As my colleague Isabela Dias observed yesterday, Republican presidential hopefuls spent the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade kowtowing to the religious right, attempting to outdo one another with deeply anti-abortion rhetoric. 

But as the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s keynote speaker, it was Donald Trump who took center stage. The former president boasted about his role in appointing three of the five Supreme Court justices in the Dobbs majority decision. “I got it done and nobody thought it was even a possibility,” Trump boomed on Saturday. Nodding to some form of a national abortion ban, he also claimed that there is “a vital role for the federal government in protecting unborn life.”

The crowd, by all accounts, appeared to relish the speech. One headline concluded that Trump had hardened his anti-abortion stance. But if you look at the actual words, you’ll notice that Trump was repeating the same performance voters have witnessed since 2016. Once again, Trump’s remarks—as they do every time he speaks on abortion—rang hollow when it came to any real policy. For every piece of bombast he threw at the fawning audience on Saturday, the former president ducked, declining to offer the specifics his rivals were eager to provide. That included Mike Pence, who urged GOP presidential candidates to embrace a 15-week national abortion ban. “We must not rest and we must not relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in this country,” Pence said during his turn at the lectern, as he challenged his rivals to support the 15-week ban.

Trump didn’t bite. But at this point, why would he? Committing to a specific number of weeks for a national abortion ban would open him up to attacks that he’s either too soft or extreme on an issue the GOP keeps fumbling. Landing on a real policy would render him unable to say in one month that Republicans are losing elections because of hardline abortion policies, only to declare, “I was able to kill Roe v. Wade” a few beats later. As I wrote last month when Trump tried to thread the needle on abortion over the course of one week:

Many things can be evinced from these chaotic remarks: Trump is an idiot in the English language, and he still posts with abandon. But perhaps the most important point is that for Trump, an abortion debate doesn’t even exist. His policies, if you can call it that, have always been reactionary, designed in his brain to please whoever happens to be in the room…He correctly asserts that he was a critical player in removing the constitutional right to an abortion—and that should speak for itself.

So I have to push back on the notion that any hardening, or really any kind of evolution, has taken place here. It’s the same sidestepping dance as usual, while, as Alexandra Petri excruciatingly put it in a column I can’t stop thinking about this weekend, someone’s life is ruined, every day.

Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee are waging war on Washington, DC’s traffic laws.

In their proposed spending bill for fiscal year 2024, House Republicans tacked on several policy riders that would alter laws in the nation’s capital. Most of the riders are standard conservative fare: repealing DC’s Death with Dignity Act, banning needle exchanges, retaining limits on contraception. But Republicans are also targeting less obviously partisan issues, like DC’s traffic rules.

One GOP proposal takes on traffic cameras, promising to prevent the city from “carrying out automated traffic enforcement.” Speed and red light cameras are not without controversy, even among safe streets advocates—but they are often touted as a way to reduce police interactions during traffic stops, and some studies have found that they decrease the frequency of crashes. In DC, traffic cameras also generate revenue from tickets, so it’s unclear how the proposal would account for this hit to the budget.

Republicans also want to override DC’s pending ban on right-turns-on-red, a dangerous maneuver and relic of the 1970s oil crisis that doesn’t actually help drivers save gas. In addition to imperiling cyclists and pedestrians, these traffic proposals impinge on DC’s right to decide how it governs itself. So much for the party of “small government.”

Update, June 15: In a statement sent after the publication of this article, Senator J.D. Vance’s office noted that Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown called the changes made a “reasonable compromise.” This story has been updated to reflect Brown’s statement.

In his brief tenure, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) has touted a signature piece of legislation to show his New Right bonafides: The Railway Safety Act of 2023. A bipartisan bill, co-authored with fellow Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, the legislation would implement new regulations in order to prevent another catastrophic train derailment like the one that occurred in East Palestine, Ohio in February. It’s something Joe Biden and Donald Trump can agree on. And, importantly, it’s theoretically Vance sticking to his word in looking to work on issues that affect the working-class Americans he feels have been left behind.

But there’s a hitch. A new report in Lever News today by Julia Rock says Vance watered down the bill at the behest of the chemical industry, who Vance receives donations from.

One of the new regulations in the bill was to upgrade tank cars that carry flammable chemicals so that they are less vulnerable to leaks and punctures if a train derails. In a previous version of the bill, the old tank cars were set to be phased out by 2025. But on May 10, Vance and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) amended the bill to push back the adoption of safer tank cars until 2027 or 2028. The American Chemistry Council told Lever they had lobbied for a “realistic and workable timetable” for these upgrades. Sen. Brown called the changes a “reasonable compromise.”

