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: Gianforte’s Own Son Is Lobbying Him To Stop With The Anti-Trans Bills
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Republicans in the Montana state House just voted to formally punish a member of the legislature, Democratic Rep. Zooey Zephyr, a trans woman who has been blocked from speaking in chamber since last week. Her crime? Vocalizing the harms of the anti-trans legislation that the state House was considering at the time.

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Where Things Stand: Another 2024 Republican Avoids Abortion Specifics
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Republicans’ inability to find their footing in a post-Roe America remains an omnipresent issue not just for the GOP as a whole, but one that is increasingly tripping up nearly every Republican with 2024 ambitions.

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Where Things Stand: Jan 6 Defendant Shot At Officers Before Surrendering To FBI
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The man from Texas is not the first Jan. 6 defendant to try to go after law enforcement.

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Where Things Stand: Biden Shreds McCarthy’s Performative Debt Limit Bill
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President Joe Biden this afternoon skewered House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who finally released an actual list of proposals after months of yelling about amorphous “CUTS” and disingenuously tying the debt limit to spending cuts. The bill primarily targets Biden’s agenda and legislative victories. 

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Where Things Stand: Didn’t Know Florida Could Be So Cold
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Two more Republican members of Florida’s congressional delegation have completely ignored Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ plea to hold off on endorsing Donald Trump while he tricks absolutely no one into thinking he’s still mulling a presidential election.

Reps. Greg Steube and John Rutherford announced this week that they’re throwing their weight behind the other Florida resident’s 2024 bid, both issuing Trump endorsements dripping with MAGA flair.

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Where Things Stand: Another GOPer Sounds Five-Alarm Fire Siren On Party’s ‘Inability’ To Message On Abortion
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Last week we unpacked how Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-SC) dodgy messaging on abortion in New Hampshire and Iowa during his soft launch of a possible 2024 campaign was emblematic of the omnipresent issue the Republican Party faces: that it has no idea how to message where it stands on the issue to a national audience.

Republican strategists both publicly and privately have been sounding the alarm for weeks, urging the party to figure out how to coalesce behind specific messaging. Some have suggested coalescing behind Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) proposed 15-week ban as a policy supposedly moderate enough to fly in the 2024 general election, particularly among independent voters who have voted with Democrats on the issue in recent elections.

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Where Things Stand: Scott’s Vague Response To Abortion Questions Is Illustrative Of The Party Struggle
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The Republican Party still has no idea how to position itself nationally on abortion after its Dobbs success. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that, electorally, it will continue to be a winning issue in driving independent voters toward Democrats.

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Where Things Stand: Elon Airs His Regrets
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The world’s second richest man has been having a really “painful” time running Twitter, the once-handy and dare I say functional social media platform that has become completely unusable since his takeover.

Elon Musk also admitted that he only went through with the $44 billion purchase because a judge was about to force him to buy it.

In a wide-ranging interview with BBC, the billionaire addressed a number of issues that have been plaguing his image and his social media platform in recent months as he’s instituted mass layoffs and claimed he’s wiping the website of bots and fake news, while deplatforming journalists and trusted media organizations.

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Where Things Stand: 66,000 People Couldn’t Get An Abortion In Their Home State In First Six Months Post-Roe
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In the wake of Idaho’s passage of a new, first-of-its-kind law that bans some interstate travel to receive abortion care, new data sheds light on just how crucial out-of-state travel has been and will continue to be in this post-Roe America.

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Where Things Stand: Remember, This All Began As A GOP Effort To Downplay Not Just School Shootings, But Jan 6
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As my colleague Emine Yücel just reported, Tennessee Republicans have voted to expel one of the three Democrats who participated in a protest that broke out in the state House last week, as children and parents showed up to demand expanded gun control in the wake of another school shooting.

Emine and I followed the livestream of floor proceeding closely all afternoon and the rhetoric was, honestly, shocking. As Republicans gave lengthy, cringe speeches about the importance of following House rules, demanding to know how Rep. Justin Jones (D) carried a concealed bullhorn into the House chamber, yelled about him wearing the wrong type of lapel pin and argued that the Democrat from Nashville was intentionally creating chaos on the House floor to get attention because he is young, Democrats pleaded with their colleagues to drop the embarrassing crusade.

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