David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect.
He suggests that the saga of the Reflecting Pool is a metaphor for the Trump administration’s incompetence, mendaciousness, corruption, and unwillingness to accept responsibility. This, with its tales of vandals dumping fertilizer and slitting the paint with a knife, may be a lasting metaphor for the Trump era.
The Reflecting Pool and the killer rabbit
Donald Trump’s second term is being defined for the public in real time.
One day in April 1979, Jimmy Carter was out fishing alone in a Plains, Georgia, pond during a brief vacation away from the White House. What he described as a “swamp rabbit” started swimming toward the boat, teeth bared and “hissing menacingly.” Carter, separated from the Secret Service, was on his own. He wielded his paddle and swatted in the rabbit’s direction; it changed course.
None of this would have been more than an amusing anecdote Carter told staff if an Associated Press reporter hadn’t gone out drinking with White House press secretary Jody Powell a few months later, in the dead of a Washington summer. (Powell later said it was over a cup of tea; OK, sure.) Powell let slip the killer rabbit story, and the reporter, having nothing else to cover in August, wrote it up. The Washington Post put it on the front page (“Bunny Goes Bugs: Rabbit Attacks President”), and fashioned a parody Jaws movie poster to illustrate the story, with the moniker “PAWS.” (Do rabbits have paws? Never mind, we’re on a roll.) This was a big media story for at least a week, and after Carter lost the presidency, Ronald Reagan’s team found a picture of the incident taken by a White House photographer and released it, giving the story more legs, or paws.
The story became something Washington reporters just love: a synecdoche. Though nothing really happened, Carter getting attacked by a killer rabbit became a symbol of a feckless presidency, the paddle splash symbolic of his flailing amid global crises like the Iran hostage situation. Carter was seen as weak, or at least that was the red meat served up by Reagan’s campaign. And the killer rabbit fit that narrative, and was easy enough for the public to understand.
We’re seeing that dynamic now in real time with Donald Trump and the green Reflecting Pool. This isn’t the most important story, or the biggest example of Trumpian corruption, incompetence, humiliation (it took a bigger body of water, the Strait of Hormuz, to do that), or conspiracism from this president. But it’s rather easy to understand, and there’s an ever-present visual reminder that cannot be explained away.
You have the sudden DEFCON 1 imperative to fix the pool, demanded by a president focused on the wrong priorities. You have the Trumpian boasts that nobody had remedied this national disgrace in 100 years, but he alone could do so. You have the no-bid contracts for a total cost of over $16 million and counting, with more than twice the usual profit margin, for cleaning, filtration, and a layer of “American flag blue” paint on the bottom meant to ensure a consistent color. You have part of that, a $1.7 million no-bid contract, given to John J. Cafaro, a Trump donor, Mar-a-Lago neighbor, and understudy in a high school musical theater production of The Sopranos. You have the paint inevitably peeling off and the algae returning to its traditional perch, with Trump literally unable to drain the swamp. You have the president, manic about being defeated by microscopic aquatic organisms, claiming that dastardly Democratic vandals unloaded fertilizer into the pool and sliced up the paint, insisting that there’s visual evidence of this without releasing it, sending out law enforcement to arrest the perfidious saboteurs (one of them a three-time Olympian who was just an onlooker), and threatening lawsuits against the media for not reporting these facts.
Literally everything wrong with Trump 2.0 is revealed in this story. He’s fiddling with the bottom of the pool while Rome burns, while inflation rises and precarity builds. He’s paying off cronies with our money to make things worse. And he refuses to take responsibility for failure, instead blaming anyone and everyone else with a sea of lies.
Barack Obama’s administration did indeed spend twice as much to beautify the pool and faced the same result. But this project is now a symbol of Trump’s broken presidency. And once the public makes that connection, no amount of bluster will beat the charges. Trump’s toxic reputation is increasingly and perhaps permanently linked to a slimy green pool.
Oh well. At least there aren’t any rabbits roaming in it.
If there were a rabbit in Trump’s pool, it would have died from the highly toxic hydrogen peroxide that workers added to the pool to kill the algae.
The Supreme Court rendered two decisions that made Donald Trump happy:
One: states may ban transgender athletes from participating in sports.
Two: It struck down limits on political contributions.
But in its last decision, it overruled Trump’s hope to eliminate “birthright citizenship.” That is, the commitment that anyone born in the United States is a citizen, even if their parents are not.
The vote was 6-3. Three conservative justices joined the liberal bloc of three.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday knocked down Donald Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship as it has been understood for more than a century, invalidating an executive order that was a key part of the president’s agenda even though it was legally dubious from the start.
The decision was nevertheless a significant loss for a president who ran for office in part on ending “birth tourism” and whose second term has been largely defined by its push to crack down on both illegal and legal immigration.
The court’s decision leaves in place the understanding that anyone born in the United States is a citizen, even if that child’s parents are not.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for a majority that included both conservatives and liberals. Three conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — dissented from the decision.
“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community,” Roberts wrote for the court. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”
Birthright citizenship is explicit in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The Originalists on the Court chose to ignore the Constitution. They are Originalists when it suits their purpose, and they make it up out of thin air when it doesn’t.
Steve Nelson was headmaster of a prestigious private school in Manhattan, yet is a strong believer in public schools. Now retired, he holds to the principle that public money belongs to public schools, and only to public schools. If parents make a private choice for their own child, they are obliged to pay for it.
