When I wrote in a February issue of the Weekender about The Weirdness Threshold and the ways in which Republicans were approaching it through Taylor Swift hysteria, I didn’t think “Weird” would become a Democratic Party rallying cry. I was mostly reacting to two things at the time: First, I saw a gap between the fixations of the new, very online, right and conservatives I know in real life who are barely online at all and who were not talking about crazy Taylor Swift conspiracy theories. (I had a unique window into this because I’m from Cleveland and we love Travis Kelce.)

The second thing I was reacting to was the pattern of conservative thought that led to this. Conservatism is intrinsically reactive. It always has been, whether you start with Edmund Burke or the Glorious Revolution. A key component of a reactive philosophy is understanding what you are reacting to. But conservatives often don’t know, exactly, what they’re reacting to. They feel they are out of sync but they don’t know why. And so it results in them scrambling, creating their own cartoonish, fun-house mirror versions of mainstream or left-leaning policies, talking points, or institutions.

There’s a long history of this in the U.S. — think of how the Heritage Foundation is a reaction to the Brookings Institute or Fox News is a reaction to … news. When the online right goes off and talks amongst themselves about “wokeness” or “critical race theory” or “DEI,” they return with a reaction so detached from the initial concept that it doesn’t even make sense; it’s often been infused with a mean, exclusionary spirit. That’s the Weird. It’s an angry reaction to something misunderstood in the first place. What does “Sydney Sweeney’s boobs defeated woke” mean? Nobody knows — except the right wingers who redefined woke to mean whatever they needed it to mean. Rinse and repeat with any concept they feel challenges tradition in a way they find unsettling.

Now, with Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) in the spotlight as Donald Trump’s running mate, many are recognizing the weirdness threshold as a potentially concerning characteristic for the Republican Party. Even Trump’s seemingly worried his freaky running mate might be a little too weird.

Anyways, I talk about this and more on the CBC Radio program Day 6, set to come out this morning at 10:00 a.m. ET. Be sure to tune into the conversation here.

— Joe Ragazzo

Here’s What Else TPM Has On Tap This Weekend:

• Josh Kovensky tells us more about the Claremont Institute as a policy lab for authoritarianism.
• Khaya Himmelman reports on Ohio removing less than 500 non-citizen voters from the rolls and how the action itself will serve as a datapoint for election deniers in the fall.
• Emine Yücel reflects on Trump shitting the bed this week when he went full-on racist in front of Black journalists.
• Khaya Himmelman also digs in on reports of vigilantes monitoring drop boxes in swing states across the U.S.

Let’s dig in.

— Nicole Lafond

Whose Birthright?

It’s been lost in the insane tumult of the past month of politics, but one of the most important questions to be decided in the upcoming election has to do with what it means to be an American citizen. The U.S. stands out by how it defines its people — your ancestry doesn’t matter; as long as you’re born here, you’re a citizen.

Trump, per Project 2025, wants to undo that. The end of birthright citizenship would likely proceed first via an executive order (as Trump has promised), and would then be challenged in the courts. The lawsuit would work its way up to the Supreme Court, whose Republican majority would then be presented with the opportunity to write birthright citizenship out of the 14th Amendment.

I wrote this week about the Claremont Institute and its fervent support for Sen. JD Vance (R-OH). As it were, Claremont happens to also be a hotbed of opposition to birthright citizenship. On Thursday, former Trump NSC official and Claremont fellow Michael Anton published an article about his own advocacy for ending birthright citizenship, and what he regards as unjustified attacks that he’s received from the press for doing so.

For Claremont, these arguments are part of a broader project that regards the past several decades as a radical break with the founding traditions of American government. That belief is what propels Claremont officials to make wild and inflammatory claims, and what underpins proposals that lead critics to describe it as a policy lab for authoritarianism. Birthright citizenship fits in the same vein: shut it all down, and return us to the American mindset of the 19th century.

