Opinion

It appears that the GOP establishment is pursuing one of its typically lame quixotic attempts to see if it might be possible to oust Donald Trump from the leadership of their party. Or, at least, they are working hard to persuade the mainstream media to tell all those suburban swing voters that they're trying.

We've seen multiple articles in recent days making the case that Trump is weakening and that GOP leadership is taking a strong hand to the party in advance of the 2022 election. Some ambitious politicians even took to the Sunday shows to proclaim their independence.

Right-wing outrage was in full force Sunday night as conservatives slammed the NFL for its Super Bowl halftime show featuring Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar, 50 Cent, Anderson .Paak, and Eminem – who took a knee.

"The NFL is now the league of sexual anarchy. This halftime show should not be allowed on television," tweeted Charlie Kirk, founder and head of Turning Point USA, a far right-wing advocacy group that pals around with white supremacists.

Campaigns that challenge people to abstain from alcohol for one month — often in support of a good cause — have emerged across the globe over the past decade. Dry January officially launched in 2013 with a public health campaign by British charity Alcohol Change.

Other “month of abstinence” campaigns have included Dry July, Sober September, Sober October and “Dry February” — a few examples of campaigns from Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada and beyond. Dry campaigns have gained traction with people increasingly taking a time out from drinking alcohol for one month.

Those of us who have repeatedly sounded the alarm about the Republican Party's threat to democracy and American society have often been told we were exaggerating or being ridiculous. We were hyperbolic, attention-seeking or just plain wrong — because, after all, the Republican Party's leaders and voters really do love America.

Last week the Republican National Committee dropped any remaining pretexts of patriotism or love of democracy with its now-infamous statement that those who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were "ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse." Reports suggest that a draft version of that RNC statement was even bolder in its embrace of right-wing terrorism.

Turning Points USA president Charlie Kirk was ridiculed online Sunday after expressing his displeasure with the Super Bowl halftime show.

Among the things that unfolded was rapper Eminem refusing to abide by the NFL's demand that he not kneel in acknowledgment of the civil disobedience protest started by former NFL player Colin Kaepernick.

Yet we don’t know the name of the firm lawmakers have decided to woo with this unprecedented and risky deal, which would provide the mystery company at least $1 billion in tax breaks, payroll subsidy, state-funded employee training and other incentives. The sheer size of the offer and the secrecy surrounding it are red flags for experts, but it has bipartisan support from Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly and the state’s GOP-controlled Legislature.

Watching the deal unfold left me with a queasy feeling in my gut.

During oral arguments in the case of Shurtleff v. City of Boston, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch made a pointed reference to "so-called separation of church and state." What precisely this aside was meant to convey is unclear. Yet Gorsuch's dismissive comment laid bare what many have known for some time: "Separationism," as a judicial and legislative doctrine, is on life support. Courtesy of the Christian right, it languishes in a theologically-induced coma.

This article first appeared in Salon.

"I'm obsessed now with just hearing women's doctor stories," says Anushay Hossain. "Everyone has one."

The author of "The Pain Gap: How Sexism and Racism in Healthcare Kill Women" definitely has her own. After growing up in Bangladesh, the writer, podcaster and policy analyst felt "relieved" to be delivering her baby in the nation with "the best healthcare in the world." Instead, she almost died in childbirth, an experience that left her shocked at how ineptly her medical team had handled her pain and symptoms — and how uncharacteristically compliant she'd been in her vulnerability.

Nothing speaks more to how the modern GOP is centered around tickling the racist lizard brains of white conservative Boomers than the sudden reemergence of the term "crack pipe." The actual crack epidemic wound down literally decades ago, back when Donald Trump was still divorcing his first wife. But the audience for Republican propaganda is still stuck in the 1980s, the last time many of them had a full head of hair, and so here we are, with the term "crack pipe" suddenly exploding all over social media, search algorithms, and, because this really is the worst timeline, a grossly named federal bill.

The situation, which I regret even having to write about, is as idiotic as it is disturbing. As Jon Skolnik reported for Salon, Health and Human Services was planning on passing out a paltry "$30 million to nonprofit groups nationwide as part of a plan to reduce drug-related harm," mainly by preventing opioid overdoses. The opioid epidemic is affecting rural white communities as much as anyone else, making it impossible to turn into a racist moral panic. So instead, Republicans seized on a minor provision allowing clinics to provide "safe smoking kits," which can be used for many different drugs, including opioids. But, because of racism, the right-wing press ran with the outdated term "crack pipe," and, in case you are too dense to hear the dog whistle, most even insisted that the provision was there to "advance racial equity," which is a flat out lie.

The Republicans are about to win a major battle in their war on electric vehicles, this time with the second largest vehicle fleet in America owned by the US Postal Service. It’s an outrageous story that most Americans don’t know a thing about.

To understand what’s going on with the Post Office right now, you first must know the backstory that, it seems, most media outlets aren’t interested in discussing. It’s an issue that’s hitting millions of Americans right now.

It's been quite a week for Donald Trump and his henchmen. The House Jan. 6 committee finally subpoenaed his former trade adviser, Peter Navarro, who has been telling anyone who will listen about his plot to overturn the election. It was reported that Trump's former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, last seen on "The Masked Singer," called a Michigan prosecutor shortly after the 2020 election and asked him to turn over voting machines in one county to Trump's team. And the National Archives has reportedly sent a referral to the Department of Justice regarding all the White House documents Trump absconded with and shipped to Mar-a-Lago, some of which were reportedly marked as classified or top secret. Oh, and it turns out there were major gaps (of more than 15 minutes) in the White House presidential call records on Jan. 6 and that Trump at least sometimes tried to flush documents down a White House toilet.

Taking the last items first, let's stipulate that Trump's non-compliance with the Presidential Records Act has been known for some time. It was previously reported that he routinely tore up documents and his staff had to rifle through the trash and tape them back together. He refused to use a secure phone and half his staff, including his daughter, used personal email accounts. Trump was even alleged to have eaten documents at one point. This new story, reported by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman in her forthcoming book "Confidence Man," that plumbers were repeatedly called to service a toilet in the White House which had become clogged with papers that "someone" had tried to flush, is entirely in keeping with all the reports about Trump's refusal to adhere to laws about record keeping.

This week, we learned that Donald Trump liked to eat presidential paperwork. A former aide told MSNBC that she saw him masticating memos.

Now we hear that the White House toilets periodically clogged with official records which, legally, should have gone to the National Archives Records Administration (NARA).