Opinion

Last spring, as the right began using the word "grooming" as a slur against LGBTQ people and their allies, journalist Melissa Gira Grant noted at the New Republic that the word provided a way to "say both the quiet and the loud part." Contorting a term long used to describe real instances of child sex abuse into a weapon to be deployed against LGBTQ people and commonplace policies — for example, that their existence can and should be acknowledged in schools — was the "loud" part. It was a shocking but pithy means of demonization; as Gira Grant wrote, the "right is using the reality of child abuse to raise unfounded fears and panic about criminal and predatory behavior hiding in plain sight." The quiet part was the secondary implication: If one's "enemies" really are "an ill-defined yet pervasive threat to children, what wouldn't be justified in stopping them?"

This week, that quiet part got noticeably louder, as right-wing activists escalated the already-dangerous rhetoric of "grooming" — language that multiple social media platforms have banned from use as an insult related to LGBTQ issues — and graduated into claims that LGBTQ people and liberals are literally kidnapping and trafficking children.

More crime is caused by rich people than poor people in America. It’s not that rich people are committing the crimes, although they often do, but that inequality destroys social trust. If we want to reduce crime, we have to start taxing billionaires.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says he’s going to cut taxes for Floridians. The Florida legislature isn’t meeting again until March of next year, which is when governors typically roll out new proposals, but, hey, he’s heading into a make-it-or-break-it election against former Florida Governor Charlie Crist in six weeks.

In 33 days, voters will decide which party controls the Congress. As the time ticks down, I’m not the only one who’s noticed that the Republicans, for all their Sturm und Drang, don’t appear to be running on anything. What will they do with control of the House? It’s hard to say. Whatever the Democrats do, do the opposite?

Again, I’m not the only one to notice a conspicuous absence of a positive policy program. So has Kevin McCarthy. That’s why the House minority leader staged a big reveal of the Republicans’ new agenda, “Commitment to America,” in Pittsburgh last month.

After a damning article claiming he paid for one of his girlfriend’s abortions, Republican U.S. Senate nominee for Georgia, Herschel Walker, is out with a new ad that claims he has “overcome” his mental illness thanks to God, while he attacks his incumbent opponent, Democratic U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock, who he baselessly says “doesn’t even believe in redemption.”

Walker’s own campaign compared the Daily Beast’s report – that says Walker even signed a card mentioning the abortion he reportedly paid for – to Donald Trump’s 2016 “Access Hollywood” video, which almost cost him the election.

Former Trump 2016 campaign manager and Senior Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway has remade herself multiple times. A pollster who once had as a client Todd Akin – the GOP lawmaker who made the phrase, "if it's a legitimate rape" infamous – Conway also did polling for Donald Trump when he was considering a run for New York governor.

Once inside the White House Conway was one of the newsiest officials, often appearing before the Fox News cameras almost daily.

I'm so old I can remember a time before critical race theory, Mr. Potato Head and library books about gay teenagers were the greatest threats to America. I know it's hard to believe that anything could ever be more dangerous to all we hold dear, but once upon a time millions of people were convinced that affordable health care spelled the end of the republic as we know it. They took to the streets, mobbed town hall meetings and screamed bloody murder when the government proposed a law that would ban insurance companies from refusing to cover sick people and offered government help to people who could not afford the sky-high premiums those companies charged.

It seems like ancient history now but just a few years ago the hottest, most contentious issue in America was the passage of the Affordable Care Act (also known, for better or worse, as Obamacare). The Republican Party organized itself for almost a decade solely around a promise to repeal it. In fact, they actually voted to do so 67 times over the course of seven years. As president at the time, Barack Obama would have vetoed any repeal, of course, but the act of voting against it was enough to keep the base in line, outraged and on the march from one election to the next.

When Gov. Gretchen Whitmer gave her keynote address at the Mackinac Policy Conference in May, it suddenly became clear how many pundits had misjudged this particular political moment.

You would have expected the Democrat to earn some polite applause at the traditionally stuffy confab dominated by CEOs, lobbyists and legislators, one where her predecessor, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, always seemed most at home.

Whoopi Goldberg is glad that her former co-host, Meghan McCain, is no longer on "The View."

In a Saturday interview with Page Six, Goldberg opened up about the new — and enjoyable — sense of peace on the show's set following McCain's departure, saying, "It's calmer because nobody wants to be that tired every day."

The Economist posted a list this month entitled "What to read to understand Donald Trump," a list of five "handy books" from the overflowing library of volumes about the man who, as the editors put it, "remains at the center of American politics." These include the first major book about the Trump White House, Michael Wolff's 2018 "Fire and Fury," and several other classics of this mini-genre: "Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America" by John Sides, Michel Tesler and Lynn Vavreck; John Bolton's White House memoir, "The Room Where It Happened" and two accounts of the end of Trump's presidency, "Frankly, We Did Win This Election," by Michael C. Bender, and most recently "Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump's Washington and the Price of Submission" by Mark Leibovich.

This article first appeared on Salon.

I’m a terrier by instinct. I won’t let go of a topic until I’ve chewed it enough. One such theme, you have no doubt noticed, is the difficulty of seeing the truth even when, or especially when, it’s in plain sight.

I wrote recently about Republican candidates who will not commit to accepting the results of their respective elections. What most see is the former criminal president’s toxic influence. What we should see, however, are candidates who are admitting that they can’t be trusted.

This week, British Prime Minister Liz Truss surrendered, abandoning her signature conservative economic proposal in the face of imminent economic collapse and public rebellion.

The reversal is mostly being reported as a massive failure for Truss and the Tory party. And it is that. But it’s also a rebuke to conservative economic orthodoxy. It’s an indication of where the US could end up if Republicans gain control of the government.

Just over a decade ago, the state of Texas was in the spotlight for its bitter disputes over social studies education, a recurring brawl that had national impact primarily because of the leverage the state wielded with textbook publishers. That leverage has abated, but like a fading star who refuses to leave the stage, the state is reviving its reactionary script with an even gaudier supporting cast.

Now, as then, the Texas State Board of Education is in the middle of the fight. With a current membership that has on occasion acted effectively on a bipartisan basis, the sad news now is that the Board was unable to resolve differences over the teaching of Texas history and voted eight to seven to delay new social studies standards that had previously been fast-tracked for consideration. The official reason for delaying the new standards was that the volume and grade sequence of topics for Texas history were insufficient or failed to deliver fully the message of Texas “exceptionalism.”

In the annals of unheeded warnings about appeasing bullies, there's British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who literally cut a deal with Adolf Hitler and promised "peace in our time." Then we have toddler-man Donald Trump, with his endless hissy-fits about not being treated fairly and mob-speak threats about what a shame it would be if our nice democracy was to — well, was to run into a narcissistic, psychopathic compulsive liar. Somebody like him.

This article first appeared in Salon.