The latest, most manipulative and dangerous assault on American education is largely flying under the radar. Endorsed by such luminaries as former Ed Secretary Arne Duncan and Colorado governor Jared Polis, the soon-to-be rolled out federal school choice plan has gotten little public scrutiny, perhaps because the daily flash bangs tossed by the Trump administration keep folks distracted.
I encourage you to read this NYT article and then consider my post a rebuttal.
The program’s architects have brewed a kettle of artificial sweeteners to persuade policy makers that this is really a win-win-win proposition. For example, they argue that vouchers for private schools will not reduce funding for public schools because the vouchers will be paid for by donations to non-profits. The donations, up to $1,700 per person, will be 100% deductible. Sound harmless? Well, not really. Every buck funneled into this program is a buck diverted from other programs as a result of reduced tax revenue; which means the rest off us will pay for the vouchers once this sleight of hand completes its circular play.
The other “oh-my-gosh-ain’t-this-swell?” gimmick is that public schools can tap the funds for a few after school services, thereby realizing additional revenue. What is unmentioned is that the voucher scheme will result in students leaving the public system and per capita funding will reduce overall revenue for many schools. As any reasonably informed observer knows, a school cannot reduce expenses in proportion to enrollment losses.
As is already the case in many states, this scam allows affluent folks to access voucher funds to take to the private school of their choice. Stunning, I know, that wealthy families win agaIn.
Beneath the heaps of cleverly contrived bullshit, the purpose of this scheme is unambiguous. Conservatives constantly rage against those damn “government schools,” which they accuse of indoctrinating kids into socialism, atheism, and white self-loathing caused by all those DEI programs. In truth, of course, most “government schools” are having enough trouble managing huge classes, hungry kids, and the enervating expectations of the accountability crowd.
This “choice” program will also allow many parents to choose a school that doesn’t expose their darlings to too many brown and Black children. America’s schools have become steadily re-segregated in recent years. White flight will get a fresh pair of wings with this program.
So, beneath the thin, shiny veneer, this massive con job is designed to kill public education and redistribute money and children to unaccountable charter schools, storefront religious schools, online money-suckers and other varietals that might appeal to the average News Nation viewer. Trump famously said he likes the uneducated, and this Education Freedom program will swell their ranks.
The current conservative movement, led by people who are generally operating behind the scenes, does not care a great deal for democracy. They support an autocrat wannabe and have enabled a steady attack on democratic institutions.
Public education is the institution best equipped to sustain a thriving democracy. It is among the only systematic ways of forging a common culture out of a wonderfully diverse population. Most Americans, including the less rabid MAGA troops, say they bemoan the deep divides in our nation. Then they cheer the possibility of sending their children to a school that deepens the divide by indoctrinating them into a perverse understanding of our history and values.
Amidst the more spectacular offensives of the current era, this issue may seem less urgent, but it is more urgent, not less. Most of the Trump era unraveling of decency and democracy can be re-raveled within a few election cycles. Our public education system is nearing the point of no return. Once gone, it’s too late. I cannot envision any politician or policy maker demanding or persuading parents to leave the school they chose for a “government school.” What’s left of the public system will warehouse children in poor neighborhoods, whose parents have insufficient power, energy or resources to do anything about.
An objective look at American schools today shows that we are not far from that point now.
Denis Smith’s late brother was an FBI agent. He was part of a team of agents sent to Mississippi to protect voting rights. When Denis learned that Kash Patel’s FBI recently raided a voting rights organization in Cleveland, he had a flashback.
Denis Smith was a public school administrator. He worked in the charter school office at the State Education Department.
Smith doesn’t explain why the FBI raided a group that was encouraging people to register to vote. We are all left to wonder why.
He wrote in the Ohio Capital Journal:
Something happened in Cleveland recently that needs our attention, regardless of political affiliation.
With so many crises facing the nation now, do we have to read that six-word headline again to fully understand what we have come to as a republic celebrating its 250th birthday?
For me, reading about the FBI raiding a voting rights organization here in Ohio brought back a vivid memory about the career of my late brother, an FBI agent. Let me explain.
Six decades ago, the headlines back then also involved the FBI and voting rights, though the setting was not Ohio, but in Mississippi.
There was one huge difference with the Ohio FBI raid: The Bureau was not involved more than a half-century ago in raiding organizations supporting voting rights, whether in Mississippi or Ohio.
Quite the opposite.
In June 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi by local members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner died at the hands of the Klan because they were helping people register to vote.
Since the three men initially were listed as missing, the FBI was able to assume jurisdiction because the initial thinking had the three treated as being kidnapped, allowing federal agents to use federal abduction law to work around the local authorities, who were thought to be also involved in the disappearance of the trio.
That proved to be correct, as Lawrence Rainey, the Neshoba County sheriff and his deputy, Cecil Price, were indicted as part of a conspiracy that led to the murders of the activists. Rainey was acquitted but Price was convicted of civil rights violations and served most of a six-year prison sentence.
In 1988, Mississippi Burning, a film starring Gene Hackman, chronicled the epic events surrounding the murders of the civil rights workers.
The film name came from MIBURN, the case file named for the charred vehicle used by the men that was found after their disappearance as well as referring to the burned African American churches that were set ablaze during the summer of 1964.
As the scope of the case widened and weeks passed with no sign of the three men, more FBI agents from other field offices were put on temporary assignment to the case and traveled to Philadelphia, Mississippi, the Neshoba County seat.
