Joe Biden flails in a friendly town hall with CNN's Anderson Cooper.

The Virginia gubernatorial race comes down to the wire and the National Institutes of Health admit funding gain of function research.

I'm Ben Shapiro. This is The Ben Shapiro show.

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slash Ben. We'll get to all the news in just one moment. First, let me remind you, you are paying way too much for your cell phone bill because you think you have to have one of the big guys, right? In order to see you have the great coverage of Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile, what if you could get the same exact coverage as one of the big guys, but pay a lot less money? This is where Pure Talk USA comes in. Pure Talk doesn't charge you for any of the crap. The big companies charge you for, right? Their retail stores, their overhead and all that. Pure Talk instead gives you killer 5G coverage on the same 5G network as one of the big guys for about half the cost. The average family is saving over $800 a year just by making the switch. So what exactly is your excuse? I already made the switch. You can keep your number, keep your phone, or get huge discounts on the latest iPhones and Android's. Get unlimited talk, text, and six gigs of data for just 30 bucks a month. And listen, if you still want unlimited data, you can still get it and save a fortune. Go to puretalk.com, shop for a plan that's right for you. They have a 30-day risk-free guarantee, so you literally have nothing to lose. Go to puretalk.com, enter promo code Shapiro. You'll save 50% off your very first month of coverage. That's puretalk.com, promo code Shapiro. Pure Talk is simply smarter, wireless. Go check them out right now.

Alrighty. So, Virginia is now down to the wire, and Democrats are deeply upset about it.

The polls are showing it is neck and neck between Glenn Yonkin, the Republican in that race, and Terry McCallough, the former Virginia governor and head of the DNC.

McColliff should have been running away with this race. Remember that Hillary Clinton won this state going away. Joe Biden won this state going away. And now you've got a neck and neck race between Glenn Yonkin, who's a pretty traditional Republican and Terry McCalloff, who's a normally traditional Democrat. This should be a walkover, which is why James Carville, the semi-centrist Democrat analyst, he's saying he's deeply worried about what's going on in

Virginia, and they should be. We're in a very tight race, and Democrats need to be activated. I do think

that Trump has a tug against Yonkin. I've seen a lot of research on that. Of course,

he said he wouldn't be running without

Trump, and he tries to run away from him. He's kind of slippery. But yeah, it's close. There's no

doubt about it. And I'm scared to death. And other Democrats should be. Okay, what Carville is

pointing out here is that all of the attempts to tie Youngkin

to Trump have failed. And that is why Youngkin is doing well. Right now, all of the polls show

that he is neck and neck with McColliffe. And the reason for that is because people are focusing

on the bread and butter issues. Suburban moms are focusing in on the failures of education in

the state of Virginia. And it's not just about the Virginia

gubernatorial race. According to Politico, the Virginia House is up for grabs as well.

Quote, Alex Askew knows firsthand how tight elections can get for Democrats in Virginia.

He barely won his seat in the State House of Delegates, defeating his Republican opponent

...