“I think the agreement of 2027, again, is very good when we’re going up against historically one of the two or three most powerful interest groups in America,” Brown told Cleveland.com. “We’ve had success taking the railroad lobby on when they have been untouchable, and have had their way with Congress and the regulators for far too many years. Nobody thought we could get this far.”

Vance has not addressed this change directly. In a statement made in May after the bill passed the Senate Commerce Committee, he framed any concessions as proof of his deal-making acumen. “We’ve made a number of concessions to the rail industry, a number of concessions to various interest groups, which is why we have so much bipartisan support in this body, but also we have a lot of support from industry,” he said. This counters his huffing about how he’s taking on the railway industry.

As Vance attempts to remake the Republican Party from a business-friendly party into a working-class party, he’ll continue to run up against an issue: if given a chance, most congressional Republicans will side with business. In theory, the change from 2025 to 2027 or 2028 is just part of the process of deals made to pass legislation. But it’s interesting when you consider how Vance has staked his career on saying he is in the Senate to be a new kind of Republican.

“Do we do the bidding of a massive industry that is embedded with big government or do we do the bidding of the people who elected us to the Senate into the Congress in the first place?” Vance asked his fellow Republicans in March.

He may want to ask himself the same question. 

You can read the full report from Lever here.

Donald Trump is struggling to find a lawyer…again. According to reports from the Washington Post, the ex-president, who’s facing 37 charges related to allegations of mishandling classified documents, spent most of the day before his arraignment searching for an advocate to take his case. Several high-profile Florida attorneys have declined the task, after two lawyers—Jim Trusty and John Rowley, who played until recently had played critical roles in Trump’s defense—unexpectedly resigned last week. Trusty and Rowley are the two latest departures from a rotating cast of Trump attorneys who have, over the years, often been entangled in nearly as much controversy as their infamous client.

“Everyone is saying no,” an anonymous source told the Washington Post. Alan Dershowitz, the former Harvard Law School professor who has advised Trump in the past, didn’t seem too encouraging either, telling the Post that “good lawyers should have been working on this case for months.”

But clearly, such “good lawyers” have eluded Trump as he sinks further into a legal hot mess. Perhaps lawyers aren’t touching the case with a 10-foot pole in order to avoid the fate of Trump’s former personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, whose own role in the Big Lie now has him embroiled in the criminal investigation into election interference in Georgia. Let’s also recall that Giuliani’s deeply problematic television interviews were reportedly central to his firing from his own law firm. He eventually got his license suspended by the New York Bar last year. 

Trump, who’ll be arraigned in a Miami courthouse on Tuesday at 3 pm, will be reportedly represented at the hearing by Todd Blanche, who’s also handling Trump’s Stormy Daniels case in New York, and Christopher Kise, a well-compensated Florida lawyer who’s reportedly led the charge to find Trump representation that fits within the state’s legal guidelines.

After spending the weekend publicly screeching about the 37-count criminal indictment over his mishandling of classified documents, former president Donald Trump is set to be arraigned at a federal courthouse in Miami tomorrow. The appearance will mark Trump’s second surrender in a little over two months. Once the arraignment wraps up, the former president—just as he did after his first arrest in April—is expected to deliver an evening speech from one of his golf clubs. The next day, Trump will celebrate his 77th birthday.

The federal indictment is nothing short of unprecedented. But as with nearly everything relating to Donald Trump, the threat of exhaustion—and even worse, indifference—looms. Who could blame anyone after surviving the relentless everyday bile from the Trump White House, two impeachments, and endless scandal? So here’s a helpful download on what to know, the stunning and the stupid, as the first former US president prepares to surrender to federal charges so damning that if even half is true, his own attorney general believes he is “toast.”

Here's what to know before Donald Trump surrenders to federal charges today. pic.twitter.com/ZXU9E7iYfG

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) June 13, 2023

Ok, I truly haven’t paid attention to any of this. What’s going on? He is in trouble for boxes? And didn’t he already get indicted? 

Oh wow. Deep breath. First of all, Trump was indicted in April on another matter. That was about his payoff of Stormy Daniels. (You can read a ton of backstory about that here—but also don’t, because that isn’t what’s going on right now.)

Last week, Trump was indicted for the second time (and the first time federally) for what you mentioned: boxes. As we reported, Trump left the White House with hundreds of documents that the National Archives and Records Administration considers federal records. In the indictment—you can read the full thing here—the Department of Justice describes the mishandling of those documents. It’s serious stuff. But also, sorry, pretty funny and wild. As I wrote previously, look at this photo of a bunch of documents stacked in a bathroom. For a full analysis of the indictment, my colleague David Corn has you covered. 