One of those on temporary assignment in Mississippi was FBI Special Agent Edward C. Smith Jr., who was also from Philadelphia — the one in Pennsylvania. He was my brother.
As a career FBI agent, my brother was the utmost model of professionalism. He did not discuss his work, and during this era of civil and voting rights activism, particularly in the South, his family had no idea where he might be at any given moment.
That changed when my sharp-eyed mother was watching the Today Show at her home in Philadelphia one morning during that momentous summer of 1964.
As she was ironing, her attention was drawn to the TV screen by a report about the ongoing investigation in Mississippi.
When she heard the words Philadelphia, Mississippi, she dropped her weekly laundry routine to fixate on the story coming from the Neshoba County Courthouse.
To her great surprise she saw her son Ed on the TV screen standing among some other FBI agents on the courthouse steps.
Now our family knew the scope of work our brother was involved with and why he had not contacted us recently.
This personal detail about my brother is provided to inform as well as remind readers that once upon a time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation — however reluctant it might have been during the tenure of long-time director J. Edgar Hoover — nevertheless worked diligently to protect individuals involved in civil and voting rights activity.
It is no coincidence that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a consequence of the upheaval during the summer of 1964.
Upon his retirement, my brother did provide some details about his experience during the Mississippi Burning era, when some of the locals referred to his agency as the Federal Bureau of Integration.
But such epithets proved to be confirmation of the effectiveness of the FBI to enforce the newly enacted Voting Rights Act as well as ensuring that the Fifteenth Amendment and the right to vote extended to every eligible citizen.
It is therefore understandable that those who lived during the bad times of the 1960s, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a mission to enforce federal law and ensure that Americans had access to the ballot box, are uneasy about a raid by the same FBI on an organization that works to promote voting rights.
Again, we are not talking about Mississippi but Ohio. In addition to the headline, the lead played out that feeling of uneasiness.
“FBI agents on Thursday raided the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a pro-democracy organization that helps register voters in that state…” the story read.
My brother would be very upset if he knew his beloved FBI conducted a raid in Ohio on an organization whose mission is to ensure that people are registered to vote.
Yes, we are witness to an FBI raid on a voting rights organization in Ohio, not Mississippi. Edward C. Smith Jr., may you rest in peace. If you were still with us, you would realize better than the rest of us how far we as a nation have marched. Backwards.
Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, is outraged by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the almost century-old precedent known as Humphrey’s Executor, which held that presidents could not fire members of independent commissions without cause..
The case was called Trump v. Slaughter. Rebecca Slaughter sued when Trump removed her from the Federal Trade Commission without cause. The court ruled in favor of Trump 6-3, allowing him to fire members of independent commissions without cause and replace them with cronies. Empowered with this decision, he can fire every Biden appointment and replace them with a MAGA yahoo who takes orders from Trump or Stephen Miller.
Rebecca Slaughter, the former Federal Trade Commission member whose firing was upheld by the Supreme Court on Monday, warned that the justices allowed for the possibility of abuse of presidential power.
Independent agencies like the F.TC. were created to act as watchdogs of powerful corporations, without interference by the president, the former Democratic commissioner said in a statement shortly after the decision was handed down.
“Today’s ruling makes it possible for presidents to fire watchdogs who won’t put politics over principle, and replace them with lap dogs,” Ms. Slaughter said. “It’s a recipe for corruption; working families will pay the price.”
The Supreme Court’s 6-to-3 decision in the case, Trump v. Slaughter, effectively gives the president free rein to fire members of more than 20 independent federal agencies, which are typically led by members of both parties. The decision overturned a 90-year-old law restricting presidents from firing officials without cause.
The F.T.C. was founded in 1914 to oversee fair trade and competition in commerce and enforces consumer protection and competition laws. The agency typically has five commissioners, three from the party in the White House.
Ms. Slaughter was appointed by President Trump in 2018 and served as acting chair of the agency during the early Biden administration. When Mr. Trump began his second term, she was the longest serving commissioner.
Earlier today, the Supreme Court declared war on U.S. democracy. It also declared war, basically, on modern society, on everything it takes to function in the 21st century. And I’m not sure that people understand that yet.
Hi, Paul Krugman with a quick video update. I’ll have more on this tomorrow.
Really shocking decisions handed down by the Supreme Court. There were a couple that were not awful. Lisa Graves gets to stay at the Federal Reserve, although that in itself is a huge contradiction to the important stuff that the court did. I mean, Lisa is important and the Fed is important, but much more important is Humphrey’s Executor, which is the generations-long precedent that says that when Congress creates an independent agency, it is independent. It’s able to make decisions.
Of course, the president has some role. Typically, the president can choose the agency’s head subject to congressional approval, but the president can’t just go and fire officials that he doesn’t like for whatever reason or for no reason, because the agencies that operate the U.S. government and basically run our society are supposed to be professional. They’re supposed to be following their legal mandate. They’re not supposed to be personal tools of a dictator in the White House.
Well, the court just scrapped that. Now, lawyers, people who are legal experts, can do a better job of explaining just what went down. But what I think is important to understand is not only does this give essentially dictatorial powers to the occupant of the White House, but it also makes it extremely difficult for the economy to function. It makes it extremely difficult for society to function.
