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The world learned this week that Graham Platner, the Maine Democrat all but set to win his party's Senate primary next month, has been sexting up to 12 women in the past few years while married. For Platner, this just added to his Cadillac Mountain of scandals.

You are likely familiar with the fact that the so-called oyster farmer has a Nazi tattoo that he covered up only after lying about knowing its meaning. He also has a long history off-color Reddit posts, including remarks blaming women for being raped.

What was most telling about these sordid new sexting revelations wasn’t that it exposed Platner as a creep. We already knew that. It was that the leak came from a fellow Democrat.

The party may be starting to realize they have created a Marxist monster they can’t control.

NEW WEBSITE PUTS PLATNER ON NOTICE BY AMPLIFYING SCANDALS: 'ONE RED FLAG AFTER ANOTHER'

Over the past several days, there has started to be what looks like an effort by establishment Democrats to tank socialist Platner’s campaign, even though his Democratic opponent, Gov. Janet Mills has dropped out and polls show the bearded blowhard leading incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins in the general election.

We have known for some time now that Platner is not exactly the poster child for impulse control, so why now? Why did a Democratic insider who had worked for him suddenly reveal secrets that Platner’s wife had originally flagged to the campaign?

One hint is that this opposition research drop, or in this case "same team" research drop, came just days after Rep. Jake Auchincloss D-Mass., called Platner’s shenanigans, including the Third Reich ink, "disqualifying."

DEMOCRAT CONGRESSMAN SLAMS GRAHAM PLATNER'S NAZI-LINKED TATTOO AS 'DISQUALIFYING'

While Auchincloss eventually walked it back a bit, saying that beating Collins and winning the Senate is a priority, this was quite an attack for what looked like a settled primary.

Of course, maverick Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman has been warning of Platner’s unfitness for office for months. On Saturday, he told me of the new scandal, in very millennial style.

"P-Hustle got his Swalwell-On sending sexually explicit texts to a dozen women as a newlywed," Fetterman wrote. "There’s never a slow comms day for Question Hound Democrats."

KNIVES OUT FOR FETTERMAN: MAVERICK SENATOR JOINS LONG LINE OF DEMS PUNISHED FOR BREAKING FROM LEFT

Question hound is the iconic meme in which a dog sits in a cafe on fire saying, "This is fine."   

One thing we also saw last week was that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who like Platner, is a member of the Sen. Bernie Sanders I-Vt., merry band of communists, endorsed a Muslim socialist over veteran Democratic Bronx Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who Madman Mamdani had previously promised to back.

It sure seems like establishment Democrats are realizing that if they choose to coddle these communists, as so many have been doing, it won’t protect them from being primaried by progressive lunatics, and quite possibly losing, as Mills did.

DAVID MARCUS: RISE OF MARXISM IS A HYRDRA DEMOCRATS CREATED BUT CAN'T CONTROL

Platner’s backers in the party, many of them the same people who propelled Zohran to success, are circling the wagons around their guy. They say the leaking aide committed a terrible act of betrayal, and with a straight face, suggest Platner is the victim in all this.

There are two problems with this. One is that voters don’t care about internal campaign disputes. Nobody watches that much C-SPAN. The second is that, this time, after Democratic Socialists have swallowed so much of the party, the Establishment seems set to strike back.

Lines are being drawn in this battle for the soul of the party of Jefferson and Jackson. This week, emerging party star Rep. Ro Khana, D-Calif., will campaign with Platner, and so far, he is standing by his man, despite the latest allegations and near certainty of more dropping shoes.

DAVID MARCUS: HASAN PIKER, USEFUL IDIOT FASHIONISTAS WANT TO MAKE AMERICA INTO COMMIE CUBA

Platner also will have the support of communist podcaster Hasan Piker, who increasingly is the leading spokesman for the party. Let's be honest, who do you hear more from these days, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries or Piker?

There are rumors of plots afoot to replace Platner on the ballot by November, perhaps with Mills, but this seems like a pipe dream, an effort to save the seat for sanity that comes a day late and a dollar short.

Everywhere you look across the country, the far left is in the ascendancy in the Democratic Party. It finally looks like old-school Democrats are noticing, as their own political safety falls into the crosshairs of the Democratic Socialists.

Make no mistake, the communists are just a cycle or two from completely controlling the Democratic Party, if they don’t already. This is bad news for our nation, but sadly, this last-minute effort by the establishment to derail Platner seems doomed.

