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Does Donald Trump actually need any human help?

The once and potentially future president went on Logan Paul’s podcast and mused about AI, including its potential to replace his speechwriters. 

“I had a speech rewritten by AI out there, one of the top people,” Trump said, per a writeup in The Guardian. “He said, ‘Oh, you’re gonna make a speech? Yeah?’ He goes, click, click, click, and like, 15 seconds later, he shows me my speech that’s written that’s great, so beautifully. I said, ‘I’m gonna use this.’ I’ve never seen anything like it.”

We don’t know when or if Trump used that speech. But it’s hard to imagine that AI chatbots, known for their riveting “on the one hand,” “on the other hand,” “in conclusion” style of argumentation, could capture Trump’s signature style. No details about sinking boats, sharks, or electrocution, I’d guess. Nonetheless, Trump joked to Paul he is ready to fire his speechwriters.

Would such a move matter? He doesn’t lean too heavily on their speeches anyway. There is a sense in which those around Trump seem to feel, this time around, that it’s not even worth asking the question of whether they should let Trump be Trump. Trump will be Trump. There’s not really a choice, there’s not much those around him can do to intervene, and there’s not many left with the spine to try. Take this New York Times’ report on Trump’s debate prep, which doesn’t actually involve any prepping for debates, just “refreshers” from his staff on the “policies” Trump allegedly supports (as if those are not prone to change based on gut feeling, barometric pressure, or a well-placed donation from an executive).

One can imagine a Trump campaign ideas team staffed entirely by chatbots: chatbots to write speeches, chatbots to give “policy” “refreshers,” chatbots to speculate on new and innovative ways the election may be or may have already been stolen. It might not change much about how the former president moves in the world, given the low level of resistance to his worst ideas currently exhibited by those humans around him, but it might reduce the number of Trump’s codefendants after the fact. 

Anyway. Here’s what’s on tap this weekend. 

• Kate Riga writes on the Supreme Court’s unsurprising abortion decision this week, and the damage it might do in the weeks to come. 
• Josh Kovensky looks for the now barely seen Proud Boys, and finds them lying in wait. 
• Emine Yücel was on the Hill Thursday trying to report as hoards of other reporters hounded senators for details of Trump’s visit to the Hill. She recounts the experience. 
• The danger of electric vehicles, according to Marjorie Taylor Greene. 

Let’s dig in.

— John Light

Celebrating That The Supreme Court Meandered Its Way To The Obviously Correct Decision

The Supreme Court did its job this week in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the case where anti-abortion doctors attempted to get mifepristone yanked from the market. Cue the ticker-tape parade. 

Seriously though — with this Court, often so hellbent on reverse engineering its way into preferred policy outcomes, it was by no means a predetermined conclusion that the justices would find that the anti-abortion plaintiffs obviously lacked standing to bring the suit. The waters were further muddied by the justices’ own actions; they chose to hear the case rather than turning it away on spec; both Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas would have allowed the 5th Circuit’s decision (which reimposed restrictions on the drug) to stand while the Court considered the case. 

But they came out with a unanimous decision, realizing, rightly, that granting standing to doctors who couldn’t prove an injury would throw wide the courthouse doors to lots of other people whose chief complaint is not liking something that someone else is doing.

The Biden campaign scrambled after the decision to remind reporters that the happy outcome of this case does not mean mifepristone is safe. Campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said on a call that “Trump’s second term agenda threatens women in all 50 states” and that Donald Trump could ban mifepristone without Congress or the courts. 

They’re clearly worried that ill-informed complacency could replace the nationwide urgency to beat back abortion restrictions borne from the Dobbs decision (a boon to Democrats). She added that abortion would be a centerpiece of Biden’s debate strategy later this month.

The Biden team may not have to worry; I suspect that the joy over this non-heinous abortion decision will be short-lived. We’re still awaiting the Court’s decision in Moyle v. United States, on whether federal emergency room standards trump state abortion bans. From a legal standard, it’s another easy case: Federal laws preempt state ones. But the right-wing justices sounded determined to decide against the U.S. government at oral argument, getting frustrated as Justice Sonia Sotomayor brought in real-world anecdotes of the suffering letting Idaho’s ban govern emergency care would unleash.