We live in a complicated world, a world of technology, where there are all kinds of spillovers, all kinds of ways in which it’s important that there be well-established ground rules. If you’re a business, take the example of medicines and foodstuffs, where we have an FDA, Federal Drug Administration, that is charged with ensuring that products that people consume are safe. We do that for very good reason. We know that not just that that there have been examples, historically, of products that were foods, medicines that were not at all safe, but also that people want some assurance.
The fact that something has been FDA approved is a bit of a warranty, that it might turn out to be very harmful, but probably not. Businesses that want to invest in developing stuff need to know that there are some ground rules that determine what they can and cannot sell.
Now imagine that all these decisions are made by political appointees who are loyalists to the president, who basically do whatever the president wants, whatever the people around the president want.
Do you want to invest in something where you have absolutely no idea what the ground rules will be, whether it will be approved or not? Do you want to invest in a whole business line when, for all you know, the White House will abruptly decide that your product isn’t safe and that a competitor’s product is, based on spurious grounds?
And what would cause those decisions to happen? Well, how about the fact that some businesses are better at the business of bribing the president and his family than others. And if you think that this is outlandish — you know, a few years ago you might have said this was outlandish, things like that wouldn’t really happen — well, as we speak, these things are happening all the time.
So you are setting up a situation in which, you know, it’s a little bit like traffic laws. Traffic laws, yeah, they can be annoying, but aren’t we all kind of glad that there are in fact rules about when you can turn and when you can go through an intersection? In order to function, in order to drive your car around you need to have a set of stable traffic rules, not a situation in which a police officer can decide you broke the law and the other guy did not because I say what the law is. And especially not where the police officer does that based upon who’s been paying him off or who he expects to be paid off.
The real world is far more complex than traffic rules but we need those rules and we need some stability and those rules cannot be specified with every letter, every punctuation mark set by Congress. The world is too complicated and changes too much. You need to have standing ethos, standing doctrine at the agencies that make modern life possible.
Now all of that is gone.
Now, it just adds to it that all of this is being done to empower a president who is the worst possible person for this job. This is not somebody you want supervising anything, everything that Trump touches turns to crud because he doesn’t care and he doesn’t actually understand or recognize that there’s such a thing as expertise as knowing what you’re doing.
So this would be terrible even if we had a temporarily competent administration. But now you’re doing all of this, the Supreme Court is doing all of this to empower the guy who brought you the Reflecting Pool, who brought you the Iran war. Utter nightmare.
Now, what will happen, hopefully, we emerge at the other end having fended off dictatorship. Then, I mean, as everybody knows, this Supreme Court is not actually empowering the presidency. It is empowering this president. And as soon as there’s a Democrat in the White House, suddenly there will be all kinds of restrictions on what that person can do.
Well, this cannot go on. This is a clear argument that says we have to one way or another disempower the Supreme Court. I don’t know enough to tell you what is the best route to do that but court packing or something else is going to have to happen. Because this has been the clearest signal yet that we have six people (there are three who are not part of it, but we have six people) who are fundamentally hostile to democracy, fundamentally hostile to the modern world and determined to put the catastrophically bad leader that we currently have sitting in the White House in charge of everything, which is a nightmare scenario on every level.
The day is not over, but so far, the High Court has handed three losses to Trump, but one significant victory. After today, every member of every independent commission serves at his pleasure.
It refused to hear his appeal to overturn a $5 million judgment against Trump for sexually assaulting the writer E. Jean Carroll. A far larger award ($83 million) by a New York court for Trump’s repeated defamation of Carroll has also been appealed and will be heard in another lawsuit. The victory today is a huge win for Carroll. No votes were recorded.
By 5-4, it upheld a Mississippi law allowing mail-in ballots that were postmarked by Election Day but received after the day. Trump has repeatedly claimed that mail-in ballots should be banned outright, but that’s now a moot question. The Court concluded that states set the rules for election, as it says in the Constitution, not the President. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the decision, which was joined by Chief Justice Roberts, and the three liberal justices.
By 5-4, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett joined the three liberal justices to reject Trump’s attempt to fire Lisa Cook as a member of the Federal Reserve Board because she did not receive due process and because the Fed is special among independent federal commissions. As the entity that sets monetary policy, it must be immune from political interference. To date, Commissioner Cook has spent $1.3 million on her defense, contributed by two nonprofits. The process is the punishment.
Cook’s case will now go back to lower courts, which will decide whether she committed criminal fraud on mortgage applications. These are the same charges leveled against New York State Attorney General Letitia James and Senator Adam Schiff, which has thus far failed to secure a conviction.
The information about mortgages was leaked by Bill Pulte, a MAGA loyalist who heads the Housing Finance Agency and was recently installed by Trump as acting Director of National Intelligence. Pulte lacks the qualifications for the job, having had no experience in intelligence, but he will oversee the nation’s deepest secrets from more than a dozen intelligence agencies, including the FBI and the CIA. It is widely assumed that he will continue to dig up dirt on Trump’s enemies to advance Trump’s retribution campaign.
But in a different decision, a majority gave the President the power to fire members of other “independent” commissions and agencies, overturning a precedent from 1932 known as “Humphrey’s Executor”:
In a major expansion of presidential authority, the Supreme Court cleared the way on Monday for President Trump to fire independent government regulators despite federal laws meant to protect their jobs. But the justices separately carved out an exception for the Federal Reserve, and prevented the president from immediately removing Lisa D. Cook from the powerful central bank.
