Sign up for the Surge, the newsletter that covers the most important political nonsense of the week, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Surge, Slate’s politics newsletter that encourages you to get some rest this August. It’s going to be a long fall campaign season talking about the only issue that matters in America: Hasan Piker.

Today we review some results from a big week of primaries and explore what could have possibly compelled Jeanine Pirro to tell the truth in a legal filing. Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination came down to one famous Senate pushover. Is it possible he could get pushed over?

Let’s begin, though, with a look toward next week’s most-watched primary, and Fox News’ next big celebrity-in-waiting.

This year, we’re thankful that the Wisconsin gubernatorial primary is almost over.

The national spotlight is now fully thrust on Francesca Hong, the democratic socialist and front-runner for Tuesday’s Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary. The topic of the week was Thanksgiving, after a 2020 tweet of Hong’s calling to “cancel Thanksgiving” resurfaced. In a CNN interview this week, then, she was asked whether she still believed that the holiday should be canceled. She did not give a firm answer. Another day or so later, she told Politico that Thanksgiving is her favorite holiday, that “I don’t want to cancel it,” and that “I actually love it.”

Hong rose in the polls by consolidating left-wing primary voters behind a populist economic platform of expanding social services, taxing the rich, and crushing data centers—all against a splintered opposition. But now that she’s at the top, everything she has ever said or posted will be under national examination.

We don’t have any advice for Hong on how she should answer these sorts of questions about past tweets sent from deep inside the bubble. We would point out, though, that governor’s races are not like Senate or presidential elections, in which pure partisanship ensures that each candidate in a swing state like Wisconsin starts at 47 percent. General election voters are more flexible in state-level races, which don’t have any effect on whether Donald Trump can continue getting judges confirmed. And we’re hard-pressed to think of anyone who’s won a governor’s race after struggling to answer a question about whether Thanksgiving should be canceled.

The party unites as the real match begins.

Some great news: This will be our last entry about the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan, because guess what? It actually happened this week, after what felt like 47 years of campaigning. As the polls predicted, progressive Abdul........

© Slate