Iowa Shock

Primary results trickle in: We have nothing useful out of California yet—current mayor Karen Bass has advanced in her bid for reelection, but it’s not clear who she’ll be up against in the general, possibly Spencer Pratt; Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra are leading the results for governor. What we do have is an interesting upset in Iowa.

Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump, lost his primary in the race for governor to Zach Lahn, a conservative farmer who was endorsed by former U.S. Rep. Steve King (R–Iowa), who has personal beef with Feenstra.

“Iowa leans red and backed Trump by 13 percentage points in 2024, but Democrats think they can make the race unusually competitive this year with a strong candidate and a backlash to Trump’s second term,” reports The Washington Post. “The Republican nominee for governor will face Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.” There is, of course, always the temptation to extrapolate from a single political outcome; it remains to be seen how normal American voters will react to Trump-endorsed candidates. Is Trump still a kingmaker? When November rolls around, we’ll learn more.

As for this race, Feenstra kind of phoned in his campaign, and Lahn was able to work the MAHA (“Make America Healthy Again”) angle—an RFK-esque brand of Trumpism, but somewhat distinct from full MAGA. So Lahn’s victory in Iowa probably shouldn’t be read as a total repudiation of Trump.

“Feenstra’s defeat makes him the highest-profile candidate endorsed by Mr. Trump to lose a Republican primary race in years—perhaps since Luther Strange, an appointed senator in Alabama, fell to Roy Moore in a 2017 special election primary,” notes The New York Times. “Mr. Moore went on to lose the general election to Doug Jones, a Democrat.”

Scenes from New York: Yesterday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani went down to Rockaway Beach (coincidentally, my old stomping grounds) to announce he’d be expanding the city’s daycare program to cover 2-K—that is, “free” preschool for 2-year-olds—in addition to 3-K, which is already universally provided. (Nothing is ever free; more on that later.)

A limited number of spots (2,000 total) will be available for toddlers in School Districts 6, 10, 18, 23, and 27, so: Washington Heights, Inwood, Fordham, Kingsbridge, Canarsie, Brownsville, Ocean Hill, Ozone Park, and the Rockaways. These are all poorer neighborhoods in far north Manhattan, the Bronx, east Brooklyn, and south Queens. These spots will mostly be full-day, so from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and the program is slated to expand over the next four years to cover the remaining roughly 48,000 2-year-olds who might want a spot.

Of course, the real Mamdani goal is not just to expand to 2-year-olds, but to cover every child in New York City from 6 weeks of life onward—at extraordinary cost to taxpayers. What this ends up being, in many cases, is a handout from the well-off to the well-off; but note how Mamdani’s 2-K announcement tries to subliminally plant the idea in New Yorkers’ heads, by prioritizing the poor neighborhoods, that actually it’s just a necessary resource for the city’s struggling working-class families.

More of my reporting on New York’s childcare system and the socialists’ dream of universal everything:

QUICK HITS

• Florida tries suing ChatGPT’s maker, OpenAI. “Sam Altman and ChatGPT have chosen the AI race over the safety and security of our kids. They have chosen profit over public safety, and we’re not going to stand for it here in Florida,” said the state’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, at a press conference earlier this week. I don’t anticipate this going especially far.
• Huge advances in pancreatic cancer treatment: “Daraxonrasib hit every marker important to doctors and patients. The drug doubled survival time and kept tumors from growing for twice as long compared to conventional chemotherapy,” reports Bloomberg. “Even better, people taking the drug had about five more months before their quality of life deteriorated compared to those on chemotherapy. And because daraxonrasib is a pill, patients are spared the burden of going to a facility and being tethered to an IV pump. For a cancer known for its brutal progression, those things—being able to receive care at home, having more quality time—truly matter.”
• There’s a bed bug infestation at the USDA:

Incredible scoop from @EricM_Katz https://t.co/ZiuwwYKgge pic.twitter.com/yxAFlTBymZ

— Jeff Stein (@jstein_star) June 2, 2026

Something I’ve noticed quite a bit is that we have this ongoing subtle expansion of the service economy but it’s often sort of intermingled with the healthcare economy. Every 6 months I will discover some sort of new-to-me profession (recent examples: Occupational Therapist,… https://t.co/B5A5atL9vC

— Scarlet Astrorum (@ScarletAstrorum) June 2, 2026