The court’s 6-to-3 ruling to broadly allow the firings, with the three liberal justices dissenting, represented a significant shift in power from Congress to the president and could usher in a drastic change to the federal government’s structure by giving the president more direct control over independent agencies.
The case specifically tested whether Mr. Trump could oust Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission, simply because she does not align with his agenda and despite a law that says the president can remove commissioners only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”
But the decision has implications for more than two dozen agencies — including those charged with protecting consumers, workers, the environment and nuclear safety — that have traditionally been insulated from complete presidential control by laws with similar protections.
In a separate decision, however, a divided court blocked the president from ousting Ms. Cook, saying she had not been given an opportunity to refute the administration’s unproven allegations of mortgage fraud, the rationale Mr. Trump had offered in attempting to fire her.
Former top Fed and Treasury officials and Ms. Cook’s legal team had warned the Supreme Court that allowing Mr. Trump to remove her while litigation was underway would spur economic turmoil and undermine the longstanding political independence of the central bank.
On Lisa Cook, the opinion said:
The Court rejects the Government’s halfhearted contention that Cook in fact received due process. At minimum, Cook was entitled to some explanation of the evidence at issue, some avenue for a response, and a deadline by which a response would be due.
If Trump tries again to remove her, she will get due process and more legal bills.
Next week: birthright citizenship and transgender rights.
Michelle H. Davis, writer of “Lone Star Left,” poses a challenge for her readers: who is the biggest nutter in the Texas Republican Party? Believe me, this is not an easy choice. Imagine being locked in a room with some of these people and trying to contest their peculiar fixations and conspiracy theories. I include this post because it will help you understand the governing party in one our most consequential states. Don’t expect normal.
Davis’s writing is so delightful, in a sardonic Texas way, that I thought you would enjoy reading her insights, maybe sending a contribution to the folks who are running against nutters. If you open the article, it contains links to candidates.
She writes:
I say nutter, you might say loon, or crank. A nutter is basically a Republican in our government who has confused a Facebook meme with a legislative agenda. Seriously, the State Legislature is full of them.
For example, last year, Wes Virdell filed a bill to make it a felony to control the weather. Virdell’s bill was aimed at chemtrails, the conspiracy theory that the government is poisoning the sky with jet contrails to manipulate the climate, the sunlight, and your mood. Virdell told the House Licensing Procedures Committee that he hadn’t planned on bringing this one, but “I had several constituents in my district ask me to file a bill related to this.” Seventeen of his House colleagues signed on as co-authors.
Or take Stan “Confederate Stan” Gerdes, who introduced the F.U.R.R.I.E.S. Act, that’s the Forbidding Unlawful Representation of Roleplaying in Education Act, because he’d heard a rumor that kids were using litter boxes in his local school district. The superintendent of his own district had already told him there were no litter boxes. He filed the bill anyway.
These aren’t outliers. Every session now produces its own crop of bills built on something somebody saw on Facebook, and Texas Republicans keep handing them committee hearings, co-authors, and gubernatorial endorsements.
That’s what a nutter is. A true believer who legislates from conspiracy theory, who can’t or won’t distinguish between a hoax and a constituent complaint worth taking seriously, and who gets rewarded for it instead of being laughed out of the building.
And when you think you’ve found the looniest one in the building, Texas hands you a bigger nutter.
Montgomery County gave Cecil Bell the ax. This is why we’re talking about nutters today. Cecil Bell was a dumb redneck and a nutter out of Montgomery County, who held his seat for 14 years. Yesterday, when I wrote about his Democratic opponent, Nicole King, in the Meet the Candidate series, I honestly didn’t check whether he lost his primary this year. I can actually do this cool party trick and recite all the Texas House members by memory. Well, not anymore.
So, Cecil Bell, after 14 years of being a QAnon nutter in Montgomery County, is out, and Kristen Plaisance (R-HD03) is in. And from what I’m hearing, she’s about three tacos short of a combo plate.
On her website, she argues that government overspending is causing skyrocketing property taxes. And she promises to end property taxes. Which really shows that she doesn’t understand ANYTHING about Texas’ state spending or how property taxes work.
And then there’s a whole bunch of deranged priorities that make no sense at all:
*Protecting and educating our children with Texas values, not federal agendas.
*Ending the weaponization of government against citizens and people of faith.
*Standing up to federal overreach and protecting Texas sovereignty.
Makes you wonder what’s going on in rural (checks notes) Montgomery County, Texas, where the white Republicans are so fearful of the feds a.k.a. Donald Trump, who they love and worship.
So, now that the primaries and the runoffs are over and done with, we’ve avoided it as long as we can; it’s time to talk about the Republicans who are no more, and their shiny new cuckoo replacements.
Congress.
These are the Republican districts only. Maybe we can flip some of them. We’ll talk about Democratic challengers in blue districts another day.
TX02: Dan Crenshaw ➡️ Steve Toth. This was a genuine litmus test for Texas Republicans, way before their convention hit. Dan Crenshaw was not a centrist or a moderate by any means. Yet, the Republican base started calling him a “RINO,” and that became the slow death of his political career.
You see, in the Republican world, they accept those among them who are criminals and pedophiles, but if you are a traitor to their cult-think, you become a RINO, a liberal, and shunned forever from Republican functions, Evangelical churches, and weekly cross burnings. It’s a recurring thing that happens in the Republican Party, sometimes for a bad vote, sometimes for aligning yourself with the wrong person, but most often it’s from internet rumors by the social media armies of the right. In Crenshaw’s particular case, I don’t know the origins of his downfall, but Toth won by being more committed to “the cause.”