But the topline is this: Tomorrow, Trump has to go to a courthouse in Miami because he reportedly took materials from his time in the White House—including sensitive ones that are labeled as secret—to his home in Florida and when he was told to give them back, there was some lying.

Cool. That sounds bad. I’m sorry to be so blunt but could Donald Trump actually go to prison this time?

That’s complicated. One of the many distinguishing features of this indictment, at least with respect to Trump’s previous legal troubles, is the real potential for a prison sentence, with prosecutors accusing Trump of violating the Espionage Act by willfully keeping—and refusing to return—classified information. Vox reports that each count related to Espionage Act violations carries a maximum sentence of up to 10 years. But Trump has not been tried or convicted yet. So at this point, though the threat of prison time may be real, the discussion of a sentence is premature. He’s also vowed to continue his 2024 run for president even if he is convicted. “I’ll never leave,” he told Politico in a deranged interview.

I think I saw someone else got in trouble too. Who is the other person that got indicted with Trump? 

That man is Waltine Nauta. You can think of him as a more buff Gary Walsh, an aide described as both a body man and butler to the former president. Nauta is a former Navy veteran, who the Wall Street Journal reports became Trump’s primary Diet Coke fetcher. Federal investigators identified Nauta in surveillance footage moving boxes at Mar-a-Lago before and after they were requested as a part of the ongoing investigation. The New York Times reports that a December 2021 incident suggested that Nauta likely knew that the boxes contained classified information. But he denied information about the boxes’ movement, which investigators say was a lie. He now faces six federal charges for his devotion to Trump. Here’s a sad paragraph from the Times report:

Former aides to Mr. Trump who observed Mr. Nauta closely said that unlike many who have gotten close to Mr. Trump over the years, Mr. Nauta did not seem to be working a “side hustle” to monetize or get famous from his access to the former president.

He now finds himself in a position several others have: attached to Mr. Trump as he’s targeted by prosecutors.

So, what kind of secrets are we talking about?

According to the unsealed indictment, everything from nuclear secrets to military plans. Some documents were even marked as part of something called Five Eyes, which my colleague Jacob Rosenberg tells me started as a War War II alliance for signal intelligence between the US and the United Kingdom (initially used to crack Japanese codes) that has continued—adding New Zealand, and Canada—to allow the coordination of espionage among allies. These boxes were allegedly strewn about Mar-a-Lago. Some were stuffed into that grotesque bathroom I mentioned above.

Set the scene for tomorrow. 

According to Trump, the hearing starts at 3 pm ET—and you can fully expect intense security.

While the protests outside Trump’s first arraignment in New York were peaceful—in fact, they were really more of an open call for a bad performance art piece—tomorrow’s appearance is sparking serious concerns of violence. (It’s useful to remember that this is happening in far more Trump-friendly territory, where this sort of thing happens whenever Trump is in trouble. And that this is about something related to the so-called Deep State instead of hush money.)

It doesn’t help that the former president and his allies, including Kari Lake, have ginned up the dangerous rhetoric in recent days. “If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me,” Lake said on Friday, “and you’re going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA.”

I heard something hilarious is happening with Trump’s lawyers.

Yes. One day after the federal indictment was unsealed, two of Trump’s lawyers who had been representing him in this classified documents legal drama resigned. There’s the matter of Evan Cocoran, a potentially critical witness in this very case. As the Guardian reported last month:

Donald Trump’s lawyer tasked with searching for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after the justice department issued a subpoena told associates that he was waved off from searching the former president’s office, where the FBI later found the most sensitive materials anywhere on the property.

The lawyer, Evan Corcoran, recounted that several Trump aides had told him to search the storage room because that was where all the materials that had been brought from the White House at the end of Trump’s presidency ended up being deposited.

Who is the judge in this case?

Aileen Cannon, a Trump-appointed federal judge, is presiding over this one which has many concerned. Last year, Cannon delivered Trump several shocking victories in the case.

Who is the other person I see on TV who seems official?  Who is that guy and does he have a specific hobby?

Jack Smith is the special counsel pursuing criminal charges against Trump. He does have a hobby. Described by friends as an “insane cyclist,” the special counsel is quite fit for someone who presumably sits in an office all day, tying together the endless ways that Trump may have broken the law. The public got a rare glimpse of Smith on Friday when he gave a short but decisive statement on the criminal charges he’s brought against the former president. “We have one set of laws in this country and they apply to everyone,” he said. Here are his triathlon times.

