Nicole Lafond

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Nicole Lafond is TPM’s deputy editor, based in New York. She has also worked as the special projects editor and as a senior newswriter for TPM. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and previously covered education in central Illinois.

Where Things Stand: Florida Synagogue Sues To Challenge 15-Week Abortion Ban As Violation Of Jewish Law
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Congregants from a synagogue in South Florida are suing to block the state’s 15-week abortion ban from going into effect on July 1, arguing the law violates their religious freedom as adherents of Jewish law.

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Where Things Stand: Some Republicans Secretly Hope Jan 6 Hearings Make Trump Unelectable
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Bon courage!

Some members of the party that hasn’t managed to figure out how to stiffen its spine in the face of Donald Trump for seven years are apparently privately hoping that the Democrats and two Republicans on the Jan. 6 select committee will do their dirty work for them.

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Where Things Stand: In Shock Of The Century, Trump Is Using His Off-Brand Twitter Site To Hype QAnon Content
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The online QAnon movement and many of its Donald Trump-adjacent conspiracy theorists have found a happy home on Trump’s glitch-ridden, generic Twitter app, TRUTH Social.

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Where Things Stand: It Was A ‘Movement’ Alright
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Republicans have been putting in a lot of work today to convince you, before the Jan. 6 committee has even spoken a word this evening, that the findings are all a bunch of bs; the product of hysterical lefty Democrats being snowflakes about a few people breaking into the people’s House.

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Where Things Stand: Republicans Said A Lot Of Very Dumb Stuff About Guns Today
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We’ve been covering Republicans’ various deflection strategies (if you can even call them strategies) on addressing gun reform in the wake of the latest mass shootings in the U.S. for a few weeks. You might even be tired of it by now — we’ve heard it all, blaming everything from “doors” to abortion access to trans-rights for the mass shootings that plague our nation.

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Where Things Stand: Dems Compare Fox To Russian TV For Not Airing Jan 6 Hearings Live
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Fox News couldn’t possibly cut off its star attraction.

Tucker Carlson’s show airs from 8:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. ET. The Jan. 6 committee hearing’s debut on Thursday begins at 8 as well. It’s hardly a surprise that the network announced yesterday that it won’t air at least the first hearing live — Tucker has amassed a cult following, coming out on top consistently with the highest ratings of any show on cable news networks.

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Where Things Stand: In Milo’s Hiring As MTG’s Intern, Viral Cruelty Remains The Point
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Yes, on its face, it is pathetic and entertaining that the once-relevant, 37-year-old far-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos has been hired as an UNPAID intern for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) several years after he was sort of but not really pushed out of his gig at Steve Bannon’s Breitbart for appearing to defend pedophilia.

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Where Things Stand: From ‘Doors’ To Abortion, GOP Blames Everything But Gun Laws For Mass Shootings
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In the wake of three recent mass shootings in America in the last two weeks, Republicans are once again showing their collective ass, deploying a litany of talking points about random stuff to clog up the national discourse on gun violence with anything and everything but guns.

It’s all very pellucid — a distraction tactic to avoid engaging seriously on the issue of our nation’s unprecedentedly lax gun laws and the need for national — or even state level! — gun control reform. And Republican Rep. Billy Long (MO) just dangerously added a befuddling new culprit to the mix: abortion is to blame for mass shootings.

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Where Things Stand: The ‘Investigate The Investigators’ Conspiracy Theorist Lines Of Attack Are Falling, One Day At A Time
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Just yesterday a federal jury essentially toppled ex-President Trump’s victimhood-laced line of attack against the Russia probe when it acquitted DNC-connected lawyer Michael Sussmann.

The acquittal was a significant swing and a miss, not just for special counsel John Durham, who was handpicked by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to look into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, but for Trumpers everywhere who have built a brand off of the long-unsubstantiated belief that the Mueller probe was nothing more than a politically motivated conspiracy of the elites to undermine Trump’s legitimacy as president.

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Where Things Stand: Anti-Abortion Activists Have Been Collecting Data That Could Be Used To Target Abortion Seekers
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A recent report from MIT Technology Review sheds light on the ways in which anti-abortion activists have collected data on-site at abortion clinics over the past several decades to go after doctors and others carrying out the procedure.

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