(The Epoch Times)—Michigan, Kansas, Missouri, Virginia, and Washington state are holding primaries on Aug. 4 in contentious races that could determine the balance of power in Congress and elsewhere.
Of those states, Michigan will be the most watched due to a Democratic Senate primary that could determine which party controls the upper congressional chamber.
Heading into the primaries, progressives have seen momentum nationwide from New York to Colorado, winning Democratic primaries that include candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America. Multiple races on Tuesday are pitting establishment Democrats against more liberal challengers with differences on immigration enforcement and support for Israel.
Here are the most important races to watch and what’s at stake.
Michigan
The Wolverine State features Tuesday’s most-watched race: the Democratic Senate primary between Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and epidemiologist Abdul El-Sayed, who ran for governor in 2018.
Stevens and El-Sayed have disagreed over whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should be reined in, as Stevens suggested, or abolished, as El-Sayed said. The race came as ICE has increased its presence in Michigan and as Democrats continued criticizing federal immigration operations and holding up funding for the Homeland Security Department.
Another major area of disagreement was support for Israel, which El-Sayed has accused of committing a “genocide” in Gaza in its military operations triggered by terrorist group Hamas’s deadly attack on Oct. 7, 2023. The Israeli government has denied such accusations.
Meanwhile, the United Democracy Project, the super PAC for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, spent more than $30 million backing Stevens.
The winner will take on former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who is running unopposed in the GOP primary. The Cook Political Report rates the general election race as a toss-up.
The Senate seat is open because Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat who has served since 2015, chose not to seek reelection.
Stevens, whose district is solidly Democratic, is expected to be replaced by another Democrat. Other hotly contested districts include the Seventh, Tenth, and 13th, which the Cook Political Report has rated with varying expectations.
The progressive versus establishment battle is also playing out in the Seventh District, where three Democrats look to take on incumbent Republican Rep. Tom Barrett. Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink and former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam are running with left-of-center platforms while William Lawrence, co-founder of the environmentalist group Sunrise Movement, is campaigning as a progressive.
The Cook Political Report rates the district as a toss-up.
At the state level, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is leaving office, and the race to succeed her leans Democrat, according to the Cook Political Report.
The Republican field consists of Rep. John James (R-Mich.), whom President Donald Trump endorsed, and businessman Perry Johnson, while the Democratic primary includes Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson.
Kansas
The most-watched race in the Sunflower State is the gubernatorial one. The winner will succeed Laura Kelly, a Democrat who is term-limited.
The Republican field includes state Senate President Ty Masterson, former state Rep. Charlotte O’Hara, cafe manager Nick Reinecker, business owner Stacy Rogers, businessman Philip Sarnecki, Kansas Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt, and Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab. Trump has endorsed Masterson.
The Democratic primary consists of state Sen. Ethan Corson, state Sen. Cindy Holscher, and Overland Park Mayor Curt Skoog.
The Cook Political Report rates the race as “Lean Republican.”
Virginia
In the Old Dominion, there are a couple of competitive House races.
In a likely rematch from 2022, former Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) is expected to win the Democratic primary to take on incumbent GOP Rep. Jen Kiggans in the Second Congressional District, which the Cook Political Report rates as a toss-up.
In the Seventh Congressional District, Republicans seeking to take on incumbent Democratic Rep. Eugene Vindman include entrepreneur Philip Harding, Army veteran Douglas Ollivant, and pastor Rick Smithers.
The Cook Political Report rates the race as “Likely Democratic.”
Missouri
The most-watched race in the Show-Me State is the Democratic primary in the First Congressional District, whose seat is occupied by Democratic Rep. Wesley Bell. Bell has four challengers in the primary, but his closest competitor is former Rep. Cori Bush, who represented the district between 2021 and 2025. She lost to Bell in the 2024 election.
This is another test of the pro-Israel camp versus those critical of the Mideast country. Bell is in the former camp, while Bush represents the latter.
The Republican field includes Paul Berry and Andrew Jones Jr.
The Cook Political Report rates the district as “Solid Democratic.”
Washington
There are two congressional races to watch in the Evergreen State.
In the Third Congressional District, three Democrats and three Republicans are challenging incumbent Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in the nonpartisan primary. The Democrats challenging her include Austin Braswell, businessman Brent Hennrich, and Democratic Socialist Troy Rasband. Trump has endorsed Republican state Sen. John Braun, who is competing against pilot Lawrence Kellogg and John Roco.
The Cook Political Report rates the race as a toss-up.
Over in the Fourth Congressional District, which the Cook Political Report rates as “Solid Republican,” the race is on to succeed retiring GOP Rep. Dan Newhouse.
The Republicans running include Yakima County Commissioner Amanda McKinney, who was endorsed by Trump, businessman and military veteran Jerrod Sessler, and state Sen. Matt Boehnke, among others. Air Force veteran John Duresky is the only Democrat in the nonpartisan primary.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
