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Five reasons for the HBO drama’s massive footprint on the TV landscape.

One way to know that Succession has become one of the signature television shows of the moment is just how thoroughly American TV fandom at large has digested it as a series of quick touchstones. You may not have seen Succession, but maybe you’ve heard about Kendall Roy’s supremely cringey rap, or the line “You can’t make a Tomelette without breaking some Greggs.”

Maybe you’ve seen tweets about how much the theme song is a banger. Or heard brilliant comedian Demi Adejuyigbe’s “Kiss from Daddy,” which adds ridiculous lyrics to said theme song. Perhaps the words “boar on the floor” mean something to you?

If you’re not a fan of HBO’s darkly comedic primetime soap, you may not be aware of all of the above, but at least one of any number of Succession memes, jokes, and flash points has probably pierced your social media bubble, even if you were completely baffled by it. The show has slowly but surely wormed its way into the hearts of People Who Talk About TV Online, and that has allowed it to become the prestige drama of the moment, winning near-universal critical praise and nine Emmys across its first two seasons.

A lot of that success is due to how easy it is to boil down the show to its most immediately hilarious jokes, awkward moments, and jaw-dropping plot twists. But I would argue that just as much of it stems from how ably Succession incorporates themes our culture is obsessed with right now. In its portrayal of a broken family that is making the world a little bit worse every single day, the series speaks to an era where billionaires openly muse about moving to a new planet if we irreparably screw this one up.

Succession is many, many things, but the series has five specific modes that have made it such a darling of people who care about TV. Those modes illustrate just how completely the series has encapsulated our modern world.

Mode 1: A lacerating portrayal of wealth’s corruptive power

HBO

If you asked even the most casual viewer of Succession to identify its core theme, “wealth corrupts those who hold it” (or something to that effect) would almost surely be part of their answer. Wealth is everywhere in Succession, but it’s rarely displayed ostentatiously. The characters are so used to having obscene amounts of money, they seem unaware that not everyone enjoys the same levels of comfort.

The Roy family at the center of Succession is a kind of portmanteau of the Murdoch family (owners of the News Corp empire, encompassing Fox News, the Fox Broadcasting Company, and numerous publications) and the Redstone family (majority shareholder of the ViacomCBS empire, which includes numerous TV networks as well as Paramount Pictures). Paterfamilias Logan Roy (Brian Cox) is past his prime, and in the series’ very first episode, he almost dies. But he’s very good at yelling, and everybody around him is so terrified of his whims that he tends to get his way, even when he’s recovering from a debilitating stroke.

Succession’s first episode almost immediately established just how divorced the Roys are from reality. In one of its most memorable sequences, Roman (Kieran Culkin), the sleazy and opportunistic youngest brother of the family, offers a working-class kid $1 million if he can hit a home run. He can’t, and Roman chuckles at the whole ordeal while a few of the lampreys who have attached themselves to the Roy family’s belly go to pay off the kid’s parents so that they don’t tell anybody anything.

Broadly speaking, Succession lives within the “primetime soap about a rich family” subgenre, but rather than reveling in the opulence and decadence of extreme wealth in the fashion of Dynasty or Dallas, Succession makes everything feel a little gross. The show is careful to never present wealth as a prison that holds the characters back — they could always just buy six jets and move to Antarctica — but it never loses sight of the fact that we, the viewers, live in a socioeconomic prison built in large part by people who have more money than they could ever reasonably spend.

Every so often, a character on Succession suggests the Roys are destroying the planet, and the show never offers a response other than, “Yes, almost certainly.” There’s no reason for anybody to have so much money, and the Roys’ wealth serves primarily to make them squabble endlessly with each other over it. Succession makes you empathize with billionaires without ever making you like them. It’s a neat trick.

Mode 2: An extremely dark comedy

Make no mistake: Succession is a uniquely despairing drama about a family (and a planet) circling the drain. But the reason it’s watchable at all is that it’s also one of TV’s funniest shows.

It comes by its comedic bona fides honestly. Creator and showrunner Jesse Armstrong was known predominantly for comedy before taking this turn toward the dramatic, having co-created the legendary British series Peep Show and written for the British political satire The Thick of It. He even earned an Oscar nomination for co-writing the screenplay of In the Loop, the film adaptation of The Thick of It. His keen sense of satire is to Succession’s great benefit.

Consider, “You can’t make a Tomelette without breaking some Greggs,” a joke from the penultimate episode of season two. It’s part of an email read by a congressman at a Senate subcommittee hearing investigating the Roy family’s shady handling of sexual assault allegations tied to their cruise line.

The joke, then, is part of something uniquely dark and horrible, but it’s also just such a good joke. It skillfully plays off the fact that Roy family son-in-law Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) and gangly nephew/cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) are the show’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, lurking around the story’s edges to have comedic side plots that occasionally intersect with the action.

“Tomelette” and “Greggs” isn’t just a funny combination of puns. It underscores the characters’ roles within both the show and this storyline, as well as the callousness with which the Roy family treats almost every serious wrong committed by Waystar Royco, the media conglomerate the family owns. It might be perfect.

Beyond oddly significant puns, Succession boasts a thorough command of a wide range of comedic styles. It’s as adroit with cringe comedy as it is with wordplay, and it allows its characters to be clever without turning everyone into a quip machine. I laugh many, many times watching each episode of Succession, without ever feeling like the show undercuts its storytelling with absurdity. It’s a neat trick.

Mode 3: An accurate, depressing media satire

HBO

Early in season two, someone in my office got their hands on a baseball cap emblazoned with Vaulter, the fake version of Gawker that the Roy family destroys across the course of Succession’s first two seasons. When I posted a photo of myself wearing it on social media, seemingly every journalist I know reached out to ask where I’d gotten it. They can’t have it. It’s mine.

I share this anecdote to elucidate the degree to which Succession resonates with media types: Its portrayal of how the Roys blithely destroy everything they touch to protect their own interests emphasizes just how perilous journalism has become at this point in history. Profit margins are razor thin, and increased media consolidation means that independent voices within the industry are largely marginalized or snuffed out. (See also: original recipe Gawker.)

Of all the modes of Succession, “media satire” is the one that probably speaks to the smallest number of people. But at a certain point, if everybody who works in media is watching a show and treating it like it’s the only show on TV that matters, a self-fulfilling prophecy emerges. Succession is popular beyond media bubbles, but its popularity within media bubbles certainly didn’t hurt it with regard to getting early attention.

I’m not sure that Succession has as much to say about the media as it does many other topics, but maybe the simple act of saying, “This seems like a shitty situation,” is enough in an era when the economic pressures that threaten to suffocate the entire media industry add up to a shitty situation.

I do find its portrayal of the ways media titans use their companies mostly to create realities where they never need to feel challenged or upbraided appropriately chilling. Logan Roy is really good at yelling at people until reality bends to become what he wants it to be. His media empire is an extension of that.

On the whole, media is even more incidental to Succession than, say, advertising was to Mad Men or chemistry was to Breaking Bad by merely offering a vague milieu in which the series can take place. Still, whenever Succession drops you into the offices of Waystar Royco, it almost always nails what it’s like to work there. It’s a neat trick.

Mode 4: An acutely observant exploration of internecine family squabbling

If Succession’s most obvious ancestral genre is the primetime soap about rich people, it also has a healthy dose of the family drama baked into its DNA. (Then again, most primetime soaps, from Dallas to Empire, are sneakily family dramas.) The core of the series rests atop the ever-shifting relationships among the four Roy siblings, especially as they compete to win their father’s approval and affection.

The series is at its sharpest when it focuses on the three youngest Roy siblings — depressive would-be heir apparent Kendall (Emmy winner Jeremy Strong), slinky cad Roman, and desperate girlboss Shiv (Sarah Snook). The three have an older half-brother, Connor (Alan Ruck), who has a different mother from them, but Connor is more of a comic-relief character, at least so far.

Succession is just so smart about the ways siblings both support and undercut each other, sometimes in the same moment. Tentative alliances form among all four of the Roy children, sometimes in opposition to Logan and sometimes in support of him, and the series digs into how these four particular people are the only ones who can know what it’s like to be raised by Logan Roy.

But the series’ portrayal of complicated family dynamics extends beyond the siblings. Logan’s current wife Marcia (Hiam Abbass) emerges as a key player in her own right across Succession’s first two seasons, while Tom and Greg are more peripheral family members who perpetually seem to be stuck at the kids’ table.

