Both U.S. Senator Tommy "Coach" Tuberville (R-Ala.) and former U.S. Senator Doug Jones (D-Ala.) won their respective primaries and will face off in November for Alabama governor.

This piece is part of MI x DW, a collaboration that brings Daily Wire readers exclusive commentary and research from the Manhattan Institute’s world-class team of scholars. *** Last month, two Americans were killed in a foreign state’s counterterrorism operation. If Lyle Prijoles, 40, and Kai Dana-Rene Sorem, 26, had been part of a group of jihadi terrorists in the Middle East, their deaths would likely have generated national headlines. But they were in the Philippines, fighting for the New People’s Army (NPA), a decades-old Maoist insurgent group that serves as the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). The two appear to have died fighting: many Western reports of the incident explicitly note that Prijoles’s and Sorem’s deaths occurred in a “firefight,” implying an exchange of fire between both sides. Nor were they fighting on the side of good: both the CPP and NPA are designated foreign terrorist organizations by the State Department. How did two Americans die in a gun battle on behalf of Filipino Communist terrorists? The incident shows how Americans can become mixed up with terrorist organizations. Such entanglements begin not just overseas but also within political organizing environments in the United States, including college campuses and diaspora advocacy networks. Both the U.S. government and higher education institutions should scrutinize these networks more closely — before more American lives are lost. Prijoles and Sorem’s radicalization began with two left-wing activist groups: Anakbayan-USA and Bayan-USA. Both operate within segments of the Filipino-American community in the U.S. The Philippine government has long argued that such groups are fronts for the CPP. Through these groups, Filipino Communist influence has extended into segments of the American anti-imperialist and abolitionist organizing space. The party and its aligned networks have also been visible in the anti-Israel protest movement, according to a report by the Center for Security Policy. Prijoles appears to have been radicalized at San Francisco State University sometime around 2004, eventually serving as chair of SFSU’s chapter of the League of Filipino Students. After his death, his wife told a local news outlet that “his passion for the community grew while he was a student at SF State.” Prijoles made several trips to the Philippines after 2006, and was a leader in the U.S. chapter of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines. This activity made him a natural fit for Anakbayan. In 2012, Anakbayan-USA held its Founding Congress; Prijoles was elected “Solidarity Officer.” After that, his organizing work took on an increasingly international character, and he grew more and more active on the ground in the Philippines. Sorem’s radicalization pathway appears to have been shaped by a broader search for political and personal identity, particularly through Filipino diaspora organizing. He served as a legislative page for the Democratic Party in Washington State. Like Prijoles, Sorem’s activism was motivated by his Filipino identity. His sibling, PJ Sorem, said that this led him to become politically active and organize in the Philippines. Sorem’s political involvement took a more radical turn in 2020, when he was a student at Central Washington University. According to an Anakbayan memorial, Sorem “witnessed state violence and repression through the killing of George Floyd and saw parallels in [Philippines President Rodrigo] Duterte’s war on drugs and the poor.” This apparently inspired Sorem, who identified as a trans woman, to see “a future for her people in the National Democratic movement.” Soon after, Sorem launched Anakbayan South Seattle. Over time, Sorem delved into anti-imperialist politics, including attendance at “international leftist summits” and expanded organizing work. Sorem traveled to the Philippines in 2025 as part of a U.S. exposure trip and, by 2026, was living in the Philippines and organizing full-time. Sorem was a significant figure in the Seattle-Tacoma Filipino activist community. The Tacoma chapter of the Malaya Movement praised Sorem’s community role and called for justice after his death. The Seattle chapter of GABRIELA USA, an organization “fighting for the rights of Filipina women and LGBTQGNC [gender non-conforming] people,” also praised Sorem’s local involvement. Sorem’s sibling PJ is a member of this organization’s Seattle branch. Prijoles and Sorem were not outlier cases but part of a nation- and globe-spanning network of Filipino groups. While they present to the world as focused on mundane ethnic affinity, many of these groups encourage their members into radicalization. A central ideological principle within these groups is advocacy of “National Democracy.” That refers to a Marxist-Leninist conception of a people’s democracy led by a Communist vanguard. Though these organizations primarily focus on issues in the Philippines, they also participate in broader international coordination through umbrella formations such as the International League of Peoples’ Struggles. The ILPS was founded in 2001 by Jose Maria Sison, founder of the CPP, and several allied international activists. It is widely characterized as part of the broader Maoist-oriented National Democratic movement associated with the CPP. Despite the CPP’s and NPA’s designations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, the ILPS umbrella group has continued to operate in the United States with little scrutiny. It has more than 350 organizations worldwide folded into its network, including Anakbayan and Bayan. Before his death in 2022, Sison maintained regular virtual contact with groups like Anakbayan, Bayan, and ILPS. He frequently appeared at conferences and delivered digital messages — including to Anakbayan’s Founding Congress. In turn, these groups have continued to invoke, commemorate, and align themselves with his legacy. Many of these groups have deep tendrils in American universities; some college professors even display these affiliations on their official faculty pages. At San Francisco State University, where Prijoles was radicalized, Irene Faye Duller’s faculty profile references her role as Bayan-USA’s Northern California Regional Coordinator and her work with ILPS. Joy Sales of California State University, Los Angeles describes her work as “community-engaged scholar” and references involvement with Anakbayan, among other groups. CVs for University of Washington faculty member Rick Bonus and Alden Sajor Marte-Wood, now at Vassar, advertise roles as advisers or faculty sponsors for Anakbayan student chapters. Nor is campus activism restricted to professors. The Georgia chapter of the Revolutionary Student Union, a “socialist mass organization of revolutionary students in the United States,” held a May Day rally in which participants waved an NPA flag and burned an American flag. Commenting on the incident, Center for Security Policy analyst Kyle Shideler observed, “Obviously if they were to display public support for ISIS or Al Qaeda the response would be swift.” Prijoles and Sorem’s deaths were the tragic results of two Americans going down the radicalization rabbit hole. What started as innocent interest in their national origins ended in their deaths amid a hail of bullets. Yet almost no one is taking the networks that radicalized them seriously, Shideler warns. Their deaths should be the trigger for U.S. intelligence, law enforcement, and higher education officials to investigate the influence of a designated foreign terror organization on America’s campuses and elsewhere — before more lives are lost. *** This is republished with permission from the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. The original can be found here. Stu Smith is an investigative analyst with City Journal. Follow him on X @TheStuStuStudio.

