On this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said impeaching President Donald Trump will not be the Democrats’ priority if they win the majority in the House in November.

Host Shannon Bream said, “I love to talk with you more about these redistricting fights. That Virginia referendum goes to its state supreme court tomorrow, and many others. But obviously, Democrats are feeling bullish on flipping the House. And this week, Axios reported that there’s a push for day-one impeachment — Democrats pushing their colleagues to begin building the case against President Trump. Now, in anticipation and anticipation of a day one impeachment vote if they retake the House. If you become speaker, is that your top priority?

Jeffries said, “Of course not. And I’ve made clear from the very beginning that our top priority is going to be to drive down the high cost of living. We believe in this country. You work hard, you play by the rules. You should be able to live an affordable life, a comfortable life, in fact, to live the good life. And that means a good paying job and good housing. Good health care, good education for your children. And when it’s all said and done, a good retirement. That’s been the American dream for decades. But for far too many people, that American dream has slipped out of reach, and we should be focused on actually doing the type of things necessary to ensure that people in this country cannot simply survive but they can thrive. And that, of course, will be at the heart of all of these midterm campaigns.”

Follow Pam Key on X @pamkeyNEN

“Democrats, fearful of a repeat of President Donald Trump’s upset victory in 2016, are reportedly losing sleep over their candidate, Joe Biden, potentially seeing his lead in the polls evaporate and ultimately losing the election.
On Friday, the Los Angeles Times noted that Democrats are nervous about Biden falling behind in the final stretch of the presidential race when it matters most.” [Breitbart]

Normally, I would say “good”. But we already know what leftists do when they panic: place us under house arrest; set cities on fire; defund the police; and use social media to censor us. So brace yourself, regardless of the election outcome. The Democratic Party is both morally and mentally unhinged. If they win, they will enslave us under Communism and fascism; if they lose, they will enslave us under anarchy.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Donald and Melania Trump entered the hall at 8:16 to cheers and applause. “Hail to the Chief” was followed by presentation of the colors and the National Anthem.  We had a brief introduction from Weijia Jiang, this year’s president of the White House Correspondents Association, followed by dinner.

Two questions hovered in the background. One, how would President Trump treat the press? And two, would he, as had many presidents in the past at this event, treat the audience to a little self-deprecating humor? “Donald Trump” and  “self-deprecation” are not words you often hear together, but who knows?  The President is also a master communicator who reads his audience well.  

We never found out. At about 8:35, four loud noises were heard from the back of the room. They were shots.

What I heard inside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

The Secret Service rushed on to stage. “Get down, stay down!” The President and First Lady, and rest of the head table, were evacuated. Cabinet secretaries and other dignitaries were hustled out of the room. It emerged that a couple of protesters had made their way to the red carpet upstairs where they waved signs calling for Pete Hegseth to be arrested. There is still much about the incident that we do not yet know. We do know that the shooter, a 31-year-old Californian man, is in custody. What will the anti-Trump press say about this incident? How about Chuck Schumer? Will there be any remorse, any self-reflection on the consequences of their industrial-strength hatred for Donald Trump? I am not counting on it.

Meanwhile, the President seems to be taking the event in stride. “Quite an evening in D.C.,” he posted shortly after the shooting. “Secret Service and Law Enforcement did a fantastic job. They acted quickly and bravely. The shooter has been apprehended, and I have recommended that we ‘LET THE SHOW GO ON’ but, will entirely be guided by Law Enforcement. They will make a decision shortly. Regardless of that decision, the evening will be much different than planned, and we’ll just, plain, have to do it again.” Sang, meet froid.

The President then added this addendum: “Law Enforcement has requested that we leave the premises, consistent with protocol, which we will do, immediately. I will be giving a press conference in 30 minutes from the White House Press Briefing Room. The First Lady, plus the Vice President, and all Cabinet members, are in perfect condition. We will be speaking to you in a half an hour. I have spoken with all the representatives in charge of the event, and we will be rescheduling within 30 days.”