Succession also broadens its portrayal of family in a metaphorical direction, by underlining the poisonous nature of corporations that insist all their employees are part of a giant family. Waystar Royco might be a family, but it’s just as fucked up as the Roy family. (Keep an eye on J. Smith-Cameron as Gerri, who starts out as a minor player in season one but becomes more and more important as the show continues.)

Beyond even Waystar Royco’s own staff, the series pulls in a handful of other rich and powerful families for comparison and contrast against the Roy family. Notably, season two introduces the Pierces, a loose riff on the Sulzbergers (owners of the New York Times) and the sort of old-money liberals Logan Roy was so clearly reacting against when he was young and hungry. (The midseason two episode “Tern Haven” is a terrific clash between the two families.)

If I had to choose just one of its modes to explain why Succession has taken off the way it has, I’d choose this one. The show’s finely tuned understanding of complicated family dynamics means that you can surely find one or two details in its portrayal of the Roy family that resonate with your own life — and might leave you thankful your family isn’t as messed up as the Roys. It’s a neat trick.

But on the “acutely observed family dynamics” front, the series ultimately goes one level deeper than even that.

Mode 5: A psychologically trenchant excavation of the legacy of abuse

HBO

Succession often portrays Logan Roy as a Shakespearean figure, a little like Lear bellowing at the skies to obey him and not being heard. But because it places his titanic rage within settings that viewers are at least somewhat familiar with — boardrooms and dining rooms — it becomes easier, as the show goes on, to realize Logan is a terrible, abusive parent. At one point in season two, he physically strikes Roman for a minor slight, and all the other siblings either flinch instinctively or stare, dead-eyed, as it happens.

Logan Roy has always gotten his way. He’s built his life around the idea that because he thinks something is true, it must indeed be true, and he has built a media empire around similar principles of telling people what they want to hear and not what they actually need to know. He shouts and he blusters and he snaps at people, and if he doesn’t get what he wants, anybody close to him feels the effects of his ire.

In Logan’s case, those who are closest to him have always been his children. Succession’s first season hinted at the depths of sadness to which Logan has driven his kids, and then the second season made that sadness both the subtext and text of nearly every scene. The Roy siblings want so badly to be loved by a man who is only capable of trying to bludgeon them (occasionally literally) into a form that is more pleasing to him, which is to say a form that is more subservient to him.

Yes, Succession is funny; yes, it’s about wealth; and, yes, it’s really smart about the media. But for my money, the show is smartest about what it means to have an abusive parent. The longer Succession runs, the more Logan’s monstrousness is revealed as critical to the formation of his children. They long desperately to be loved, but what they get is mostly a sense that they have no control over anything in their lives. They spread that lack of control outward to everyone around them. They are a ruling class that does not understand what it means to rule, much less how much their ignorance damages everyone they come into contact with, because all they have known is damage.

To be alive in the 2020s is to become more and more aware of how deep the rot goes, to realize how unlikely any of us is to turn the car around before it goes over the cliff. We exist in a world full of men who believe that if they shout something loud enough, it is true — and who take extreme offense to the idea that maybe they are wrong, no matter how gently we break it to them. Succession captures that feeling, and ... I don’t know if it’s a neat trick, but it feels like right now more than any other show on television.

Succession season three debuts Sunday at 9 pm Eastern on HBO, and will run through December. The show is also available to stream on HBO Max.

the sonic hedgehog gene is responsible for chili dog expression

Which needs go unmet? Which millions of Americans don't get served?

The contrasts in the Democratic Party between the majority and the feckless conservatives couldn’t have been made more clear than they have been this week between Washington State Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. One is steadfastly promoting the vision President Joe Biden has for rebuilding the nation’s economy and addressing racial inequality and climate change. One has swanned off to Paris to promote herself. You can probably guess which is which.

More than two dozen House Democrats signed on to a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from Jayapal arguing for the “compelling case” made by President Biden “to the American people that government can, and should, be a force for good in the country.” That case included “bold investments in good-paying union jobs, climate action, immigration reform, and caregiving,” which they argue “are essential to uplifting families and building back better.”

“This is our moment,” Jayapal and colleagues remind Pelosi, “to make the President’s vision a reality.” The caucus rejects the idea that Democrats have to be negotiating with themselves. “We have been told we can either adequately fund a small number of investments or legislate broadly, but only make a shallow, short-term impact,” they write. “We would argue this is a false choice.” They write that “a majority of our 96 CPC members agree” on four principles that “should guide our caucus’ legislative strategy”: to make shorter, “robust investments over a shorter window … [to] touch people’s lives immediately” by “structuring legislation so that benefits flow to the American people as quickly as possible;” provide universal benefits “to ensure lasting change … structure these programs to eliminate false cliffs or administrative burdens that leave out the neediest or those areas with higher costs of living;” and “keep the President’s commitment to racial equity.”

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Jayapal also appeared on CNN Wednesday to reject the idea of a needing a self-imposed deadline of Oct. 31 to get the reconciliation bill done. Surface transportation funding, which has been extended, expires then. But as Jayapal said, “We’ve had 29 short term extensions” of transportation funding. “We can certainly do that again.” She also challenged Sinema and her colleague in chaos, Sen. Joe Manchin, to lay out their demands and engage in discussions with other members.

She got some backup on that from a Senate colleague, Elizabeth Warren, who appeared on ABC’s The View on Wednesday. Warren said she would not not “negotiate against myself” and demanded the two on “the other side,” Manchin and Sinema, “put on the table what they don’t want, what they want to cut […] Every time someone says to me, ‘well I don’t like that price tag,’ my answer is, ‘then tell me what you want to cut,’” Warren said. “Do you really say to the mommas of America, ‘you know, you don’t really need childcare.’ And keep in mind, with women out in the workforce, one out of four right now says the big problem (is) they don’t have affordable, accessible childcare. Are you really going to say to them ‘too bad’?”

Meanwhile, Sinema—who only talks to the White House and only when she feels like it, apparently—is spending her week in London and Paris on a fundraising trip. “Ms. Sinema’s office declined to say how long she would be abroad, what countries she was visiting, how the trip was being paid for and whether she was doing any additional fund-raising for her own campaign,” The New York Times reports. Imagine that: Sinema refusing to answer any questions. “Her political team had reached out to set up meetings in London and Paris, according to two people familiar with the matter.”

It is legal for lawmakers to fundraise overseas as long as the contributions they receive are from American citizens. It is slightly obnoxious to fundraise in London and Paris when you are the primary obstacle to working families getting child care assistance, or seniors and disabled people having access to dental care.

Sinema’s spokesperson, John LaBombard, didn’t help her much: “So far this week, Senator Sinema has held several calls—including with President Biden, the White House team, Senator Schumer’s team, and other Senate and House colleagues—to continue discussions on the proposed budget reconciliation package,” he told the Times. “Those conversations are ongoing.” That might have been in response to a Politico piece Wednesday in which a Democratic senator reported Sinema telling them: “I’m not going to share with you or with Schumer or with Pelosi,” what she wants. “I have already told the White House what I am willing to do and what I’m not willing to do. I’m not mysterious. It’s not that I can’t make up my mind. I communicated it to them in detail. They just don’t like what they’re hearing.”

No report on whether this fundraising trip for Sinema includes a side trip to Versailles, where she would surely feel right at home.

The Times takes the opportunity to remind readers of Sinema’s previous eyebrow-raising money events during these negotiations, like the  D.C. fundraiser five business lobbying groups held for her in late September. Sponsors of that little soiree included groups that are officially opposed to the budget reconciliation bill for Build Back Better. Just days after that, the Times recalls, “Ms. Sinema traveled to Arizona where she had a ‘retreat’ for her political action committee at a high-end resort and spa in Phoenix. When she left Washington, the reason that her spokesman provided was a medical appointment for a foot injury.”

It’s almost enough to make you think Sinema doesn’t give a damn about anything other than getting money to go to Paris, to spa retreats, and for opposing the will of the majority of Americans.

She and Manchin have been doing their damnedest to prolong these negotiations in the belief that it would break a long-standing agreement between the White House and congressional Democrats on this initiative, and force the House to vote on the fossil fuel-heavy hard infrastructure bill they structured with Republicans. Then they could refuse their support for the reconciliation bill and get what they really wanted—what the moneyed interests behind them really want.

As of now, the White House is reportedly running out of patience, sending a message to lawmakers that the “time for negotiations is nearing an end … soon it will be time for negotiations to conclude.” Meanwhile, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is still trying to determine what exactly it is Manchin and Sinema would agree to, since they seem unwilling to put it into words.

