(AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) offered a stark warning about the future of her party late last week, in comments that went largely unreported in the media – despite Michigan’s Tuesday primary being the center of the political world at the moment.

Nessel held a roundtable discussion on anti-Semitism last Thursday and told participants that she will skip her own party’s state convention next month over fears for her safety.

“I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed,” Nessel told the group of the same convention that put her in office for the last eight years.

Michigan Advance’s Katherine Dailey, who broke the story, reported that Nessel added, “I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying. And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”

Dailey also noted in her reporting that Nessel criticized her party’s leadership for not taking more seriously the harassment she’s been receiving from inside the tent, “She criticized party leadership for not responding to concerns she said she has raised about members who have harassed her in the past, and compared the rise of antisemitism on the political left and in the Democratic Party to the proliferation of neo-Nazi organizations in far-right fringe politics.”

Nessel’s stunning remarks should have quickly reverberated through the mainstream media, but instead were met with near-total indifference. According to a search of cable news transcripts via the media monitoring service SnapStream, Nessel’s comments were not picked up by CNN or MS NOW. Fox News ran a segment on them on Tuesday afternoon.

Nessel’s name has been mentioned on CNN and MS NOW in recent days for her efforts to push back against the Trump administration in several lawsuits she’s filed and for prosecuting polluters in Flint that are allegedly tied to the water-poisoning crisis in the city. Despite being a prominent newsmaker in her own right as attorney general, The New York Times, Politico, CNN.com, and almost every other major digital publication did not pick up her eyebrow-raising comments.

Imagine if an establishment Republican, holding statewide office in a major swing state, had publicly said they would boycott their party’s upcoming convention out of fear of being harassed and intimidated by the MAGA base of the party. It’s all but certain that mainstream media would jump on the story and dedicate a good deal of time and attention to it. Furthermore, imagine if that Republican statewide office holder were a member of a prominent minority group (Nessel is both Jewish and openly gay) and the harassment they faced were tied not only to their political beliefs but their identity – it’s incredibly hard to believe that the mainstream media would not, as they should, quickly run with the story.

Fox News digital did run Nessel’s comments, as did publications like Jewish Insider and various local publications inside Michigan.

Nessel’s unprecedented boycott of her own party’s convention comes amid Tuesday’s heated Democratic Party primary in the state, pitting progressive Abdul El-Sayed against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) in a contest that many pundits see as a bellwether for whether or not the Democratic establishment can stop the rising tide of Democratic Socialists.

Nessel endorsed Stevens in the race, and her comments offer a warning for the general election as well. Nessel’s remarks further raise the question of whether moderate Michigan Democrats will turn out for El-Sayed if he’s on the ballot in November, which every poll expects he will be.

Semafor covered the rising trend in an article last week titled, “Never-El-Sayed moment in Michigan?” Semafor’s Nicholas Wu focused the piece on comments from another Michigan Democrat, Rep. Hillary Scholten (D-MI), who has made it clear she will not support El-Sayed in the general election. Scholten has also endorsed Stevens in the race.

“I will not stand beside someone who has allowed distinctly anti-American sentiment to enter our public dialogue,” Scholten told Wu, referring to El-Sayed allying himself with far-left figures like Hasan Piker, who has said he has no patriotism for the U.S. and once argued the U.S. “deserved” 9/11. Scholten has also accused El-Sayed and his backers of “deeply intense sexism” in the race and insisted that “Abdul needs to answer for his own words.”

The dynamics surrounding the Michigan Senate primary make the media’s lack of coverage of Nessel’s ominous warning about her party and her place in it all the more galling.

While Nessel is term-limited and appears poised to leave Democratic Party politics, Scholten’s comments make clear that she’s not an outlier in her state and that a fierce battle between the progressives and the moderates is only just beginning – especially as more and more progressives and Democratic Socialists win their primaries.