Did any of this have to happen?

No. As Maggie Haberman noted this morning, the National Archives had asked Trump to return the documents for almost a whole year. His lawyers had reportedly urged him to keep things simple and comply. Did he take the advice? Of course not. Now the world is forced to keep tabs on yet another Trump shitstorm of his own making; the inexorable march of time trudges on.

This post has been updated.

In the wake of his federal criminal indictment, Donald Trump dropped a new video on Truth Social on Saturday. And it is cringey-as-hell. The two-minute spot, complete with gauzy, quasi-cinematic shots of the ex-president walking away from his helicopter like an action hero, is pretty standard messianic Trump fare. 

But here’s the weirdest part, reported by Axios today: For its narration, the video steals a monologue performed by Matt Damon in “Air”, the new biographical film about the rise of Air Jordans and the Nike salesman who created them. The film was directed by Ben Affleck, stars Damon, and has absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump.

“You’re going to change the fucking world. But you know what, once they build you as high they possibly can, they’re going to tear you back down,” Damon’s voice is heard saying, as a shot of a stadium filled with Trump supporters morphs into an ABC news headline about the indictment.

I guess the trailer’s creators thought the speech would paint Trump as a dynamic underdog betrayed by the world, and not a man who has been found liable of sexual abuse; accused of inciting a riot to steal an election; and indicted on 37 felony charges.

As is the case for many things that have (allegedly) found their way into Trump’s possession, he had not sought permission. In a statement to Axios, Artists Equity, the production company run by Affleck and Damon, said they did not consent to Trump’s campaign using the dialogue. They added that they don’t “endorse or approve” of any footage or audio from “Air” being used in the former president’s campaign.

Swiping creative properties without permission is nothing new for Trump. From Adele to Neil Young, the GOP candidate’s team is notorious for using songs throughout his 2016 and 2020 presidential runs without the green light from artists.

Ted Kaczynski, known widely as the Unabomber, was found dead in his prison cell Saturday morning, according to the Associated Press, which cited a spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons. The 81-year-old, who was serving a life sentence in Colorado, had been moved to a North Carolina medical facility due to poor health. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Across nearly two decades of terror starting in 1978, Kaczynski fashioned 16 “increasingly sophisticated” bombs, which he then mailed or hand-delivered, killing three people and injuring scores more. The name, “Unabomber” derived from a six-letter acronym used by the FBI’s taskforce investigating the cases, UNABOM, the “UNA” being a reference to some of his targets, university campuses and airliners.

Kaczynski was finally captured in 1996, a year after he sent the FBI a 35,000-word manifesto that was published by the Washington Post and the New York Times, causing family members to tip off authorities. He pleaded guilty in 1998, and was sentenced to a Supermax facility in Colorado.

Kaczynski’s deadly spree, and the accompanying manhunt, reverberated for decades through American politics and culture. The current Attorney General, Merrick Garland, oversaw the case against Kaczynski—a high-stakes investigation that made a lasting impression on the then-prosecutor. He described the raid on Kaczynski’s Montana cabin to students at the University of Chicago Law School in 2017: “You can read about criminal law as much as you want,” he said. “But sitting around a table trying to figure out whether you have enough probable cause to search the cabin—that was a really complicated problem.”

Kaczynski’s stated desire to attack industrialized society was seized upon by some in an attempt to link his crimes to the environmental movement at large. In 2012, the ultra-conservative Heartland Institute (described by environmentalist Bill McKibben as the “nerve center of climate change denial”) put up a billboard near Chicago that compared anyone who thought climate change was real to Kaczynski, in an attempt to show that “the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.” The billboard screamed, “I still believe in Global Warming. Do you?” in giant, crimson letters. (Heartland eventually removed the billboard.) The group also wanted to feature the faces of Charles Manson, Fidel Castro, and Osama bin Laden.

This is a breaking news post and will be updated.

On Wednesday, Donald Trump became the first former president to face a federal indictment. Today, federal prosecutors released a scathing indictment outlining charges stemming from Trump’s decision to bring classified documents with him to his Florida estate after his term as president ended.

The 37 charges brought by a grand jury include conspiracy to obstruct justice and willful retention of classified information. 

You can read the full indictment here:

Large swaths of the United States are buried under a blanket of smoke, with some states facing the worst air pollution in decades. Virginia is no exception; state officials have warned that the air quality is too hazardous for prolonged public exposure in certain regions.

