As anti-trans rights laws pop up in GOP-led state legislatures across the country, fueling one of Republicans’ top culture wars in the Biden era, the majority conservative Supreme Court decided to not take up a key transgender rights case today, a surprising victory for LGBTQ rights.
No, really. Thanks to Mitch McConnell for confirming how he suckered most of the big DC publications with the faux drama over President Biden’s ‘veto threat’. The word from the bigs over the weekend was that yes, all knew that Democrats were proceeding with the two bills in tandem, that the two were linked. It was just that Biden made this too clear by saying he would not sign the bipartisan mini-bill if only that one came to his desk.
But now McConnell is helpfully clarifying that in fact he is objecting to what everyone knew in advance and that even he spoke about numerous times on the record.
I’ve spent some time over the last few days trying to puzzle out the available information on vaccine efficacy, the Delta variant and what if anything we can see about the future from what’s happening today in a few test case countries around the world.
I had missed this important development in the rush of events on Friday. We’ve been discussing the rising tide of harassment (legal, extralegal and illegal), threats and sometimes actual violence against election officials around the country. Sometimes it’s relatively high level elected officials like Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. But more often it’s little known election administrators at the local level – elected, appointed or simply hired to conduct the nuts and bolts of managing elections. Now the Garland DOJ has set up a special task force focused on these threats.
I’ve written over many years that despite the seesawing of control in Congress and executive branch, Washington remains wired for the GOP. We’re seeing another striking example of that in the way most establishment DC press outlets are are treating the brouhaha over President Biden’s alleged ‘veto threat’. We started with Biden stating openly what all the parties to the proposed bipartisan legislation know, which is that for Democrats it’s a package deal. Democrats know that. Republicans know that. The reporters know that. And yet the same folks have decided to take the feigned Republican freakout entirely at face value regardless. Politico of all places was closer to the mark on Friday when they noted that it took a day for Republicans to realize they were upset and what about.
And it’s actually accelerated over the weekend.