Kicking The Can Down The Road

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

The battle over mifepristone has been raging at a dizzyingly high frequency in the past two weeks. To summarize:

• Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas stays the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, putting the ruling on a seven-day delay. 
• A panel of justice on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals disagrees with Kacsmaryk on staying the approval, but upholds challenges to the FDA’s loosening of restrictions around the drug. That decision — and the old restrictions — were set to go into effect this Saturday. 
• The Department of Justice appeals to the Supreme Court, asking for an emergency stay of the lower court decisions. The Court grants that on Friday, kicking the can until Wednesday. A response from the anti-abortion groups is due Tuesday.
• Meanwhile, in Washington, a judge rules that 17 states plus Washington D.C. have to keep mifepristone available as usual within their borders. Conflict! When asked for clarification re: the other case bubbling out of Texas, Judge Thomas Rice said that the states involved still have to follow his ruling.

Got all that?

The Supreme Court granting the administrative stay doesn’t tell us anything about how they’ll ultimately rule, and it would have been bizarre if they didn’t (though, we don’t take things for granted with this particular court).

But now we’re in a pause in the proceedings. Mifepristone will stay available as usual for the next few days. Take a deep breath and buckle up for next week — it’ll likely be a big one.

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

— Kate Riga

The Big Lie’s Little Experiment

This week, we went long on Shasta County, a rural enclave in Northern California. Its local governing board had been hijacked by far-right election deniers in recent years. And, thanks to right-wing conspiracy mongering, getting rid of Dominion voting machines was among their top priorities.

“The fact remains that these proprietary systems, without us looking into them, there is no trust for me,” Board Chairman Patrick Jones, who’s protested against Dominion for months, said in a March board meeting, pulling talking points straight from the MyPillow Guy Mike Lindell. “And most Americans, the majority of Americans, do not trust these machines.”

The Shasta County Board of Supervisors recently voted to switch to hand-counting all of its paper ballots in the next election. But Cathy Darling Allen, the county clerk, worries that they don’t know what they’re asking for: a complicated, costly, and legally treacherous process that her office has to deal with.

— Kaila Philo

Whatever Happened to Gary Cooper?

Over the last week or so, you may have encountered videos of right-wingers performatively assassinating cans and bottles of Bud Light. This aggression stems from Bud Light partnering with trans activist Dylan Mulvaney. The general contours of this cycle are probably familiar to you by now: A large corporation that couldn’t care less about anything but maximizing profits does something vaguely progressive in appearance, conservatives then engage in a pseudo-boycott where they buy the product (?) only to destroy it (??) online so millions of people see the product (???). Don’t ask me how but I found myself on a thread over at AR 15 dot com where the hot topic was which beer company is not woke? The answer appeared to be MillerCoors who is so sufficiently conservative they donate to fake climate change research.

Honestly, that’s all well and good but I have another question: Whatever happened to Gary Cooper? If you’ve not seen “The Sopranos,” this question was almost a recurring character in the show. Tony didn’t understand what happened to the strong silent type, who handled their problems “like a man” and didn’t complain or get emotional. Whenever these conservatives go full-theatre kid and engage in over-the-top faux aggression on social media, my friends and I remark that that doesn’t in fact seem in line with traditional “masculinity.” Back in my day, men walked 20 miles in the snow barefoot, uphill both ways, and then never complained about it for one second. Now of course, I don’t care what people do. Do whatever makes you happy. Just know that that isn’t a very masculine thing to do, being happy.

— Joe Ragazzo

• The U.S. built out a new social safety net during COVID, with federal cash helping to fund experiments that had a significant impact on lives — especially in the realm of childcare. Now we’re about to blow it up. Read more here. 
• The far-right is pissed off at the modern world and re-enamored with domestic terrorists such as Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh. Increasingly, it’s setting its sites on the power grid in the hopes of bringing about a Mad Max-type world from which to build a right-wing society. Read the latest from TPM’s Hunter Walker.
• The Texas GOP called passing this bill a “priority.” Its author says it will allow the state to supersede federal immigration law. TPM’s Josh Kovensky: Texas Bill Would Make Federal Law ‘Inoperative’ In The State To ‘Repel’ Migrants.

“If we don’t stick together, if we don’t believe we’re at war for our republic, with all love and respect to you, you need a different job… This is not a neighborhood social gathering. We’re fighting for the republic of our country right now… I’ve been called a racist, a misogynist, a white supremacist more in the last 2 months than I have my entire life… I’m gonna have to swallow this, seeing Mr. Jones back up here walking these hallowed halls that the greats of Tennessee stood in and watch them disrespect this state that I choose to move to… You gotta do what’s right, even if you think it might be wrong.” 

That’s a member of the Tennessee House GOP aggressively confronting the handful of Republican members who didn’t vote to expel Democratic Reps. Justin Jones, Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson — also known as the Tennessee Three — for breaking House chamber rules.

A leaked audio recording obtained by The Tennessee Holler this week revealed the infighting within the state House Republican caucus after the majority of them voted to expel Jones and Justin — two Black men — but spared Johnson — an older white woman —  for protesting lax gun laws on the House floor.

During the recording, Republicans complained that some members’ refusal to expel Johnson led to the party as a whole being tagged as “racist” and “white supremacist,” saying they “were hung out to dry” by members who voted no to the resolution to oust Johnson.

— Emine Yücel 

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