A journalist is sounding off after U.S. Circuit Judge Bill Pryor refused to comment about a particularly questionable hire, who was accused years earlier of tweeting her disdain for Black people. That hire, a new clerk named Crystal Clanton, previously served as the national field director for the conservative youth group Turning Point USA, and she was accused in The New Yorker in 2017 of texting another Turning Point employee: “i hate black people. Like f--k them all ... I hate blacks. End of story.”

It certainly marked the end of her story with Turning Point, an organization with its own issues with racism, wrote Kyle Whitmire, a political columnist for the Alabama Media Group. Clanton resigned and, in a statement to The New Yorker, said she has “no recollection of these messages and they do not reflect what I believe or who I am, and the same was true when I was a teenager.”

Clanton worked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, and was also admitted to George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, as reported by Above the Law after breaking the story about Clanton’s position with Pryor. “So we are left to believe either Judge Pryor is incapable of either the most rudimentary Google search, or he just doesn’t care that he’s putting someone with a history of racist behavior further along on the path to power,” journalist Kathryn Rubino wrote.

Whitmire also spent much of his column rightfully criticizing the judge for refusing to explain his hiring decision. The journalist said his call to action wasn’t for Clanton. He said it’s quite possible the alleged text message was nothing more than a youthful transgression that hardly represents who Clanton is now. And while I hardly believe—and definitely don’t accept—that a person simply grows out of racism, I do agree that the judge’s decision to hire Clanton is extremely telling.

“Clerkships for federal judges aren’t coffee-fetching internships for resume padding,” Whitmire wrote. “They are launchpads for legal careers—shortcuts into ivory tower law firms, stepping stones that can lead to the bench itself one day.

“It’s a gateway. Pryor is a gatekeeper. And when you let one person through that gate, you inevitably leave someone else locked on the outside.”

It’s not exactly unbelievable that Pryor would be an unfit gatekeeper. A top choice of former President Donald Trump for a Supreme Court justice position in 2016, the judge deemed the Roe v. Wade ruling the “worst abomination in the history of constitutional law” and “a constitutional right to murder an unborn child.”

Meteor Blades, a Daily Kos staff writer emeritus, wrote of Pryor that year: “From his judgeship on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, he ruled for the restrictive Georgia voter ID law, claiming that ‘racially disparate effects’ are inadequate to prove a violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The Supreme Court he would sit on has ruled oppositely. In Kimel v. Florida Board of Regents, Pryor went a good deal further than the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling, arguing that Congress’ had no power to legislate under the Fourteenth Amendment with respect to age discrimination because it was not concerned with a ‘suspect’ classification like race and national origin, a radical theory that would further limit Congress’s ability to protect individual rights.’”

Not exactly a model for morality, then or now.

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Here is a sentence exactly nobody in the world needed to hear: Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw has written a children's book.

Crenshaw—who is better known for asking U.S. military troops to report "woke ideology" in their ranks, calling for athletes who protest during the national anthem to be kicked off their Olympic teams, claiming that corporations speaking out against Republican-backed voting restrictions is "fascism," that new Labor Department rules on vaccinations for companies with 100+ employees is "insanity" and "trying to start a full on revolt," for skirting House security stations, and for having sales of his last book goosed to the tune of $400,000 in copies bulk-bought directly by the National Republican Campaign Committee—wants children to know about the dangers of "cancel culture."

Yes, "cancel culture." It is "manifesting in some dangerous ways," sez Crenshaw, so here comes Dan Crenshaw—or more probably a ghostwriter spotting for Dan Crenshaw while Dan Crenshaw pretends to do his day job—to explain that to good conservative children who would never, ever demand anyone be reported or kicked off their team or boycotted or whathaveyou based on their own political beliefs, because only a spineless gutweasel would do such a thing. It's "pretty hard to find exclusively conservative-themed children's products," says Crenshaw, who grumbles (no seriously) about "woke children's books."

So then, meet Fame, Blame, and the Raft of Shame, Crenshaw's attempt to explain the dangers of "cancel culture" to children. And if we're being honest here, Crenshaw's attempt to write a book about "cancel culture" goes a long way toward explaining why conservatives don't have a lot of luck writing conservative books for conservative children. The art, which is not by Crenshaw, is pretty good! Everything else is a bit of a train wreck—er, shipwreck. Raftwreck?

"The story takes place in an underwater city protected by a dome of seaweed, which begins to crack as more characters are banished for various offenses and hurled through the dome on a 'raft of shame,'" reports Fox News.

All right, this is not an auspicious beginning. An underwater city populated by furries, I'll give you that one. But hurled through a seaweed dome? So, like, you're murdering them? We're talking about murdering them, right? It's not so much a Raft of Shame as a Raft of Murdering Furries?

The main premise of the book is that a city of well-dressed furries lives under the sea, all under a large dome made out of seaweed. Also, Crenshaw is there, but now he's an underwater mountain lion. Already we run into problems, because raw seaweed is an absolutely terrible building material and these animals are in for a heap of trouble if the only thing protecting them all from apocalypse is a thin wall of sushi wrap. In this environment, the woke animals' method of choice for cancelling those who have been rude to them is to put them on a raft, shove them onto a waterspout in the middle of the town square, and blast them out the seaweed dome to, we presume, meet a horrific end as their animal lungs fill with seawater and nearby adorable dolphins size them up to see what part of their corpses might taste the best.

Here's some sample text:

"This hateful animal has hurt Mr. Mountain Lion's feelings!" yelled Swan. "Let's build a Raft of Shame, and trap the skunk forever in the whirlpool. This way, all who visit our great city will see his shame."

Oh yeah. Yeah, that's the stuff. That's definitely murder, right there.

Anyhoo, all of this apparently goes wrong because apparently the woke animals firing nonwoke animals into the load-bearing seaweed dome of their city is, like, a bad idea and is damaging the dome, threatening to doom them all.

Really, though? This is the world you're setting up to paste in this message? This is terrible writing. A civilization threatening to doom itself to extinction by firing things that shouldn't be there into their protective atmospheric dome is a premise tailor-made for explaining climate change—what happened? Did the actual author and artist try to sell a climate change book, but got no takers so had to hastily rewrite it for Team Conservagrift? This is just sad.

The last part of the book is, apparently, all Crenshaw-introduced Bible quotes and activities you can do with your child as you work to combat wokeness, things like using "a six-sided die and one pillow per child" in a game with the objective of pretending you are tied to the Raft of Shame and need to "make a strong plea to the other animals of Starlotte City that they let you back in."

And I'm just going to assume that one started out as a drinking game, because "six-sided die and one pillow per" person does not sound like the gateway to any redemption arc I, personally, am aware of. Being tied to a "Raft of Shame" and having to roll dice to see what happens next is a whole different genre of game, by my understanding, and absolutely not one you should be teaching your grade-school children.

But you do you, conservative publishing group. Let us know how that works out for you.

It will surprise nobody to know that Mountain Lion Dan Crenshaw is a hero of the story, and Fox News reports that the Mountain Lion-Skunk interaction is an "unmistakable reference" to the dust-up between Crenshaw and Saturday Night Live comedian Pete Davidson. It will also surprise nobody to learn that the moral of the book is about forgiveness when you are insulted, rather than wokeness. And that's all fine and good, but I do feel like writing an entire book rehashing the time somebody was mean to you four years ago isn't as forgiveness-filled as you might think it is. Again, though, knock yourself out with that.

I can think of so many other books to make with this premise. You tie people to a Raft of Shame and ritually murder them? It sounds like a Texas anti-abortion bill. You cavalierly knock off Those of Insufficient Ideological Belief, purging them from your midst so that the rest can be pure? Isn't that the plot of every local Republican meeting of the Trump era? Liz Cheney got fired through the seaweed dome for daring to suggest that Trump's delusional and fascist election hoaxes were not in fact true.

The idea that the guy who literally made a whistleblower site so that members of the U.S. military could turn in superiors suspected of propagating insufficiently conservative ideals is writing a sincere book about not canceling people, though, is a bit much to take. The guy who thinks protesters should get kicked off Olympic teams for protesting wants you to know about the dangers of cancelling people, he insists, and by God he feels so strongly about that that he's lending his name to a whole book condemning people like that.

No, I expect it's that other bit of Crenshaw history that explains this newest Crenshaw book. When Crenshaw last wrote a book, he or somebody convinced the Republican Party to buy $400,000 in copies to boost its rank on the bestseller lists. Any guesses on how many copies House Republican leaders write a check for this time around?

