KELI From Inkwell, this is the Independent News Drop. It's Saturday, May twenty-third. The time is six a.m. central. I'm Keli, with Hast.
HAST Good morning. Slovenia's making a European shift this morning—we'll start there.
KELI Right. Slovenia's parliament has approved Janez Jansa as prime minister. He's a right-wing populist who led the country before, and this represents a pretty sharp turn from the centrist government that's been in place. What you'll hear on some outlets is that this is just another domino falling in Europe's swing rightward, which is the simple read. But the structural piece is more granular: Jansa's previous term was marked by media tensions and judicial friction with Brussels, and his return now depends on coalition partners who weren't available to him before. So the prediction to watch in the coming weeks is whether those partners actually hold or fracture once he tries to move on those same friction points. If they hold, Europe's rightward story becomes real. If they fracture, you're looking at a much narrower mandate than the narrative suggests.
HAST Back stateside, and we've got an accountability piece out of Florida. A detention center in Miami called Krome North was documented as the harshest in the country when it comes to use of force. Staff were using restraint chairs, documented incidents of rough handling—all of it tracked and reported by ICE. Then the reporting stopped. Records on use of force at that facility disappeared from public tracking. Advocates say the center continued operating under the same conditions, just without the documentation. The center still holds detainees today.
KELI Sticking with Texas. The Republican Senate primary runoff between incumbent John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton hits the ballot Tuesday. We're fourteen months into this race, a hundred thirty-five million dollars spent, and Trump endorsed Paxton late in the game. Both candidates are running hard through the weekend—ads up, rallies scheduled. Paxton's banking on the Trump backing to close a gap that polling has suggested is tight but trending his way. Cornyn's leaning on establishment Republican networks and the argument that primary voters should choose based on electability in November. Either way, this resolves Tuesday, and Texas Republicans move toward the general.
HAST On voting rights, there's an argument being made this morning that the weakening of the Voting Rights Act doesn't just affect Black voters—it has ripple effects across the whole electorate and changes the structural way elections work in this country. The piece flags how the legal architecture that protected access has been steadily dismantled, and without it, the incentives change for how campaigns compete and which voters get prioritized. It's a slower-moving story, but worth tracking in states that used to have pre-clearance requirements before they didn't.
KELI Ken Paxton, the same attorney general we just mentioned in the primary race, is now facing a separate question from lawyers: he's been pushing to crack down on what's called forum shopping—when litigants try to pick courts favorable to their side. But Paxton himself is now being accused of doing exactly that in some of his office's cases. He's filing in courts where precedent favors his positions, and critics say that's the same behavior he's condemned. The optics of that tension are going to follow him regardless of Tuesday's outcome.
HAST One quieter story before we close. Summer's coming, and your electric bills are going to feel it. Electricity prices are up, demand for cooling is climbing, and the combination of hotter-than-usual weather and rising grid costs means utility bills this summer could be notably steeper than last year. If you're on a fixed income or running thin on margins, this is a real-world squeeze to budget for.
KELI One date marker. On this day in nineteen thirty-two, four students were shot and killed during a protest against Brazil's dictator Getúlio Vargas—an event that sparked the Constitutionalist Revolution weeks later.
HAST That's the Independent News Drop. We'll be back this evening. From Inkwell.