Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, Colorado’s gun-toting representative, is likely to serve another term after winning her district’s Republican primary last night.

Freedom wins!

Thank you for all of your support.

I love and appreciate all of you and promise to work as hard as I can to help get our country back on track! pic.twitter.com/QXgH3ZT39E

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) June 29, 2022

Boebert handily defeated challenger Don Coram, a moderate Republican with friends on both sides of the aisle in the state House but nowhere near Boebert’s name recognition. Her win comes despite seemingly endless controversy. Earlier this year, former employees of Boebert’s Rifle, Colorado, restaurant told me that the congresswoman routinely failed to pay them on time. Colorado is set to investigate her over misuse of campaign funds. Her latest faux pas came this weekend when she declared, “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk.”

But none of that is likely to keep Boebert out of Congress. Thanks to redistricting, her district leans even more strongly Republican this year than it did in 2020. Boebert will face off against Democrat Adam Frisch in the general election.

On Friday, with the fall of Roe official, a parade of companies emerged with similar announcements: we hear you, we see you, and we will fund your abortion travel and assistance. Dick’s Sporting Goods, Target, JP Morgan Chase, Disney, and others all introduced these policies either after the leak of the decision or in recent days.

At first blush, it could seem comforting. But as with many corporate acts of activism before it, a closer inspection gives way to the sinking feeling that something is deeply warped; that this pantomime of corporate responsibility has been spit out of a shiny branding machine and processed in a scrambled effort that neatly smooths over cracks of hypocrisy, complicated human resources questions, and the alarming consequences of turning to business while the government in power sits on its hands.

In the case of Starbucks—where a promise to cover abortion in health care plans and cover abortion travel expenses could not be promised to employees at unionized stores—it’s devolved into explicitly anti-union tactics. “What we can say for sure, is that Starbucks will always bargain in good faith,” Sara Kelly, acting executive vice president of Starbucks, explained.

Though I don’t doubt Kelly’s sincerity in mourning Roe, the certitude with which she promises Starbucks will bargain in good faith does not track with the company’s increasingly brazen, union-busting efforts.

Imagine the worker at a newly unionized location, who may one day be in a position to seek to terminate a pregnancy, receiving this news. Doesn’t it suddenly seem attractive, downright reasonable, to jump to a non-unionized Starbucks? Here, Starbucks’ refusal to guarantee abortion assistance to unionized workers boils down to an anti-union carrot stick intended to exert what the company wants most of all: control.

The potential exclusion of unionized workers misses a critical point in our post-Roe landscape: that society’s most vulnerable—those who benefit from labor protections offered by unions—will be most affected by the loss of Roe, and would thus benefit the most from any reimbursement plan. And if helping them does not fit a company’s other interests. Well, oh well.

None of this is to say that companies should decline to take action. Nor is it to dismiss the fact that some seeking abortions may truly benefit from employer-backed abortion assistance. But intense scrutiny must be paid when capitalist forces are stepping in where the state has failed, especially when we’re living through the backlash to progress in real-time; when the same streaming giants that celebrate gay pride allegedly retaliate against their trans workers; when Meta offers travel assistance for abortions while silencing internal discussion of the extremist ruling that prompted that very assistance; when companies that staunchly oppose classifying most of its workforce as “employees” will include abortion in healthcare plans; when so many of these corporate giants have had outsized roles in bankrolling state abortion bans around the country.

But the problems extend far beyond hypocrisy. Serious questions over what corporate-sponsored abortion support will look like in practice have also emerged, particularly in regards to employee privacy. After all, employer-backed abortion assistance will not be anonymous; funds and reimbursement will presumably be directed into an account attached to an identity. CEOs could promise privacy now, but what happens to abortion data when companies change hands? Will it be monetized? What’s missing in many of these corporate announcements is what steps are being taken in order to protect healthcare records from outside forces, whether that be the newly emboldened anti-abortion movement, everyday hackers, or law enforcement officials in states increasingly weaponizing digital trails in order to prosecute abortions and miscarriages. Now, zoom out once more and you’ll see that this entire ad-hoc system requires the worker to place a herculean level of trust in their bosses—the very people, who, no matter how benevolent, cannot be trusted, during an experience where many are often unable to trust their most intimate personal relations.

The impulse to get on the right side of history may be well-intentioned. Yet, capitalism subbing in for the constitutional right to an abortion smacks of opportunism; corporate America knows it will profit from fundamentally good social policy. After all, corporate knows that it feels good for a worker to believe that they work for the right type of company, one willing to stand up to at least some of the neverending supply of cruelty we’ve witnessed over the past few years. Companies might be breeding armies of asshole managers, but, hey, at least the narcissist on top did something after the fall of Roe.

For so many, Roe afforded women the same basic rights to personhood as men. But with corporate-funded abortions, pregnant people will be forced to surrender their autonomy to another person, their boss. That’s never going to be freedom.

Are the blockbuster revelations from the January 6 Committee hearings cutting through? Changing hearts and minds?

A new CBS News/YouGov poll released today found that, from what they’ve seen so far, half of the country thinks former President Donald Trump tried to stay in power “through illegal means”, and nearly half think he should be charged with crimes as a result.

From what they’ve seen of the hearings so far, half the country thinks Donald Trump planned to remain in office through unconstitutional & illegal activities. Half think that he should, in turn, be charged with crimes. https://t.co/gPT48cT4tq pic.twitter.com/qTRBynUtmb

— CBS News Poll (@CBSNewsPoll) June 26, 2022

Game. Set. Match. Right? Book him! Not so fast. As with all public opinion in the United States, the consensus evaporates as soon as you look at party affiliation. According to the poll, 70 percent of Republicans still say Biden didn’t legitimately win the 2020 election, and that Trump didn’t plan to seize power illegally. Half of Republicans view the insurrection as “patriotic”—a number that has remained relatively unchanged since the attack, according to the pollsters.

And democracy lovers, brace yourselves. There’s another disturbing finding in the poll today: The majority of Americans now think it’s at least “somewhat likely” that election officials will refuse to certify results in the future for political reasons.