But while Virginians breathe in toxic wildfire smoke this week, state regulators appear more concerned with helping Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s plans to exit a coalition largely credited for incentivizing utility companies to cut carbon emissions. On Wednesday, in a 4-3 vote, the state’s Air Quality Control Board approved the governor’s plan to remove Virginia from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an 11-state coalition environmentalists have praised as an effective, low-cost tactic to fight climate change.

Virginia joined the group in 2020, becoming the first southern state to participate in the program that creates mandatory caps on carbon emissions from power plants. Power sector companies are also required to receive allowances for every short ton of carbon dioxide they emit, money that, in turn, is used to fund energy-efficient initiatives. 

Since coming into office, Youngkin has made it a priority to remove the state from the RGGI, claiming that the program is an unfair tax on residents and businesses that doesn’t help the environment. But environmentalists say otherwise. During Wednesday’s hearing, the Southern Environmental Law Center cited recent EPA data that showed Virginia’s carbon emissions from power plants declined by about 5.5 million tons a year or 16.8 percent since 2020.

Nikki Haley is once again trying to have it both ways. In response to a question asking her to define “woke” during a CNN town hall on Sunday, the Republican presidential candidate suggested that transgender girls in sports can be blamed for a rise in suicide rates among teens. 

“How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker rooms? And then we wonder why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year,” Haley said, calling the topic the “women’s issue of our time.”

“We should be growing strong girls, confident girls,” she continued.

The former South Carolina governor appeared to be citing a recent CDC survey that found nearly a third of teenage girls have seriously considered suicide. But there is no evidence to support Haley’s assertion, which was swiftly blasted as anti-trans. In fact, the same CDC study revealed that LGBTQ teens are at higher risk of suicide and that transgender youth experience greater levels of violence.

Haley’s remarks, which come amid a sharp rise in anti-trans laws across the country, are an escalation of a 2021 editorial she wrote for the National Review, in which she called the inclusion of trans women in sports an “attack on women’s rights.”

Nikki Haley discussing trans girls in kids sports: "How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker room. And then we wonder why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year." pic.twitter.com/rA2lD06yVe

— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) June 5, 2023

When pressed on whether there was any room for “humanity” in the so-called debate, Haley, in typical fashion, seemed to slightly backtrack, insisting that “we need to take care of these kids.”

“I think there is a humane way to do it,” she continued. “Let’s get them the help, the therapy, whatever they need so that they can feel better and not be suicidal, but don’t go and cause all these other kids to feel like that pressure is on them. They don’t deserve that, and they don’t need that, either.”

Haley did not offer advice on how to square that call for humanity with her own suggestion that trans people in locker rooms could be responsible for suicidal ideation.

Update, June 1: In a 52-46 vote, the Senate passed a resolution to overturn Biden’s student debt cancellation plan. The bill now heads for the president’s desk. He has already vowed to veto it.

If you’re one of more than 43 million people with student loan debt in the United States, you may soon be forced to start repayments once again. On Wednesday, the House passed a deal to raise the debt ceiling, which includes a provision ending the pandemic-era pause on student loan payments. The agreement now heads to the Senate where lawmakers on both sides of the aisle hope to pass it by late Friday.

So what do borrowers need to know? If the deal passes in its current form, repayments and interest accrual will kick in at the end of August. That’s roughly the same time the Biden administration had previously said that the federal pause would finally end after more than three years, eight extensions, and two presidencies. But those hoping for another last-minute extension this time around are out of luck; the debt ceiling agreement specifically blocks President Biden from issuing one without congressional approval.

Biden’s plan to cancel student debt—something House Republicans sought to kill in an initial debt ceiling draft—was spared, and the proposal to eliminate $20,000 worth of debt for Pell Grant recipients and up to $10,000 for borrowers who earn less than $125,000 a year remains in the hands of the Supreme Court. Court observers, as my colleague Hannah Levintova reported, are pessimistic that student loan forgiveness will survive the high court’s conservative majority. And even if justices do allow Biden’s plan to continue, future legal challenges are expected. There is, however, a whole other Republican-led measure seeking to repeal the student loan forgiveness plan that just advanced in the Senate. But Biden has vowed to veto it.

If all this sounds confusing, rest assured, you’re not alone. Both the debt ceiling provision and the upcoming high-stakes Supreme Court ruling are all but certain to add to the general confusion over repayments. One thing that isn’t confusing, however, is the immense relief that would affect countless lives if student loan forgiveness actually wins. 

In a move lauded by safe streets advocates, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration proposed a new rule this morning that would require automatic emergency braking (AEB) on new cars and light trucks.