The Hilton was the site, in 1981, of John Hinckley Jr.’s attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. The venue is still used, but the security is much tighter… Watching this year, I wonder whether so much self-satisfaction was ever crowded into a single room? The judges are still out on that question. This 105th iteration of the media’s celebration of itself, in which some 2600 souls are stuffed into the Hilton’s ballroom, might give us an answer. Beforehand, among many other celebrities, much of the president’s Cabinet milled around the red carpet and White House Correspondent Association’s step-and-repeat upstairs while the cameras flashed, the microphones bristled, and the video rolled. RFK Jr. was there, as was Lee Zeldin, Doug Bergum, Tulsi Gabbard, Scott Bessent, Marco Rubio, Kari Lake, Pete Hegseth, and others.

“The First Amendment,” “Free Speech,” “A Free Media” are different ways of enunciating what the dinner is supposed to be all about. Not much mention, if any, will be given to the clamp down on free speech under the Biden administration or the liberating revolution sparked by Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and his campaign to restore speech to the platform and hence to the wider media environment.

Donald Trump has probably given the media more access to his thoughts than any president in history. At least part of many of his Cabinet meetings are open to the media and he seldom boards or exits a plane without stopping to answer questions. If he thinks a question is stupid or ill-informed, he will say so. Fake news he treats as fake news. The media hates that, of course, but has anyone ever treated them more like adults?

As you likely know the Southern Poverty Law Council was indicted this week for Wire Fraud, False Statements, and Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering.

A grand jury in the Middle District of Alabama returned an 11-count indictment charging the SPLC with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to the Justice Department (DOJ). Between 2014 and 2023, according to the DOJ, the SPLC “secretly funneled” more than $3 million in donations to at least eight individuals associated with violent extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, the Nationalist Socialist Movement, Unite the Right, Aryan Nations affiliated Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club, and more.

The bottom line is that the SPLC was acting in a Munchausen-by-proxy kind of manner. They were making the patient sick so they could bring the cure.

The disease was hate and their condemnation was the cure, not to mention their scoring bog donations from it.

Among their targets were the Turning Point USA, the Family Research Council, Moms for Liberty and Wildman’s Civil War Surplus and Herb Shop in Kennesaw GA.

They chose to instigate hatred because hate as a commodity was running low, and that was something they shared in common with the Democrat party.

Hate.

In that regard the Democrat party and the SPLC share a common MO- hate fills the coffers.

For years I have repeated something frequently- the most poisonous phrase over the last several decades to plague this nation was “celebrate diversity.” It’s a total shitshow.

That phrase has caused more pain and hatred than anything I’ve seen in my lifetime. Its fatal flaw is its intrinsic focus on what makes us different from one another. It is the antithesis of the greater American family. It is the antithesis of the American melting pot. It is the opposite of assimilation.

We all have friends who share our values- that’s what binds us. Of course, we have our differences, but we do not dwell on them. Emphasis on our differences lead to suspicion and doubt. Enough of that can lead to hatred.

And that’s what Democrats live for.

Barack Obama set race relations back 50 years. A Bill Ayers protege and Alinskyite, he was all about division. He wanted people to be and stay angry. He wielded racial power like Tiger Woods’ ex-wife wielded a nine iron.

When is the last time you saw Al Sharpton come to a racially charged event and try to calm it down?

Democrats used to oppose illegal immigration but now you’re the hateful one if you oppose it.

The Democrat party is now overflowing with politicians who compete with one another in a “who can hate Trump the most” competition.

It starts with a crusade against ‘ghost guns.’ It ends with government bureaucrats able to see everything you do.

Trish Randall | April 25, 2026

One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one’s house.”

—James Otis, patriot

As an American citizen, whenever legislators deploy the ever-flimsy progressive banner of “public safety,” I feel decidedly unsafe.

Newly proposed and enacted legislation targeting 3D printers and CNC machines would impose restrictions more severe than those the Supreme Court rejects for actual guns.  In conjunction with restrictions on tools, states would create a category of computer source code illegal to possess.

The excuse? “Ghost guns”!