The new poll also contained some grim news for President Biden: The lowest ever approval rating of his presidency, at 41 percent.

It has been difficult to gauge the overall impact of the hearings as they happen. Lots of people seem to be paying at least some attention and ratings have been good. But a poll released earlier this week by Quinnipiac showed that the number of Americans who believe that Trump committed a crime in his attempts to steal the 2020 election remained “essentially unchanged” from an April poll asking the same question; 46 percent say he did commit a crime, and 47 percent saying he did not.

Read more detailed results from today’s CBS News poll here.

Now that the Supreme Court has officially overturned Roe v. Wade, near-total abortion bans are springing into effect across the nation in the form of “trigger laws.” 

Oklahoma—which didn’t even wait for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe—has already banned abortion. Immediate abortion bans have also come into effect in Kentucky, Louisiana, and South Dakota, according to the Guttmacher Institute.  The trigger laws in Idaho, Tennessee, and Texas will take 30 days to come into effect. If you have an abortion scheduled in one of these states, you still have a very limited amount of time to undergo the procedure.

@motherjonesmag

Welp. #BBPlayDate #ShowYourJOWO #supremecourt #politics #reproductiverights

♬ Le Calin – 斌杨Remix

Meanwhile, trigger laws in Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming require an extra step to come into effect—typically certification by an attorney general—which could take place at any second.

Oklahoma also has a trigger law pending certification on the books, which could soon overlap the six-week civil ban already in effect.

Here’s what has been announced by state officials so far.

Arkansas

Arkansas requires the attorney general to take actions to certify that abortion law has changed to enact the trigger law. Attorney General Leslie Rutledge has announced in a press release she will do so at a ceremony this afternoon.

Idaho

Idaho’s abortion ban will come into effect in 30 days. 

Kentucky

Kentucky’s trigger law has come into effect.

Louisiana

Louisiana’s trigger law has come into effect. 

Mississippi

Mississippi requires the attorney general to take actions to certify that abortion law has changed to enact the trigger law. At the time of publication, no announcement has been made.

Missouri

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt has already certified the ban in his state, enshrining it into law.

North Dakota

North Dakota’s abortion ban will come into effect soon. First, the attorney general has to reaffirm to the legislative council that a ban is now constitutional. Then the legislative council has to certify that recommendation. At the time of publication, no announcement has been made.

Oklahoma

Oklahoma passed a law banning abortion after six weeks before the Dobbs decision was handed down. An additional ban requires certification from the Attorney General. Shortly after Roe was overturned, Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor wrote that he wanted “to thank the Supreme Court for returning decision-making power to the people,” calling today a day for “celebration and thanksgiving.” However, at the time of publication, no announcement has been made.

Tennessee

Tennessee’s abortion ban will come into effect in 30 days. 

Texas

Texas’s abortion ban will come into effect in 30 days. 

South Dakota

South Dakota’s abortion ban has come into effect. 

Utah

Utah’s abortion ban comes into effect when the legislative counsel certifies the legislature’s ability to ban abortion. At the time of publication, no announcement has been made.

Wyoming

Wyoming’s abortion ban requires the certification of the attorney general and then the governor. After certification, the ban will come into effect in five days.

This is a breaking news post, and things are changing rapidly. We’ll update with more information as it becomes available. 

Ivanka Trump’s piss poor relationship with the truth—one of the most enduring storylines of the Trump era—has once again come into focus after the New York Times got a glimpse of the former first daughter, a month after the November presidential election, privately telling a film crew that her father should “continue to fight” the election results “until every legal remedy is exhausted.”

In the same interview, Ivanka was also reportedly recorded questioning the “sanctity of our elections”—a more polished version of the same unhinged, baseless claims about a stolen election that flowed through the former president’s inner circle.

The remarks, as they seem to always do, fly in the face of Ivanka’s testimony before the January 6 committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol, during which she told investigators that she had accepted Bill Barr’s assessment that no fraud had taken place during the election. They also contradict the narrative that she and her husband, Jared Kushner, knew that Dad was a loser before it became official, and eagerly absconded to Miami while Trump marinaded in increasingly desperate conspiracy theories.

Ivanka’s coup-friendly remarks are now in the hands of the committee after it subpoenaed Alex Holder, the British filmmaker who had sought to create a “legacy project” for the Trump presidency. To that end, it does seem as though Holder successfully captured one prominent theme of the Trump White House: Ivanka’s ruthless self-interest.

One month after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, damning new details about the police response continue to emerge. Based on reporting from the Texas Tribune and testimony from Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw in a hearing before the state Senate, we now know that police armed with rifles were at the scene just three minutes after the shooter entered the building. Police never attempted to open the door to the classroom where the shooter had been “barricaded”—at least until the final moments before killing him, more than an hour after officers first arrived on the scene. In fact, it’s yet to be settled whether the door was even locked.

As details continue to be contested and new information emerges, it’s clear that a tragic confluence of factors—from faulty door locks to a disjointed police response—allowed the shooter’s rampage to continue for 77 minutes. Here’s a list of some of the things that went wrong, based on what we know so far.

• An apparently faulty lock on a school door allowed the shooter to enter the building with ease. While it was previously reported that a teacher had propped the door open, officials have since explained that the teacher shut the door when she saw the gunman approaching the school. As McCraw pointed out during his testimony today, even if the door had been locked, the shooter would have been able to enter the school by shooting through an adjacent glass panel, reaching inside, and pulling the door open.
• The classroom apparently could only be locked from the outside, and there is no indication that the door was ever locked. The Texas Tribune reports that the shooter easily entered and exited the classroom at least three times. Surveillance footage does not show police attempting to open the door to the classroom. Even if the door had been locked, police appear to have had the means to open it: Just eight minutes after the shooter entered the building, an officer reported that police had a Halligan bar, a firefighting tool used to break down doors, according to AP. Instead of trying the door, Uvalde schools police chief Pete Arredondo waited to obtain a master key he might not have even needed.
• Arredondo did not bring his police radio into the school. Furthermore, police radios tended not to function inside the school, according to Arredondo.
• Some of the diagrams of the school that the police were using were incorrect, according to McCraw.
• Officers had access to ballistic shields 58 minutes before authorities stormed the classroom. The only thing preventing them from entering the classroom, according to McCraw, was Chief Arredondo. 

