Editors’ Blog
Make No Mistake. The House GOP is On the Ropes Here. 
I wouldn’t be so quick to assume Democrats got taken by working with Senate Republicans to put together this bipartisan border deal. There are a number of provisions in this deal which many Democrats won’t like at all just on the merits. That is an important question. But here I’m talking about the politics. It’s House Republicans who are in an awkward position now.
House Republicans are now clearly refusing to support provisions they’ve been demanding for years. Now they claim that they are refusing to support or even allow a vote on the deal because it doesn’t go far enough. But it’s a bit late for that since they were already pretty open about simply refusing to vote for anything until Trump becomes President again.
Read MoreThere was a helpful article in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend illustrating some of the actual situation in Israel-Palestine. It’s a profile of far-right Kahanist politician Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is one of the two ultra-far-right figures keeping Netanyahu in power. Through the article he pines for the return of Donald Trump who would, Ben-Gvir says, finally give Israel the free hand it needs to encourage the “voluntary” departure of the Gazan population and resettle the strip with Israel settlements.
“Instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel [to Gaza], which goes to Hamas,” Ben-Gvir told the Journal. “If Trump was in power, the U.S. conduct would be completely different.”
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Taking a Look at Team Polls and Team Specials ahead of the 2024 Election
I want to flag to your attention two interesting articles on the the shape of the 2024 election. The first one is from Nate Cohn of the Times and it is is on a topic that requires some background explanation.
There’s been a debate for the last year or so about two potential sources of insight into who has the advantage going into 2024. Camp one looks at polls which show Trump and Biden either roughly tied or Trump with a small but significant lead. But a lengthy list of special election outcomes tells a different story. It shows Democrats significantly and fairly consistently exceeding historical benchmarks and, often, polls. There are a lot more polls than special elections. But special elections aren’t estimates of election results. They are actual election results.
Read MoreI can’t speak to the methodology. But a study just published in JAMA Internal Medicine calculated that from the time the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision (calculated from July 1st, 2022) and the end of 2023 64,000 pregnancies occurred as a result of rape in the 14 states that immediately implemented near total bans on abortion.
Of those 64,000, 5,500 rape-caused pregnancies took place in states with at least nominal exceptions for rape. As we know, those exceptions can be more nominal than real. But if those are excluded the number comes down to just under 59,000.
These are statistical estimates. So there’s probably some room for quibbling at the margins for the exact numbers. But the scale of pregnancies as a result of rape occurring with no recourse to abortion without traveling to another state is staggering.
I’m going to try to write more about it tomorrow, but this executive order from President Biden targeting violent settlers in the West Bank is a bigger deal than most people realize. It’s also more far-reaching than I think most expected. People who follow this stuff I think can see it. But there are so many other more immediate, high octane things going on that it’s a bit hard for the news to break through.
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BREAKING: You Might Be Compelled to Think that Bridget Ziegler Is At Least Sometimes a Good Person
There’s yet more information out now about the now-mostly-dethroned threesomeer power couple of Christian and Bridget Ziegler. And despite her obvious hypocrisy, I’m compelled to note that Bridget comes off somewhat sympathetically in the new material. Christian, well, a bit less so.
The latest update comes to us from the Florida Trident, which broke the original story and has been first on many of the subsequent details.
Though the new text messages don’t say so specifically they certainly suggest, unsurprisingly, that when it came to threesomes, this wasn’t Christian and Bridget’s first rodeo. Or their last. The first assignation appears to have occurred in February 2021. On February 19th, Christian texted Bridget to “come home, stop, and pick up [the woman] to play again and be crazy.” Bridget was up for it but also concerned that, even though the woman was consenting in a formal sense, she might be too troubled and that sharing her as a sexual partner might be taking advantage of her.
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YOLO on the Down Low—Meet State Rep. Jim Lucas, the Feralist Indiana Has to Offer
Last night I brought you news of Indiana State Rep. Jim Lucas (R) who was meeting in a corridor of the state capitol with some high school students who came to talk about out of control gun violence and their fears of being gunned down while in algebra class. The video I linked in that post shows the moment he flashed them his loaded pistol to convince them that guns are actually totally awesome. His point seemed to be: guns aren’t scary. You don’t think I’m gonna shoot you right now, do you?
I’ve taken a crash course in Lucasian studies overnight and from what I’ve learned it’s hard to believe Lucas hasn’t yet made the jump to Congress to join the House GOP conference.
As you might expect, Lucas appears to have a long history of posting what a local NBC affiliate in 2020 rather charitably called “racially controversial social media posts.” In that case it was a new meme he’d made with a photo of black children over the text “We gon’ get free money!”
In the wake of that controversy he explained that he “was bored last night and made several memes on imgflip.com, essentially mocking our government and it’s overstepping it’s (sic) authority.”
Read MoreA new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh discuss the waiting game on Trump’s immunity, congressional Republicans’ scuttling of the border deal to help Trump and some hopeful signs from the Arizona Senate race.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
Yesterday I wrote that a subset of users were experiencing a couple issues. We now believe this issue has been resolved. The source of the problem was some server maintenance work gone awry by one of our hosting partners. But our crack team of developers figured out what was going on, notified the partner, and they were able to fix the issues last night.
Thanks to all the readers who wrote in, was a big help. Teamwork makes the dreamwork.
Also, if you aren’t a member, how about changing that today?
Amazing what people are capable of. Indiana House GOP Rep. flashes his loaded handgun at high school students at the capitol to discuss their concerns about gun violence and getting shot to death during algebra class.