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I Hope Iran Wins at the World Cup

In this week’s Elie v. US, our Justice Correspondent explains why he’s rooting for the Iranian national soccer team. Plus: the DOJ’s scary rollback of gun regulations.

Shahriyar Moghanlou of Iran battles for the ball with Finn Surman of New Zealand during the FIFA World Cup 2026.

Billionaire healthcare executive Rick Jackson won a GOP runoff for the governor’s race in Georgia, beating Georgia’s current lieutenant governor, Burt Jones. Jackson will now take on former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms in the general election.

Jones, who famously tried to help Donald Trump overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results, earned a thank-you endorsement from Trump nearly a year ago. His loss is one of the only times during this primary cycle that the Trump-endorsed Republican didn’t win.

For his part, Jackson, despite failing to secure an endorsement, did dutifully kiss Trump’s ring in the only way that matters: He donated $1 million to Trump in December. Jackson also reportedly spent $100 million of his own money on his campaign. He claims that being self-funded means that he’s not beholden to special interests but he’s a billionaire healthcare executive, which means he’s basically a walking special interest.

The most interesting thing about this gubernatorial primary is its immediate effect on the midterm elections. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, the Georgia state legislature was one among a number of former Confederate states looking to re-gerrymander their congressional maps to give Republicans even more of an advantage. Georgia’s legislature is already dominated by Republicans, but there had been some pushback within the party against even more aggressively gerrymandering the state. Jones, as lieutenant governor (and therefore president of the Georgia state Senate), was expected to try to push through the new maps.

But now that he has lost, reports indicate that the new maps are “dead on arrival.” This is not because Jones has had a change of heart. He still wants the racist gerrymander. It’s just that, since Jones is a lame duck, other Republicans who oppose the new map no longer fear his retribution should they vote against it.

That is fascinating to me. Republicans will go for maximal racism to keep their jobs, but won’t necessarily if they’re not threatened. And we’re all used to it. Pro-racism is just kind of accepted as a necessary position for Republicans who are still running for office.

The fact is, Republicans think racism helps them win. That’s probably the biggest difference between modern Republicans and the still-super-racist Republicans I grew up with. The Republican antipathy for equal rights has always run deep, but back in the day, active racism wasn’t the unyielding requirement for membership in the Republican party. Now, it pretty much is. And their voters love it.

I’m not looking forward to all the ways the healthcare executive will try to pick up the mantle of racist dog-whistling as he runs against a Black woman this fall. I’m sure it’ll be ugly. 

Speaking of healthcare executives—after a fashion—Luigi Mangione is planning to claim “extreme emotional disturbance” as his defense during his trial over his slaying of United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson. This means Mangione is admitting that he killed the man (after initially pleading “not guilty”). It also means that, if this approach succeeds, he’ll receive a much-reduced prison sentence. I interpret this as Mangione going for jury nullification—which is to say that the jury will support his clearly criminal actions and refuse to convict him. He’s not arguing that his killing was justified; he’s basically saying that it was understandable. If he gets off, I want a whole book written about the jury deliberations.

The Department of Justice has charged 15........

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