McCraw summed up the tragedy like this:

Three minutes after the subject entered the west building, there was sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to isolate, distract, and neutralize this subject. The only thing stopping the hallway of dedicated officers from entering room 111 and room 112 was the on-scene commander, who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children. The officers had weapons. The children had none. The officers had body armor. The children had none. The officers had training. The subject had none. One hour, 14 minutes, and eight seconds. That’s how long the children waited and the teachers waited…to be rescued. And while they waited, the on-scene commander waited for a radio and rifles. Then he waited for shields. Then he waited for SWAT. Lastly, he waited for a key that was never needed. The post-Columbine doctrine is clear and compelling and unambiguous: Stop the killing, the stop the dying. You can’t do the latter unless you do the former.

“There is compelling evidence that the law enforcement response to the attack at Robb Elementary was an abject failure,” he said, “and antithetical to everything we’ve learned over the last two decades since the Columbine massacre.”

This article first appeared in the Mother Jones Daily, our newsletter that cuts through the noise to help you make sense of the most important stories of the day. Sign up for free here!

One of the more curious themes to emerge from the January 6 hearings is the notion that Mike Pence is an American hero, one who honorably rebuffed Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure him into using non-existent powers to subvert Joe Biden’s unequivocal victory. Others have pushed back against this characterization of Pence’s behavior, including Bret Stephens, who ponders today:

Where was Pence in November when Trump started lying about the election the moment their defeat became clear? Where was he when the president enlisted the likes of Sidney Powell and John Eastman to peddle insane conspiracy theories about voting machines and preposterous interpretations of the Electoral Count Act? Where was he on invoking the 25th Amendment after the assault on the Capitol, or at least on supporting impeachment? Pence was a worm who, for a few hours on Jan. 6, turned into a glowworm.

I’m firmly in the camp that Pence is not a good boy. But for anyone who finds themselves in the former—whether it be out of sincere gratitude that Pence resisted Trump’s coup fever dreams or apparent acceptance for men doing the absolute minimum—let his recent media appearances guide you to more reasonable waters. Let’s roll the tape.

Referring to the January 6 insurrection, the former vice president appeared on Fox News Digital Monday and characterized the current hearings as a Democratic political plot intended to “use that tragic day to distract attention from their failed agenda or to demean the intentions of 74 million Americans who rallied behind our cause.” Pence also flirted with Trump’s election lies, claiming that he had been concerned over the “voting irregularities” that supposedly arose in the election. As for his relationship with Trump, Pence said that they’re essentially simpatico. “In the aftermath of that tragic day, we sat down, and we talked through it,” Pence said of the man who allegedly expressed approval of rioters calling for him to be hanged.

But perhaps the most damning moment, one that succinctly captures Pence as the mealymouthed Trump stooge he’s always been came when Pence, during a separate Fox Business interview with Larry Kudlow, asserted that Biden tells lies more than any president he’s ever witnessed.

“Have you ever seen a president who refuses to accept blame and I want to add to that, commits so many falsehoods?” Kudlow asked, referring to Biden. “On any given day, he’s out there saying stuff that just ain’t true. You ever seen anything like that?”

“Never in my lifetime,” Pence said with a straight face. “There’s never been a time in my life where a president was more disconnected from the American people.”

Larry Kudlow asks Mike Pence if he's ever seen a president say as many falsehoods as Biden. Pence says "never in my lifetime." Not a single shred of self-awareness between these two guys. pic.twitter.com/lqf9SLlCSa

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 20, 2022

Taken together, Pence’s recent media appearances, which, of course, come amid more chatter of his own potential presidential run, seem to make the pretty compelling case that he’s far from the stand-up conservative some are so eager to lavish praise on these days.

Yellowstone National Park was forced to close all entrances to visitors this week, after heavy rainfall and snowmelt caused massive flooding to sweep through the area, ripping through roads, bridges, and homes. More than 10,000 people were ordered to evacuate the nation’s oldest national park. As of yesterday, there have been no major injuries or deaths reported, officials said.

The damage, however, is extensive and could take years to repair. “Because initial damage assessments are ongoing, the [National Park Service] does not yet have an estimate on when Yellowstone will fully reopen nor are preliminary costs for repairs and recovery available,” NPS said in a statement. Yellowstone had just celebrated its 150th anniversary in March, the Associated Press notes, and was nearing its busiest season when the floods hit.

While an official reopening date has not been set, officials said three out of the five park entrances are “targeted for reopening as early as next week.”

Here are some of the most dramatic videos and photos from the disaster:

Current conditions of Yellowstone’s North Entrance Road through the Gardner Canyon between Gardiner, Montana, and Mammoth Hot Springs.

We will continue to communicate about this hazardous situation as more information is available. More info: https://t.co/mymnqGvcVB pic.twitter.com/S5ysi4wf8a

— Yellowstone National Park (@YellowstoneNPS) June 13, 2022

Yellowstone National Park closed for the first time in 34 years after record floods washed out roads, bridges and nearby communities, prompting evacuations https://t.co/TF0Jl9Z15y pic.twitter.com/CXPqPfvfs0

— Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) June 14, 2022

Aerial views of historic flooding on the Stillwater and Yellowstone Rivers. pic.twitter.com/OIC2JP7RXI

— Larry Mayer (@BGMayer) June 13, 2022

@kryptekeeper

Bison walking up road during yellowstone flood.#yellowstonenationalpark #yellowstoneple#yellowstonepark💜

♬ original sound – KrypteKeeper

"That was our way home." Visitors at Yellowstone National Park watched as a bridge was swept away after severe flooding on Monday. https://t.co/2HxDL2nxML pic.twitter.com/TUORp1srjO

— CBS News (@CBSNews) June 14, 2022

Florida, a state famous for its oranges, is now in the orange. According to an analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most counties in the Sunshine State are seeing “high” Covid community levels, a metric based on hospital capacity, hospital admissions, and new case numbers. With an average of about 10,618 new cases reported per day in the state and climbing hospitalization rates this week, more than 90 percent of Floridians fall into the “high” risk category, the Tampa Bay Times reports.

