Hi All –
A lot of big things happened this week:
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Trump announced a $1.776 billion slush fund to give bribes to loyalists who tried to help him steal the 2020 election. A lawsuit has already been filed to stop it and a bipartisan pair of House members has filed a bill to ban it. “So the nation’s top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops?” said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky. “Utterly stupid, morally wrong — take your pick.”
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Trump-aligned Republicans won primaries against Bill Cassidy and Thomas Massie, two members who dared to buck Trump. Trump is trying to purge his party of anyone who will say no to his authoritarian whims.
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The Iran War Powers Resolution is wreaking havoc within the Republican Party. House Republicans abruptly canceled a vote on a resolution directing President Trump to withdraw U.S. forces from Iran or win approval from Congress to continue the war, after it became clear they lacked the votes to defeat the measure. In the Senate, Bill Cassidy flipped his position after losing his primary and tee’d up a vote on the resolution in the coming weeks.
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The DNC autopsy mess sent me spiraling. Ken Martin, DNC chair, promised an autopsy of what went wrong in 2024 when he was elected. But then asked one of his ‘friends’ to do it as a volunteer. What the guy turned in is half-baked, riddled with errors and lacking sourcing of any ilk. Instead of remediating it, Ken tried to hide it. He’s bungled the apology tour and eroded much of the public trust he had. On the one hand … this is inside baseball shit, and there are many other autopsies available for your consumption. But on the other hand, the Presidential primary process has been an Achilles heel for Democrats over the last couple of cycles,, and the management/comms/strategy failure indicated by this fiasco leads me to think that Ken may not have what it takes.
Heading into Memorial Day weekend, I am thinking a lot about the people who have sacrificed their lives for our freedom and to defend our democracy. I sorta crashed out over the DNC autopsy because it’s so reflective of the problems I have come up against over the past 20 years of working in politics. But … what a pleasure it is to fight this fight from within the corners of my warm and safe home. To have these fights publicly can be very hard, but this is the work of protecting the things that allow us to have the lives we love.
Hope you all are able to take some time with loved ones this long weekend, and get to enjoy the freedom we hold.
Best,
Three People Were Killed in a Hate Crime at a San Diego Mosque. Two teenage gunmen opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego on Sunday, killing security guard Amin Abdullah, staff member Mansour Kaziha, and community member Nader Awad. They met online, radicalized each other, and left a 75-page manifesto praising other mass shooters. Experts say the path was textbook far-right radicalization. The mosque reopened Thursday.
Trump’s $1.8 Billion Anti-Weaponization Fund Will Pay Jan 6 Rioters and Abortion Clinic Attackers. The DOJ announced a fund to compensate people who claim they were unfairly prosecuted. January 6 defendants are eligible. So are people convicted under the FACE Act for attacking abortion clinics. Two Capitol Police officers, Harry Dunn and Daniel Hodges, filed suit arguing it violates the 14th Amendment’s ban on paying debts incurred in aid of insurrection.
Planned Parenthood Is Now Offering “Just in Case” Abortion Pills You Can Keep at Home. Starting this week, Planned Parenthood clinics in Washington and Hawaii are offering advance provision of mifepristone and misoprostol. You get the pills during a regular appointment and keep them in your cabinet in case you need them later. $100 if you add it onto an existing visit.
The Education Department Is Hiring While Being Actively Dismantled. Federal Student Aid lost half its staff last year. NPR reported it now has 731 employees managing $1.7 trillion in student loans for 43 million borrowers. And now they’re hiring 334 new workers while simultaneously saying student aid is being moved from Department of Ed to Treasury.
The DOJ Indicted Former Cuban President Raul Castro for a 1996 Plane Shootdown. A Miami grand jury charged Castro on seven counts for the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown that killed four people. NPR confirmed the indictment was unsealed on Cuban Independence Day, which is definitely not a coincidence. Castro is 95.
Can Allegra and Pepcid Really Ease Menopause Symptoms? (The New York Times)
Women are going viral sharing that OTC antihistamines are helping with brain fog, hot flashes, joint pain, and PMDD. The Times reported that estrogen fluctuations trigger histamine release, and blocking that response appears to help. Doctors say risks are low but want clinical trials.
How Talking to Strangers Can Make Us Happier (The Washington Post)
Behavioral scientist Nick Epley studied over 30,000 people and found we are happier when we’re more social, even self-described introverts. The kicker: people who actually talked to strangers had better conversations than those who texted old friends.
Millennials Have a “Credentialed Class” Problem ( Janel Abrahami, Going Places)
A career strategist with two degrees in work psychology watches a woman with zero credentials steal her content, go viral, and gain 100K followers. Instead of spiraling, she wrote this essay about why the competitive advantages millennials banked on, degrees, networks, pedigree, aren’t competitive advantages anymore. Gen Z just surpassed Boomers in new business starts. 71% used AI to launch.
The Hacky Sack Is Cool Again and Gen X Doesn’t Know What to Think. Gen Z has made hacky sack a phenomenon at high schools across the country. The Journal reported there are no screens, no apps, just kids standing in a circle, laughing and kicking a bag. They’re posting interscholastic rankings and fake Division I commitments.
The Ted Lasso Actor Who Played Dani Rojas Just Became an Actual Professional Soccer Player. Cristo Fernandez signed with El Paso Locomotive FC. He told the Post, “My inner child is very happy.” Football is life!
Alberta Police Catch a Fox Stealing a Bundle of Hot Dogs. RCMP officers responded to reports of a “BBQ goods” theft and found a red fox with five hot dogs in its mouth. The suspect was described as “red-haired, short in stature and wearing a thick coat.” They declined to press charges.
A Beagle Followed Her Nose to 100 Illegal Sandwiches at the Minneapolis Airport. Merla, a federal employee with the Beagle Brigade, sniffed out 100 pork sandwiches from Thailand in a traveler’s luggage. All destroyed. Merla remains unbothered and very good at her job.
A Grieving Mother Found a 3-Carat Diamond at an Arkansas State Park.Keshia Smith, grieving the deaths of her son and her father, found a 3.09-carat white diamond at Crater of Diamonds State Park. She named it the Za’Novia Liberty Diamond after her grandchildren.
The Relentless Fantasy of the Tradwife. Sarah Jones uses the bestselling novel Yesteryear as a launching pad for a cultural essay about what the tradwife actually is: an apparition, a propaganda figure, a Rorschach blot who reveals more about her observers than about herself. Jones argued we are boxing with a ghost while real conservative women, from Karoline Leavitt to Hannah Neeleman, are making very lucid, very strategic choices about power.
This week I am giving away a copy of Kin by Tayari Jones, her long-awaited follow-up to An American Marriage. It follows two lifelong friends, Vernice and Annie, who grew up as motherless daughters in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, and were fated to live starkly different lives. Set during the 1950s and 1960s, it is a novel about the bonds that hold us together and the forces that pull us apart. It is an Oprah’s Book Club pick and a New York Times bestseller.
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