Yeah. Yeah, that's why a book about endangering your civilization by sending things smashing up into your fragile atmospheric shield is now about "wokeness" instead of the obvious environmental messages. The Republican Party won't be shelling out a half million for a children's book about how Republican obstruction is dooming every child in the world to a disaster everyone but Republicans know full well is coming.

Honestly, though, this is a racket more of us should be getting into. There aren't many people who can articulate their thoughts well enough to write an actual for-adults book on politics or the dangers of certain ideologies, but children? You can sell children anything, so long as you draw cute anthropomorphized animals for it. Come hither 'n stuff, kids, and let me tell you a story about mean Mr. Possum. Mr. Possum rails about everyone and everything six days a week, demanding that people be fired or sued or banned or shamed for having the audacity to believe in things he doesn't.

Then on the seventh day he goes to Possum Church and teaches children verses from the Possum Bible. And the news services all line up to get pictures of it, too.

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas can continue banning most abortions after a federal appeals court on Thursday rejected the Biden administration’s latest attempt to undo a novel law that has become the nation’s biggest curb to abortion in nearly 50 years.

It pushes the Texas law closer to returning to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in September allowed the state to move ahead with banning abortions once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks. No exceptions are made in cases of rape or incest.

Since then, Texas women have sought out abortion clinics in neighboring states, some driving hours through the middle of the night and including patients as young as 12 years old.

The new decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals extends a previous order that for now keeps in place the Texas law known as Senate Bill 8. It marks the third time since October that the conservative-leaning appeals court has sided with Texas and let the restrictions stand.

It leaves the Justice Department and Texas abortion providers with a narrowing path to try stopping the law, which has thus far prevailed because of a unique structure that leaves enforcement up to private citizens. Anyone who brings a successful lawsuit against an abortion provider for violating the law is entitled to claim at least $10,000 in damages, which the Biden administration says amounts to a bounty.

Despite numerous legal challenges both before and after the law took effect Sept. 1, only once has a court moved to put the restriction on hold — and that order only stood for 48 hours.

During that brief window, some Texas clinics rushed to perform abortions on patients past six weeks, but many more appointments were canceled after the 5th circuit moved to swiftly reinstate the law. The Biden administration could now seek a rehearing or go straight to the Supreme Court, just as abortion providers unsuccessfully tried in August.

Texas had roughly two dozen abortion clinics before the law took effect, and operators have said some may be forced to close if the restrictions stay in place for much longer.

Already the stakes are high in the coming months over the future of abortion rights in the U.S. In December, the new conservative majority on the Supreme Court will hear Mississippi’s bid to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that guarantee’s a woman’s right to an abortion.

A 1992 decision by the Supreme Court prevented states from banning abortion before viability, the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, around 24 weeks of pregnancy. But Texas’ version has outmaneuvered courts so far due to the fact that it offloads enforcement to private citizens.

Texas Right to Life, the state’s largest anti-abortion group, set up a tipline to receive allegations against abortion providers but has not filed any lawsuits.

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My alternate version of this was giant aliens putting humans in food slurry so that their excreta would cause it to be fluffy, but honestly that felt weird.

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Some people don’t care who hosts their fundraisers as long as the money keeps rolling in, and Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker is just one of those guys. As Walker’s $3.7 million treasure chest grows, he heads to a fundraiser in Parker, Texas this weekend, co-hosted by dubious figure Bettina Sofia Viviano-Langlais—a film producer, prouder birther, and president and owner of Accelerate Entertainment, which offers a very short slate of very bad movies. 

Viviano-Langlais not only produces crap entertainment, but she’s also a vehement right-wing anti-vaxxer who had a very interesting symbol gracing her Twitter profile. She has changed the image after reporting from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Patricia Murphy alerted readers to the issue, but you can’t fool Twitter. 

When AJC asked for a comment regarding the swastika symbol on Walker’s host’s page, his camp responded with: “This is clearly an anti-mandatory vaccination graphic. Herschel unequivocally opposes anti-semitism and bigotry of all kinds.” Okay, and we don’t see the resemblance? 

Viviano-Langlais herself defended the symbol on Twitter, saying she changed the profile picture because “It’s insane to think that pic was Anti-Semetic. Desperate actually. It was a pic showing what happens when fascists demand people insert foreign material into their body they don’t want...”

But who cares about Nazi symbols when attendees to the fundraiser pay $500 for the reception, another $5,800 for VIP treatment, and a photo with Walker? 

In addition to the obvious anti-vaccine theme, the party will likely be anti-mask as well. Viviano-Langlais and her husband Jim recently hosted a “Texas is Now Open” party in partnership with the Dallas Jewish Conservatives, featuring “fantastic conservative speakers, live entertainment, food & drink, and a big communal [mask-burning] bonfire!” Wondering if the Dallas Jewish Conservatives were aware of their host’s Twitter profile pic? 

NFL legend and Trump-minion Herschel Walker is currently the front-runner for the GOP nomination in Georgia.

According to public records reviewed by Associated Press, Walker repeatedly threatened ex-wife Cindy Grossman during his divorce. In 2005, Grossman secured a protective order against him, alleging violence and controlling behavior, AP reports.

In an interview with ABC News, Grossman said Walker held a gun to her head, saying, “I’m going to blow your f----ing brains out.” She filed for divorce in 2001, citing “physically abusive and extremely threatening behavior.”

Meanwhile, Walker, obviously not having enough to do himself, joined the board of Lin Wood’s “Fight Back Foundation” a few months ago. Wood is the attorney who helped raise $2 million for the bail and defense of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenage vigilante who is charged with fatally shooting two men and injuring another at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year. 

Wood is a devout conservative, 9/11 truther, and Trump supporter who once tweeted that “President Trump Won reelection by a landslide. Biden cheated.” 

Good job, Walker. Between aligning yourself with a truther and a birther, you’ve crafted the perfect GOP candidate. Walker will be facing off against Senator Raphael Warnock, who is up for re-election after winning a special election in 2020. Join Stacey Abrams' Fair Fight and New Georgia Project and let's get this joker out of here.'

AMD warned last week that its chips are experiencing performance issues in Windows 11, and now Microsoft's first update to its new OS has reportedly made the problems worse. From a report: TechPowerUp reports that it's seeing much higher latency, which means worse performance, after the Windows 11 update went live yesterday. AMD and Microsoft found two issues with Windows 11 on Ryzen processors. Windows 11 can cause L3 cache latency to triple, slowing performance by up to 15 percent in certain games. The second issue affects AMD's preferred core technology, that shifts threads over to the fastest core on a processor. AMD says this second bug could impact performance on CPU-reliant tasks. TechPowerUp measured the L3 cache latency on its Ryzen 7 2700X at around 10ns, and Windows 11 increased this to 17ns. "This was made much worse with the October 12 'Patch Tuesday' update, driving up the latency to 31.9ns," says TechPowerUp. That's a huge jump, and the exact type of issue AMD warned about.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is moving toward a hard do-it-now-or-face-criminal-referral deadline for the four members of Team Trump whose original subpoena deadlines were last week. That’s progress—but the committee needs to follow through.

“I think we are completely of one mind that if people refuse to respond to questions, refuse to produce documents without justification that we will hold them in criminal contempt and refer them to the Justice Department,” Rep. Adam Schiff told CNN.

Depositions are scheduled for Kash Patel and Steve Bannon on Oct. 14, and for Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino on Oct. 15. If they don’t show up for their depositions, members of the committee have indicated it will be criminal referral time.

“People will have the opportunity to cooperate, they will have the opportunity to come in and work with us as they should,” said Rep. Liz Cheney, one of the Republicans on the committee. “If they fail to do so, then we'll enforce our subpoenas.”

Patel, a former administration aide, and Meadows, a former White House chief of staff, are already “engaging” with the committee. While that’s different from fully complying with subpoenas, it suggests there’s a chance they will show up for depositions. Bannon, Trump’s former campaign manager and a White House adviser early on, has said he will not comply. Scavino, a longtime Trump aide, was only even served with his subpoena after the original deadline has passed. Depositions aren’t the only question, though. The subpoenas include demands for documents relating to Jan. 6, and Patel and Meadows cannot be allowed to get away with, for instance, a half-assed deposition and no documents.

