Good morning, Early Birds. Could Barack Obama have a second career as a children’s entertainer? Send tips to [email protected]. Thanks for waking up with us.
In today’s edition … The fate of the strait … We ask you about psychedelics … but first …
The big news
Eight children ranging in age from 1 to about 14 were killed Sunday in a shooting in Shreveport, Louisiana. Police described it as a domestic disturbance.
Mariana Alfaro and Chris Hacker have more on what data shows is the deadliest mass killing in the United States in two years.
Candidate’s old Facebook posts draw scrutiny
This morning, we published a story about Bob Brooks, the burly, goatee-sporting firefighter and union leader who is running to oust a freshman Republican congressman in Northeast Pennsylvania. His race is key for Democrats in their quest to take back the House.
Brooks was prolific on Facebook before he ran for Congress, and he made some off-color posts. One that we highlight is a meme that stated the “problem is not guns” and included the logo of a right-wing, anti-government organization the day after a self-described white nationalist killed nearly two dozen people at a Texas Walmart in 2019.
“The problem is not guns. It’s hearts without God, homes without discipline, schools without prayer and courtrooms without justice,” reads the meme, which included an image of actor Clint Eastwood holding a rifle and a skull superimposed with the roman numeral III, an image often associated with the Three Percenters, a right-wing anti-government militia group that Canada later declared a terrorist entity because of its links to bomb plots targeting U.S. government buildings and Muslim communities.
The day before Brooks’s post, Patrick Crusius entered an El Paso Walmart seeking to kill Latinos, killing 23 and injuring 22 people before pleading guilty to federal hate-crime charges.
Brooks, in response to questions about his posts, said “a bunch of DC insiders who don’t want more working people in office are selectively digging up years-old Facebook posts,” but he apologized for some of them.
“I’ve shared a few stupid things over the years, and for that I am sorry,” Brook said in a statement. “I believe who I’ve fought for and my values have always been clear.” A Brooks spokesperson said the Democrat regrets the post and “wishes he never made it,” but had “zero awareness” of the Three Percenters logo on the meme.
These posts — including one calling former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick a “douchebag” during his protests of police brutality and another defending police in the wake of widespread protests following George Floyd’s killing in 2020 — highlight an interesting tension around Brooks’s candidacy.
The Democrat — himself a white, working-class, non-college-educated voter — embodies the kind of candidate Democrats, who have long been criticized for so-called political purity tests, need at this moment. But here lies the tension: To win back the sort of voters Brooks embodies and who fled to President Donald Trump over the last decade, the party needs to embrace candidates who look and talk like them even if that comes with a few off-color comments that may not comport with party orthodoxy on issues like guns and policing.
Nick Gavio, a spokesperson for the Working Families Party, a liberal political group that often endorses Democratic candidates, said Brooks’s Facebook posts came up during the endorsement process. Members asked the candidate about them in December 2025 as they decided whether to back him in the race.
“Bob’s a guy who has a background that is really helpful for where the Democrats need to go these days,” Gavio said. “We’re hemorrhaging working class voters left and right.”
What makes Brooks particularly interesting at this moment is that he has high-profile backing from the Democratic establishment, such as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, and the party’s left flank, like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).
Some of Brooks’s high-profile supporters — including Shapiro — were aware of these Facebook posts before they backed him, according to multiple people familiar with the endorsements, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the Democrat’s campaign. And they opted to endorse him anyway.
“As the Governor has made clear, Bob Brooks is the candidate to win this race and be the fighter the Lehigh Valley needs in Congress,” said Manuel Bonder, a Shapiro spokesperson.
Brooks has also received support from The Bench, a Democratic organization that works directly with candidates to bring new voices into elected office. Andrew Mamo, the group’s spokesperson, said they were aware of Brooks’s Facebook posts when they decided to endorse him.
“Bob Brooks has spent his life serving his community as a firefighter. If his opponents want to waste their time policing his years-old social media posts, be our guest,” Mamo said. “Voters don’t care about old Facebook posts, they care about being able to afford things like gas, food, and health care: exactly what Bob is focused on.”