New York native Steve Toth doesn’t even live in this district. Before becoming a government official, he was a pool guy. And he really hates Black people and American history.
Shaun Finnie is the Democrat running for TX02.
TX08: Morgan Lutrell ➡️ Jessica Steinmann. Morgan Lutrell decided not to seek re-election. The Republican who won the primary in this district is Jessica Steinmann, who describes herself as an “America First conservative, President Trump and Ted Cruz alum, Christian, proud wife, mother of two, and proven fighter for the America First agenda.” 🤮
On her website, she says “Trump” about roughly every five words, and her priorities seem to be to get Black people out of higher education, non-Christians out of the military, kill the planet, make sure AI isn’t regulated, and to inspect every athlete’s genitals before they can engage in sports.
Laura Jones is the Democrat running for TX08.
TX09: 🫨➡️ Alex Mealer. So, Republicans drew this district to be red in their racial gerrymandering last year. This seat was Al Green’s, so I don’t know whether we still call it a blue or red district. But I’ll add this caveat. I think this seat could be blue in November, and it’s not as safe as Republicans think.
California native Alex Mealer is this wacky Republican who has been wreaking havoc in Harris County for the last several years. She ran against Lina Hidalgo for County Chair in 2022 and lost. She has a history of spreading election conspiracy theories online, and now she’s running for Congress.
According to Mealer’s website, she wants to protect the petrochemical complex, bar AI regulations, and reduce flooding. It’s so stupid, it hurts. She wants to take severe actions that will lead to increased flooding and reduce flooding.
Leticia Gutiérrez is the Democrat running for TX09.
TX10: Michael McCaul ➡️ Chris Gober. After 23 years in office, McCaul, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, finally retired. Good riddance. Gober, pronounced “goo-ber,” proudly proclaims himself to be the only Trump-endorsed candidate in TX10.
Not one of these Republicans has a priority, a care, or a personality beyond, “Trump is my daddy.” Gober’s issues are the same as the rest, “stop weaponization of the fed, beat China, AI dominance.” Yet, like the rest of them, he has no policy ideas on how to do any of that, or any proof that it’s happening now or needed.
Caitlin Rourk is the Democrat running for TX10.
TX19: Jodey Arrington ➡️ Tom Sell. The only thing I’m going to miss about Jodey Arrington is calling him Frodo Baggins on his social media every time he makes a post. Seriously, you won’t be able to unsee it.
But there’s always a bigger nutter, and the Republican running for this district, Tom Sell, is absolutely one. For one, on his website, he says he wants to “Stop Sharia Law,” which is a dog whistle for bigotry for people who can’t even define Sharia Law. He also says he wants to “Stop Leftwing radicals from injecting woke politics into the US military.” Wtf does that even mean? No gay people in the military? No women? No Black people? Who knows with these fuckers.
Kyle Rable is the Democrat running for TX19.
TX21: Chip Roy ➡️ Mark Teixeira. Virginia native Chip Roy is another Republican who fell to the RINO bug. Which is pretty funny, considering he’s also a screwball who spent the last six months trying to convince Texans there was an invasion of “Marxists and Muslims.”
Teixeira is a Maryland native and a former Texas Rangers baseball player who is now retired from sports, during which he earned roughly $213 million over his 14-year playing career. He wants to get into Republican politics and stick it to the little guy. According to his website, he loves Trump, fossil fuels, and incarcerating marginalized communities. He also believes in superstitions, the boogie man, and “Cultural Marxism.” Another out-of-touch, rich, white guy from some other state than Texas, looking to continue to make sure that Texas remains the state with the highest poverty, most uninsured, and most children living with hunger.
Dr. Kristin Hook is the Democrat running for TX21.
TX22: Troy Nehls ➡️ Trever Nehls. Twin Wisconsin natives, Troy and Trever Nehls, are two peas in a pod. Corruption? They like it. Women? They hate them. Trump’s boots? They kiss it. Talk like they’re lost in the woods without a flashlight? Both of them do it.
Honestly, the Nehls brothers’ politics are as identical as their hatred for liberty and freedom for Texans. We think we’re switching them out, but they may have been playing the swicharoo on us this whole time, and continue to plan on doing so. 🤷🏻♀️
Marquette Greene-Scott is the Democrat running for TX22.
TX23: Tony Gonzalez ➡️ Brandon Herrera. While this story was going on, I didn’t talk about it much because it’s sad as hell, and there were plenty of other outlets who were glad to drop all the juicy details. Gonzalez had an affair with a staffer, whose husband discovered the affair, and this led to the staffer’s suicide by self-immolation. But there’s always a bigger nutter.
North Carolina native Brandon Herrera also goes by the moniker “The AK Guy,” as in “armalite rifles.” He’s a gun manufacturer who only moved to Texas in 2023 with the specific intent to run for Congress. He’s also a popular YouTuber who makes shooting videos, including the recreation of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. On his YouTube channel, he has also joked about veteran suicide, glorified Nazis, and mocked the Holocaust.
The Congressional district he’s running for is where the massacre in Uvalde happened. One time, at a campaign event, he left an unexploded grenade at a restaurant, and the restaurant had to call the bomb squad. He wasn’t charged, as it was chalked up to an “accident,” and some Texas police are right-wing dipshits, too.
Katy Padilla Stout is the Democrat running for TX23.
