“The only minority destroying this country is the billionaires,” he told MSNBC in an interview.

Regular readers of Secrets will know where this is going.

On Wednesday evening, our plucky champion of America’s downtrodden masses, and the Democratic nominee for Senate, was in Chicago for a fundraiser with JB Pritzker. The Illinois governor is a philanthropist, businessman, scion to a family hotel chain, venture capitalist, and, oh yes, a billionaire. Forbes puts Pritzker’s wealth at $4.3 billion, making him the second-wealthiest elected politician in the country after President Donald Trump.

Invitations to the fundraiser listed suggested contributions starting at $500 and going up to $13,000, according to an image shared on X.

Funding a campaign is an expensive business, particularly when you are a Democrat running in the vast red state of Texas. A poll this week suggested Talarico is trailing state Attorney General Ken Paxton. So it would be churlish to suggest that the Left shouldn’t spend hundreds of millions of dollars on pollsters, advisers, consultants, TV adverts, and assorted hangers-on.

But Talarico has won plaudits for the way he has woven religious themes into a populist message at a time when the Democratic Party is desperate for a new model it can roll out across the country. His campaign is using the slogan “It’s time to start flipping tables,” with its nod to the story of Jesus overturning the desks of money changers in the temple.

That means “fighting back,” he told the New York Times, against “The billionaires who own our algorithms, who own our cable news networks, who own the politicians fighting on our screens and keeping us all divided; This was going to be a campaign that was going to bring people together to stand up to those forces.”

(Is this where we should mention his fundraising swing through Silicon Valley?)

When Talarico won his primary in March, he said: “We already know who we’re running against: The billionaire megadonors and their corrupt political system.”

It is a powerful message.

When AI giants and their billionaire owners (who have odd ideas of freedom and responsibility) can pour upwards of $20 million into a Democratic congressional primary in New York, is democracy already dead, upended by a handful of people whose dollars are worth more than votes in the ballot box?

But let’s be fair to Talarico. Did he use his Wednesday trip to lecture Pritzker on his responsibilities to leave the politics to ordinary people, people who hadn’t had their entire life served up on a silver plate?

Or maybe it is a sign that Talarico is changing tack, dropping the rhetoric and embracing billionaires, rather than a tacit admission that his campaign is based on hypocrisy?

The Talarico campaign did not respond to a request for comment explaining the trip.

And anyway, let’s be fair to Pritzker.

Maybe he understands humility and the struggles facing ordinary Americans. After all, he is the poorest of three siblings. Elder brother Anthony is worth $4.9 billion, and sister Penny, the U.S. Secretary of Commerce during Barack Obama’s second term, is listed by Forbes at $4.8 billion.

But let’s give the last word to Talarico and his ideals.

“Imagine a Democratic Party that takes on big money and isn’t captured by it,” he said last year, channeling his inner John Lennon. It’s easy if you try, I guess.

Abraham Lincoln time traveler

There was much to talk about in Donald Trump’s speech marking the start of the Freedom 250 events on the National Mall last night.

Secrets doesn’t claim to be an expert on the heroes of the American Revolution or the Founding Fathers, but even we spotted something a little off.

“This exceptional nation was forged and won by some of the bravest, toughest, strongest, most extraordinary people ever to stride the earth,” he said.

So far, so good. But what came next must have raised some eyebrows.

“Together we stand on the shoulders of incomparable heroes, such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Paul Jones, John Hancock at Lexington and Concord, Brooklyn and Saratoga, Trenton and Yorktown, and at Independence Hall in Philadelphia,” he said.

Lincoln was many things, of course. The man who led the country through the Civil War, holding the nation together, the leader who delivered the Emancipation Proclamation, the first Republican president, and so on.

One thing he was not, however, was alive during the American Revolution.

Why do pregnant women look pregnant?

The headline above could have been the alternative heading on a bizarre New York Times piece that was actually titled, “The politics and power of the pregnancy image.” It ran through recent White House pregnancies (Katie Miller, Karoline Leavitt, Usha Vance), documenting how their choice of clothing suggested they were part of a political push to promote fertility.

“Indeed, ever since Vance, Leavitt and Miller revealed their pregnancies, their public appearances have showcased their growing stomachs,” ran a typical line.

Vance was having none of it. The second lady is perhaps the most interesting figure in Trumpworld right now, and certainly the only one who understands the absurdity of it all.

“Now that we know the political significance of my $8.75 coral maternity dress from Old Navy, can’t wait to hear what the New York Times has to say about my elastic-waistband pants and compression socks,” she posted on X.

She followed it up with a screenshot of the receipt. Which revealed that she even used a promo code!

Bravo.

Lunchtime reading

Meet the megadonors pouring more than $1.3 billion into the 2026 election: In keeping with the theme of Talarico’s campaign…

Robert Thurman, Buddhist monk who after finding enlightenment became a scholar-advocate of Buddhism in the West: Of American Buddhist practice he said: “The main thing has been to just meditate and it will all be solved. That is a bunch of B.S.”

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