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This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 800-273-TALK (8255).

Matt Brown, who appeared in Discovery Channel's "Alaskan Bush People," has died. He was 42.

On Saturday, his brother, Bear Brown, took to social media to confirm Matt had been found dead after authorities had recovered a body from a Washington state river.

"They found a body in the river a few hours ago, and it was positively identified as being Matt," Bear said in a TikTok video.

Bear confirmed their brother Noah was the one to positively identify Matt.

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"I would have never suspected he would have hurt himself, honestly. He struggled for a long time, as I've mentioned, and I worried he was going to end up, like, OD'd or something like that. I didn't think he would hurt himself."

"It does look as though the injury is self-inflicted," he continued. "Obviously, the coroner and stuff still has to look at him and stuff, but I thought that you guys should know that it is him."

According to Page Six, the Okanogan County Sheriff's Office deputies responded Wednesday after receiving a 911 call from a witness who reported seeing a man sitting in a shallow section of the river. The caller later reported hearing a sound and finding the man face down in the water before he was swept away by the current.

A firearm was reportedly recovered from the area where the man was last seen, according to the outlet.

In the TikTok video, Bear urged fans to be respectful of his family's privacy during this time.

"Please be respectful to the family, to my mom [Ami Brown] especially," he said. "Please don’t attack my mom. Mom cares very much for Matt and always has."

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Matt starred on "Alaskan Bush People" from 2014 to 2019, when he stepped away amid his addiction struggles.

During an interview with People in 2016, Matt opened up about his drinking, saying, "I could see myself spiraling."

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"I started drinking lightly and then it got to be more and more," he told the outlet. "That’s when I saw the problem around the corner, and I didn’t want to be one of those guys."

"There was a lot of anxiety. It took a couple days to work up the guts to tell my parents," he continued. "But their support was unbelievable. It instantly made me feel better and like I could be successful on this journey."

After completing 35 days of treatment, Matt told the outlet he had gained a new perspective on life.

"I learned a lot about myself in those 35 days. I’ve turned my weakness into a strength," he said. "In life, we all get lost every now and then and have to find our way back."

This is not the first time the Brown family has been hit by tragedy. 

Billy Brown, patriarch of the Brown family, died in 2021 after suffering a seizure. He was 68.

"We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved patriarch Billy Brown passed away last night after suffering from a seizure," the family said, per the outlet. "He was our best friend — a wonderful and loving dad, granddad and husband and he will be dearly missed."

"He lived his life on his terms, off the grid and off the land and taught us to live like that as well," Bear wrote on Instagram at the time. "We plan to honor his legacy going forward, and to continue with his dream. We ask for privacy and prayers during this painful time. God Bless Everyone!"

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This is part five of a series examining the challenges confronting the NATO alliance.

For more than three decades, the U.S. carried the largest share of NATO's military burden while many European allies spent far less on defense than Washington wanted.

The imbalance survived the Cold War, multiple U.S. administrations and repeated debates over burden sharing. Only in recent years — following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine and renewed pressure from President Donald Trump — have many NATO members begun significantly increasing defense spending.

So why did the gap persist for so long?

Defense analysts say the answer lies in a combination of post-Cold War optimism, domestic political priorities and an American defense umbrella that convinced much of Europe it could safely spend less on defense without sacrificing its security.

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"For much of the post–Cold War period, it is fair to say that Europeans underinvested in defense, partly because threats were low, and partly because a series of U.S. presidents did everything they could to convince Europeans that we would stay there forever," Barry Posen, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Fox News Digital.

The collapse of the Soviet Union reinforced that mindset. 

With the primary threat NATO had been created to deter suddenly gone, governments across Europe moved to collect a so-called "peace dividend," redirecting resources toward domestic priorities and away from their militaries.

Between 1992 and 1999, defense spending among European NATO members fell 22%, helping establish a pattern of underinvestment that would persist for decades even as the United States maintained troops in Europe and continued serving as NATO's ultimate security backstop.

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As defense spending declined, many European governments expanded or maintained social welfare systems that consumed a growing share of public budgets. Programs such as healthcare, pensions and higher education became deeply embedded in domestic politics, often making them harder to cut than military spending.

With the U.S. continuing to provide the bulk of NATO's military power, many governments faced little immediate pressure to reverse course. Critics of the alliance's spending imbalance argued that American taxpayers were effectively subsidizing Europe's security, allowing allies to devote a larger share of public resources to domestic priorities.

