The theory that since we haven't protected young girls from seeing photographs of penises, it's not important to protect them from a penis in the girls' locker room.

.@AbdulElSayed says it’s ok for MEN to be in girl’s locker rooms. Why? “Well because they are going to find out about it on the internet anyway” Completely unacceptable. https://t.co/eXeh70kkeP

— Mike Rogers (@MikeRogersForMI) November 2, 2026

"The Democratic representative who lost a primary fight against Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, endorsed his Republican opponent on Sunday...."

"The Republican nominee, Mike Rogers, received the endorsement from Representative Haley Stevens, a Democrat who represents suburban areas around Detroit, after she appeared alongside him at a church service.... 'I am endorsing Mike Rogers for the United States Senate today,' Ms. Stevens said in a video she posted on social media, not long after she arrived with Mr. Rogers at Perfecting Church, a Black church in Detroit. 'I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign.'... Dr. El-Sayed was attending a church service in Detroit that was intended to be a unity gathering with Ms. Stevens... in an effort to move past her recent criticisms of him. But that plan fell apart this weekend, with Ms. Stevens and Dr. El-Sayed publicly feuding over U.S. policy on Israel. On Saturday, Dr. El-Sayed urged Ms. Stevens to stay away from the event...."

From "Midterm Elections Live Updates: Democratic Senate Primary Loser Endorses Republican in Michigan/The rift between Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate, and Representative Haley Stevens widened to a gulf two days before the midterms. The president was set to campaign in Iowa and Kansas" (NYT).

ADDED: "Congrats, Fetterwoman":

@HaleyforMI Congrats, Fetterwoman, on nuking your political career and being the saddest sore loser in Michigan political history. I hope whatever you’re getting in return for doing this is worth it.

— 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐝𝐢 (@ChidiNwatu) November 1, 2026

"In the most eye-popping moment of the exchange, Mr. Watters asked if Dr. El-Sayed believed it was OK 'for a parent to slash his kid’s ding-a-ling off'..."

"... referring to transition surgeries for minors. Dr. El-Sayed responded by asking if Mr. Watters was circumcised. 'Uh, yeah, but that’s a personal question, doctor,' Mr. Watters responded, laughing, before contending that 'circumcision’s different than castration.' Dr. El-Sayed said that he believed the government should not tell Americans what health care procedures they could undergo, but he did not directly say whether he approved of transition surgeries. The interview showed the strategy Dr. El-Sayed is adopting as Mr. Rogers seeks to paint him as a radical leftist who is out of touch with Michigan voters. The Democratic nominee’s approach is to cast 'culture-war' issues as a distraction from the everyday problems Americans face, like rising costs and worries about health care...."

From "El-Sayed Joins Fox News for Some Light Verbal Combat and a Pitch to Republicans/In a smiling yet tense interview, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, argued that his Republican critics were using culture-war issues to distract from Americans’ economic concerns" (NYT gift link).

"Mr. Rogers" = Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate.

"You know, listen, I'm old fashioned about my entertainment. I just like to go to be entertained. If I want politics I'll go to a town hall meeting."

"I'll turn on cable news. There's lots of outlets you can go to get politics even the issues and ideas that you disagree with. A play for the vice president-elect of the United States who was there with his family to get booed tells you how far gone civility is in America.... This is the vice president-elect of the United States. They should want him to be successful. They should want his family to feel welcome in anywhere they go in the United States like everybody should want to feel welcomed anywhere in the United States. And it starts with a small thing like not booing the vice president-elect of the United States and not having a cast come out and lecture somebody who probably paid 800 bucks to be there.... I hope they give him his money back."

Said former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers on "State of the Union" yesterday.

I didn't think Pence should have been singled out and lectured to from the stage when the audience — which had booed him earlier — seemed so hostile. His physical safety was in issue, and that introduced an element of intimidation and bullying that the people behind the show probably didn't intend but should have been more sensitive about. The people in the audience who booed were creepy and cowardly — in their safe space and (probably) believing themselves to be the good people.

But Mike Rogers sounds like a fool talking about the theater as a place that owes you politics-free entertainment — where you pay your money and they owe you a pleasant, happy, relaxing time. Whose theory of theater is that? Rogers calls himself "old fashioned" as if he's relying on a traditional view of the role of theater in human culture, but where the hell did he get that?

Even shows aimed at children raise unsettling matters that question and challenge the audience about things that can be political. I'm not going to go down the rathole of the politics of "The Lion King." And you can, on your own time, read this New Yorker article, "The Politics of 'Annie.'" ("[Annie] wanders into a Hooverville—a shantytown whose jobless denizens (proto-Occupiers?) sing a sarcastic ode to the outgoing President....")

But "Hamilton" is a musical that is on its face about politics. How in hell could it be a night of lightweight, relaxing amusement? That wouldn't be good. You have to be lying or a fool to assert that you paid for tickets to "Hamilton" and felt entitled to a politics-free experience.

