"...[his opponent] leans toward conservative talking points on most topics and seems comfortable to remain in virtual lockstep with President Donald Trump, whatever the issue."

"Casten continues to espouse thoughtful, often innovative ideas on issues like foreign policy, economic policy, tariffs, congressional duties, presidential authority, health care and protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid..."

Honored to earn the Daily Herald's endorsement today. GO VOTE #IL06! https://www.dailyherald.com/20261016/endorsements/endorsement-casten-for-congress-from-illinois-district-6/

The US doesn't have a disproportionate share of mental health issues, or disaffected young men, or anything else that will be scapegoated this morning. We just have way too many guns. We can deal with that, or we can keep living in fear. Everything else is horrible, terrible, frightening noise.

The Onion got it painfully right after Uvalde, and don't tolerate anyone today framing this as a mental health issue, or a missed signal by local law enforcement, or a hard question about what our society has become. https://theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1848971668/

And yes, the rebuttal to every point I made above is "well, US law is the reason" or "the Supreme Court directly contradicts what Sean just said". WHICH IS THE PROBLEM. Those are political choices. We don't have to accept those choices in a representative democracy.

There is no reason why schools, theaters, places of worship and all our other common places should be obligated to invest in security and miiiltary-level hardening just so that some emotionally fragile dude can cosplay as GI Joe.

There is no reason to believe that your right to enough liberty to kill supersedes my right to enough life and pursuit of happiness to stay alive.

There is no reason to believe that easy access to deadly weapons makes you safer. There is no reason why gun manufacturers shouldn't be subject to the same product liability laws that knife, rope and rat poison manufacturers live by.

There is no reason to respect the Supreme Court's decision in Heller when they claimed (under the guise of originalism, no less) that the first 13 words of 2A - the part constraining to a "well regulated militia" were "merely prefatory"

There is no reason to let civilians have weapons of war. There is no reason to assume that our right to guns is limited when the reality is that if we took 50% of all guns away tomorrow we would still have more guns per capita than any other country in the world.

This is so scary - we same too close to losing too many friends. We will and should have a conversation about what could have been done to avoid this, but remember this risk only exists because we have too many damned guns. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/15/us/hindu-temple-chicago-arrest.html

As you read this, keep in mind that Todd Blanche was Trump's 3rd choice for Attorney General. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article317634839.html

Put it this way: you don't call Toonces to give you a lift until after your car breaks, the taxi doesn't show, the Uber app crashes and the creepy guy in the van is already booked.

Nothing screams "no one is applying to this job" louder than putting out feelers to Kevin McCarthy. https://www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/news/susie-wiles-trump-chief-of-staff-b3067465.html

In any event, the links between crypto, money laundering, the Trump, Lutnick and Witkoff family and the rampant law breaking that the money laundering was used to try and hide are all coming out. This will not be the last story and Bo Hines ain't the biggest fish in this pond.

This part is curious, as Emmer has very consistently opposed any effort to make it harder to use crypto (stablecoins or otherwise) to launder money. He's a shill for the industry - but the fact that they wanted - and got something - even he wouldn't provide is quite troubling.

Suffice to say that if you run a money laundering business, you'd vastly prefer to be subject to El Salvadoran disclosure and compliance standards. The "Genius" Act that regulated stablecoins in the US should have closed doors to ML with stablecoins but didn't - one of the many reasons I opposed.

For context Tether is a so-called "stablecoin". (So-called because it has not always remained stable, nor has it provided consistent accounting of its reserves). But it central to money laundering in the crypto ecosystem since it affords a way to convert shadier crypto into hard currency.

So Tether, which is closely tied to Cantor Fitzgerald (aka, Howard Lutnick) successfully lobbied to pass a law that allowed them operate in the US but subject to El Salvadoran compliance, then paid off the Trump staffer who twisted GOP arms to seal the deal. https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/crypto-law-trump-tether-bo-hines-45bcd95d?st=3Foi6Q&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink