Note: I have been a little under the weather and also a little underwhelmed by the Takes out there, so this edition of TWIPN is rather skimpy. Enjoy anyway!
(ANOTHER) TRUMP MELTDOWN: I just can’t, this week, with Trump’s gonzo rally in Phoenix on Tuesday. I just can’t. You all saw it, or read about it. It is too disgusting and pathetic and absurd and frightening for me to take on at the moment. I hereby outsource my “take,” as the Internet Kidz say, to Charlie Pierce, who does a far better job than I ever could. Read the whole thing, for lines like these (addressed to the adoring Trump fans in the Phoenix arena): “[Y]ou can't even feel yourself sliding toward something that will surprise even you with its fundamental ugliness, something that everybody who can see past the veil of their emotions can see as plain as a church by daylight, to borrow a phrase from that Willie Shakespeare fella. The problem, of course, is that you, in your pathetic desire to be loved by a guy who wouldn't have 15 seconds for you on the street, are dragging the rest of us toward that end, too.” And this one: “I don't care for anybody's interpretation of why you voted for this abomination of a politician, and why you cheer him now, because any explanation not rooted in the nastier bits of basic human spleen is worthless.”
THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST: The Executive Branch continues to be filled with super stellar, top-notch sorts of people who will surely make us all proud. This week, CNN investigative reporter Andrew Kaczynski digs into Sam Clovis, Trump’s choice to be the chief scientist at the Department of Agriculture. During his time as a right-wing radio host and blogger between 2012-2014 (yes, this is the man chosen to be the chief scientist of a major federal agency), Clovis argued that homosexuality was a choice and that legally recognizing it could lead to that always-terrifying slippery slope: “If we protect LGBT behavior, what other behaviors are we going to protect? Are we going to protect pedophilia?” But guys, it’s cool, because this same guy who also wrote that “minorities have been enslaved by government operatives,” that Obama was a “Maoist,” and that progressives were “race traitors.” Seems like a great choice to me! Also this week, New York Magazine and Pro Publica go deep on HUD under Ben Carson: “HUD has emerged as the perfect distillation of the right’s antipathy to governing. If the great radical-conservative dream was, in Grover Norquist’s famous words, to ‘drown government in a bathtub,’ then this was what the final gasps of one department might look like.” Go read the whole thing! Oh, and then we have the Real Housewife of the Treasury Department, aka, Steven Mnuchin’s wife Louise Linton. On Monday, she posted on Instagram a windswept photo of herself and her husband (again, the Treasury Secretary) stepping off a government plane, tagging it with the various designer #brands she was sporting. When a woman dared to point out that this seemed inappropriate for a government trip, Linton let loose on this woman. “In a few aggrieved sentences, Linton managed to frame her husband’s three-hundred-million-dollar net worth as a burden, her six months in Washington as harrowing public servitude, and an ordinary American as a contemptible member of the economic underclass,” Jia Tolentino explained. “She punctuated this bit with two emoji, a flexed bicep and a kissy face, which were meant to convey nonchalance but instead communicated a type of strained, hierarchical female fury that I have not witnessed in person since cheerleading camp, in 2005.” Now CREW has filed a FOIA request for information about this one-day jaunt down to Kentucky -- wondering if it is perhaps more than coincidence that the Mnuchin duo’s trip took them directly into the path of totality in time for Monday’s eclipse.
A MAJOR WIN IN TEXAS: Marking the 9th judicial ruling since 2011 finding that Texas had engaged in voting discrimination, a federal judge this week ruled that Texas’s voter suppression/voter ID law violated the Voting Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause. Crucially, the court found that the law was passed with discriminatory intent, a finding that could serve as basis for placing Texas back under the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance requirement; the court will decide that issue in the coming months. Eliminating the law “ ‘root and branch’ is required,” the judge wrote, “as the law has no legitimacy.” Ari Berman points out that this is the third court ruling in just eight days to find that Texas acted in a discriminatory manner to violate voters’ rights: “On August 15, a three-judge federal court in San Antonio ruled that Texas’ 2013 congressional redistricting maps were enacted with ‘racially discriminatory intent’ against Latino and African American voters. On August 17, the Fifth District Court of Appeals ruled that Texas’ restrictions on assistance to non-English-speaking voters violated the Voting Rights Act.” Hooray for good news! (Let’s ignore the fact that, midway through the litigation of this case, the DOJ switched sides: Where the Obama DOJ had fought against the discriminatory ID law, the Trump DOJ switched to defending it, and will support an appeal. Because nothing is ever good anymore.)
iF TRUMP PARDONS ARPAIO: Apparently, Donald Trump is seriously considering or on the verge of pardoning former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a racist asshole who was convicted of criminal contempt of court for flagrantly and repeatedly violating court orders to stop his racist policing. Let’s remember who, exactly, Arpaio is: He was a hardline and extremely vocal birther, leading the conspiracy charge for years (and was still talking about as late as last December). He gained fame for torturing prisoners at the Phoenix jail (where, remember, most detainees have not been convicted of any crimes). Starting in the early 2000s, he decided his office’s entire focus would be hunting down undocumented immigrants, leaving other violent crimes uninvestigated. In 2011, the DOJ concluded that Arpaio engaged in systemic racial profiling of Latinos, excoriating his office’s “systematic disregard for basic constitutional protections” and its “penchant for retaliation against individuals who speak out.” His criminal contempt conviction stems from a civil lawsuit against him and the city for for racial profiling. (“Maricopa County taxpayers are on the hook for nearly $70 million, specifically relating to this racial-profiling case. Even if Trump pardons Arpaio, taxpayers would still foot the bill.”) Dahlia Lithwick argues that Arpaio is just Trump Version 1.0, and thus the perfect recipient of Trump’s beneficience: “Arpaio’s career and conviction stand as yet one more example of his complete disregard of judicial orders and binding court authority. That makes him another Donald Trump. Make no mistake about it: The fact that Arpaio is quite literally convicted of being in criminal contempt of the courts is a big selling point for a president who has evinced nothing but contempt for the judicial branch since before he took office.”
(Skimpy) Endorsements:
- This Media Matters compilation comparing Fox & Friends’ take on kneeling during the national anthem and white supremacy. See if you can spot the difference!
- This story about a supremely fucked-up ATF practice of paying informants to pretend to be someone’s boyfriend in order to lure them into illegal drug activity, for which ATF then arrests them. Seriously.
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