There’s abundant hair-on-fire rhetoric, even written into legislation.  Washington’s recently enacted HB2320 states, “Undetectable and untraceable firearms and firearms components presents a growing threat to public safety.”  The author of California’s AB 2047 testified, “These firearms are incredibly dangerous because they are not part of our regular flow, meaning they are not marked, they are not permitted, they are made in someone’s home, and we don’t even know they exist.”  Not actual use, but private possession frightens this lawmaker.

Plain text on the ATF’s website states that personally manufactured firearms (PMFs) are legal to own and make, even with 3D printed components.

California, Colorado, New York, Massachusetts, and Washington lawmakers are generating restrictions on certain tools and computer code, used to create millions of items unrelated to guns every day, to thwart Americans’ attempts to make a gun it’s legal to make.

In August, Colorado will forbid using a 3D printer or CNC to make any firearm or part, along with sale or distribution of digital firearm-making instructions to anyone but a student or instructor in an approved gunsmithing program.

Massachusetts’s General Laws Section 121 D bans 3D printers or CNC machines primarily used for making or assembling firearms.

California bill AB 2047 would outlaw 3D printer use to make an illegal weapon, “or the manufacture of any firearm using a 3-dimensional printer, as specified.”  Any firearm?  Like legal PMFs?

More sinister is targeting of source codes.  States intend to maintain databases of source code they declare to be firearms assembly blueprints and illegal to possess.

Makers and sellers of 3D printers and CNC machines would be required to preinstall software to prevent machines using forbidden code or generating forbidden shapes.  But the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ Bernstein decision says source code is protected speech.

Washington bill 2321 would require machines to “handshake” a government website to confirm code as innocent before initiating a print.  New York lawmakers are going farther, considering background checks to purchase a 3D printer.  Washington State’s recently passed HB2320 includes preinstalled future encroachment.  The attorney general will “adopt any rules or regulations to further establish standards for software control processes.”

The transcript of the April 14, 2026 hearing, memorializing member Ash Kaira’s words and muddled grammar, displays the unconstitutional intentions.

And by the way, the law has been on the books for over two years and hasn’t been overturned yet under Second Amendment grounds.  In regards to their privacy concerns, I think there are there [sic] if there’s a substantial public interest, the it [sic] does allow for limited legal legally justified restrictions on privacy rights.  I do think there is a substantial public interest, and this is clearly going to be challenged in the courts.  And we’ll let the courts decide whether we’re right or not on that.

That individual swore to uphold the Constitution.

Let’s put legally homemade firearms into a larger context.  There are an estimated 300 million guns in the U.S.  The ATF estimates that Americans created 45,240 personally manufactured firearms, about 7,500 per year between 2016 and 2021.  Approximately 692 of those PMFs were used in a homicide or attempted homicide (about 115 per year). 

Between 2016 and 2021, there were 116,876 homicides — about 19,500 per year.  Homicides have been decreasing since — down 6% in 2022, 13% in 2023, 15% in 2024, and a projected 20% in 2025.

When judging a restriction on firearms, the Supreme Court applies the standard of “text, history, and tradition.”  Text refers to conforming to the plain words of the Constitution.  History and tradition refer to conforming to the restrictions imposed on firearms when the Constitution was adopted.

Consulting a handy timeline of firearms regulations, from Massachusetts’s 1633 ban on transferring firearms, gunpowder, and ammunition to Indians to the 2024 Rahimi decision upholding the federal ban on domestic abusers possessing guns, guess what we don’t see: restrictions on tools used to make firearm.

Home and small business use of 3D printers has been increasing for over a decade, and CNC machines, since the 1970s.  In 2024, approximately 2.1 million 3D printers were sold in the U.S.  About 1.4 million Americans owned one.  Approximately $1.25 billion’s worth of medical, surgical and dental 3D prints will be made in 2026.

The ATF doesn’t report how many PMFs include any 3D printed material, but even if all the estimated 7,000–8,000 produced annually included some 3D printed part, that would be a vanishingly small percent of the total firearms available in the U.S., and an even tinier portion of items Americans 3D print every day.