TX38: Wesley Hunt ➡️ Jon Bonck. Wesley Hunt ran for Senate and lost. Oh well. Goodbye. Hopefully, we don’t hear from him again. The Republican looking to replace him is Jon Bonck, short for “bonkers,” because he put out a whole ad saying that “we need Christians like Trump and Ted Cruz in Congress.”
Trump, the pedophile rapist, is the Christian values he looks up to. And this is from his website:
Faith belongs in public life? What? These people have legit never read the Constitution, never read the Federalist papers, and the only people they listen to are their pastor and Trump. This bonkers guy is very, very weird.
Melissa McDonough is the Democrat running for TX38.
We’re going to have to do a Part Two.
This was longer than I expected, and we still have the Legislative races to go through. So, we’ll do part two. I’m not exactly sure when.
When Texas Governor Greg Abbott was promoting vouchers, he usually accused the public schools of “indoctrinating” students. This was untrue. The five million students in the state’s public schools come from every imaginable background, and teachers were not indoctrinating them about anything, neither in politics nor religion.
He wanted them to go to Christian schools, where they were certain to be indoctrinated into the doctrines of one faith. Now that he is spending billions for children who are in private and religious schools, the Texas State Board of Education just passed a measure that introduces religious indoctrination into the public schools.
Which Bible will be used? The Protestant Bible? The Catholic Bible? The answer is obvious.
What about children who are not Christian? Or children whose families don’t believe in religion? Isn’t their right to religious freedom violated?
Bible passages will be taught in Texas public schools, the State Board of Education decided on Friday.
The Republican-majority board voted 9-5 in favor of a required reading list that includes Bible stories but no representation of other religions, wrapping up a monthslong battle.
Roughly 5.5 million children are enrolled in Texas public schools, and the new standards would affect students for years to come…
On Friday, board members decided to stagger implementation of the reading list: elementary school students will see the new standards in the 2030-31 school year, sixth graders in the 2031-32 school year, seventh and eighth graders in the 2032-33 school year, and high school students in the 2033-34 school year…
The new required reading list, mandated by the Texas Legislature in 2023, has over a dozen Bible passages or stories, with at least one biblical text in every grade except kindergarten. In first grade, students will read Noah’s Ark by Peter Spier, and in later grades, excerpts from the books of Luke, Matthew and Genesis.
The list does not include the central texts of any other religions, prompting critics to say the required reading is promoting Christianity, violating the First Amendment. Educators and parents warned that non-Christian students could feel excluded.
Catherine Rampell of The Bulwarkwarns that the Trump administration hopes to roll back the rights of people with disabilities. The administration wants to promote institutionalization, rather than home care or community-based care.
He and those around him have no sympathy for the struggles of people with disabilities to be treated with dignity. She recalls that in one of his first press conferences as a candidate, he mocked a reporter with disabilities, fluttering his arms and hands in the air. For others, that would have ended their campaign, but Trump lacks any sense of shame.
Rampell writes:
Last week the Department of Justice published a memo authorizing states to institutionalize more people with disabilities. This basically means plucking more people out of society and shutting them into nursing homes, psychiatric hospitals, segregated schools, and sheltered workshops, rather than funding community- or home-based care where they have more autonomy.
“This is at its core about the belonging and inclusion of people with disabilities in our communities,” says Alison Barkoff, a health law professor at George Washington University who worked on disability policy under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. “This is about moving forward from a very shameful part of our history when we locked people with disabilities away from society.”
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HAS MADE clear that it wishes to purge America of some of its undesirables. That includes, for instance, deporting 100 million people (a third of the population). But for those he can’t expel, he hopes to simply hide away.
The DOJ policy would turn back the clock on decades of law and Supreme Court precedent. SinceOlmstead v. L.C.,¹ in 1999, states have been required to support disabled people in the most integrated setting possible that is appropriate to their needs. Institutionalization is supposed to be the last resort.
The consequences of this change could be enormous. Community- and home-based care services involve having a home health aide visit a person for, say, a few hours a week at home, rather than sealing them off in a closed facility. They help disabled people achieve both personal and financial independence. This kind of support empowers people to care for themselves, maintain relationships with friends and family, and hold jobs. And there has generally been bipartisan political backing for policies that, for example, enable children with disabilities to live with their parents whenever possible.
The actual legal enforceability of this memo is still unclear. Perhaps because it may not have originated with actual lawyers. Stephen Miller was reportedly behind it, Bloomberg reported, though the White House has officially denied his involvement.²
Even before this memo, states have been slashing disability services for some time as a result of the Medicaid cuts in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. The law’s advocates professed that the cuts would safeguard safety-net programs for the “most vulnerable Americans,” but so far children and people with disabilities are among the biggest victims. More than half of states have already cut home- and community-based services that support elderly people with disabilities living in their homes.
The irony is that, in the long run, these changes may be more costly, since institutionalization tends to be much more expensive than letting people stay in their homes with supportive care.
“The states are a little bit playing Russian roulette,” says Barkoff. “They’re saying: ‘Is this a person who is going to find some way to navigate these cuts, and find family or friends to fill in? Or is it someone who’s going to end up costing me three times as much because they end up in a nursing home or in the emergency room?’”
The DOJ memo is part of a sweeping series of changes from this administration that affect how disabled people learn, live, work, and otherwise interact with society.