The timing of the next move is the question. Rep. Jamie Raskin said “I would expect the Chairman to decide to move immediately on criminal referrals” is the deposition dates pass and the men do not show up and sit down and talk. That’s surely what needs to happen, though Chair Bennie Thompson has not said anything so concrete. (Thompson has mentioned the possibility of criminal referrals, though.) So the committee should be prepared to move on Oct. 15. Especially in Bannon’s case, they can have referral all teed up and ready to go and send it out as soon as he doesn’t show up.

Then Attorney General Merrick Garland will need to follow through, more aggressively than he’s done so far when faced with Team Trump wrongdoing. Garland has to back Congress in investigating an insurrection against the U.S. government in an attempt to overturn an election, or he is useless as a defender of the rule of law.

Meanwhile, CNN reports that as many as five of the 11 rally organizers who received subpoenas from the committee have started cooperating by sharing documents. That group of 11 faces a Wednesday deadline to comply, so the committee may need to be working on a few more criminal referrals in the near future. But it may also have a lot of interesting new documents to sift through, as well, allowing it to make progress on some of key questions.

Friday, Oct. 15, though. That’s the day we want to either know that four Trump loyalists sat down and talked, really talked, to the committee (and turned over documents), or that they now face criminal referrals and that a resolute Merrick Garland is moving with dispatch.

An Indiana bank is facing a federal lawsuit after the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana (FHCCI) accused the business of lending to only 37 Black borrowers, out of more than 2,250 who applied for mortgages between 2019 and 2020. Old National Bank, operating in the area of Indianapolis, Carmel, and Anderson, Indiana, identified more than 91% of borrowers by race and "deliberately" practiced housing discrimination against Black applicants, the FHCCI said in its complaint filed Wednesday and later obtained by The Indianapolis Star.

Amy Nelson, executive director of FHCCI, said in a news release about the two-year period of analysis that Old National Bank made only 23 loans to Black borrowers in Marion County, the largest county in the state. “Over the time period reviewed, Old National Bank has been one of the worst performers in making mortgage loans to Black home-seekers in Central Indiana,” Nelson stated in the release. “Old National’s peer lenders did a substantially better job at serving the credit needs of Black residents. In Marion County, the four peers reviewed made 14.73% of their loans to Blacks, a proportion that is 3.82 times greater than that of Old National with their paltry 23 loans.”

Seeking a trial by jury, attorneys stated in the lawsuit:

“Old National is the largest bank headquartered in Indiana and one of the twenty largest residential mortgage lenders in the Indianapolis region. (...) Old National has structured its business to avoid providing access to mortgage credit to Black residents and neighborhoods in the Indianapolis area and to discourage Black residents from seeking mortgage credit. Old National deliberately seeks to limit its residential lending business to predominantly white areas and customers and maintains policies and (...) practices that have the effect of doing so. This conduct constitutes a pattern and practice of redlining and violates the Fair Housing Act.”

Redlining, the practice of refusing someone a home loan on the basis of ethnicity, race, or religion, particularly in a primarily white area or under the guise of “financial risk,” was outlawed with the Fair Housing Act of 1968, but it hasn’t stopped racists from using other tactics to block Black people from acquiring property. In California, Black residents of the noted and affluent Sugar Hill community successfully staved off "racially restrictive covenants" for years, only to have a freeway built through their community, effectively erasing it, NPR reported.

Mark Alston, a real estate broker, told NPR while some argue that "risk-based pricing" is fair, "'fair' is an interesting concept" when it rides the coattails of 350 years of exclusionary zoning laws. "I could[n’t] care less about Black Lives Matter being painted on [a] basketball court," he said. "How about an affirmative program to lower the gap between white and Black homeownership? How about actual public policy that moves the needle, for real? How about a change in employment and pay that narrows the gap, the inequities between white and black pay? How about those types of things that will make a difference for future generations?"

Old National Bank wrote in a statement obtained by The Indianapolis Star that the banking business "strongly and categorically denies the claims made by the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana regarding certain lending practices.”

“Old National is committed to engaging in fair and equal lending practices," the company continued.

Nelson told The Indianapolis Star that Old National Bank "disproportionately" closed branches in Black areas, treated Black people in tests conducted by FHCCI "less favorably" than white testers, and merged with another bank accused of redlining in 2018.

“We are calling on the Federal Reserve to do what it is required to do,” Nelson told the newspaper, “and conduct a thorough analysis and to address any disparities that is occurring to make sure that Old National’s lending practices are fair to everybody.”

RELATED: Homeowners associations are just as problematic as they've always been. Twitter users show why

RELATED: Turns out, fighting the temptation to strip property from Black families isn’t asking too much

RELATED: Bloomberg's defense of redlining comes back to haunt him during live debate

RELATED: Black homeowner went to 'strike conversation' with neighbor. He responded he doesn't have any money

When plotting Russian election results, a structured grid patterns appear. From The Economist:

When Dmitry Kobak and Sergey Shpilkin, two researchers, analysed the results, they found that an unusually high number of turnout and vote-share results were multiples of five (eg, 50%, 55%, 60%), a tell-tale sign of manipulation. According to Messrs Kobak and Shpilkin, there were at least 1,310 polling stations (out of 96,325) with results that were suspiciously tidy, with rounder numbers than you would expect to see by chance.

I’m not familiar with Russian elections, but this seems like lazy cheating. Are they just making up numbers by hand or what?

Check out the full results of Kobak and Shpilkin’s analysis in Python notebook form.

Tags: cheating, Economist, election

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When it comes to election season, Republicans aren’t only running in opposition to Democrats, but one another. That might sound obvious, but it’s worth pointing out that a concerning number of conservatives are only running on more and more conservative measures to get the furthest right vote they can possibly achieve, as opposed to running for the more “moderate” voter audience. And as Daily Kos has stressed when covering related issues in the past, these folks aren’t espousing theories and arguments that are laughed off and forgotten about in a day—they’re giving voice and credence to dangerous, violent transphobic ideologies that are making their way into public consciousness. 

One example comes out of Texas, a part of the nation that continues to make headlines for anti-trans legislation on the state level thanks to Republican lawmakers. As reported by The Houston Chronicle, Don Huffines, a Republican who launched his primary campaign against Gov. Greg Abbott back in May, released a video at the end of August suggesting that Abbott supports “transgender sexual policies” for youth in the state based on a list that included suicide prevention hotlines and resources for LGBTQ+ young people published on a state agency website. That’s a laughable (not to mention offensive, language-wise) assertion to anyone who even remotely follows Abbott’s stances on trans folks, but, as the Chronicle reports, within hours of Huffines’ video going viral on Twitter, the webpage had vanished. And with it, the valuable resources for vulnerable LGBTQ+ youth. The question: Who is willing to take credit for the change?

Here’s that tweet Huffines sent out on Aug. 31.

The website Huffines referred to was published by the Department of Family and Protective Services. One section of the site, called “Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation,” included links to the aforementioned suicide hotline and other resources for youth. Similarly, the resources from the Texas Youth Connection disappeared, which included resources for housing and education aimed at LGBTQ+ youth aging out of foster care. 

In its place? A message that says the site has been “temporarily disabled” for a “comprehensive review” of its content. The message says this review is happening to make sure the resources and information are “current,” but progressives are concerned it disappeared because Abbott and his fellow Republicans got worried about being perceived as a little too welcoming to LGBTQ+ folks. 

According to the Chronicle, a public records request shows that employees did discuss both the video Huffines posted and removing the Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation page. Huffines does say he’s the reason the page was ultimately removed, but Abbott’s office has neither confirmed nor denied it.

Either way, those resources were deeply important for already vulnerable youth who are at an increased risk for mental health struggles, homelessness, harassment, and even some forms of violence. LGBTQ+ youth are not pawns for political gain, and their rights and protections shouldn’t depend on whether or not someone wants to be perceived as an ally (or, in Abbott’s case, not as an ally) by a fellow elected official (or, in this case, hopeful).

Though hateful folks would like to tell themselves otherwise, LGBTQ+ people are real, living people who are just as worthy of protection, safety, and affirmation as anyone else, and to have resources removed is not only shameful but in the big picture, adds to the slow erasure of LGBTQ+ folks and identities in the mainstream. 

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A superintendent—actually the first Black superintendent to lead her district—has been forced into what The New York Times describes as "a yearlong firestorm” for having the audacity to share her concern for the Black community in a majority-white area of Maryland. Following the murder of George Floyd, Queen Anne’s County Public Schools Superintendent Andrea Kane wrote in an email to the parents and guardians of the some 7,700 students in her district that “racism is alive in our country, our state, in Queen Anne’s County, and our schools.”