AEB uses sensors to detect objects in a car’s path, like pedestrians or other vehicles, and automatically brakes if the driver fails to react. Most light-duty vehicles sold in the US are already equipped with some level of AEB, but the proposed rule would hold the braking systems to a higher standard. Among the new rules would be a requirement for AEB to detect cyclists and pedestrians at night, which is when most pedestrian fatalities occur, according to NHTSA. The new rule also seeks to increase safety for cars traveling at higher speeds.

Today .@NHTSAgov is proposing a rule to make AEB mandatory in all vehicles and pedestrian AEB mandatory in light duty vehicles, requiring FULL crash avoidance, a shift that would make roadways safer for all. 🙌🏼 pic.twitter.com/VlKQvZt64z

— danisimons (@danisimons) May 31, 2023

NHTSA estimates that the rule, if finalized, could save at least 360 lives and prevent at least 24,000 injuries a year. The provision comes amid a nationwide surge in traffic fatalities. While the proposal would not address the nation’s lurch toward the ever-larger SUVs that often prove deadly in pedestrian crashes, it is a small but significant step toward preventing crashes in the first place.

You can read the full proposed rule here. And if you’re interested in how new technology could be implemented to increase safety, here’s my report on the possibility of ending drunk driving under a new regulation passed as part of the infrastructure bill.

If you haven’t ordered your free Covid tests yet, you might want to hurry. US residents are still allowed to order free tests online until 11:59 p.m. PT on May 31. After that, the federal program will be officially terminated. According to the Covid.gov website, every US household is eligible for up to four at-home testing kits, as long as their last order was before December 15. 

Since the World Health Organization officially declared an end to the Covid public health crisis on May 11, a slew of pandemic-era resources and protections have ended.

Now, anyone looking to purchase once-free Covid tests will have to discuss the cost with their personal insurer, regardless of whether it is a laboratory or at-home test. Those without insurance can reportedly receive free tests via outreach programs.

Last week, Florida Gov. Ronald Dion DeSantis announced his run for president of the United States. In the avalanche of background coverage, one point hasn’t been discussed much: DeSantis’ middle name. “Dion”? 

According to reporting from NBC News, it’s a tribute to the early rockstar, and Bronx-born heartthrob, Dion DiMucci. When Henry J. Gomez interviewed fraternity brothers of DeSantis’ father, Ronald (they call him a “jokester”), one said that the elder DeSantis was “into music.” The potential president got his middle name, according to the report, as “a tribute” to Dion.

I reached out to Dion to ask if he had any comment on his (middle) namesake’s run. A spokesperson told me that the artist “predictably” is “not going to engage” beyond the following: “Ron DeSantis’ father has great taste in Rock ‘n’ Roll. God bless America.”

There you go. Tepid. But respectful. We’re doing the work over here to cover the 2024 presidential primary.

If you’re wondering why there’s a God bless on the end there, it might be worth knowing that DiMucci had a Christian rock phase. After helping birth “Rock ‘n’ Roll”—at least the commercialized, teeny-bop-friendly version that soared in the 1950s—Dion’s career wandered. In the 1960s, he did have solo hits after his success with the Belmonts. But the British invasion, and the cataclysms of 1968, saw his style tossed aside. In the 1970s, he had a very underappreciated troubadour thing going. In 1976, Dion released Born to Be With You—a baroque pop record disliked by critics—with the infamous Phil Specter producing. That decade he also put out Sweetheart (with Phil Everly on backing vocals on a song!) and, again, no luck. Eventually, DiMucci found God. In 1983, he released, “I Put My Idols Away.” Here are the lyrics to the title track:

I was raised on New York rock and roll

I took control

I was cool

Made the rounds

Made the record hops

I hit the top

Played the fool

From above I truly heard a friend

Truly now you must be born again

If Dylan could go Christian, why not Dion? It seems this didn’t lead to much in terms of politics, except for avoidance of such earthly matters. In 2020, Der Spiegel interviewed Dion and he rebuffed an election question like this:

SPIEGEL: Sam Cooke once sang: “A Change Is Gonna Come.” Translated into today: Do you believe in a change in the US presidential election?

DiMucci: I know nothing about politics. That’s why I don’t want to comment on Trump. Some like him, others hate him. I believe in God more than politicians and stay out of it.

In 1989, Lou Reed—who loved Dion’s voice—inducted him into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. That same year, Reed appeared on a track on Dion’s album Yo Frankie. (Produced by Dave Edmunds, of Rockpile.) It had special guests Paul Simon and Bryan Adams. And it got a positive review in Rolling Stone. Dion had his return to secular music.

