Clarence And The Grift

Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕

It’s a tired point among liberals: Trump’s populist rhetoric, claiming to be the champion of the working class, is so often at odds with his policy prescriptions. He enacted historic tax cuts for the rich, stocked his Cabinet full of anti-government ideologues, and cemented a Supreme Court majority that, if nothing else, will rein in any attempt to level the economic playing field.

This past week highlighted and heightened these contradictions.

On one side, we had the revelation that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gloried in the wealth of what he described as a close personal friend who also happened to be a major GOP donor, receiving superyacht trips to Indonesia and Greece along with private jet flights without disclosing any of the largesse.

On the other, the spectacle of Trump’s arraignment on Tuesday. I spent that morning with some of his supporters who turned out to support their man. I asked a few of them about potential future Trump indictments in Georgia, or in DC. Most demurred; a trip to Georgia would be too far or expensive, maybe they couldn’t get off work to make it to Washington.

This is not to valorize these protesters as tribunes of the working class. But rather to remind everyone of the point here: there is a massive, massive gulf between the foot soldiers of the conservative movement and its highest echelons.

More on other news below. Let’s dig in. 

— Josh Kovensky

Bear With Me

To those of you who have been reading The Weekender for more that the past year or so, I’d like to apologize… or thank you? During the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, as it ravaged New York City, I used this newsletter as an outlet for reflection and processing the horrors around me. But mostly, The Weekender and its loyal readers helped keep my sanity intact.

I can only hope that the dark humor and demented stories helped get you through some of those difficult, deadly days too.

While I mostly edit this newsletter now, that time sort of encapsulates one of my favorite things about TPM: so much of what we do is centered on processing the world around us alongside our readers. We don’t pretend to know everything, we’re clear about where we’re getting our information from, we’re direct with readers about what we don’t know and why what we do know matters. And we have fun, too.

In some ways, this newsletter is just the zened out version of what TPM does best. So this is my pitch to those of you who have been reading this newsletter for a while but haven’t yet pulled the trigger on joining TPM: If you like The Weekender, there’s a whole hell of a lot more of where this came from.  Please consider becoming a member today 🙂

— Nicole Lafond

A Certain Sort Of Trailblazing

Idaho earned the dubious distinction of passing a first-of-its-kind abortion ban this week, which makes it illegal for minors to leave the state for the procedure without parental approval.

Supporters of the new legislation call it the “abortion trafficking” law — both a sign of how QAnon has infected the entire Republican party, and an attempt to shift the criminality from the person who raped the minor to the person trying to help her get an abortion.

The regional Planned Parenthood hub has already promised to challenge the law, setting up a court battle experts had foreshadowed to TPM over a year ago: a jurisdictional war as red states seek to police abortion across their borders and blue states try to protect their providers from out-of-state prosecution. There’s very thin case law here, though Justice Brett Kavanaugh affirmed the right to interstate travel for abortion in his Dobbs concurrence.

Anti-abortion activists have always wanted to ban abortion everywhere. Keep your eye on this case, an opening salvo in this red state creep.

— Kate Riga

The Latest Target Of Elon Musk’s Pettiness: NPR

Earlier this week, Twitter’s added a “state-affiliated media” tag to NPR’s account — a label typically used by the platform to identify foreign media outlets that represent the official views of their government, like Russia’s RT and China’s Xinhua.

The decision — just another escalation in the newly minted Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s ongoing and petty squabble with the press — disturbed many, including the non-profit media organization itself.

In a statement to TPM, NPR President and CEO John Lansing called the move “unacceptable,” adding they were “disturbed to see last night that Twitter has labeled NPR as ‘state-affiliated media,’ a description that, per Twitter’s own guidelines, does not apply to NPR.”

But later in the week, Musk reportedly said the decision to label NPR as a “state-affiliated media” account might not have been accurate during a series of emails he exchanged with an NPR reporter.

“The operating principle at new Twitter is simply fair and equal treatment, so if we label non-US accounts as govt, then we should do the same for US, but it sounds like that might not be accurate here,” Musk wrote in email to the reporter.

But still, as of Friday the label on NPR’s accounts remained.

— Emine Yücel

“I’m able to speak because the people of District 52 sent me here to speak. Speaker Sexton is not my constituent, Speaker Sexton is not a king, Speaker Sexton is not God — though he may want to be. He is my colleague.” 

Before I get into it, a BIG disclaimer that this week’s Words of Wisdom is a rare earnest one that I wanted to highlight not only because it’s the best burn I’ve heard in a while but also because it touches on a very important point in a very eloquent way.

The above is former Tennessee Rep. Justin Jones (D) answering Rep. Johnny Garrett (R) during a Thursday session after he condescendingly asked the Democrat if he understood that he can only speak on the floor if House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R) gave him permission to do so.

Jones’ answer is one for the books.

The Democrat and his colleague Rep. Justin Pearson (D) — two young Black men — were expelled from the state House this week by a Republican-led resolution for participating in a peaceful gun protest from the floor of the chamber last week. The protest — that came in the wake of the Nashville school shooting that left six people dead — was made up mostly of children, parents and teachers who held up signs and chanted in the House gallery.

Meanwhile, Rep. Gloria Johnson of Knoxville (D) — an older white woman — who also participated in the demonstration, survived the vote.

But a silver lining: There’s a good chance the two could be reappointed by their local county commissions. 

— Emine Yücel 

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