The Grotesque State of Our Gerontocracy

Our gerontocracy is growing increasingly macabre. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), a key architect of our current era of hyperpartisanship and shattered norms, has been unseen since his hospitalization on June 14. The “Weekend at Bernies” memes and jokes about interacting with the 83-year-old senator via Ouija board are getting louder. Prominent right-wing commentators are demanding proof of life, and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear even sent a letter to McConnell’s office formally requesting information about his condition. This comes after years of news reports about McConnell injuring himself during falls and painful videos of the senator freezing up on camera.   

But it’s hardly just McConnell. “Elected official death and dementia watch” has become a game the Internet is playing far too frequently. In just the past few years, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) died in office at age 90 after losing her cognitive abilities and missing dozens of Senate votes. D.C.’s nonvoting representative for over three decades, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, finally agreed not to run for reelection at age 88 amid reports she was in the early stages of dementia. And reporters from the Dallas Express tracked then-Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX) to a memory care facility where she’d been living for months after she was “found wandering, lost, and confused” in her former neighborhood. The 2024 presidential campaign was a slow-motion-trainwreck of bearing witness to both Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s mental decline, while Trump now frequently dozes off during Cabinet meetings and is more prone than ever to bizarre rambling and embarrassing gaffes. (“Islamic Republic of Japan,” etc. etc.)

Thanks to an unwillingness to let go of power and the assistance of enabling staffers who cover up for them, this grotesque state of affairs doesn’t seem likely to change any time soon. A 2026 NBC News analysis found that a dozen of the oldest members of Congress are running for re-election.

But it is having a corrosive effect on our already deeply corroded politics. Voters from both parties are deeply put off by the lack of transparency from their elected officials, and they’re making their feelings known. Anger still burns deeply in the Democratic electorate at Biden’s small cadre of advisers for concealing his condition and risking a second Trump administration by allowing him to run for reelection when he was not equipped to do so. While GOP leaders are mostly circling the wagons around McConnell, insisting that they literally just got off the phone with the senator after spirited debates about foreign policy, Republican voters and much of MAGA World are not. 

On X, Laura Loomer ranted about a “massive coverup,” claiming that McConnell is “brain dead” and writing, “President Trump, they are trying to screw you!!!!! The RINOs want the Save America Act and our country to die alongside Mitch McConnell!” Glenn Back demanded “the truth about Mitch McConnell NOW,” calling it “unacceptable that the party who spent four years criticizing Joe Biden’s health is now silent on McConnell’s.” Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) mocked McConnell’s allies for their feeble attempts to demonstrate “proof of life.” 

Medical conditions are fertile ground for conspiracy theories. There are valid privacy reasons why aides might keep a close lid on things, ample opportunities for close readings of video appearances. Crucially, the recent barrage of health scandals involving some of the most powerful people in the country underline the understandable feeling people have about lacking legitimate representation and being jerked around by party leaders pulling the strings.

Republicans Are Being Insane About Caitlin Clark Again

The right pretends to care about women’s sports in one of two circumstances: when trans girls are involved, or when they can project their racial grievances onto Indiana Fever player Caitlin Clark.

The latter provided grist for the faux outrage mill this week, as elected Republicans caught up to a tediously long simmering kerfuffle over a foul Phoenix Mercury player Alyssa Thomas committed against Clark in late June. The two got tangled up and fell to the floor; as Thomas, who has torn labrums in both shoulders, tried to push herself up, her balled first seemed to slide onto Clark’s throat. The freeze frame makes it look like Thomas was trying to hurt Clark, though in the full clip, Thomas is already looking up towards the ball as she tries to get up. The Mercury guard was later assessed a flagrant 2 foul, a one-game suspension and a fine.

The photo quickly attracted the most loathsome elements online (yes, I mean Barstool’s Dave Portnoy) and eventually crossed the boundary from right-wing curious (male) sports commentators to, well, the president. 

“I thought your young, wonderful basketball player — Caitlin (Clark) — I thought she was treated rather rough, if you want to know the truth,” Trump told reporters unprompted on Monday. “That was a much different kind of an event. That was a pretty bad event.”