Many who use 3D printers see the problem as proposed controls that can’t accomplish the stated goal.  Source codes are instructions for geometry, not intent.  A tube could be a gun barrel or a segment of tension pole for a shower shelf unit.  Too many ordinary prints would be blocked.

There are several increasingly common features of these tools that are already compatible with expansive government intrusion into our private spaces.  The control screens of many 3D printers alert the user to firmware updates.  If the user clicks, the manufacturer remotely, and quickly, installs updates.  A machine capable of remotely accepting firmware is capable of remotely accepting firmware from the government.  And many 3D printers and CNC machines feature cameras for users to remotely view, or control, printing in progress.

The case of Nancy Guthrie recently revealed startling information about doorbell cameras packaged with instructions saying a subscription is required or images and video won’t be stored.  Nancy hadn’t subscribed, yet investigators acquired images of her property from prior to her disappearance.

I look at my 3D printer, which has received firmware updates by the manufacturer and can be outfitted with a camera (which I skipped).  I consider what multiple American legislators have set in motion, on the excuse that, among the millions of objects 3D printed in America every day, a minuscule percentage might be attached to a homemade firearm — a firearm Americans are legally entitled to make.

I see firmware updates of the Intolerable Acts.  British colonial bureaucrats had been granted authority to enter “any house, shop, cellar, warehouse or room or other place.”  Modern legislators would have for themselves not just authority, but a permanent virtual wormhole into “any house, shop, cellar, warehouse or room or other place” containing a 3D printer or CDC machine.

Looking at a tool I use to make things, I suspect they see a telescreen, and they’re preparing for the opportunity to see what Winston Smith might be up to.

While the Trump administration continues to put the economic squeeze on what and who is left of the Iranian government, the Iranian royal family in exile hasn’t been silent.

Reza Pahlavi, the Crown Prince and heir to his father, the late Shah of Iran, has been keeping up the constant drumbeat of return, even though he has been effectively iced out of any negotiations between the Trump administration and the Islamic regime.

That is as it must be. Operation Epic Fury had distinct parameters for the security of the world and the United States, and not one of them was returning a Pahlavi to the throne. The last thing Trump would need, especially in the middle of all this nutzoid Democratic squawking about losing, is being accused of installing a king.

Nope, nope, nope.

Although, as Trump has said, if the conditions arise where the Americans have eased the way for the people of Iran to rise up at last and overthrow the monsters who have held them prisoners for almost fifty years, he is delighted he could help.

If his current economic strangulation continues in the face of regime intransigence, it may finally collapse sooner rather than later, as those oil storage facilities reach their tippy tops and the Iranians face a choice. They either shut the wells down or pump crude into the Persian Gulf to keep them operational.

In any event, it’s a financial catastrophe.

Pahlavi was in Berlin today, a city that has an Iranian expatriate community of some 300,000 members and there was quite a welcome.

He held a news conference, and then, in a stunning breach of security, when he was leaving, one of the pro-regime protestors got close enough to the Crown Prince to fling either paint or tomato sauce on the back of his neck.

This is amazing to me in this day and age.

Where was the security guard?
He is the Shah of Iran. You must have taken care of him!
It is shameful.
Punish him !

The Telegraph UK said part of the press gathering had been focused on Pahlavi’s reaction to the on-again, off-again US-regime negotiations, which, unsurprisingly, Pahlavi is not a fan of.

…Mr Pahlavi is the son of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran’s former shah, who ruled the country from 1941 until he was forced from power in 1979, setting in motion the establishment of the Islamic Republic.

While he has spent his life in exile, Mr Pahlavi has been working to project himself as a future leader in the country, meeting with government officials, supporters and the media.

German media said hundreds of his supporters gathered to watch him speak at Germany’s federal press conference building on Thursday.

A supporter of the Israeli and US attacks on his country, Mr Pahlavi criticised the ceasefire announced by Donald Trump on April 3.