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. *** Catholicism is having a moment, and now the church is getting even more good press. On Saturday, beauty brand founder Scott-Vincent Borba, 52, will give up his former life of fame and fortune to begin life as an ordained Catholic priest in his hometown of Visalia, California.  “I have never been happier in my life,” Borba told ABC 7 of his massive life change. “Once I started to reorient myself, recalibrate myself with God’s help to the focus to Him, the joy started coming.” Borba co-founded the makeup brand e.l.f. Cosmetics (“eyes, lips, face”) with his father and son in 2004. The brand became a huge success in the mid-2010s thanks to clever marketing campaigns and affordable prices. Per Forbes, it reached $100 million in sales in 2014, and Borba was living a lifestyle to match his newfound success. “We ran around with the likes of Paris Hilton and partying with Kardashians and just doing up the Hollywood life,” the brand founder told ABC 7. “I was a poster boy for luxury living. I was not in any which way humble. I was very prideful,” he added. “I was vapid. I had a perverse life,” Borba told CBS 47 during another interview. “I went to L.A., I got sucked into the Hollywood lifestyle — it was almost to a point where I was trying to sell my soul, right, for all of the riches of the world, which is not what we’re supposed to be … I was living for myself.” Borba is currently living as a deacon and, because he’s becoming a priest so late in life, is in the minority. But what makes his story so remarkable is how he lived with such success and turned away after realizing the money never delivered true joy. Instead of turning to sex, drugs, and alcohol or chasing more success, Borba gave away all his earthly possessions and tried something radically different.  “I asked our Lord to help me be the man that he created me to be. And upon that instance, I had this massive flood of love and mercy that came into my life,” Borba told ABC. “It was a very mystical experience.” “I live in a little tiny room with … it’s sparse, nothing in it,” Borba said of his current seminary life. “I have a few bits of clothes and a few pairs of shoes. And my life has been culled down to the bare minimum.” The e.l.f. brand founder said he always felt called to become a priest but ignored it until a few years ago, which is when he finally discovered that the treasures of the world would never fill the void in his soul. This story couldn’t come at a more critical moment for the Catholic Church. While there has been a massive uptick in converts to Catholicism, including among young adults who have a particular interest in the traditional Latin Mass, there is also a huge shortage of priests. Parishes are merging and closing even as the number of interested congregants continues to grow. According to the Church’s statistical yearbook, the number of priests worldwide fell to 406,996 in 2023, representing a multi-year decline that doesn’t appear to be changing. Older priests are retiring or dying, and not enough young men are coming to replace them, despite the massive number of Catholic converts. Dan Monastra, a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, said he has a theory about this.  “One reason is the overall lack of desire in our culture to commit oneself to something permanent, especially among younger generations. We see this not only with the priesthood but with marriage as well. Another reason is that the priesthood is antithetical to what modern culture offers: namely, comfort,” he told Fox Business during an interview on the topic last month. That explains why the global Catholic population has surpassed 1.4 billion, but there is still a critical shortage of men willing to step up and join the priesthood. People in Borba’s position are even rarer. According to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the average age for new priests is 33. Only 3% of current seminarians are over 50, according to Zach Flanagin, a professor of theology and religious studies at Saint Mary’s College of California. “We are entering into a different time with new challenges. The world is constantly changing, and it is up to the Church to find ways to bear witness to Christ in the midst of these changes while still upholding the ancient faith,” Monastra said of the new reality. With stories like Borba’s being reported, it could inspire more men who feel the call to change their lives to consider entering the priesthood, even if it’s a second act. “I think that a story like his is a great opportunity to inspire people,” theology and religious studies professor Zach Flanagin told ABC 7 of Borba’s journey. “And certainly, his call, I hope it’s genuinely successful because if it is, then he will hopefully bring in people to know Christ.”