“I will speak as a member of the Democratic Party here in Michigan, that some things have changed,” Nessel added in her warning about the future of her party, concluding, “This cannot continue, and the fact of the matter is, we have to be able to be a society where we can have intelligent discourse and debate about ideas without people being threatened, and certainly without people carrying out those threats.”

Why exactly cable news producers and editors across the nation decided to leave Nessel out of their coverage of the Michigan primaries is somewhat baffling. Right-leaning media would presumably be all in on a big-name Democrat slamming the hard left, while mainstream and left-leaning media are already focused on the brewing civil war in the Democratic Party, in which Nessel has certainly now fired a shot.

But the why isn’t terribly important here, really. Because the what is just way too damning.

The post A Key Swing State Democrat Says Progressives Have Her Fearing For Her Safety And the Media All But Ignored It first appeared on Mediaite.

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Amazfit's Cheetah 2 Ultra is a premium titanium-and-sapphire trail running watch, with a $599.99 price that feels pretty steep for a brand otherwise known for its budget options. And while Amazfit's Cheetah line isn't exactly my favorite, the Cheetah 2 Ultra is still an incredibly solid choice for any runner who wants a watch that looks and feels top-of-the-line.

Like with the Cheetah 2 Pro, there's more than meets the eye with this surprisingly feature-rich watch. Here are five features in the Cheetah 2 Ultra that go a bit beyond the manual.

Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra

$599.99 at Amazon

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Shop Now

$599.99 at Amazon

Unlock a secret developer mode in your Amazfit watch

Your Zepp app has a hidden menu you probably wouldn't stumble upon by accident. Go to Profile, then Settings, then About, and tap the Zepp logo seven times in a row. This unlocks developer mode, which lets you dig into device information and debugging options that aren't normally visible in the consumer-facing app. It's not going to unlock secret hardware, but it's a useful place to check firmware details or troubleshoot a stubborn sync issue, and it's fun rabbit hole if you like poking around under the hood.

Developer mode also lets you install custom watch faces, rather than relying on the existing native watch face library and upload a custom face on your computer, scan a generated QR code, and install it directly onto your watch.

Prepare for difficult elevation at a glance on your Amazfit Cheetah 2Ultra

If you're planning a route with serious hills, this is one of the Ultra’s best hacks. The watch includes an elevation overview tool that color-codes slope difficulty across a route, so instead of squinting at a raw elevation profile and trying to guess where the brutal climbs are, you get a more accessible visual for where the terrain gets steep. This feature is easy to miss if you're not a dedicated trail runner, but it's worth pulling up before any route, so you know what you're walking into (before the hill tells you itself, the hard way).

Here's how to use the color-coded elevation glance on your Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra:

1. Create your route: Open the Zepp App, go to the Workout tab, select Create Route, and save your path.

2. Send the route to your watch: Sync your devices and check that the route successfully transfers to your watch.

3. Open Trail Mode: On your watch, launch the Trail Run sports profile before you start running.

4. Activate your route: While in trail mode, go to Settings, select Navigation, choose My Route, and select the route you created. Swipe to the elevation profile to see your color-coded preview.

If you want to see this elevation profile during your run, you can add elevation as a data screen. Here's how to customize your data screens on your Amazfit:

1. Select Workout on your watch and select your activity (like Outdoor Running).

2. Go to Settings > More > Data Page.

3. Tap whichever data field you want to show the elevation. You can swipe through your existing data pages or tap Add Page to create a new one.

Use the flashlight's boost mode when you need extra light (and practice the SOS feature)

Every Ultra user loves their watch's built-in flashlight, but there's even more to get out of it. The Ultra's flashlight includes white, red, SOS, and boost lighting modes, not just a single beam. The boost mode is there for when you need maximum brightness, like scanning a dark trail, while the SOS mode is a safety feature and needs to send a clear flashing signal in the dark. Cycle through the modes with repeated presses rather than assuming it's a one-setting tool.