It’s easy enough to understand where he’s coming from, but he’s also on the outside looking in.

That’s just how it is.

What was really interesting was how he handled the European press. There is strong anti-Israel sentiment all through the European Union and that was obvious from one of the questions the Crown Prince received.

I don’t think the reporter was prepared for the strength of the answer he got back.

It was absolutely beautiful.

And then he gives the reporter a lesson on European democracies.

I edit the post:
He actually said “the only country in the Middle East that harbored Jews escaping Hitler..”— Mααԋι🐟 (@Luneamahsa) April 23, 2026

…After reminding them about Cyrus the Great, he added:

“In modern history, Iran is the only country that harbored Jews escaping Hitler and his regime.”

Mic. Dropped.🎤

It’s actually wild that a German journalist feels comfortable throwing shade on Jews and Israel. 

Prince Reza Pahlavi stays classy, stays truthful, and stays based.

But that wasn’t the end of what he had to say, although it was the end of the news conference.

When he got a few moments to himself, the Crown Prince issued a statement that surely should have singed some hairs in European quarters, had they any shame at all. A Europe that has cravenly taken the side of a murderous, fanatic, tyrannical regime over the people it has oppressed and abused for 47 years.

He called them all out for the posturing hypocrites they are.

🚨PRINCE REZA PAHLAVI JUST WENT FULL NUCLEAR ON THE ENTIRE EU PRESS & PARLIAMENT! 🔥🧨

I want to speak DIRECTLY to the people of Europe. In the past two weeks I held TWO MAJOR press conferences — one in Stockholm, one in Berlin. Over 150 JOURNALISTS showed up. We spent MORE THAN… pic.twitter.com/s9digeOfFd— Neo (@Realneo101) April 24, 2026

We spent MORE THAN TWO HOURS with them…

And guess what? 

NOT ONE SINGLE of those 150 journalists asked about the 40,000 IRANIANS SLAUGHTERED on the streets of my country on January 8th and 9th! 

NOT ONE asked about the 19 political prisoners EXECUTED in the last two weeks.

When I told them 20 more are currently sentenced to death — CRICKETS. Not a damn question.

I stood right next to a grieving mother and father who lost their sons in that massacre and begged them to listen to their stories… 

NOT A SINGLE ONE of those 150 journalists asked them a thing.

Let that sink in.

My 40,000 BRAVE INNOCENT COMPATRIOTS who were butchered fighting for liberty? They don’t give a damn.

They are too busy criticizing America and Israel for taking out the dictator who’s been slaughtering our people for 47 YEARS — instead of going after the regime that’s actually doing the killing!

They’d rather dig up Iran’s history than talk about what’s happening RIGHT NOW or the free democratic Iran we’re fighting for. 

One EU parliament member even had the nerve to say Iranians aren’t ready for democracy. To that coward and to every fake journalist in the room I say this:

Iranians aren’t just “ready” for democracy… 40,000 of them just DIED for it! And I will NOT let their blood be in vain. 

SO HEAR ME LOUD AND CLEAR:

Whether Europe stands with us or not…

Whether your journalists do their damn jobs or not…

Whether your politicians grow a spine or not…  

I WILL FIGHT FOR MY PEOPLE AND MY COUNTRY. 

Even if we have to do this ALONE — we are fighting until IRAN IS FREE! 🇮🇷

Damn.

So powerful and so very, very true.

I sure hope he makes it to Tehran just for what he said in those sneering Euro-faces today.

Is there anything a Democrat won’t do?

Democrats can’t seem to do anything honestly.

Now we learn that their fundraising machine, ActBlue, is under investigation for taking foreign cash to elect Democrats, making Democrats bought men.

According to the New York Post:

WASHINGTON — ActBlue employees invoked their Fifth Amendment right at least 146 times in depositions with congressional committees investigating alleged donor fraud on the fundraising platform, according to an explosive report released Monday.

Two ActBlue officials, one of whom formerly served as VP of customer service, and three of its former lawyers “declined to answer a single one of the Committees’ substantive questions,” stated the interim staff report from the House Administration, Oversight and Judiciary Committees.