It’s the same Court as ever. They just couldn’t quite stomach an argument so flawed that a 1L would know to decide against it.

— Kate Riga

Loud and Proud

I wrote this week about the Proud Boys. The group was everywhere during the Trump years, doing battle with his opponents and buttressing his supporters. But at the Trump trial — including on the day of its dramatic end — they were nowhere to be found.

That surprised me. Throughout the trial, Trump had complained that his fans were being blocked from coming to show their support. I was there every day, and saw neither blockage nor a significant number of his supporters. But the Proud Boys struck me as different. During the Trump years they proudly acted as his auxiliaries, claiming to provide “security” for him and his supporters. Why weren’t they there for him at his moment of maximum legal peril?

The answer is that they’re standing back and standing by, avoiding situations that might subject them to further scrutiny from the FBI. In other words, they’re avoiding situations that might cause mass arrests, like the courthouse as Trump’s verdict was announced. It reflects many things: the group’s relative weakness when compared to 2020, for sure, but also a certain canniness. They recognize that they are damaging for Trump; as one chapter put it, the requirement then is not to disband themselves, but to lie low and wait until November to act.

— Josh Kovensky

Words Of Wisdom

“If there was an attack on our nation’s capital, Joint Base Andrews would be responding. Are we going to have to sit around and wait for our military members at Joint Base Andrews to charge their electric vehicles to come into the nation’s capital to defend us in case of an attack?”

That’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) speaking on the House floor earlier this week.

The conspiracy theory–loving congresswoman introduced an amendment to the 2025 defense budget Wednesday, trying to withhold funds authorized to the Department of Defense that may be used for electric vehicles or electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

The MAGA hatred for everything electric vehicle is well known but this ridiculous argument is a new one for me…

MTG really seems confused about how electric cars and electronics work in general. Somebody ought to tell her you can charge things ahead of time.

Thankfully House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) shut it down quickly.

“Let me assure you that as basic readiness they’ll be charged in the same way that the gas tanks are currently full. Okay?” Smith said.

— Emine Yücel

Let Them Eat Cake

As I exited the metro station this Thursday, I ran straight into a wall of DC’s infamous humidity. That I expected. I did not expect the wall of reporters and cameras that greeted me in front of the Capitol Hill Club.

Former President Donald Trump was on the Hill meeting with Republican lawmakers, but I was not there to cover him: I was tracking Senate Republicans’ efforts to explain why they refused to support the Democrats’ bill to codify in vitro fertilization despite repeatedly claiming they are all for the procedure. I spent most of Thursday debunking one of their go to arguments: that IVF is not under threat at the state level.

After the Trump meeting was over, many of those reporters I had seen earlier swarmed the Senate basement in the hope of getting details on the closed-door meeting.

As I fought my way into the scrums to ask senators about IVF and the bill they were walking up to the Senate floor to vote on, I expected that most of the other reporters would ask instead about the topics of discussion during the Trump meeting. It’s normal, after all, that the press wants to cover what the presumptive GOP nominee said in his first meeting at the Capitol since Jan. 6. 

But as senator after senator walked by, reporters were shouting over each other, tripping over the stairs and other members of the press to get their recorders close enough to the conversation to instead ask about mundane details of and how Republican lawmakers kissed the hand.

“Did you sing him happy birthday?” 

“Was there cake?” 

“What kind of cake did you guys get for the former president?”

Squeezing into the scrums of sometimes more than seven or eight reporters chasing a senator walking down the narrow hallways of the basement connecting the Senate to the senate office buildings, all I heard were those same questions over and over again.

What a scene I thought to myself… Here I was covering a major threat to reproductive rights and I could barely get any question in because everyone else wanted to hear what kind of cake Trump ate.

— Emine Yücel