“When I hit send, everything just imploded,” the superintendent told the Times of the letter sent last June.

Gordana Schifanelli, a parent in the district, created a Facebook group, Kent Island Patriots, to protest Kane's letter, and before long it had upward of 2,000 members. Schifanelli wrote in the group:

“Dr. Kane in QAC needs to end her contract and go! People in this group must call and make it loud and clear that the school must remain apolitical and her letter to parents promoting Black Lives Matter is not going to be tolerated. The children must know that those individuals who died in police custody were criminals — not heroes! Our children will not be indoctrinated by anyone’s political opinion in the school and our children must NEVER feel that their white skin color make them guilty of slavery or racism!”

It was essentially the manifesto of every bitter white person raging against empathy and renaming it critical race theory, which is actually a framework for interpreting law that maintains racism has an undeniable effect on the legal foundation of American society. The framework would be pretty exclusively confined to law schools if not for Republicans redefining it to mean anything that reveals the truth of racism or prejudice in America. Their push has been to ban that redefinition in classrooms, which has often translated to watering down the already bland representation of African American history in K-12 history instruction. 

Practically arm in arm with their peers who’ve redefined having to wear a mask as an assault on freedom, Republicans across the country have also taken violently to the goal of keeping Black history out of schools unless it serves white people. Attorney General Merrick Garland tasked the FBI last Monday with addressing a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against educators and school board members regarding misinterpretations of critical race theory and pushback from mask mandates. 

In a memo The Washington Post obtained, Garland wrote: 

“In recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation's public schools. While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution, that protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views.

Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation's core values. Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.

The Department takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate. In the coming days, the Department will announce a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.

Coordination and partnership with local law enforcement is critical to implementing these measures for the benefit of our nation's nearly 14,000 public school districts. To this end, I am directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working with each United States Attorney, to convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders in each federal judicial district within 30 days of the issuance of this memorandum. These meetings will facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff, and will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.

The Department is steadfast in its commitment to protect all people in the United States from violence, threats of violence, and other forms of intimidation arid harassment.”

The National School Boards Association similarly wrote in an earlier plea to President Joe Biden to intervene because "America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat."

The association continued:

“As our school boards continue coronavirus recovery operations within their respective districts, they are also persevering against other challenges that could impede this progress in a number of communities. Coupled with attacks against school board members and educators for approving policies for masks to protect the health and safety of students and school employees, many public school officials are also facing physical threats because of propaganda purporting the false inclusion of critical race theory within classroom instruction and curricula. This propaganda continues despite the fact that critical race theory is not taught in public schools and remains a complex law school and graduate school subject well beyond the scope of a K-12 class.”

President of the board Viola Garcia and Chip Slaven, interim executive director, signed the letter detailing how "threats or actual acts of violence against our school districts are impacting the delivery of educational services.” They listed:

“An individual was arrested in Illinois for aggravated battery and disorderly conduct during a school board meeting. During two separate school board meetings in Michigan, an individual yelled aNazi salute in protest to masking requirements, and another individual prompted the board to calla recess because of opposition to critical race theory.

In New Jersey, Ohio, and other states, anti-mask proponents are inciting chaos during board meetings. In Virginia, an individual was arrested, another man was ticketed for trespassing, and a third person was hurt during a school board meeting discussion distinguishing current curricula from critical race theory and regarding equity issues. In other states including Washington, Texas, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Tennessee, school boards have been confronted by angry mobs and forced to end meetings abruptly. A resident in Alabama, who proclaimed himself as “vaccine police,” has called school administrators while filming himself on Facebook Live.”

Garcia and Slaven added in the letter:

“Our children are watching the examples of the current debates and we must encourage a positive dialogue even with different opinions. However, with such acute threats and actions that are disruptive to our students’ well-being, to the safety of public school officials and personnel, and to interstate commerce, we urge the federal government’s intervention against individuals or hate groups who are targeting our schools and educators.”

If I wasn’t witnessing it play out myself, I would not believe that the hateful actions of adults could have been in defense of a murderer. Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering Floyd when he kneeled on the Black father’s neck for more than nine minutes because Floyd said he was claustrophobic and had anxiety about getting into the back of a squad car. Floyd earlier had only been accused of providing a counterfeit $20 bill. 

Kane, the Maryland superintendent targeted for caring about Black people, told the Times she wrote her letter to families while agonizing over every word. She said she understood that the Black Lives Matter movement was controversial, but she also understood her responsibility to Black children. “How could I not help them make sense of a Black body being destroyed in the street?” she asked.

Read a portion of her letter below:

Despite all the business of closing out one school year and preparing for the next, I must stop and acknowledge what is happening in our country and across the world right now. The deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd have spun our country into what has been called “a national outrage”. There is no denying that police brutality and racism exist in our country. There is no denying that in many communities, racism and biased behavior are the norms. Racism is learned at an early age and can be passed on from one generation to the next. Trayvon Martin, Michal Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, and countless other Black people have been victims of systemic racism. Racism is alive in our country, our state, in Queen Anne’s County, and our schools.

It’s encouraging to see Black and White people coming together in nonviolent protests against the mistreatment of and discrimination against Black people and people of color. More than ever, I hope that we can listen more and pass judgment less; be slow to anger and extend grace to one another generously. As a Black woman with two Black sons (whom I worry about in ways that only a mother of Black sons in America can understand), when I say “Black Lives Matter” it is not meant to disparage any other race. It is an acknowledgment of the disparate brutality and overt racism this only experienced by Black people in America including me. For the record, I value all lives and do not want to be misunderstood so I will share an analogy that a friend explained earlier this week. If a house was on fire and the fire department came to put out the fire, would it make sense if firefighters sprayed water on every house on that street or just the one on fire? All of the houses have value but only one is in danger of being destroyed.

The marginalization of Black people and dehumanizing images that our children are exposed to require conversation but where do we start? Tyrone Howard, an expert in the study of black males and professor at UCLA suggests that we refrain from diluting the issue, name anti-Black racism for what it is; believe Black students when they say they’ve been subjected to racism and discrimination; stop challenging Black Lives Matter, it only exacerbates the marginalization; and identify and speak about Black excellence to stop the narrative about the inferiority of Black people. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

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The number of U.S. representatives not seeking reelection is now up to 19. Since our last update, GOP Rep. Anthony Gonzalez bowed out in the face of a Republican revolt in his district over his vote to impeach former President Donald Trump, and Democratic Rep. Karen Bass announced her intention to run for mayor of Los Angeles in 2022. And just on Tuesday, Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth announced he would retire from elected office as well.

House retirements are one metric we’re watching to give us a clue as to how the 2022 midterms will unfold, but on the surface at least, it doesn’t look like either party has an advantage in this regard: 10 Democrats are retiring compared with nine Republicans. However, when you dig into the specific reasons that are likely behind each retirement, it does look like Democrats are more worried than Republicans.

At this stage, six of the Republicans are leaving the House to run for another office. Of the other three, Gonzalez is probably leaving because he would have a hard time winning his Republican primary, Rep. Tom Reed appeared to retire in response to his sexual harassment scandal, and Rep. Kevin Brady said he is leaving partly because he is term-limited out of his position as top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. Arguably, Reed and Rep. Lee Zeldin, who is running for governor, also decided to retire given Democrats’ control of redistricting in their home state of New York (which means they could be running on bluer turf next year). But considering they also had other factors playing into their retirements, one can argue at this point that no Republicans are retiring primarily out of fear of losing their general election next year.

Retiring Democrats, however, appear to be more motivated by electoral concerns. Only five of the 10 retiring Democrats are running for another office, while four currently represent swing seats: Reps. Filemon Vela, Ann Kirkpatrick, Cheri Bustos and Ron Kind. And only Vela’s seat is likely to be made safely Democratic in redistricting, although he didn’t know that when he announced he was retiring. It’s reasonable, therefore, to theorize that fear of losing reelection was a key factor in their decisions to retire. 

The 10th retiring Democrat is Yarmuth, who currently represents a safely blue seat anchored by Louisville, Kentucky. But he may be retiring out of fear of losing reelection, too. That’s because Republicans, who control the redistricting process in Kentucky, could eliminate his seat by giving slices of his dark-blue 3rd District to neighboring red districts that can absorb more Democratic voters without becoming competitive — a gerrymandering technique known as “cracking.” 