The result was what some defense analysts describe as a "moral hazard" problem: because the U.S. commitment to NATO was viewed as ironclad, allies could spend less on their own militaries without facing the full consequences of those decisions.

NATO CHIEF WARNS EUROPE CAN’T DEFEND ITSELF WITHOUT US AS TENSIONS RISE OVER GREENLAND

Over time, that dynamic became self-reinforcing. As European militaries shrank, many allies grew increasingly dependent on American capabilities ranging from logistics and intelligence to missile defense, strategic airlift and nuclear deterrence.

"We are still having a strong, conventional U.S. presence in Europe," NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said earlier in 2026, "and, of course, the nuclear umbrella as our ultimate guarantor."

American frustration over burden sharing is nearly as old as NATO itself.

In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned European allies that "the American well can run dry" and pressed them to assume a larger share of the alliance's defense burden. The issue resurfaced repeatedly over the following decades as successive administrations sought greater European contributions to collective defense.

The concern persisted long after the Cold War. In a blunt 2011 farewell speech in Brussels, then-War Secretary Robert Gates warned of a "dim if not dismal future" for NATO if European governments continued underinvesting in their militaries. Gates cautioned that there would be "dwindling appetite and patience" among American lawmakers and taxpayers to bear a disproportionate share of the alliance's defense costs.

Yet despite decades of warnings, the underlying incentives changed little. 

Washington repeatedly reaffirmed its commitment to NATO and maintained a large military presence on the continent, reducing pressure on allies to rapidly increase defense spending.

"Every administration has been pushing allies to spend more money on their own defense," former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO Jim Townsend told Fox News Digital.

The issue gained renewed urgency after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, when NATO established a benchmark for members to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense. While spending gradually increased, progress remained uneven across the alliance.

"Nations slowly began going to that. But it's been slow," Townsend said.

For years, burden-sharing disputes followed a familiar pattern: American officials urged allies to spend more, European leaders promised improvements and NATO continued to rely heavily on American military power. What finally broke that cycle, Townsend said, was the combination of Russia's growing aggression and Trump's willingness to challenge assumptions that had shaped the alliance for decades.

"What really woke everyone up were two things," Townsend said. "One was the 2022 invasion by Putin the second time. And then the second was Trump."

Unlike previous presidents, Trump openly questioned whether the United States should defend allies that failed to meet defense spending commitments. During his first term and again during his return to office, Trump argued that NATO members were taking advantage of American taxpayers and suggested U.S. protection should not be unconditional.

Whether European leaders viewed Trump's approach as pressure, a warning or a negotiating tactic, it altered assumptions that had shaped the alliance since the end of the Cold War and accelerated a debate that had simmered for decades.

The shift culminated at NATO's summit in The Hague, where allies agreed to a new goal of spending 5% of GDP on defense and defense-related investments by 2035. The agreement marked a dramatic leap from NATO's long-standing 2% benchmark and reflected a growing consensus that the alliance faced a far more dangerous security environment than the one that emerged after the Soviet Union's collapse.

The agreement also signaled that many allies had come to the same conclusion American presidents had voiced for decades: the post-Cold War era of reduced military spending was over.

TRUMP PUSHED NATO TO SPEND BIG — NOW COMES THE HARDER QUESTION: CAN EUROPE ACTUALLY FIGHT?

But analysts caution that rebuilding military power is far more complicated than increasing budgets.

Europe remains dependent on the U.S. for capabilities ranging from air defense and logistics to intelligence and defense industrial capacity, Townsend said. Even as governments commit more money to defense, translating those investments into military readiness will take years.

John Byrne of Concerned Veterans for America said the challenge extends beyond equipment and spending levels.

"They don’t have the experience," Byrne told Fox News Digital, referring to the decades in which large multinational military commands were overwhelmingly led by American officers.

Running large coalition military operations requires years of institutional knowledge and leadership experience, he said — something that cannot be rebuilt overnight.

"You can buy equipment," Byrne said. "You can’t instantly buy command experience."

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Trump suggests holding a "Make America Great Again" rally instead after most headliners drop out of White-House-linked event.

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The film editor and ex-wife of director George Lucas was widely recognised as a pivotal creative force behind the original space trilogy.

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Performers Young MC, Poison frontman Bret Michaels and country singer Martina McBride raised concerns the event will be political.

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Same-sex acts are punishable by jail terms under Ghana's new bill targeting those identifying as gay, lesbian or transgender.

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