Here’s the graphic of Covid community levels by county in Florida:

And here is the rest of the country: 

The report comes at a particularly bad time for Florida. This week, the Florida Department of Health announced it would not be preordering vaccines for children under five years old, making it the only state in the country to do so. “States do not need to be involved in the convoluted vaccine distribution process, especially when the federal government has a track record of developing inconsistent and unsustainable COVID-19 policies,” the department said in a statement, according to Politico. “It is also no surprise we chose not to participate in distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine when the Department does not recommend it for all children.” (It’s worth noting that Florida’s recommendations against vaccination for healthy children, including those older than five, have received harsh criticism from health experts and pediatricians.)

“There’s not going to be any state programs that are going to be trying to, you know, get Covid jabs to infants and toddlers and newborns,” said Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, at a news conference Thursday. “That’s not something that we think is appropriate, and so that’s not where we’re going to be utilizing our resources in that regard.” In response, Florida Democratic Party spokesperson Kobie Christian said DeSantis was “using children’s safety as a political prop,” CNN reported.

The CDC is expected to follow the Food and Drug Administration and recommend the vaccine for children under five years old (and older than six months) on Saturday.

On Friday, after reports of Florida’s decision circulated, Florida’s Department of Health issued another statement clarifying that vaccines can be ordered by health care providers and will be available “as early as next week” at pharmacies like CVS, Walgreens, and Publix, a Florida grocery store chain. “Florida’s decision to not participate in the cumbersome vaccine pre-ordering process never prohibited vaccine supply from being ordered or from being available in Florida,” it reads.

When it comes to reality television, my bar is pretty low. Love Island? Great. Dancing With the Stars? Fantastic. Antiques Roadshow? Mesmerizing. Too Hot to Handle? Gold. Almost nothing is too stupid for me to enjoy. So if I have time after a long day of doing journalist stuff to settle in for some television, chances are, it’s going to be trashy.

I understand, however, that these shows aren’t for everyone. And for the most part, I keep my love of reality TV to myself. It’s sort of like cheap wine: While I will happily dip into an opened, week-old bottle of Two Buck Chuck alone on a Tuesday night, I most certainly wouldn’t bring that to, say, a dinner party with friends. Other people have standards.

But there is one show that I’ve found myself talking about to anyone who will listen: The gripping—and surprisingly wholesome—Netflix baking competition Is It Cake? (Warning: spoilers ahead.)

Honestly, I didn’t expect much from this show. At its most basic level, Is It Cake?, which premiered in March, is a contest between nine bakers to make hyper-realistic cakes that look like things that are not cake: designer bags, bowling pins, shoes, luggage, steak, sea shells, etcetera. If a panel of celebrity judges can’t pick the cakes out of a lineup of real objects, the bakers win some cash—and increase their odds of winning the Grand Prize of $50,000.

If you’ve spent any time on social media during the pandemic, the show’s premise may sound familiar. As Slate‘s Cleo Levin wrote shortly after Is It Cake? aired, it’s basically a rip-off of an internet trend: “[T]he show’s source material is a meme, developed from the mega-viral series of realistic cake videos of the last couple years.” In short, someone saw one of those viral videos and thought, Let’s make it into a Netflix show. It’s absurd.

@netflix

Spoiler: it’s all cake! #isitcake #netflix

♬ original sound – Netflix

The writers of the show, to some extent, seem to be aware of this. Is It Cake? knows it’s a show about items made out of cake—and leans into the ridiculousness. This is best exemplified by the self-deprecating humor of the show’s host, comedian Mikey Day, “one of the white guys on SNL,” as he puts it, whose primary job responsibilities include making (at times, cringey) jokes and slicing open cakes with a really big knife. “That’s right,” he says in one of the episodes. “They gave an idiot a machete.”

But what makes Is It Cake? great isn’t the cake art or the cake jokes or even the tension of who is going to win. It’s the cast members themselves, who, even as they compete, root for each other. In the first episode, for instance, after fooling the judges with a taco cake, TikTok-er Jonny Manganello is given the opportunity to win $5,000 if he can distinguish between a sack of cash and a cake that looks a heck of a lot like a sack of cash. He guesses correctly, and his competitors burst into applause. “You guys are so nice!” he says. In episode five, Day holds a brief “graduation ceremony,” complete with a cap and tassel for 18-year-old Justin Ellen, who missed his high school graduation to appear on the show. And when finalist Hemu Basu is asked which of the eliminated bakers she would like to bring back into the competition to assist with a final cake, she chooses Dessiree Salaverria, because “[Salaverria] wanted one more chance to show her skill to her daughter.” Then, there’s Andrew Fuller aka “Sugar Freakshow” who becomes emotional after securing a spot in the finale: “I’m always, like, the weirdo and the oddball who people don’t take seriously,” he says, his eyes filled with tears. “And I’m just not used to being the one that people consider the best. And it’s crazy ’cause these are incredibly talented people and I just feel incredibly honored…I love you guys.” Is It Cake? may be the most wholesome reality television show I’ve seen since the Queer Eye reboot aired in 2018.

Perhaps it’s unsurprising that a show like Is It Cake? would resonate with audiences—it ranked in Netflix’s top 10 most popular shows in English for four weeks—at a time of so much conflict and uncertainty (see: Covid, Ukraine, abortion rights, gun violence, the economy, [insert latest crisis here]). When normalcy has dissolved, a bizarre show about cake just…makes sense. Or maybe, after the last two bitter years, we all just needed something sweet. Either way, I’m pleased to report, Is It Cake? has been renewed for another season.

The political action committee that helped bring down Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) has released a series of salacious and likely false accusations against Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)—and online liberals are eating it right up. But if the Cawthorn allegations, which centered around an explicit video, were fueled by homophobia, then the Boebert allegations are being fueled by a no less pernicious force: misogyny.