It’s unclear at what stage of Dion’s career Ronald DeSantis loved enough to name his son partially after DiMucci. But consider this an important point in an ongoing confirmation of something one side of my family has noted: DeSantis would be the first Italian American president in the history of the United States.

Last night, in a Twitter Spaces marred by glitches, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that he was running for president. Within hours, former President Trump took to Instagram with a seemingly AI-generated video so absurd that I had to double-check that it was in fact posted by @realdonaldtrump.

The video, laced with homophobic and anti-Semitic innuendo, sees Elon Musk, Ron DeSantis, George Soros, Klaus Schwab, Dick Cheney, Adolph Hitler, the devil, and the FBI in a fictional Twitter Space. In the video, DeSantis attempts to announce his presidential run but is interrupted by a babbling Soros, a coughing Cheney, a yelling Hitler, and an FBI representative who publicly wonders, “OK, so how are we gonna take out Trump, you guys?”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by President Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump)

After DeSantis manages to spit out the words, “I’m running for fucking president, okay?” Trump’s voice—also seemingly AI-generated, despite coming from his own Instagram account—jumps in to make his 2024 presidential pitch: “The devil, I’m gonna kick your ass very soon. Hitler, you’re already dead. Dick Cheney, sounds like you’ll be joining Hitler very soon. Klaus Schwab and George Soros, I’m putting both your asses in jail. And Ron DeSanctimonious can kiss my big beautiful 2024 presidential ass.”

The video is a preview of a 2024 Republican primary that will see DeSantis and Trump rolling around in the muck, using whatever memes are at their disposal to score internet points and, hopefully, votes. If there was ever a time when presidential races were dignified and respectful, well, that’s long in the rearview. Welcome to 2024. Welcome to hell.

Amid high-wire negotiations over the nation’s debt ceiling and the increasing likelihood of a US default, House Republicans on Tuesday took a moment to turn their attention to a used chapstick belonging to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. That chapstick—which, according to Politico, was a cherry-flavored souvenir from Florida Congressman Aaron Bean’s campaign—was to be auctioned off to benefit the House Republican electoral committee. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene secured the prize by pledging $100,000 from her own campaign coffers.

NEW: During GOP conference today, House Rs did about a 15-min fundraising auction for chapstick used by Speaker McCarthy.

The winner: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), whose winning bid was $100,000, her Spox confirms to me.

— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) May 23, 2023

“They doing this insane chapstick shit while the country teeters on default,” Rep. Ilhan Omar tweeted as confusion abounded. The stunt prompted hygiene concerns, as well as questions from this writer over what could compel someone to debase themselves by voluntarily becoming the new owner of used chapstick. That was all by design, of course. The winning bid—which, perhaps most importantly, also buys Greene a dinner meeting between McCarthy and Greene’s own supporters—came as the latest evidence of the intense bond between these two high-profile Republicans.

But look one step further out from the weirdness, and you’ll see that the stunt as a fairly mundane window into how fundraising in the swamp tends to work: Donors give to politicians, who then bolster their own power and influence by passing that money along to other political candidates. Greene’s standing among Republicans grows; so-called establishment candidates in swing districts happily accept chapstick-stained dollars, despite everything hideous there is to know about the QAnon-supporting congresswoman from Georgia. The wheels of power keep turning.

My colleague Jeremy Schulman, who would like to clarify that he did not edit his own name into this post, said it best: This story is less about the gross chapstick than it is about a lame inside joke involving the most extreme lawmaker in the United States transferring wads of cash to the most spineless. So, totally normal stuff.

The NAACP is the latest organization to warn Black people and members of marginalized communities against traveling to Florida amid the relentless right-wing bills signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis. The travel advisory, issued on Saturday, condemned Florida as “openly hostile towards African Americans, people of color, and LGBTQ+” people and urged people to fight the state’s attack on democratic institutions.

“Under its current Governor, the State of Florida has engaged in an all-out attack on Black Americans, accurate Black history, voting rights, members of the LGBTQ+community, immigrants, women’s reproductive rights, and free speech, while simultaneously embracing a culture of fear, bullying, and intimidation by public officials,” the NAACP said in a statement.

“Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the State of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of and the challenges faced by African Americans and other minorities.”

The announcement is a direct response to DeSantis’ war on so-called “anti-woke ideology,” which has seen the governor attacking diversity and equity efforts at seemingly every opportunity, including most recently, DEI initiatives at Florida’s state colleges and universities. In issuing its formal travel advisory, the NAACP joined other advocacy groups, including Equality Florida and The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), to warn against visiting the state. 