Kentucky hasn’t begun the redistricting process yet (at least publicly), so we don’t yet know with certainty what its new map will look like. Yarmuth’s retirement, though, could suggest that he expected Republicans to force him out. But even if they hadn’t and the 3rd District remained intact, Yarmuth may have still retired for political reasons: He is currently chair of the House Budget Committee, but he stands to lose that considerable power if Republicans take back control of the House in 2022. His retirement may indicate that he’s not optimistic about Democrats’ chances next year. Political science research has found that politicians are more likely to retire when they see a bad political environment for their party on the horizon.

The good news for Democrats is that politicians make bad pundits: There has historically been a weak relationship between which party sees the most retirements and which party does poorly the subsequent election. But the bad news for Democrats is that, whatever the specific motivation of Yarmuth’s retirement, history is clearly on the side of Republicans having a strong performance in the 2022 midterms.

Congressional Democrats, in the House anyway, are looking ahead this week to consider what to do about Mitch McConnell and his band of nihilists in the Senate when it comes to the next fight over the debt ceiling. McConnell ended up capitulating on the issue last week, leaving ill feelings toward him among Republicans, which resulted in a toxic declaration of intent from him to President Joe Biden.

“Whether through weakness or an intentional effort to bully his own members, Senator Schumer marched the nation to the doorstep of disaster,” McConnell wrote in his poison pen letter, revising the history of his hostage-taking, as usual. “Embarrassingly, it got to the point where Senators on both sides were pleading for leadership to fill the void and protect our citizens. I stepped up,” he said. More like he stepped in it if you ask his disgruntled conference of Republicans, none of whom—not a single one—actually voted to raise the debt ceiling in the end. He’s expecting eternal gratitude from the president for the fact that after weeks of filibustering, he relented enough to allow a vote to be held on the issue and didn’t blow up the global economy, after all. “Your lieutenants on Capitol Hill now have the time they claimed they lacked to address the debt ceiling through standalone reconciliation, and all the tools to do it. They cannot invent another crisis and ask for my help,” McConnell said.

Okay then, Democrats. Do it. And while you’re doing it, take away the power he’s been wielding since 2011, when he infamously declared that the “default issue” is “a hostage that’s worth ransoming.” A decade of McConnell willing to pull the pin on this particular grenade should be more than enough.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi might have finally reached that conclusion herself. She told reporters Tuesday that ceding congressional power on raising the debt limit to the Treasury Department is something to look at. “I do think it has merit,” she said. There’s legislation in the House now that would do just that. It is cosponsored by the powerful chair of the Budget Committee, Rep. John Yarmuth of Kentucky. (Yarmuth announced his intent to retire after this term, so it would be a fitting final accomplishment for him, finally getting one up on his fellow Kentuckian, McConnell.)

“After everything the American people have been through over the last 19 months and all the progress we have made in our recovery, the last thing we need is a dangerous game of political brinkmanship that will devastate our economy and plunge us into another recession,” said Yarmuth when he and Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania introduced the bill last week. “It’s time for Republicans to pull the ripcord and support our legislation to implement the McConnell Rule, giving the Treasury Secretary the authority to raise the debt ceiling. We need to get past this politically manufactured crisis and get on with the business of addressing the needs and priorities of the American people.”

That “McConnell Rule,” by the way refers back to that fight with President Obama in 2011, when an agreement between McConnell and the White House gave the administration the power to raise the debt limit by a maximum of $1.2 trillion, but gave Congress the ability to reject the increase. That veto power, however, comes with a 60-vote threshold in the Senate, meaning it would require bipartisan support. It’s a good trick, one that even Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema could get behind because “60 votes” and “bipartisan.”

“That seems to have some appeal to both sides of the aisle because of the consequences to people of not lifting it,” Pelosi said. Not that any Senate Republicans would admit to there being any appeal to them right now, even if the whole thing was McConnell’s idea in the first place. It’s hard to imagine a more toxic GOP than the one we had in Obama’s first term, but then came Trump.

This is a good idea for getting rid of the whole threat of the debt ceiling, and fun because Yarmuth can rub McConnell’s nose in it a little. But it’s not necessarily the most effective way to get it done at the moment. That might be to actually concur with McConnell, and do it in budget reconciliation. Not that that wouldn’t potentially also involve a fight with Manchin and/or Sinema, but the stakes on that could bring them around.

There are a couple of ways that mooting the issue could be done in reconciliation. The argument against it from Democrats has been that the rules of reconciliation require a number be attached to the hike. But that’s not necessarily the case. It could be done by saying that the “number” attached equals the nation’s debt, thus automatically indexing the government’s borrowing authority to what it owes and making this a non-issue. That might require overruling the Parliamentarian, the Senate staffer who advises on the rules, but for such an issue as momentous as this, it’s definitely worth it.

Here’s another idea that could go into reconciliation from former Senate staffer Ira Goldman, with the added fun of putting it all on Republicans and the former guy.

That would be about $7.8 trillion, so that would definitely work, too. And it would be really, really satisfying. It would be worth Schumer and Pelosi giving in to McConnell’s demand that they include the debt ceiling in budget reconciliation, if they could do it in a way that both humiliates him and takes it away as a weapon—forever. 

When progressive activist Lauren Windsor, executive producer and creator of grassroots political web-show The Undercurrent,  pretended to be a pro-lifer asking for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s autograph, she also took the opportunity to query the governor on his full stance regarding reproductive rights in Texas—all the while filming him without his knowledge.

Windsor tells Abbott, “We want to thank you so much for defending the unborn,” and asks what more he can do “until Roe v. Wade is not the law of the land anymore.”

“Can you do something about morning-after pills birth control, ‘cause I think it’s destroying the fabric of our society, giving women incentives to be promiscuous,” Windsor said.

Falling for her Borat-style schtick and thinking she was an anti-abortion ally, Abbott spilled the beans, telling her essentially that he had basically outlawed abortion in Texas, pointing to two laws he’d recently signed. One that outlaws morning-after pills to be purchased via mail-order and the other he referred to as the “Trigger Bill.”

Abbott was talking about House Bill 1280, which would take effect 30 days after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, or after a court ruling or constitutional amendment gives states the authority to prohibit abortions. 

The governor went on to applaud Windsor and her accomplice for being “so pro-life.” 

Windsor and her group have perfected the gotcha sting, catching unwitting Republicans in a slew of gaffes. As Daily Beast reports, Windsor caught Sen. Ron Johnson at a GOP event in Milwaukee saying there was “nothing obviously skewed” about election results in his home state. 

But, Windsor doesn’t always do her interviews undercover. In July, she pounced on Florida’s Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, who is currently under investigation for paying to transport a minor across state lines for sex, if he believed sleeping with a teenager made him a pedophile. 

“My being there and asking him if he was a pedophile was to really key in on the ridiculousness of the situation in the first place,” Windsor told Daily Beast. 

In the end, Windsor got Abbott to admit what we all know is his end game: a total ban on a person’s right to have an abortion and wholesale prohibition of birth control. 

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In November of 2019, the Boynton Beach City Art Commission approved a mural depicting the Florida city’s firefighters. Latosha Clemons, the city’s first Black female firefighter, agreed to the use of her image in the mural. The mural used quite a few photos of the city’s firefighters to draw from—some are replicated nearly perfectly. In June of 2020, the mural was unveiled to reveal that Deputy Fire Chief Latosha Clemons, as well as retired Chief Glenn Joseph, who is also Black, were depicted as white. The mural was quickly pulled down, and City Manager Lori LaVerriere fired public arts manager Debby Coles-Dobay and removed Matthew Petty as chief of the Boynton Beach Fire Rescue Department. Petty would later resign. 

Mayor Steven Grant said he didn’t know how this had happened, as this buck didn’t pass by his desk. City manager LaVierriere offered up only this statement about the literal and figurative whitewashing of Clemons and Joseph’s images: “The decision made to alter the artwork that was approved by the Public Arts Commission was wrong and disrespectful to our community. Every employee in the city of Boynton Beach works for its community. As a leader, I have been very clear that I will not tolerate any employee to be disrespectful, in any shape or form, to any members of our community.”

What happened exactly remains something of a mystery. Clemons, who retired in 2020 after 24 years in the department, wants answers.

The first Black female firefighter of Boynton Beach sued the city for $100,000 in damages back in April. She told news outlets: “I was hurt, I was disappointed, and then I was outraged.” CNN reports that the complaint includes a straightforward, easy-to-understand summation of her grievance and why the backlash led to the city yanking down the mural within 24 hours of its unveiling. “Being depicted as white was not only a false presentation of Clemons, it was also a depiction which completely disrespected all that [she] the first female Black firefighter for the city had accomplished.”