Several news sites in recent days have breathlessly amplified claims that Boebert had two abortions while working as a paid escort, a small news cycle that’s prompting loud accusations of hypocrisy from the blue-wave Twitter crowd. To be sure, these outlets have published unverified claims from a politically motivated organization as if they were facts, all in pretty clear violation of good journalistic practice. These claims come from a heavily redacted set of anonymous text messages sent to a member of the American Muckrakers PAC, without corroboration. And, as Will Sommer of the Daily Beast points out, one of the photos that the source characterized as being of Boebert is actually of another woman entirely—not exactly the mark of a trustworthy tipster.

Last month, I published a feature on Boebert, for which I interviewed many people who personally knew her. I had to sift through a lot of unverifiable information before deciding what to publish online. There was really no need for rumor-mongering about Boebert; the truth was dramatic enough. We know that Boebert was present on the night that a man exposed himself to two women at a bowling alley, one of them a teenager—then went Boebert went on to marry him. We know that she denied responsibility for selling tainted pork sliders that had sickened 80 people at a local rodeo. And we know, as I reported, that she consistently failed to pay employees at her restaurant, Shooters Grill.

A lot of the criticism of Boebert is warranted, but she doesn’t deserve to be the victim of sexist tropes. After my story on Boebert was published, many self-professed liberals used misogynistic language to describe her. One commenter called her a “batshit crazy woman.” A Twitter user replied to the article link with the word “Skank!!!” A recent Reddit thread related to a follow-up post contained some comments too obscene to post here.

In promoting the explicit video of Cawthorn and pushing unverified abortion allegations against Boebert, the American Muckrakers claim that they’re demonstrating political hypocrisy. Cawthorn, the PAC’s co-founder said, deserved to be outed as having dressed in drag and made homoerotic jokes with his friends because he “holds himself to be above everybody.” But the group’s attempt at exposing hypocrisy really came off as a cynical play on voters’ homophobia. Sure, one could call Boebert a hypocrite for allegedly having abortions despite publicly opposing them. But accusing Boebert of having done sex work and gotten abortions involves an obvious layer of contempt, of shaming a woman for things that she shouldn’t have to be ashamed of—especially when there’s no shortage of actually shameful things to talk about. 

Keep in mind that Boebert once referred to her colleague Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) as the “jihad squad.” If the public outcry over her explicitly hateful comments wasn’t enough to get her to tone it down, I doubt the label of “hypocrite” will do the trick.

Asking questions about the ethics of something you’re already doing can be a useful evasion. Still, it’s a dodge. Just own it.

But let me ask for your feedback. I’m curious.

Is this an ad?

When I say this, I am asking: Is this post from erstwhile New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s Substack “asking for feedback on an ethics question” actually just an ad for his new cider? Is it a bizarre way to avoid admitting the normal fact he wants people to buy his alcohol? Is it a wild attempt to unnecessarily preempt blowback? 

Thoughts?

Mostly I inflict my views on others; this time I'm asking for your views about an ethical question of my own. Is it OK for someone like me who has highlighted the toll of addiction and alcoholism to be raising wine grapes and cider apples? https://t.co/e9pdZVZXey Thoughts?

— Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) June 14, 2022

In case it helps inform your opinion, we got here because in 2021, Kristof attempted to run for governor of Oregon. He quit the Times, writing in his final column it was “fair to question my judgment.” From there, he launched his campaign as an encapsulation of the deaths of despair thesis. Kristof bemoaned that he’d fled to a better life while his friends were caught in the collapse of the working class. He harped on rising deaths caused by drugs and alcohol. 

This made it surprising, and ironic, when he said he was going back to Oregon both as a political candidate and to make an alcoholic drink. As Olivia Nuzzi noted in a story for New York magazine, Kristof was starting a cider business. His explanation of this contradiction was that, basically, alcoholism doesn’t work like that. Can’t really be from cider.

(Many disagreed!)

Nick Kristof's view on alcoholism is one of the dumbest things I've ever read. https://t.co/2xWNn8L9ZS pic.twitter.com/VnbiNl3pGw

— Bradford Pearson (@BradfordPearson) April 12, 2022

In the end, this “controversy” did not change Kirstof’s ability to garner votes.

That’s because Kristof did not meet the residency requirements, according to the state Supreme Court, and was dropped from the ballot.

Out at the Times and out of the race, Kristof’s been doing a bit of Substacking, where he has remained consistent when it comes to his fear that drug use these days is acute and particularly harmful.

But he needs feedback, you see, because he’s also stayed at the cider game. And he has a question: Am I being bad?

As he writes in explaining his question, he’s seen “how the wine industry had created good jobs, while spawning related jobs in tourism, retailing, restaurants and B&Bs.” He’s noted how “a glass of good cider and wine can promote social networks and reduce social isolation, which is another crisis I’ve written about often.”

In fact, Kristof has a potential comparison: “I wonder if alcohol isn’t something like motor vehicles: a powerful tool that causes death but also makes life more joyful for most.” (Hmm, do cars work like that?)

So I repeat: Why ask this now—months after the article and the dunk tweets about his hypocrisy? Well, as Kristof writes (with added bolding for emphasis from me):

All this has been on our mind because we just launched our new Kristof Farms cider a week ago, after it won a “best in class” among 151 ciders at Glintcap, the biggest international cider competition. We’re proud of this cider, and we think it adds sparkle to life.

That’s why I’m trying to think through these issues. My take is that a good cider or wine can, on balance, make life better and that they are worth producing and taking pride in, and have real economic development benefits. But I’m genuinely interested in how other people see this. What’s your take?

Oh, what’s my take? No, no. I’m just asking questions, too.

Specifically: Why did you try to shoehorn in an ad for your cider as some weird journalism ethics question? Why not just post “new cider (and career) just dropped” like any other journalist would?

The claim that Rudy Giuliani had been “inebriated” when he, as Donald Trump’s conspiratorial hype man, pushed the former president to prematurely declare victory over Joe Biden is indeed a distraction. But a day after the American public learned of Giuliani’s apparent condition on election night, the question arises: Is Giuliani wasted…right now?