“Their unwillingness to testify only amplifies the Committees’ concerns,” the report added of the depositions between July and December 2025, also citing ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Wells’ seemingly “false statements to Congress” and withholding of documents pursuant to a subpoena for recor

One hundred forty-six times, which sounds a lot like Hillary Clinton’s ‘I don’t recall.’

There’s no such thing as Democrat cooperation in any operation that requires transparency. But as the Post continued:

ActBlue has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and in a recent statement through a spokesperson maintained that it has “always been forthcoming with Congress.”

I’ll bet. And you can bet that no one on that congressional panel was fooled, either. They sound like they are hiding something.

Yet the investigation raises serious questions about how many ‘bought men’ there are among the Democrats, in hock to foreign moneymen.

The Post continued:

It could “be alleged that ActBlue accepted and/or facilitated the acceptance of foreign-national contributions into American elections,” in violation of federal law, a February 2025 internal memo from the firm Covington & Burling found, according to The New York Times.

How many did China’s bidding, how many…

Monica Showalter

Beginning with Woodrow Wilson’s justification for getting America into WWI, America has been the world’s policeman, a role that escalated after it was the only wealthy nation standing in 1945. However, it’s not 1945 anymore. The Cold War is over, allegiances have shifted, and Europe is not Europe. That’s why it was simply awesome today when Secretary of War Pete Hegseth explicitly told Asia and Europe (although he was clearly speaking to NATO) that the “time for free-riding is over.”

In 1916, when the “Great War” in Europe was already in its second year, Woodrow Wilson won reelection in part by pointing out that he’d kept America out of the war and promising that he would continue to do so. However, for myriad reasons, by 1917, Wilson could no longer maintain that promise.

However, Wilson, a high-minded, racist, eugenics-believing progressive, needed a high-minded reason for tossing young American men into those bloody trenches. America, he said, was a savior. “The world must be made safe for democracy,” and America was the one to do it.

There was no room for self-interest:

We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make.

Instead, virtue would be its own reward:

We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.

Those same principles have guided American warfare ever since. Yes, we entered WWII after Japan attacked us and Germany then declared war on us, but in the aftermath of a war that cost us over 400,000 American lives, we dedicated ourselves to rebuilding a shattered Europe and protecting it from Soviet domination.

When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” — Maya Angelou

If there is one thing that leftists are adept at doing, it is projecting who they are upon others, namely, their political opposition. How often have we had to endure the incessant droning of these maniacal totalitarians castigating everyone else as fascists, authoritarians and threats to democracy?

It only takes one reading of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto to show you who these leftists are, along with a study of their history, in order for anyone to believe who they are.

But, just in case there was still any doubt, never fear, James Carville, last week on the Al Hunt podcast, reminded us for the umpteenth time. Carville asserted, “If the Democrats win the presidency, and both houses of Congress, I think on day one, they should make Puerto Rico and D.C. a state, and they should expand the Supreme Court to 13. F!@K it. Eat our dust.”

But what Carville also suggested to the Marxist leftists, Democrats, is even more nefarious: “Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it. Just do it.” I suppose this is the new leftist campaign model that was brought to us by the current Virginia Governor, Abigail Spanberger.

When Barry Soetoro, or whatever his name actually is, shouted out in Columbia, Missouri, that we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America, we should have believed him. We did not, and to our peril, no one questioned him, under the fear of being demonized as a racist. As well, when Barack Hussein Obama, the man of many names, stated that if you own a business, you didn’t build that, which came after his openly confiding that he believed in “spreading the wealth around,” he was reelected as president.

Now, we have (17) leftist States violating the Constitution and voters’ rights, by signing onto something called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). They affirm that in their respective States, regardless of who wins the presidential election vote, they will only grant their Electors to whoever wins the national popular vote. The Marxists believe that this will favor them because they control the most populous states. So, in essence, these leftists are saying we do not care what happens in our respective States.