The administration also announced last week that it was reassigning the Education Department’s responsibilities for special education and civil rightsto the Department of Health and Human Services, raising concerns about whether children will continue to have access to free, appropriate public education.
HHS, after all, is run by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spoken in degrading and even vaguely eliminationist terms about people with intellectual disabilities and neurodevelopmental conditions. Last summer, for instance, Kennedy lamented that autistic people would never lead productive lives: “And these are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”³
Shortly after those remarks, another HHS official, NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, announced plans to create a compulsory “registry” of people with autism, using confidential private and government health records without consent—purportedly for the purpose of better studying the condition. These kinds of government lists, when compiled in authoritarian regimes, have not always worked out well for those appearing on them. After public outcry from the disability rights community, the agency eventually walked back the plans.
Elsewhere the administration has ended or suppressed programs intended to help people with disabilities. For example, the government canceled surveys tracking factors that can help disabled people find employment. It has tried to prevent Head Start providers from using the word “disability” when describing their programs, which forced at least one provider to cancel staff training on working with kids with autism spectrum disorder.⁴ And it withdrew guidance for businesses about their obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Not all of this can be laid at the feet of Miller, odious though he may be. After all, his boss launched his political career by appearing to mock a New York Times reporter with a physical disability; and both Trump and his top civil rights appointee regularly use a slur for people with mental disabilities.
Long ago Trump promised Americans a new “Golden Age.” And he’s been clear from the get-go who he believes belongs in it, and who does not.
The New York Times revealed the reason for the algae that quickly bloomed in the Reflecting Pool that Trump renovated. Someone in charge removed the nanobubblers, intended to prevent algae, for esthetic reasons in advance of Trump’s birthday bash.
It was early June, and the Trump administration was planning an event at the Lincoln Memorial on June 12 to promote President Trump’s Ultimate Fighting Championship birthday celebration at the White House.
Dotted around the perimeter of the memorial’s Reflecting Pool were the nanobubblers, the temporary water-purification machines meant to keep the pool clear of algae. Encased in black fencing and powered by large generators, the machines were something of an eyesore.
Before the event, the National Park Service asked Greenwater Services, which won a $1.7 million no-bid contract to install the nanobubblers, to remove them, according to two people briefed on the decision. The people asked for anonymity because they feared retaliation from the administration. The Park Service did not provide a reason for the removal, but it coincided exactly with the promotional event, which drew crowds to the Reflecting Pool.
Photos from that evening showed the pool without the hoses or enormous machines working to keep the water clean. The water looked dark blue.
But by the time the purification systems were reinstalled 36 hours later, enormous algae blooms were starting to spread unchecked, turning the water green.
Once the algae started growing, it proved difficult to eliminate. Even with the nanobubblers back online, Park Service workers tried dumping jugs of hydrogen peroxide into the water to clear the algae more quickly. But the peroxide largely dissolved before it could reach the large clumps in the middle of the basin.
The decision to remove the water-treatment systems, which has not previously been reported, was one of several missteps that have plagued Mr. Trump’s $16.4 million renovation of the Reflecting Pool. There have been no-bid contracts, peeling strips of waterproof coating in Mr. Trump’s handpicked shade of “American flag blue,” and even a dead duck floating in the water (though it is not clear if the renovation had anything to do with the duck’s demise).
The result was a Reflecting Pool that stayed green and murky for about a week because of the residual chlorophyll — a highly visible symbol of one of Mr. Trump’s pet projects gone very wrong.
In recent days, the water has become clear again, reflecting the sky and the surrounding monuments. The temporary nanobubblers have been replaced with more discreet, permanent purification systems.
Still, the Park Service plans to drain the pool again soon to fix the peeling coating.
Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, did not answer specific questions, but said in an email that “thanks to President Trump, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is fixed, crystal clear and currently reflecting beautifully ahead of America’s 250th birthday celebration.”
Mr. Trump has blamed vandals for the deteriorating conditions of the Reflecting Pool, saying they dumped fertilizer to feed the algae and slashed its blue coating with a “sharp knife or razors.” The administration has asserted in court that there were cuts made to the caulk and “surface material” of the pool.
Interviews with people involved in the project and a New York Times analysis — including a review of images taken by news photographers — suggest that actions taken by the Trump administration and the companies involved caused disruptions at every turn.
A Construction Spree
Mr. Trump has embarked on a construction spree in Washington unlike any undertaken by a modern president. He has rolled out jobs quickly, bypassing traditional contracting requirements and review panels. And costs have mounted as Mr. Trump’s vision for his most prized projects has doubled or tripled in size.
But it is the renovation of the Reflecting Pool that perhaps best serves as an emblem of how Mr. Trump operates. Instead of seeking competitive bids for the project, the administration awarded no-bid contracts, hoping to expedite the process. Mr. Trump never submitted the project to a review board so that experts could weigh in.
A crucial decision came in early April, when the administration awarded a no-bid contract to a Virginia-based company called Atlantic Industrial Coatings to spread the waterproofing blue coating on the pool’s concrete slabs. That coating, known as Rhino Pipeliner 5000, may be peeling off because it is not stretchy or flexible enough, said Anthony Flett, the chief executive of U.S. Coating Specialists, a Florida-based company that specializes in waterproofing substances.
“They used a hybrid polyurea, and they really should have picked a pure poly,” Mr. Flett said, adding, “There’s people in the pool industry whose whole life is polyurea, and they should have been called in.”
Diane Ravitch's blog