The Big Question in Iowa’s Senate Race

Earlier this week, Groundwork Collaborative president and CEO Lindsay Owens strongly condemned surveillance pricing while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism. “Surveillance pricing isn’t just unfair. It erodes transparency and predictability and makes it harder for families to budget, let alone comparison shop,” Owens said, before listing both historical and hypothetical examples. “Imagine you’re the parent of a sick child. It’s midnight. You ask Walmart’s AI shopping blockistant, Sparky, to suggest a thermometer and some Tylenol. Sparky knows that your purchase is urgent, potentially leveraging that vulnerability to overcharge you.”

While moderate Democrats such as Chuck Schumer, Gretchen Whitmer, and even Haley Stevens have pointedly endorsed progressive Abdul El-Sayed following his win in the Michigan primary earlier this week, centrist and moderate groups are making their displeasure known. Two notable examples: centrist group Third Way, which announced a $15 million “war” against the left in The New York Times on Thursday, and centrist think tank Progressive Policy Institute, whose president, Will Marshall, issued a statement saying El-Sayed’s “narrower-than-expected victory … highlights the risks posed by left-wing ideologues to the party’s midterm election prospects” and will “compound the party’s already difficult challenge of winning back the Senate this fall.”

The Center for Biological Diversity, Miami Waterkeeper, Florida Wildlife Federation, and the Diving Equipment and Marketing Association are suing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and National Marine Fisheries Service for allegedly violating the Endangered Species Act via a dredging project near Port Everglades. The dredging, they say, endangers “critical marine habitat, threatened corals and queen conch,” adding: “There is added pressure on the reef ecosystem, and greater risk from this project, after an unprecedented 2023 marine heatwave caused widespread staghorn and elkhorn coral mortality, leaving these threatened species at dire risk of extinction.”