The Marxist leftists in America are the true threat to our Republic, and oddly enough, all of this is happening in the year of our 250th anniversary of Independence. It would appear that history is indeed repeating itself in that tyrannical totalitarianism rooted in destroying individual rights, freedoms, and liberties is rearing its ugly head. We should all ponder what has happened in our America over the past 50 years, since our Bicentennial.

We did not believe the Marxist leftists when they showed themselves the first time, and we continued to dismiss and excuse their abhorrent behavior. Now we are at critical mass as the Marxists have joined forces with the Islamists in order to fundamentally transform our America, in the celebrated year of its 250th remembrance of its Declaration of Independence. What will be our response?

Ten days ago, Congressmember Eric Swalwell was getting very close to becoming the Democratic candidate for governor of California. But then he imploded amidst sensational accusations of sexual harassment and assault.

Within hours of the revelations, Swalwell abandoned his campaign and then resigned from Congress and is now under criminal investigation.

Why Swalwell was leading the field of Democratic hopefuls was never clear. His only claim to political fame was being one of President Donald Trump’s most persistent critics — which, of course, has little to do with governing the nation’s most populous state.

It seemed he was seen as an alternative to billionaire Tom Steyer, who had been spending lavishly on TV and internet ads while positioning himself as a Bernie Sanders-style progressive.

Those turned off by Steyer’s ideology or his wealth were seemingly drifting to Swalwell, who hewed to a more or less moderate line.

Swalwell’s sudden departure left a vacuum that Steyer and the third Democrat in the top tier, former Congressmember Katie Porter, hoped to fill. However, when Swalwell’s disappointed supporters looked at their options, many apparently settled on Xavier Becerra, the mild-mannered former congressmember, state attorney general and Biden administration official.

The Democratic Party released its latest tracking poll on Monday, revealing that the two Republicans, — former TV commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco —are still leading the pack at 16% and 14%.

However the big news was that Becerra had shot up from 4% on April 5 to 13%, topping all Democrats. Both Steyer and Porter gained slightly in the post-Swalwell shakeout but Becerra’s rise is nothing less than phenomenal.

Why?

Perhaps Swalwell’s disillusioned supporters, who obviously had not felt comfortable with Steyer or Porter, were looking for someone dependable and trustworthy — even a little dull — after seven years of Gavin Newsom’s flashy sideshow.

It could be 1982 all over again.

That was the year that a stolid public servant, Republican Attorney General George Deukmejian, succeded wunderkind Gov. Jerry Brown.

Brown, like Newsom, had devoted much of his governorship to seeking national political attention, running for president twice, and the same voters who elected Deukmejian on a law-and-order platform soundly rejected Brown’s bid for a U.S. Senate seat.

Brown publicly acknowledged that he had worn out his welcome — although 28 years later, much older and wiser, he returned to the governorship.

This year’s campaign for governor has been the weirdest of any in at least 80 years, including actor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s improbable victory in 2003. For months, potential candidates dropped in and opted out, two Republicans led the polls in one of the nation’s bluest states, Democratic leaders were openly worried that the GOP could win the governorship by default with a 1-2 finish in the primary and, finally, scandal forced Swalwell out.

The next phase will continue the post-Swalwell reshuffle, with Becerra either continuing his meteoric rise or reaching a plateau and with Democrats still mired in low single digits, deciding whether to continue their campaigns.

“I continue to believe there are too many Democrats in the field,” said Rusty Hicks, Democratic state chair.

An hour before the new poll was released, one of the also-rans, former Controller Betty Yee, tearfully suspended her campaign — understandable, given her 1% standing. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (2%) and state schools Superintendent Tony Thurmond (2%) are on the bubble. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan gained a bit to 5% and his Silicon Valley backers are now staging a multimillion-dollar ad campaign in hopes of putting him in contention, with mail voting beginning in just two weeks.

Meanwhile it’s still theoretically possible, although not likely, that the two Republicans could finish 1-2, thus guaranteeing election of a GOP governor in November.

In a year as wacky as this one, nothing seemingly impossible should be discounted.