After you press and hold the top-left button to turn on the flashlight, use the UP or DOWN buttons to cycle through the white brightness settings until you reach the red light mode. You can also swipe down from the watch face to open the Control Center and tap the flashlight icon.

Use your Cheetah 2 Ultra to browse new maps

You might assume your options are limited to whatever maps Amazfit preloads or offers through the Zepp app's map store—which includes plenty of options already. But you can go a little further. The Cheetah 2 Ultra can be used as a map browsing tool when you import OSM (OpenStreetMap) map files, which means if you're headed somewhere obscure that isn't well covered by the default map set, you have a nifty workaround. Just keep in mind the downloaded map needs to actually match your real location to be usable, so this is a plan-ahead hack, not something you sort out mid-trail.

Use the extra storage on your Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra to load MP3 files

Even though the Ultra doesn't download music directly from streaming services like Spotify or Amazon Music the way some competitors do, you can manually load MP3 files onto the watch yourself. This is notable because the Cheetah 2 Ultra doubles the Pro's storage to 64GB, which means plenty room for saved running routes, offline maps, and mp3 files for music. It's an extra step compared to a simple streaming sync, but for anyone who wants a truly phone-free long run, it's a hack worth knowing about. To load music, head to your Amazfit Cheetah 2 Ultra device page in your Zepp app > Select "Music" > select .mp3 files from your phone and transfer them to the watch.

CNN’s chief data analyst Harry Enten declared Monday that Democrats have a “very, very real” shot at flipping a U.S. Senate seat to blue, thanks to one group in particular.

“This is the best looking polling for Democrats in the Senate race since really the 20th century!” Enten exclaimed. “You’re going to have to go back, probably to the late 80s. The last time they won a Senate race when it was Lloyd Bentsen winning in 1988.”

Enten continued:

This polling looks so much different than it did eight years ago. You take a look here, James Talarico, the latest poll against Ken Paxton, he’s actually up by three points. Look at where the race was between Beto O’Rourke and Ted Cruz at this point in the 2018 cycle. Ted Cruz was ahead by six. This is very different. The Democrat here is doing nine points better. And what is supercharging that? Look at this: Independents move from tied to plus-39 points for James Talarico. Independents, the name of the game! Shifting significantly to the left-hand and supercharging James Talarico. It could be real! Every single time I look at the polling going, “Hmm, this can’t be right.” This could be very, very real. Democrats have a real shot in Texas.

Talarico’s opponent, Ken Paxton has a very real popularity problem, according to Enten.

“Take a look here, the GOP nominee’s net favorability, in July of 2018, Ted Cruz was eight points above water,” Enten said. “Look at this side of the screen — very different indeed. Ken Paxton, six points under water with — get this — among Independents, 47 point under water. No wonder, no wonder that you’re seeing major issues for Ken Paxton in this race so far.”

John Berman asked how Paxton’s most important supporter, President Donald Trump, was doing in Texas.

“The president is supercharging Democratic possibilities across red states. Remember, Donald Trump won Texas by double-digits. But now, he’s nine points under water. He was slightly under water back in 2018, but he’s much further under water right now in the great state of Texas.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.

The post ‘It Could Be Real!’ CNN’s Harry Enten Points to Key Group ‘Supercharging’ James Talarico In Texas first appeared on Mediaite.

Fox News’s Trey Yingst reported from Tel Aviv Sunday that Donald Trump’s tit-for-tat with Iran has turned into an ongoing cycle of military strikes followed by pauses for negotiations.

Fox News Sunday anchor Shannon Bream asked Yingst if this time’s “attempt at peace” feels “different this time around.”

“This has really turned into a cycle for the Trump administration,” Yingst began. “They strike Iran, the Iranians target Gulf infrastructure, and then they get close to an agreement. The question now is whether or not the Iranians are serious about making a deal and if they have the officials who are actually talking to the president’s team who can enforce such an agreement.”