— Josh Kovensky

Watch Election Deniers Point To This If They Lose In The Fall

On Thursday, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose announced that county boards of elections have been instructed to remove 499 alleged non-citizen from the voter rolls — a move that experts warn is part of normal voter roll maintenance, but a move that has the potential to only further perpetuate the false narrative of non-citizens voting in elections. 

At least, that’s how election deniers might spin it. 

According to LaRose, the individuals who will be removed from the voter rolls include those who “confirmed their non-citizen status to the BMV, and a subsequent review of the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database system has confirmed them to be non-citizens.”

Justin Levitt, an election law scholar and professor at LMU Loyola Law School, Los Angeles explained in an interview with TPM that although this is part of reasonable list maintenance, 499 ineligible voters in a state of about 8 million registered voters is not a “harbinger.” This number is only 0.006% of the registered voting population, which only serves to highlight how accurate and safe the election process is. 

“I have no doubt that people who’ve been screaming about an issue that isn’t really an issue, will seize on a headline and make it an issue,” Levitt said. “So I would not be at all surprised to see this portrayed in a very different way with a lot more exclamation points and a lot more capital letters to try and make it out to something that (it’s) not.”

In May, LaRose announced this expanded effort to remove non-citizens from the voting rolls, noting then that the Secretary of State’s Public Integrity Division and Office of Data Analytics and Archives identified 137 possible non-citizen voters through records from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles. In his announcement, as TPM reported, he failed to mention that these possible discrepancies are less than 0.002 percent of the total number of registered voters.

“This actually shows that there are already systems in place to identify and remove any ineligible voters who happen to make their way onto the roll for whatever reason,” Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, previously told TPM.

— Khaya Himmelman

Experts Warn of Possible Ballot Drop Box Intimidation

Last month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which holds a liberal majority, reinstated the use of ballot drop boxes for absentee ballots — a decision that expands the franchise but brings with it concern of increased vigilante activity around drop boxes. 

Ballot drop boxes have been the source of many of the election conspiracy theories that came out of the 2020 election. This was in large part due to the 2020 election conspiracy film “2,000 Mules,” that purported to have evidence proving that “paid professional operatives” delivered fraudulent ballots to mail-in drop boxes. The conservative media company behind the film recently apologized for the movie and said it would halt distribution of it and remove it, and the book, from its platforms.

But, now as we get closer to November, election conspiracy theorists are gearing up to monitor ballot drop boxes. The new rules governing their use and potential difficulties enforcing the rules around them may create an opening for election conspiracy theorists to monitor them and intimidate voters in the process, according to reporting from Votebeat Wisconsin. 

And some are already starting to make plans to monitor drop boxes on social media. Votebeat Wisconsin highlighted a Telegram user who wrote: “Sit by those boxes like flies on shit.”

Of particular concern leading up to the election is not just about actual violence, but also the intimidation factor of people patrolling polling sites and ballot drop boxes, which could have the effect of disenfranchising voters, Wendy Via, president and co-founder of The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, explained in an interview with TPM. 

“I would be looking as much at the intimidation, as I would the potential violence,” she said. 

Wendy noted too that her organization is particularly focused on the activities of groups like the constitutional sheriffs, Proud Boys, and Patriot Front.

— Khaya Himmelman

Words Of Wisdom

“Trump did crap the bed today. The only question is if he’s going to roll around in it or change the sheets.”

That’s longtime Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) advisor Scott Jennings’ reaction to Trump’s extreme and racist remarks at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago.

During the hostile interview — which began with Trump attacking ABC News’ Rachel Scott in order to avoid answering a question about whether Black voters could trust him — the former president said he would pardon the Jan. 6 rioters who assaulted police officers and reiterated his baseless claim that millions of people are crossing the border and “taking Black jobs.”

But the worst one of all (and the one that I imagine led Jennings to say Trump crapped the bed): “[Kamala Harris] was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?”

“I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t,” Trump added. “Because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn and she went … she became a Black person.”

It would be smart for his campaign advisers to remind him of the existence of more than 33 million biracial Americans in this country. Changing the sheets might be harder after this than Republicans hope.

— Emine Yücel