Maine Democrat Senate candidate Graham Platner once lamented the closing of a loophole that allowed military contractors to save money on taxes by spending their time off “banging hookers in Thailand” instead of getting “b*tched” at by their wives back in the United States. “Spend your leave banging hookers in Thailand instead of getting b*tched at by the wife back home, and you could sell it as avoiding federal income tax,” Platner wrote on Reddit in June 2019. “Once the Afghans started using our paychecks as a personal piggy bank, that whole loophole disappeared.” Platner made the comments under the name “P-Hustle,” a handle he admitted to using after an archive of his Reddit posts was reported by the Maine Monitor.  “Hell, with those DoD static contracts, those poor bastards literally are just making 65 a year,” Platner posted under the user name “P-Hustle” on a thread. “Sadly, the Afghan tax f***ed everybody on the 330 game.” That appears to be a reference to IRS regulations allowing a significant portion of income to be exempt if a person spends at least 330 days in a foreign country during a 12-month period. This allows American military contractors to avoid paying higher federal income taxes if they spend significant time overseas.  During the final decade of the United States’ military operation in Afghanistan, contractors said the Afghan government taxed their income significantly more than the bilateral agreements between the two countries allowed. In 2013, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found that the Afghan government had levied $93 million in taxes on money that should have been exempt. Platner went to Afghanistan multiple times, including once with the Maryland Army National Guard as an infantryman in 2010 and later in 2018 as a contractor for the State Department. The Democrat has faced a barrage of criticism over past posts and statements in his bid to unseat Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). These comments have ranged from posts calling the Virgin Mary a “skank” to discussions on masturbating in portable public toilets.  “I still have to jerk off every time I sit in a portash*tter… that blue water smell conditioned me,” he wrote in March 2017 in a thread on nostalgic military smells. In another thread titled “GWOT Dick Art,” Platner described graffiti of a penis as “beautiful,” “engorged and veiny,” and moving “towards its penetrative glory,” according to Fox News.  Platner has characterized many of his previous posts as jokes and apologized for his former comments about women. His campaign began with a burst of controversy when it was revealed that he had a tattoo on his chest that closely resembled a Totenkopf, the skull-and-crossbones emblem adopted by an infamous Nazi SS unit. The Democrat said he received the tattoo while serving in the Marine Corps during a drunken night in Croatia and claimed he was unaware of its historical meaning at the time. The Associated Press later confirmed that he had the tattoo covered once the comparison became public, saying he did not want a symbol associated with hate on his body. As of this writing, Platner leads Collins by 7.5 points, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.

'Corrupt sham'

'No idea what these chemicals are'