I am disgusted and outraged at the out right lie by Jason Miller and Bill Steppien. I was upset that they were not prepared for the massive cheating (as well as other lawyers around the President) I REFUSED all alcohol that evening. My favorite drink..Diet Pepsi

— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) June 14, 2022

Hints of an inebriated state abound. There’s the misspelling of “outright” and Bill Stepien, the former Trump campaign manager. The continued push of the false claim that Trump won. And perhaps most egregiously, the choice of Diet Pepsi over Diet Coke as one’s preferred diet soda. Taken together, it’s giving vintage Trump tweet with a fresh hint of melting Giuliani.

But his denial of being drunk only underscores this key takeaway from my colleague Dan Friedman. Giuliani may have taken the time to shoot down the headline-generating drunk claim—garnering yikes and laughs—but his statement conveniently forgets to address the January 6 committee’s most damning allegation. That he, as Trump’s personal lawyer, pushed the then-president into falsely declaring victory, ultimately helping to lay the foundation for the violence at the Capitol.

The Supreme Court on Monday issued two decisions on immigration-related cases that, while less high-profile than the pending “Remain in Mexico” case, could have far-reaching implications for detained immigrants. 

In a blow to the rights of detained immigrants, the Supreme Court ruled in Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez that federal law doesn’t require the government to grant bond hearings to them after six months of detention to prove that they are at risk of flight or pose a danger to the community. “On its face, the statute says nothing about bond hearings before immigration judges or burdens of proof, nor does it provide any other indication that such procedures are required,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the 8–1 opinion, in which Justice Stephen Breyer concurred in part and dissented in part. 

In this case, Antonio Arteaga-Martinez, a citizen of Mexico who faced deportation proceedings and sought relief based on a fear of persecution or torture in his home country, was detained in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security for four months. After that period, he filed a petition for habeas corpus with a district court in Pennsylvania challenging his continued detention without a bond hearing. The district court had sided with Arteaga-Martinez, ordering the government to grant him a bond hearing before an immigration judge. The government appealed, but the appeals court affirmed the prior decision. At the bond hearing, an immigration judge authorized his release under supervision pending a decision on his deportation case. The Supreme Court reversed the rulings from the lower courts, finding that immigrants detained for longer than six months aren’t entitled to bond hearings. 

Justice Clarence Thomas suggested the court should overrule a precedent under another case known as Zadvydas v. Davis that prevents the government from detaining immigrants indefinitely. Mary Yanik, director of the Tulane Law School’s immigrant rights clinic, said on Twitter that such a reversal “would be a radical departure” from existing protections and result in no constitutional rights for people facing deportation. 

The justices also ruled on a related case, Garland v. Gonzalez, which consolidated two class-action suits brought on behalf of immigrants in similar circumstances as Arteaga-Martinez. In a 6–3 vote, the Justices also decided that immigrants trying to challenge their detention can’t seek relief from lower courts on a classwide basis. Instead, they have to individually petition the courts, which effectively makes it harder for immigrants to challenge immigration policies. “Injunctive relief on behalf of an entire class of aliens is not allowed because it is not limited to remedying the unlawful ‘application’ of the relevant statutes to ‘an individual alien,” Justice Alito wrote for the majority.

The ruling, Justice Sotomayor wrote in a partial dissent, “risks depriving many vulnerable noncitizens of any meaningful opportunity to protect their  rights.”

SCOTUS bars classwide injunctive relief in immigration cases. This means that if (when) DHS is violating the rights of noncitizens on a classwide basis, federal courts cannot enjoin it on a classwide basis. What justice is there in that? https://t.co/kwxnt22XdA

— David Cole (@DavidColeACLU) June 13, 2022

Herschel Walker talks a big game. As I’ve written before, the former college football star, who is now challenging Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) for a Georgia Senate seat, claims to have considered committing murder, repeatedly played Russian roulette, and suffered from dissociative identity disorder-related blackouts that allowed him to forget allegedly pointing a gun at his ex-wife. 

Another one for the list: Walker has claimed to have a history in law enforcement. He doesn’t—even if his resume does sound like the making of a fine police officer. As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported today, Walker said on at least three occasions that he had worked in law enforcement—and he once even claimed to be an FBI agent.

Pressed by AJC, Walker’s campaign said that he was an honorary deputy at Georgia’s Cobb County Police Department, which, a former DeKalb County district attorney said, is “like a junior ranger badge.”

As for being in the FBI, well, Walker spent a week at an FBI training school in Quantico, Virginia, in 1989. He never graduated college, a prerequisite for joining the FBI.

Honestly, I’m not sure which is worse: a cop running for Senate, or a non-cop pretending to be one.

As the congressional committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol prepares to kick off its primetime hearing, a curious report has emerged on the front pages of the New York Times. Taken at face value, it offers a behind-the-scenes look at how Jared and Ivanka dealt with Donald Trump’s increasingly delusional claim that he had defeated Joe Biden and secured a second term. 

“We’re moving to Miami,” Kushner told his wife from their $18,000-a-month mansion, deciding that they’d hit eject even if Trump refused to accept defeat. The Times goes on:

No matter how vociferously Mr. Trump claimed otherwise, neither Mr. Kushner nor Ivanka Trump believed then or later that the election had been stolen, according to people close to them. While the president spent the hours and days after the polls closed complaining about imagined fraud in battleground states and plotting a strategy to hold on to power, his daughter and son-in-law were already washing their hands of the Trump presidency.

Their decision to move on opened a vacuum around the president that was filled by conspiracy theorists like Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who relayed to Mr. Trump farcically false stories of dead voters, stuffed ballot boxes, corrupted voting machines and foreign plots. Concluding that the president would not listen even to family members urging him to accept the results, Mr. Kushner told Mr. Trump that he would not be involved if Mr. Giuliani were in charge, according to people he confided in, effectively ceding the field to those who would try to overturn the election.

Just two weeks after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at a Texas elementary school, Uvalde community members—including a doctor, a student survivor, and the parents of a child who died—have come together to plead for Congress to take action on gun control.

Dr. Roy Guerrero, an Uvalde pediatrician, tried to convey the horror of the day to the House Oversight Committee.

“What I did find was something no prayer would ever relieve: two children whose bodies had been pulverized by bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been ripped apart, that the only clue to their identities was the blood-spattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them,” he said.