Bream asked if there was any deadline for the latest negotiations.

“At this point, it doesn’t appear there’s a deadline,” Yingst said. “But remember the backdrop here, there is an ongoing U.S. Naval blockade of Iranian ports, and it’s costing the Iranians hundreds of millions of dollars each and every day. Their crude oil exports are down, domestic exports down, as well.”

“And so the clock is ticking for the Iranian regime, and they will have to make a decision whether or not they want to sign a deal with the Trump administration or return to war,” Yingst added.

On Saturday, Trump abruptly called off a planned pummeling of Iran after the president said “perimeters of a deal” had been agreed to. Sources told CBS News that the strikes would have been “one of the harshest bombing campaigns to date against energy infrastructure targets in Iran.”

Trump added to Saturday’s Truth Social that the U.S. remained “locked and loaded and ready to go against the Islamic Republic of Iran” unless they “rapidly make a DEAL” for “Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT, and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat.”

Watch the clip above via Fox News Sunday With Shannon Bream.

The post Fox News’s Trey Yingst Says US-Iranian Tit-for-Tat Has ‘Turned Into a Cycle’ first appeared on Mediaite.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said the Democratic establishment has been hijacked by rich donors and become “way, way out of touch” with the American public.

The socialist senator vented about the state of the Democratic Party during a Sunday interview on the MediasTouch On Sunday podcast.

Host Jack Cocchiarella pointed out a number of Democratic socialist candidates won Democratic primaries recently, which led some people to saying, “if you’re not going to just fit in nicely with the Democratic establishment, you shouldn’t be a Democrat.”

“Well, maybe the converse is true. Maybe the Democratic establishment should begin to understand they are way, way, out of touch with where the American people are,” Sanders countered. “That we don’t need a party anymore which is dominated by wealthy campaign contributors.”

Cocchiarella seemed to love the senator’s take, letting out a healthy “Yes!” as he went on.

“So when you talk about the Democratic establishment, it’s really relatively a few people. And they’re pretty open about it,” Sanders said. “You know, ‘the donor class said you or you should be the candidate for the senate,’ that’s what the ‘donor class’ says.”

Sanders continued, saying the Democratic Party should become a “party of working people, of young people, of people of color, of people who understand what it’s like to struggle, who are prepared to take on the oligarchs, who want to see the economy work for all, not just a few.”

His interview comes after a handful of other socialists won Democratic primaries in June.

Two of those candidates in New York — Darializa Avila Chevalier (D) and Claire Valdez (D) — are card-carrying members of the Democratic Socialists of America, just like NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D). The mayor backed both Chevalier and Valdez in their primaries. 

Beyond its socialist economic agenda, the DSA website said it is against Trump’s “racist immigration policies” and America being allied with Israel, which it said has committed a “genocide” in Gaza.

Soon after the primaries, Trump sardonically congratulated Mamdani on getting “solid Communists” elected. His tone shifted a few days later, when he said the communists have started to make “their move” in the USA.

“The game is on,” Trump said. “Enjoy watching!”

Trump has ripped the socialists and socialism plenty of other times recently, including when he said communism is a “cancer” which must be dealt with ASAP during his Fourth of July address.

He issued a similar warning during a speech last week in Georgia. Trump said it is really simple to understand: “With communism, everything turns to sh*t!”

Watch above.

The post Bernie Sanders Torches Democratic Establishment — Claims They Are ‘Way, Way Out of Touch’ With Americans first appeared on Mediaite.

CNN posted a scathing fact-check article immediately after Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s stunningly contentious interview on Sunday’s State of the Union, claiming the Health and Human Services chief pushed “medical misinformation” during his appearance.

Anchor Dana Bash grappled with Kennedy for 22-minutes about autism, measles, and Covid, with Kennedy accusing Bash of “saying nonsense” when she pushed back on his medical inaccuracies and attempts to politicize how the U.S. is planning for the next pandemic.