And a group of Republican congressmen this week sent a letter to WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert, threatening prosecution by the Justice Department, the Department of Labor or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for “violations of federal civil rights laws” in the “racially motivated attacks” against Clark. Many lawmakers who shared the letter online were quick to claim that the 29-year-old league wouldn’t exist without Clark’s participation. 

This exact media cycle has played out at least three times since Clark entered the WNBA: She gets fouled by a Black player (Thomas, DiJonai Carrington, Chennedy Carter) and the right pounces, insisting that Clark — straight, white — is unsafe in a league full of thugs that want to hurt her. 

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) — why a congressman from Tennessee is involved at all is beyond me — suggested that Clark should play in Europe, where she’d be safer (presumably Burchett assumes that only white women play basketball overseas). 

“Caitlin Clark is a bball superstar who gets consistently treated unfairly on the court she gets a fist to the throat for example,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) tweeted in his usual semi-literate style. “As a fan I don’t appreciate ill treatment So refs start treating Caitlin like u do every other player. What happened last night shldnt happen again.”

And some decided to jump atop the dogpile in a milder way, as Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA), a self-professed non-fan of the WNBA, critiqued the league’s lack of marketing of Clark. How someone who doesn’t follow the league has a finger on the pulse of its ad campaigns — in which Clark features heavily — is somewhat mysterious.

Thomas, a soft-spoken player who’s in a relationship with teammate DeWanna Bonner, told reporters that she and her family have received death threats. 

Every facet of this story is infuriating to real fans of the WNBA. Basketball is a physical game and hard fouls happen — but in a mostly-Black league, the only episodes that break containment always feature a Black player fouling a white one (check out this egregious play by Clark teammate Sophie Cunningham on then-Connecticut Sun guard Jacy Sheldon, which prompted no congressional inquiry). 

Clark herself — a talented, exciting, hyper-competative shit-talker — doesn’t hesitate to dish it out on the court, but can be frustratingly lukewarm in response to the right-wing media explosions. It makes her an easier avatar for these actors to project their agenda onto than, say, Paige Bueckers, another white, number-one draft pick who entered the league a year after Clark, but has been consistently outspoken about the different standards of treatment for white players versus Black ones (she is also openly gay, perhaps making her a more difficult fit for reactionaries).

It all presses on one of the W’s deepest sore spots: the league’s longtime prioritization of white players as its posterchildren over Black ones, no matter if their skill and accolades justify such all-star status. 

And it’s a hijacking of the league’s indisputable success story by figures who routinely dismiss and demean female athletes when they can’t use them as politician pawns. Clark, Bueckers, former LSU star Angel Reese and future hall-of-famer A’ja Wilson have all injected the game with excitement and drawn in thousands of new fans. The players association tirelessly fought for and won a life-changing new collective bargaining agreement, giving the players livable wages, private flights, protection from pregnancy discrimination and many other rights that are standard in even less popular men’s leagues. The league has added three new expansion teams since 2025, with teams in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia coming in the next three years. Broadcast networks and streaming services are jockeying to get a slice of the ever more profitable pie. 

In a time of authoritarian backsliding, a league of mostly gay, Black women is making historic progress. No wonder Republicans keep returning to this well — it’s an existential threat to the world they’re trying to impose.

Speculating on Aliens

While the North Face vests on Wall Street pump AI stocks and the eggheads at the IMF warn of global economic slowdown thanks to the Iran War, savvy market watchers have their attention elsewhere. 

On Friday, July 10, the Department of War (referred to here for context by its new click-friendly name) declassified another round of UFO/UAP records opening the door to a potential frenzy in the prediction markets. This is the fourth set of records released since May in accordance with PURSUE (Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters). The decision to release the files in tranches on a rolling basis has created a great deal of intrigue around the WAR.GOV/UFO website; Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell claimed the site’s first three releases have received more than 1.7 billion hits (nice!). It has also led to speculative markets forming on platforms like Polymarket where you can bet on when the next tranche of files might drop. But in the world of financial UFO speculation, betting on the date of file dumps is small potatoes. The big money is in determining when the US government will definitively confirm alien existence. And here is where this latest dump, along with related developments, might provide an opportunity for those watching closely.