And Rogers slotted in an appeal to "civility." You know what I always say: Appeals to civility are always bullshit. Rogers himself is doing politics, and if the politics cut the other way he'd be praising free speech and parsing the language of the from-the-stage lecture for respectful intelligence. 

(For what it's worth: Mike Rogers was kicked off the Trump transition team last week.)

Trump chaos... as told by the NYT.

I don't trust the NYT to tell the story straight, so I'm picking my way "Trump Staff Shake-Up Slows Transition to Near Halt" looking for bits of real news and cherry picking evidence of bias:

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition operation plunged into disarray on Tuesday with the abrupt resignation of Mike Rogers, who had handled national security matters....

An aide to Mr. Trump’s transition team who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters said that the delay was taking place because the wording of [a legal document required to conduct the transition] was being altered and updated, and that it was likely to be signed later Tuesday.

Still, the slow and uncertain start to what is normally a rapid and meticulously planned transfer of power could have profound implications for Mr. Trump’s nascent administration, challenging the efforts of the president-elect to gain control of the federal bureaucracy and begin building a staff fully briefed on what he will face in the Oval Office on Day 1.

The chaos caught the attention of some senior Republicans who criticized Mr. Trump during his campaign but said after he won that they would not necessarily rule out joining his administration or advising him....

The turmoil at the highest levels of his staff upended months of planning and preparation for a process that many describe as drinking from a fire hose even in the most orderly of circumstance....

So... Rogers left and they're finishing that legal document. But: disarray, chaos, turmoil...

I'm utterly jaded by the emotive prose from the NYT. 

By the way, who is Mike Rogers? Here's Bret Baier and panelist Laura Ingraham talking about him on November 11th:

"Here's a candidate [Trump] who ran in part on the Benghazi issue. You've got the 13 Hours guys that endorsed Donald Trump. And you've got a guy running your national security transition that comes under fire from conservatives over Benghazi," Baier said.

"The 13 Hours guys were infuriated, fuming when that report came out, because the report basically called their integrity into question—said that these heroes were doing it just to sell a book," Ingraham added.

Watch the video at that link. If you're a Trump supporter, I don't think you'll feel bad losing Mike Rogers.

"There is a whole celebrity political class in Washington, D.C., today that I think is doing a huge disservice to the functionality of our national security..."

"... who are using it to foment their isolationalist tendencies — and I think it is dangerous, really dangerous."

Said Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, announcing that he will not run for reelection (and will move into radio).

Lindsey Graham was on fire on "Meet the Press" today.

About the Benghazi attack and the statements various people made about it:

... I think one of the reasons that Susan Rice told the story she did, if the truth came out a few weeks before the election that our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, had been overrun by an al Qaeda sponsored or affiliated militia, that destroys the narrative we’ve been hearing for months that al Qaeda has been dismantled, bin Laden is dead, we’re safer.... [T]he story she told reinforced a political narrative helpful to the president, but disconnected from reality....

The president said, why pick on her? She didn’t know anything about Benghazi. She was the most politically compliant person they could find.... Would this White House mislead the American people about national security events? I think they might simply because when the bin Laden raid occurred, they leaked every detail about the raid....

There are 10 militia groups all over Benghazi. I blame the president for…making this a death trap. I blame the president for not having assets available to help these people for eight hours. We need a select committee not only to look at intelligence failures...

Also in today's MTP transcript:  the House and Senate intelligence chairs Congressman Mike Rogers and Senator Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein is clear that on Sept. 14th, David Petraeus said the Benghazi attack was terrorism. Why did Susan Rice say otherwise on Sept. 16th? Rogers says:

The intelligence community had it right, and they had it right early.  What happened was it worked its way up through the system of the so-called talking points, which everyone refers to, and then it went up to what’s called a deputy’s committee... that’s populated by appointees from the administration.  That’s where the narrative changed.  And so how that thing got back to Senator Rice, I think, is probably another question.

Feinstein says the White House did not change the talking points (other than to change the word "consulate" to "mission").  Rogers says:

[T]here was no one in the professional intelligence community could tell us who changed what.  So that-- there-- there goes the disconnect.  So the intelligence community said this is-- this was a terrorist act.

The moderator, David Gregory, says he doesn't get it: "Why not just call it what it was?  Who-- why are we protecting?" Feinstein says she doesn't know, and she seems to be really struggling to understand (even though I assume she's trying to protect her party's interests). Gregory asks "was there a cover-up?" And "Do you believe that the president or anybody serving the president deliberately misled the American people about the true nature of this attack for political reasons?" And Feinstein says "no, no." She's the Democrat. The Republican, Rogers, says:

Well, this is what I know.  I know the narrative was wrong and the intelligence was right.  Now, getting between there and there, I think you have to be careful about making those accusations.... But there were some policy decisions made based on the narrative that was not consistent with the intelligence that we had.