At the end of the first week in October, city officials discussed their options in a closed-door meeting. City Manager LaVerriere had hoped that by characterizing the mural’s racist artistic decisions as a gaffe or blunder—and saying that it afforded the city “an opportunity for us to look at the process” of how decisions are approved and changed might—lead them through this without more serious repercussions.

After initially pleading complete ignorance of how the mural ended up depicting the two Black firefighters as white people, Mayor Grant said he had heard that the request to make the change came from then-removed fire chief, Matthew Petty. Grant says Petty made the decision because Clemons and Joseph were no longer active. Fired former Public Arts Manager Coles-Dobay released a statement saying that she had been “directed and pressured” by now-resigned Chief Petty, as well as Fire Marshal Kathy Cline.

City officials told reporters that they could not comment further on pending litigation. 

When Donald Trump inevitably chokes to death while trying to swallow an entire Costco rotisserie chicken, you can pretty much guarantee he’ll still be clinging to his nonsensical claims about the 2020 election. His belief that he was robbed last November is simply impervious to facts. Meanwhile, any meager morsel of evidence that supports his febrile stolen-election fantasies, no matter how bonkers, immediately gets stovepiped into his creaky, ramshackle husk of a brain.

This would all be super funny if Trump were languishing in a Long John Silver’s bathroom stall clinging to a bottle of spent Boone’s Farm wine like he should be by now. Unfortunately, a massive cohort of Republicans somehow believes the serial liar who suggested they should look into injecting disinfectant, so now we’re being threatened with a raft of grievously stupid election reviews.

First up was Arizona, which allowed the Cyber Ninjas, an outfit with zero auditing experience to—oh, wow, this can’t be right, can it?—conduct an audit. You know, because they were convinced the historically unpopular guy who bragged about passing a dementia test and isn’t smart enough to work as an assistant glory hole attendant anywhere in the contiguous United States couldn’t possibly have lost an election.

And now? Oh, right. Now Wisconsin is ready to shit itself in public, too. And you won’t believe what the guy they’ve put in charge of their election “review” is saying:

The attorney leading a partisan review of Wisconsin's 2020 election acknowledged this week that he doesn't understand how elections are supposed to be run.

Not a great start, but okay.

"Most people, myself included, do not have a comprehensive understanding or even any understanding of how elections work," [Michael] Gableman said in an interview late Tuesday before addressing the Green Bay City Council about his plans.

Gableman's acknowledgment that he does not know how elections work comes 10 months after he told a crowd of supporters of former President Donald Trump without evidence that elected officials had allowed bureaucrats to "steal our vote." Recounts in the state's two most populous counties and court decisions determined Joe Biden won by more than 20,000 votes, or 0.6 percentage points.

Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Gerrymanderland) hired Gableman, a former state Supreme Court justice, to review the election. He gave him a $676,000 budget, which is a huge waste considering you can thoroughly make a fool of yourself in Wisconsin for $11 worth of Jägermeister—and the hangover will be far less severe.

But hey, maybe there’s more method to this madness than meets the eye. Except that, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel notes, “A spokeswoman for Vos did not say why the speaker hired someone who does not know the ins and outs of elections, rather than an expert on the issue.” 

Oops.

Also—apologies for burying the lede—Gableman attended Pillow Man Mike Lindell’s barmy cyber symposium in South Dakota in August. So, yeah, this is another grotesque shitshow, and we all get front-row seats whether we want them or not.

Gableman recently issued subpoenas to the mayors of Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Kenosha, and Racine—which, by some wild coincidence, are home to some of the largest communities of color in the state. In response, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said, “This constant rehashing of the 2020 election is not only demoralizing for our clerks, it is corrosive to our democracy. There is no wrongdoing to investigate which justifies subpoenas and interrogations.”

Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Mark Spreitzer, a member of the Assembly Elections Committee, stated the glaringly obvious: “If you are going to investigate an election, you should start by educating yourself about how elections work. How can we trust the findings of a person who doesn’t understand how elections work?”

Yeah, you can’t. But this isn’t about building trust. It’s about stirring up enough mud to give Donald Trump and his cronies cover for all the awful things they still plan to do to our democracy—experience be damned.

North Carolina’s Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson is hearing calls for his resignation after homophobic, transphobic, anti-education, and bigoted-across-the-board comments he made at a church went viral. In the video first posted by Right Wing Watch on Twitter, Robinson seems to be promoting the need for “Christians” to take control of public schools in order to stop the left-wing indoctrination of children. The speech, which WRAL reports was given at Asbury Baptist Church in Seagrove, North Carolina, back in June, included germs of wisdom like, “Teach them a bunch of stuff about how to hate America. Teach them a bunch of stuff about why they’re racists.” Classically offensive GOP talking points.

But after semi-mumbling against the idea that there is widespread white supremacy and racism in the U.S. to a predominantly Black North Carolina congregation, the Republican elected official went on to further detail the depth of his phobic ignorance, railing against something he termed “transgenderism.” Having worked himself up to a point where he wanted an applause break but lacking any content, Robinson explained that these schools are forcing kids and their parents to confront uncomfortable truths: "There's no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth. And yes I called it ‘filth.’ And if you don’t like that I called it ‘filth’ then come see me and I’ll explain it to you.”

Well, state officials (as well as anyone with even a modicum of morality) are now calling on the lieutenant governor to resign. So how about you “explain it” to us, Mr. Robinson?

Democratic state Sen. Jeff Jackson released a statement saying that “There's no debate here. This is open discrimination. It is completely unacceptable. Mark Robinson should resign.” State Sen. Jackson also warned that North Carolina’s Republican Party has been “clearing a path for him to be their gubernatorial nominee in 2024. If he runs, he's all but certain to be the Republican nominee. He is immensely popular within his party - and I imagine he still will be, even after this.”

”The last thing our state needs is open discrimination from someone in high office. It tells a lot of wonderful people - our friends, family, neighbors - that someone who represents them thinks they're all beneath basic dignity. No one should find that remotely acceptable.”

—State Sen. Jeff Jackson (D-NC)

Robinson is adamant about his ambitions though, telling WRAL, “We will not be intimidated. We will not back down. We will not change our language. The language I used, I am not ashamed of it. I will use it in the future because, again, it is time for parents in this state to take a strong stand for their children."

Of course, when ABC11 asked him how gay and lesbian and transgender folks and their parents and their parents’ parents are not supposed to take his comments to mean that they, themselves are “filth,” “filthy,” or “dirty,” Robinson did his best impression of an ambitious GOP coward, saying, “If they take it that way I sincerely apologize, but I don’t back off of my words.” He went on to explain that the concept of bringing up the concepts of LBGTQ existence with children was “filthy.” Okaaaaay? Let’s think about this “apology” for one minute, because it’s so goddamned insincere and meaningless.

He apologizes if you take his words to mean what words mean but he also is saying he didn’t mean those words to mean the things that those words mean. But also he stands by his words because he doesn’t “back off of” them, even when by his own admission they’re ignorant or, at the very least, were spoken so poorly and in such a way as to need a very large level of rearticulation. Gotcha!

When asked about his comments on Spectrum later the same day, using the same Zoom camera, wearing the same outfit, and sitting in the same room, Robinson added a touch of the self-aggrandizing persecution complex to his response: telling the news outlet that he would be adding himself to the massive crucifix the GOP has nailed itself to, that the “left” is making an effort to silence people like him—and people that threaten the lives of school board members. Doubling down on his double down,  he said, “It doesn’t matter to me what the definition of hate speech is. I said what I said, and I believe what I said, and many people across the state feel the exact same way.”

NBC News reports that this isn’t Robinson’s first anti-trans rodeo. A few months ago, Robinson spoke to the Upper Room Church of God in Christ and had this to say in a long-winded speech: "There ain't but two genders. Ain't nothing but men and women ... You can go to the doctor and get cut up. You can go down to the dress shop and get made up. You can go down there and get drugged up, but at the end of the day, you're just a drugged up, dressed up, made up, cut up, man or woman. You ain’t changed what God put in you—that DNA. You can’t transcend God’s creation." He reportedly added this touch of conservative Christian hatred: "If there is a movement in this country that is demonic, and that is full of the spirit of antichrist, it is the transgender movement."

As Daily Kos community member ShowerCap pointed out, there’s a good chance this kind of viral bigotry is just the kind of thing Mark Robinson needs to get shot into the top echelon of the Republican Party’s leadership these days.