On Tuesday, July 7, UK-based filmmaker and ufologist Mark Christopher Lee told the Daily Mail he had learned from multiple sources that Trump had already written and was planning to give a speech confirming the existence of aliens — possibly as early as July 8 to coincide with the anniversary of Roswell. According to the Daily Mail, “The alleged draft of the speech is said to mention specific UFO incidents over the last 80 years, including Roswell, the US Navy’s encounter with a craft called the ‘Tic Tac’ in 2004 and multiple UFOs spotted by fighter jets along the East Coast in 2015.” Trump, of course, delivered no such speech on the 8th. But perhaps what appeared to be a slip of the tongue when he told reporters during the NATO summit in Turkey that he was “No. 1 on Tic Tac,” was in fact an accidental nod toward imminent revelations — a matter of having future speeches on the mind. And before you dismiss Mr. Lee as a crank, in January he told the Daily Mail that his inside information came from “a successful business person acting as an advisor to the Trump administration officials, who has been responsible for reviewing archive UFO evidence in preparation for [the disclosure event].” Further chin-scratching: in February, The Atlantic questioned whether a mysterious $100,000 bet made on Kalshi predicting the US would confirm alien existence by the end of 2026 might be insider trading. 

A statement from Pete Hegseth published on the DOW/UFO website includes as a reason for disclosure that, “These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation.” 

“Justified speculation” —  an interesting choice of words, wouldn’t you say?

Come Nerd Out About Politics With Us!

When news breaks — about, say, the Platner disaster or McConnell hospitalization — I always scramble to open TPM’s Slack to see what my colleagues are posting about it. They’re so quick to share the latest updates or jokes that help add some levity to a grim situation.

That’s the spirit of our upcoming event in Brooklyn on Wednesday July 29. Josh Marshall and Marisa Kabas, independent journalist and founder of The Handbasket newsletter, will weigh in on whatever hell is currently breaking loose, in a conversation moderated by TPM publisher Joe Ragazzo. Marisa is a diligent chronicler of our current hellscape, who has broken stories about the takeover of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Office of Management and Budget’s effort to freeze billions of dollars in federal grants and loans. (She also wrote an essay for our 25th anniversary last year about journalists becoming personal brands). So we’re thrilled to be able to bend her ear about the news of the day and making it work in independent media. 

Nicole LaFond and I will kick off the event with some politics trivia for the audience, and we’ll end the night with a happy hour, where our staff hopes to meet readers of both The Handbasket and TPM. We’d really love to see you there.

Tickets are on sale now for just $25 (or free for TPM Inside members). Get yours while they last. 

— Allegra Kirkland

How Much of This Week’s News Do You Remember?

1) President Trump intervened to overturn the red card of this U.S. Men’s team striker before the team went on to lose to Belgium this week. 

2) Which Republican U.S. Senate candidate was spotted on a date with an alleged mistress in London over Fourth of July weekend?

3) Name at least two of the candidates under consideration to replace Graham Platner in the Maine Senate race.

4) How much will President Trump finally have to pay out to E. Jean Carroll after a court denied his appeal?

Answers below

Fair Enough!

Kevin McCarthy Thinks Republicans Run Unimpeachable Candidates

In a truly remarkable bit of hubris, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy claimed that Republicans have the upper hand when it comes to rejecting problematic candidates in their ranks. “One thing I know about Republicans is when we had a very bad candidate, we didn’t vote for that person. We walked away,” McCarthy said during an appearance on Fox News, responding to the implosion of Graham Platner’s campaign over sexual assault allegations. Ah yes, the GOP, famous for never backing candidates accused of rape, voter fraud, extramarital affairs with staffers or other misconduct.

Mainstreaming White Nationalism

Christopher Mathias traces the story of how the term “remigration” — a euphemism with the clearest, most traceable of fascist lineages — traveled from the far-right fringes to the halls of power, with the Trump administration creating an Office of Remigration last year.

A key figure in all of this is Thomas Rousseau, who led his white nationalist Patriot Front brethren through the streets of Washington, D.C. over July 4th weekend. (TPM investigative reporter Hunter Walker has more reporting on Rousseau and the absurd conspiracy theories circulating about Patriot Front.)

State-Sanctioned Killing

Trivia answers: 1) Folarin Balogun 2) Ken Paxton 3) Nirav Shah, Troy Jackson, Jordan Wood, Dan Kleban, Shenna Bellows 4) $5.8 million