In the past month alone, DeSantis, who’s expected to officially announce his presidential run this week, has signed off on a flurry of bills attacking everything from abortion rights to health care for trans people. As I’ve previously reported, DeSantis has made it no secret that he plans to make Florida his blueprint for America if he secures the presidency. Should he succeed, perhaps we’ll see more countries issuing travel advisories against the United States, as they did under Donald Trump and the scourge of mass shootings that continue to take place in the US. 

This morning, Andrew Yang announced that Krist Novoselic of Nirvana joined Forward—his political party that is “not left,” “not right,” but “FORWARD” (and pretty hard to take seriously).

Yang is famous for running unsuccessfully for president and for mayor of New York City. He has staked his claim on the technocratic, centrist dream that problems can be solved by, as his hat said, “Math.”

Krist Novoselic is famous for being the bassist in Nirvana. (He also played with the band Flipper in the 2000s, an underrated no-wave rock outfit.) There are other things Novoselic has done—including political activism as an independent after breaking away from the Democrat party, and some not-great comments on “law and order”—but if you had to say one thing he’s known for, it’d be: That guy is the bassist in Nirvana.

Pumped to have Krist Novoselic of Nirvana join the #ForwardParty!! https://t.co/1J8GDy38gx

— Andrew Yang🧢⬆️🇺🇸 (@AndrewYang) May 23, 2023

And yet, in the announcement, written by Yang (at least according to the byline), amid a lot of mentions that Novoselic is very tall, is this: “Krist co-founded Nirvana with Kurt Cobain—he’s the tall, good-looking one playing guitar near the back.” (My emphasis added.) Hmm. Guitar? I don’t think you get on a Discogs list of “The Greatest Rock Bassists of All Time” made by anavrin3 playing guitar. You do it by playing bass.

Is this just an elision? Does Andrew Yang mean playing “bass guitar” in the back?

Well, either way, I guess Yang’s claim that Krist Novoselic is the guy playing guitar is fitting in one way. It’s like his claim the Forward is a political party. Technically true. But also: “A denial, a denial, a denial.”

The specifics of Bill Gates’ relationship with Jeffrey Epstein have been an open question since details about their ties were revealed in 2019. In 2022, Gates’ ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, revealed that her then-husband’s relationship with the child predator financier even contributed to their divorce. 

On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal shed new light on their dynamic, revealing that Epstein once threatened to reveal Gates’ affair with a Russian bridge player named ​​Mila Antonova.

According to the report, Gates met Antonova in 2010. Three years later, Epstein paid for Antonova’s coding school tuition. Then, four years after that he emailed Gates asking for reimbursement for Antonova’s tuition after Gates declined to put money into a multibillion-dollar charitable fund that Epstein was trying to create at JP Morgan. The implication of the request for reimbursement was that if Gates didn’t maintain a relationship with Epstein, the registered sex offender would reveal the affair. 

Antonova explained to the Journal that Epstein paid for her tuition after declining to invest in a bridge business that she was attempting to start. When she couldn’t raise enough money, she decided to go to a coding boot camp instead and reached out to people she knew to ask for loans. 

“Epstein agreed to pay and he paid directly to the school. Nothing was exchanged. I don’t know why he did that,” she told the paper. “When I asked, he said something like, he was wealthy and wanted to help people when he could.”

A Gates spokesperson told the Journal, “Mr. Gates met with Epstein solely for philanthropic purposes. Having failed repeatedly to draw Mr. Gates beyond these matters, Epstein tried unsuccessfully to leverage a past relationship to threaten Mr. Gates.”

Read the entire Journal story here.

It sure seems like Ron DeSantis really doesn’t want to talk about abortion, despite his sterling record of restricting it. Just six weeks after passing one of the toughest bans in the country, DeSantis barely brought it up during a speech Saturday evening at the annual gala of the Florida Family Policy Council, an anti-abortion group. 

“We believe that everybody counts, everybody’s special, and our Heartbeat Protection Act shows that we say what we mean and we mean what we say,” DeSantis said of his new abortion restrictions, before quickly returning to his usual talking points about his coronavirus and transphobic policies, according to the New York Times.

Beyond the gala, DeSantis hasn’t spoken much about abortion publicly, only including it once in his regular 45-minute stump speech listing his accomplishments, according to the Times.

As the Florida governor reportedly nears announcing his run for president, he may be caught between the hardened base of GOP supporters who want to end abortion and the public at large, which consistently and overwhelmingly supports abortion rights in public polling.

After DeSantis introduced his latest restrictions, his would-be opponent, Donald Trump, attacked him on it, saying in an interview with The Messenger that “many people within the pro-life movement” think the Florida ban “was too harsh.”