Guerrero said that he became a pediatrician because he admired children’s resilience and willingness to accept change. “Adults are stubborn,” he said. “Why else would there have been such little progress made in Congress to stop gun violence? Innocent children all over the country today are dead because laws and policy allow people to buy weapons before they’re legally old enough to even buy a pack of beer.”

Guerrero criticized one other habit of adults: their affinity for nostalgia. “Once the blood is rinsed away from the bodies of our loved ones and scrubbed off the floors of the schools and supermarkets and churches,” he said, “the carnage from each scene is erased for our collective conscience, and we return again to nostalgia, to the rose-tinted view of our Second Amendment as a perfect instrument of American life, no matter how many lives are lost.”

Miah Cerrillo, a student who survived the massacre, was the next to testify at the hearing via video. Cerrillo made headlines when she described covering herself in her classmate’s blood and playing dead. In her video appearance today, she described the gunman shooting her teacher in the head. Asked if she felt safe at school, Miah shook her head and said, “Because I don’t want it to happen again.”

Miah Cerrillo, the #Uvalde student who smeared blood all over herself during the shooting, says she doesn’t feel safe at school because she doesn’t “want it to happen again”

"Do you think it's going to happen again?"

Miah: -nods- pic.twitter.com/rie0zreopA

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) June 8, 2022

Miah’s father, Miguel Cerrillo, appeared at the hearing and choked back tears as he described how the shooting affected his daughter. “She is not the same little girl that I used to play with, run with, and do everything, because she was Daddy’s little girl,” he said. “I wish something would change, not only for our kids, but every single kid in the world, because schools are not safe anymore.”

Kimberly and Felix Rubio, the parents of 10-year-old Lexi Rubio, who died in the attack, appeared to remember their daughter, who wanted to go to college on a softball scholarship, major in math, and attend law school.

“We understand that for some reason—to some people, to people with money, to people who fund political campaigns—that guns are more important than children,” Kimberly said. She proposed a list of demands: a ban on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, red flag laws, stronger background checks, and an increase in the age to purchase assault rifles in Texas from 18 to 21.

As her husband wiped tears from his eyes, Kimberly concluded, “Somewhere out there, there is a mom listening to our testimony, thinking, ‘I can’t even imagine their pain,’ not knowing that our reality will one day be hers, unless we act now.”

Wait, what is this all for?

Starting this week, the House’s January 6 Committee will hold a series of hearings, at least two of which will be in “primetime,” on the blitz of the Capitol by protesters egged on President Donald Trump on January 6. As my colleague David Corn has reported, the hope is to “convey the full significance of the insurrectionist assault on Congress.”

The seven Democrats and two Republicans on the panel face a massive undertaking to convince the American public, many of whom largely believe the news has exaggerated the affair, that something went dreadfully wrong on January 6, that American democracy was fundamentally harmed. It is an attempt to lay down for history what occurred.

Which is why it was odd this morning when the New York Times described the hearings as aimed at something else: winning the 2022 midterms.

NYT headline about violent coup to topple multi party electoral order of US republic apes talking point of party that orchestrated and covers up for sedition by casting attempt at national reckoning & accountability as a political horse race stunt pic.twitter.com/UtnN8VlgY5

— Philip Gourevitch (@PGourevitch) June 7, 2022

Perhaps this is just a bad headline. The Washington Post reported Democrats are “not counting” on the January 6 hearings for influencing voters in the upcoming midterms; in the story, Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) noted that the presentation is solely “focused on presenting the American people with the truth about this violent attack.” The Times’ own report contains much of the same rhetoric.

But the headline is one set of a larger piece: New York magazine reported the plan is to “cast as stars” Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Democrats hired a former ABC News producer to assure it is, according to Axios, a “blockbuster investigative special.” At some point, the medium becomes the message.

Since January 6, and for much of the Trump era, Democrats have melded defenses of democracy with pleas to Vote Blue. (Donate, too, folks.) And so when Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) tells the Times he wants the hearings to show “how irresponsibly complicit Republicans were in attempting to toss out their vote and just how far Republicans will go to gain power for themselves,” it’s easy to ask: Is he talking about the midterms or an investigation of a violent attack? The answer is Democrats want it to be both. 

But putting on display weeks of what I’ve (perhaps crassly) started calling Democracy Porn can only do so much. People have to believe our electoral system, in some way, works for them. If not, an issue arises: What is this week’s massive spectacle TV show actually defending?

Institutions? Democracy? Rule of law? You mean the things that…don’t seem to be working at all for so many people?

Let’s remember: Over the past few years, a central thesis of the Democrats’ message has been to protect institutions of democracy. And that worked—they won. Yet, now with that power? Not much has changed. Democrats failed to enshrine reforms like eliminating the filibuster and passing voting protections, among many others. They have often fallen short in making the institutions strong enough to be cheered.

Partly as a result, everything else is broken, too. After a heartbreaking deluge of mass shootings, Congress can’t pass gun reform. The Supreme Court is about to overturn Roe as the federal government more or less sits on its hands. Police, transit, housing, and health care remain fundamentally broken. COVID relief could have heralded a larger social welfare state if enshrined, fulfilling all those heady pieces about Joe Biden’s New Deal; instead, Democrats couldn’t even keep around the expanded child care tax credit, which had lifted many out of poverty. For all the paying attention to court cases, scandals, reports, hearings, and impeachment(s) that would finally oust Trump, he’s been fine. Carbon filters into the sky.

Yelling about our chief Democratic obstructionists in Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema isn’t wrong as a response to this. But we’re living under a system designed to empower them.

So, sure, one can imagine how these hearings would be a good idea, a thorough presentation that outlines the core concepts of what some Democrats have been screaming for a long time: The other side cares more about winning (appeasing Trump, in our parlance) than democracy (the will of the people) and here’s the proof.

But that gambit doesn’t work as well if everything, the very system itself, is broken. The material benefits of democracy must flow to people from the institutions to earn all this defense. If not, we are in grave danger.