Whether all of this around Brooks means that Democrats have rethought their approach to purity tests or not remains to be seen — he still has to get through a competitive primary — but it shows Democrats know they need to embrace working-class, white men to win them back.
“I have a unique ability to get to the voters who have left this party in droves,” Brooks said in an interview this month with Rabbi Moshe Kurtz, “and to bring them back to the party because they can see themselves in me.”
For more on this, please read our full report here.
Get ready with The Post
- Supreme Court justices are writing children’s books — and earning big, from Julian Mark.
- Higher fuel costs threaten Republicans in key battleground, from Riley Beggin.
- Uncertainty reigns at DOJ in the aftermath of Bondi’s departure, from Jeremy Roebuck, Perry Stein, Salvador Rizzo and Theodoric Meyer.
- A CEO tries to address affordability with tiny home neighborhoods, from Julie Z. Weil.
- This teaching method, pushed by conservatives, is on the rise, from Lauren Lumpkin.
What we’re watching
Open or closed?
The state of the Strait of Hormuz will be a dominant story this week, after Iran announced over the weekend that it was closing the crucial trade passage, citing a continued American blockade.
The announcement leaves the status of the waterway unclear, our colleague Susannah George reported, just days after Trump declared it open. More concerned, she reported that two ships reported attacks while attempting to cross the strait, despite an ongoing ceasefire.
The president fumed over Iran’s actions yesterday.
“Iran decided to fire bullets yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz — A Total Violation of our Ceasefire Agreement!” he wrote, before announcing his “representatives” were headed to Pakistan for talks with Iran to try again to bring an end to the nearly two-month-old war.
“We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!” he added.
Trump later announced that the U.S. military seized an Iranian-flagged cargo ship that tried to bypass the American blockade.
Earlier in the weekend, Trump acknowledged Iran’s actions, telling reporters that Tehran “wanted to close up the strait again.”
All of this will have real-world implications in the United States. Trump’s declaration that the strait was open last week led to a jump in the stock market and a drop in gas prices, the latter being a persistent political thorn in the president’s side. But what could the week hold if Iran fully closes the Strait again?
In your local paper
LAist (California): Activists in Los Angeles are pushing for immigration protections around the World Cup, which will be played, among other locations, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.
Philadelphia Inquirer (Pennsylvania): Vacant storefronts are a persistent issue in cities nationwide, including Philadelphia, where a local group finds that the downtown area is still dealing with low occupancy rates that have failed to rebound since the coronavirus pandemic.
Boston.com (Massachusetts): Forbes is out with its list of “new Ivies” — or universities that are in the upper echelon of schools nationwide. Among the schools: Tufts University, Carnegie Mellon, Emory, Georgetown and Northwestern. College graduation is around the corner, and graduates are about to enter one of the most difficult job markets in years.
From you
Shoutout to Howard Shorr, a reader in Portland, Oregon, for a very funny email centered this past weekend being the 251st anniversary of Paul Revere’s famed ride to alert colonists that the British were marching to Concord to seize militia weapons.
“If he were to make the same journey from Boston to Lexington today, he could stop at 7 Dunkin’ Donut locations,” Shorr wrote.
He even provided a map, confirming that Paul — and maybe his steed? — would be properly caffeinated when they arrived in Concord.
Send a reply
Trump over the weekend expanded access to psychedelics like LSD, psilocybin and ibogaine, to make them more available in controlled therapeutic settings. Under the president’s executive order, the Food and Drug Administration will support new clinical trials for drugs known as serotonin agonist receptors, and move swiftly to approve drugs deemed to be safe and effective. What do you think of using these drugs for medical treatment? Do you support the president’s move? Let us and your fellow Early Brief readers know at [email protected].
Thanks for reading. You can follow Dan and Matthew on X: @merica and @matthewich.
The post What a candidate’s old Facebook posts tell us about this moment for Democrats appeared first on Washington Post.
