Karmaspora?

After the first 2026 U.S. House debate, I went to a lovely dinner with my wife and some friends.

I was ready for a good night’s sleep, but my digestive system rebelled. The acid reflux was so bad that my wife, Kelli, thought I might be having a heart attack. When I assured her that it was only heartburn from Hell and magma reflux, she told me to stop exaggerating and cease the sudden sitting up, groaning, and deep breathing that was ruining her sleep.

Ah, true love.

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An entire bottle of generic antacid relieved the symptoms enough for me to fall asleep around four in the morning. Also, I was not exaggerating. The sudden sitting up was to prevent magma reflux from becoming lava reflux. As proof that it was magma and not run-of-the-mill stomach acid, I offer the fact that it liquified my insides.

(After reading this far, my campaign manager will be thinking, Oh, no! He’s not writing about this! Don’t worry, Lieutenant Dawn. We won’t get too scatological.)

I won’t describe how the liquified-insides situation presented itself other than to say it made me regret all of those cyclospora jokes I told over the summer. Instead of Karma Chameleon, I got Karma Microorganism.

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Two days ago, I had another debate. It was fifty minutes long with a break in the middle, and the incumbent was ten minutes late. In her defense, she is wealthy and doesn’t have to play by the same rules as us regular schlubs. Several times during the debate, she mentioned the “Working Families Tax Cut.” At the very end of the debate, I pointed out that, unlike the tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, the no-tax-on-tips and no-tax-on-overtime provisions expire, and, I said, “Renaming the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ as the ‘Working Families Tax Cut’ doesn’t change what the bill does.”

My feeling at the end of the debate was that it needed to be longer. There was so much we didn’t get to. I mentioned data centers, but they were never a main topic. We didn’t get to discuss fellow North Dakotan Doug Burgum and his Reflecting Pool kerfuffle. We missed an opportunity to talk about the hapless negotiating duo, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. Mike Johnson’s promise to take a look at “entitlements” if Republicans maintain control of the House and Senate was on my mind but never entered the discussion. Kristi Noem’s many abuses of DHS money, pardons for sale, and kickbacks for government contracts lay naked before us, but they didn’t make the agenda.

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I’m sure those things will be on the U.S. House agenda in January. I think there will be a large number of freshmen in Congress. We will be the lawmakers most hungry for positive change from the status quo, and I think we ought to have our own caucus. We could agree to not join or pay dues to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee or the National Republican Congressional Committee until we have some of our demands met. As a group, we could have our own code of conduct—how we will conduct ourselves in hearings and with the media, how we will ensure full transparency of our meetings with lobbyists and special interest groups, etc. We could agree that we will socialize together across party lines to create better working relationships, a thing that happened regularly a few decades ago. We can also agree to get some small wins right away, like a clean anti-gerrymandering bill, and removing the income cap on social security taxes so beneficiaries aren’t hit with across-the-board cuts in 2032.

(The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has an interactive tool to see how different policy changes affect the Social Security trust fund. They also have interactive tools for fixing the debt, building your own child tax credit, and other budget-related policies.)

Finally, the FEC filings came out today, and we saw that Congresswoman Fedorchak’s campaign paid for polling way back at the beginning of August. Last time around, they got their polling results out to the media in a timely manner. That they haven’t done that this time—plus rumors I have heard from a nonpartisan organization that conducted its own poll—make me think that the Fedorchak campaign’s polling didn’t show them what they wanted to see.

I noticed that the Congresswoman’s campaign spent money on airfare and hotel rooms in Orlando.

“Wouldn’t that be nice?” I asked Kelli.

“You got to go to Grafton,” she replied.

“By yourself,” added Lieutenant Dawn.

I should just count my blessings.

At least our country is no longer planning to livestream the execution of a man who would likely revel in his public martyrdom. Even the smallest step toward decency is better than none.

Just a couple of weeks left, folks. I know it seems like we shouldn’t need any more money, but all of those text messages you are getting from James Talarico prove that even the big-money campaigns need more money. The good news is that my much leaner campaign can do more with less. The bad news is that we can’t do more with nothing. We will still be paying bills in November, after your support has helped us win; so share, like, comment, donate, and all of that. Also, remind your billionaire uncle that he owes you one and that he can donate up to $3,500 to your favorite House candidate.

Semper fi,

Trygve

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