Today is a big day for the 2026 midterm season, with primaries in California, Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota. While the national media’s attention is fixated on the Golden State’s jungle primaries for governor and LA mayor – (will it be a Pratt summer?) – a Trump endorsement in a lower-profile race caught Cockburn’s eye last night.
“Congressman Tom Kean is a Great Representative for the People of New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District!” President Trump wrote on Truth Social, describing how the Republican has been “working tirelessly” to advance Trump policy goals. “GET OUT AND VOTE FOR TOM — HE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”
Questions have been raised in recent months about how tirelessly, exactly, Kean has been working: he has not been seen in public since March.
The congressman attended 359 of 361 House roll-call votes in 2025. A spokesman told local press back in March that Kean was “addressing a personal health matter.” As the days dragged on, colleagues said he had not been answering their texts. His chief of staff told the New York Times in May, eerily, “There’s no cameras where Tom is.”
Kean has no opponents in the Republican primary and so won’t have to face the public until November. His race is considered one of the country’s most competitive – will he reemerge to participate in it?
On our radar
PULTE TAKES THE REINS President Trump named Bill Pulte as Acting Director of National Intelligence, succeeding Tulsi Gabbard. Pulte will continue in his role leading the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
OBAMALISK The Obama Presidential Center will open on Juneteenth in Chicago and will have a playground, a garden, barbecue grills and a 25-foot-tall stone tower housing a museum that commemorates the 44th president. Trump has already compared its brutalist architecture to a trashcan.
JUDGE NOT President Trump wished Judge Jeanine a happy birthday this morning, saying she is “Respected by everyone, even the Radical Left Lunatics.” The US Attorney for DC is 75.
Booking it
Jill Biden’s book tour is muddled. Despite the former first lady’s front and center role during her husband’s bid for reelection, her memoir, View from the East Wing (out today!), features a conflicting account of his cognitive abilities at the time. Jill thought Joe may have had a “stroke” during his disastrous last debate with Trump, she told CBS. She noticed Joe was “slowing down” as they charged ahead with his campaign.
This revelation will touch a nerve for Democrats who see the failure of the party to account for Biden’s decline as pivotal to their loss in the last presidential election. The topic is even more charged ahead of the 2026 midterms, as the party struggles to bounce back from its recent, senile past.
During an interview with TODAY, Craig Melvin asked her if she would encourage him to go for reelection if she could go back to that time. “As I look back, would I want to put Joe through the hurt and the pain that we felt during that time? Never,” Jill said. “It was so hurtful. It had to be his decision. It had to be his decision alone because he had to live with that decision the rest of his life.”
According to Ashleigh Fields in the Hill, a former spokesman for Dr. Biden said that the attempt at reframing the failure of her husband’s campaign “damaged” her “credibility.”
The truth is, it’s a touch soon for a Jill Biden memoir. Cockburn wonders who was insisting that she write it and why she didn’t wait… just a little longer.
Still, there are worse ways to while away the days: her stepson Hunter spent yesterday on X, replying to people touting him as a 2028 candidate. Don’t tempt Cockburn with a good time…
Spaghetti with Homan
Newark’s Delaney Hall, New Jersey’s largest ICE detention center, has come under fire in the past week after reports that detainees were only receiving small amounts of food that “very often” contained maggots.
To combat the rumors of inedible food and unlivable conditions in the facility, border czar Tom Homan visited on Saturday and sat down for a good family-style dinner. “I made sure my tray equaled their tray! I had spaghetti and meat sauce… I had green beans. I had bread and rolls. I had drinks. I had dessert. The food was good,” Homan stated to Fox News yesterday. What a gourmand.
Homan also assured Fox that the visit was a “surprise,” though it’s hard to imagine how he could have kept his appearance under wraps, even if he tried.
Cockburn found himself thinking back to his college days and remembers how dining halls would consistently wheel out their best offerings on weekends, when parents or donors were visiting. Or, at the very least, they would pick out the maggots.
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