The right has made clear where it’s headed. Consider the ascendency of Senate hopefuls J.D. Vance and Blake Masters, who have shorn their economic populism pretty far from the economic. Ponder the New Right. Think about (shudder, I’m sorry) how the faux-Marxists cool kids have indulged in it. They are landing pretty close to fascism. The Republican Party has illustrated it’s okay with a tinge of illiberalism. Who could forget CPAC in Hungary? 

January 6 was the more obvious of the antidemocratic moments of the past few years. But as Ari Berman has written for us, it is the slow-moving destruction of election law that could papercut our system to its knees. We’re living through a dirge of democracy; January 6 was a high note. If someone savvier takes up the reins, the next coup will likely be horrible, but also boring—and it might even be exceedingly popular.

The Democrats’ response to that cannot be only to message harder, even if it’s during primetime, that the other side is antidemocratic. Everyone saw it. The problem is that not enough people care that much about the sacred values of a Republic. They care about other things. For some, that’s bare allegiance to Donald Trump; for others, it’s tax cuts. No amount of framing will outweigh the galling lack of action by Democrats.

There is only one solution: Shit has to work. I get that’s not easy, but democracy has to function as a way to make the lives of people tangibly and materially better. If it does not, people won’t believe in it. Democrats need to not only defend democracy in hearings, they have to make it popular in real life. Or else it seems like all there is is the show.

This is something Eric Foner, the historian most famous for his book on Reconstruction, recently wrote about the history of the Democratic Party for the London Review of Books. In defeating Trump, Foner warns, many missed how easily a new Republican coalition is forming. He seems to agree with Michael Kazin, whose new book, What It Took To Win, allows him to give a tour of the history of the party, in noting that “the Democrats have succeeded…when they have enacted policies, such as Medicare in the 1960s, that demonstrably serve all segments of the working and middle class.”

Lately, in having these thoughts, I’ve come back to a piece from 1941 by Dorothy Thompson. In it, she famously wrote about the “macabre parlor game” of wondering “Who Goes Nazi?” There are “the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers,” she writes.

Often, we think of the born Nazis. These are easy enough to identify. But I want to pause for a moment on those “whom democracy itself has created.” Who is this man? Thompson describes him thus: “He is the product of a democracy hypocritically preaching social equality and practicing a carelessly brutal snobbery. He is a sensitive, gifted man who has been humiliated into nihilism. He would laugh to see heads roll.”

Democrats must do everything in their power to stop that nihilism.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) loves accusing people of supporting pedophilia.

During Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Greene levied the accusation against the Democratic Party and a select group of moderate Republicans, all because of a bad-faith argument that Jackson was lenient when sentencing child-pornography defendants. Greene’s enthusiasm for smearing others as pedophiles isn’t surprising, given her affinity for QAnon and the pedophilia hysteria that goes along with it.

So I guess that makes it “funny,” in a backwards and depressing way, that Greene hired Milo Yiannopoulos as an unpaid intern. Yiannopoulos even posted a photo of his badge to Telegram.

For those blissfully unfamiliar with Yiannopoulos’ comments on sex between children and adults, all you really need to know is that they were bad enough for the editor-in-chief of Breitbart News to call them “indefensible” and “appalling.” Yiannopoulos had defended sex between adults and boys as young as 13 and bashed child sex abuse victims who came forward as adults. He has since said that his comments were an effort to cope with the sex abuse he experienced as a child. Yiannopoulos resigned from Breitbart in 2017.

Since then, Yiannopoulos has gone on to be a fundamental part of a new push from the far-right to fundamentally change the Catholic Church in the United States and across the world. As Kathryn Joyce reported for us earlier this year:

In 2018, [Yiannopoulos] published a book, Diabolical: How Pope Francis Has Betrayed Clerical Abuse Victims Like Me—and Why He Has to Go, that tied his defense of the remarks he’d made—that he’d been glibly processing his own childhood sexual abuse—to the broader crisis in the Catholic Church. Soon, he was welcomed by right-wing Catholic news outlets like Church Militant and LifeSiteNews, and a popular Catholic apologetics YouTube show hosted by firebrand and now anti-vaccine activist Patrick Coffin, which together represent some of the most vitriolic critics of the pope online. In early 2021, Yiannopoulos completed the journey, announcing to LifeSiteNews that returning to a traditionalist form of Catholicism had helped him become “ex-gay,” and he now planned to build a Catholic-based conversion therapy clinic in Florida, to be called the Milo Center.

As Yiannopoulos conducted a publicity tour around the alternative media universe of the Catholic right, he theatrically threw away an engagement ring he called his “sodomy stone” and quipped about the need to “make the Vatican straight again” and “make America homophobic again.” By July, he’d become a regular columnist at Church Militant, where he paired his trademark acidity with a laser fixation on the “cult of homosexualism,” which he described as “a reimagining of a very old, pagan form of worship.” He also claimed that women who miscarry after receiving Covid-19 vaccinations have effectively aborted their children, and declared that “sometimes one feels the only good bishop is a dead bishop.” By fall, he was appearing on Church Militant’s home-shopping network, flogging an $88 “Adoring Virgin” icon—a “good Mary,” Yiannopoulos promised, unlike some less physically attractive depictions—and a CD set of him reading Psalms and Proverbs for $75.

As usual, anything Yiannopouls says should be taken with a grain of salt, given his propensity to troll. That includes his internship. But, come on. There’s an entire section of his Wikipedia page subtitled “Remarks on paedophilia and child sexual abuse.”

What sort of a statement is Greene hoping to make by affiliating with someone whose rhetoric is harmful enough to have gotten him banned from both Twitter and Facebook? And to have gotten him to resign from, of all places, Breitbart?

“So I have an intern that was raped by a priest as a young teen, was gay, has offended everyone at some point, turned his life back to Jesus and Church, and changed his life,” Marjorie Taylor Greene told The Daily Beast. “Great story!” https://t.co/uVPkw3Zeeb

— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) June 6, 2022

If Greene can accuse others of being “pro-pedophilia” for supporting Judge Jackson, does she think she’s immune from being the subject of those same jeers for supporting someone who has actually belittled the experiences of child sexual assault survivors?