“In attempting to rewrite the history of the US Covid-19 response, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday pinned the blame for pandemic lockdowns on Dr. Anthony Fauci, while simultaneously reviving a string of debunked assertions about vaccines, RSV and measles,” the CNN article by Aileen Graef and Katherine Dillinger began.

“As HHS secretary, Kennedy’s skepticism of mainstream science is no longer just outsider rhetoric; it now shapes official federal policy,” the article continued. “His efforts to reframe the pandemic’s legacy come as the US battles its worst measles resurgence in more than three decades — a crisis experts warn is fueled directly by the type of vaccine misinformation and institutional distrust Kennedy amplified during the broadcast.”

The article referred to Bash’s interview with Dr. Ashish Jha that she conducted immediately after the marathon Kennedy session. Jha served as the White House Covid-19 response coordinator under President Joe Biden from 2022 to 2023, and condemned Kennedy’s false claims.

“There was a lot of information that secretary Kennedy said that it just isn’t true. Just factually not true,” Jha said.

When addressing Kennedy’s claims about vaccines and autism, Jha said, “This has been an issue that we have settled over and over again. There is zero link between vaccines and autism. This stuff does get a little tiresome.”

On measles, Dr. Jha said, “The truth is that the last two years we’ve had more measles cases than the entire rest of the 21st century, the cases combined than the last two.”

Jha said he didn’t think it was a coincidence that the outbreak happened after the Trump administration stopped actively promoting vaccines.

Bash, then asked about gain of function research, “which is, you go into a lab, and you take a disease and you give it mutations in order to see what happens, to try to come up with potential help for it, vaccines for it, in the future. He said that RSV and Covid came from gain of function research.”

“First of all, no, RSV did not come from any gain of function research. Obviously, Covid remains controversial,” Jha said, adding, “I have come to conclude that [Covid] is more likely to have been a lab leak.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.

The post CNN Posts Scathing Fact-Check on RFK Jr.’s Blockbuster Interview With Dana Bash: ‘Pushes Medical Misinformation’ first appeared on Mediaite.

Mark Schiefelbein/Jacquelyn Martin/Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo

President Donald Trump lashed out at Jeannine Pirro after the U.S. Attorney in Washington D.C. dropped criminal charges against an American Olympian who had been accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Trump blasted Pirro in a Truth Social post Saturday:

I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool. I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM, that included the grass, which had a big 86 47 emblazoned in giant letters on it, and other elements of the surrounding area. There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS! President DJT

Trump followed up the post with several videos of people milling about near the reflecting pool.

Look for yourselves at the VANDALISM that took place at The Reflecting Pool. The material is being cut with a knife or a box cutter, for all to see!

Pirro sought Friday to dismiss the criminal case against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, acknowledging in a court filing that damage to the Reflecting Pool was caused by “flawed installation” rather than vandalism.

Hearn had pleaded not guilty earlier this month to one felony count of destruction of government property after he was accused of damaging the Reflecting Pool during a June 19 visit.

Pirro’s office said in court papers that new information provided after the indictment undermined the government’s original theory of the case.

“It was not until after the return of the indictment, that the DOI provided additional documents to the USAO-DC indicating that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in June 2026 was the result of flawed installation by the contractor, Atlantic Industrial Coatings (‘AIC’), and the rush to complete the project prior to events associated with the America 250 celebration in the weeks surrounding Independence Day 2026,” according to the court filing.

The dismissal came after The Washington Post earlier this month revealed experts who said the lining peeled away most likely because it was incorrectly installed.

Dropping the case was a “true embarrassment” for Pirro, CNN’s Elie Honig said.

“It’s your job as a prosecutor to get the relevant information first. You don’t charge first and then figure it out. You get the information first and then charge,” the legal analyst said.

The post Trump Lashes Out at Jeannine Pirro Over Reflecting Pool Case: ‘Disagree 100%’ first appeared on Mediaite.