for this excess of American culture changed, though, when I recently took a trip to Ireland. In Ireland, like much of Europe, they don’t do tipping the way we do. You can tack on 5 to 10% for your waiter or bartender if the service is particularly good, but it’s not expected. And a service charge is often already included. You don’t get sideways looks for just paying the tab and leaving like you would stateside. My initial reaction to this was relief. Finally, some simplicity in this life. The meals may be a bit more expensive because the labor cost is factored into price, but simply being able to pay and go without doing extra math and giving a performance review at the end of the meal would be nice. Things began to change with each passing day. When we had our first sit-down dinner of the trip, I couldn’t help but notice how inattentive the waitstaff was. No refills of water. Twenty minutes passing by between being seated and having our order taken. Want to get some extra condiments on the side after the food arrives? Good luck. I thought it may be an anomaly, but then the same experience kept repeating itself every single time we had dinner during the trip. I will say this didn’t extend to bartending service — I’m talking strictly about sit-down meals here — but without a single exception, the service was just dreadful, inattentive, and slow. It was the type of experience that makes one pause and reflect on the bigger picture. I’m not saying that Europe’s poor table service is a direct consequence of a culture that stifles innovation and snuffs out the ambition of the individual for the good of the collective, but it is striking that we don’t have this issue in hyper-capitalist America. Now, you may be thinking this was my fault somehow. Maybe my Americanness was an affront to the waitstaff’s European sensibilities. I don’t think so. I wasn’t acting visibly foreign, and the staff were very polite and personable in every interaction. I gathered no sense of disdain whatsoever — only indifference. My only conclusion can be that these workers did not put an American-level effort in because they didn’t have to. There was no incentive to give me good service, so they didn’t. The system failed. The experience has certainly changed my perspective on tipping culture. Yes, it remains excessive in certain American contexts. But there’s a wisdom to Chesterton’s fence: If something has been around a while, it just might serve a purpose you’ll miss when it’s gone.