I made Whoopie Goldberg laugh

We'll sleep when we're dead

I had an event for Bad Law at the Harvard Bookstore on Monday evening. It started at 7 pm, just as New Jersey Senator Cory Booker was rising to take the Senate floor.

I stayed late, signed a lot of books, and grabbed a drink at an old college hangout. When I got back to my hotel room at around 11 pm, Booker was still speaking. I woke up at 3:45 am, in time to make a 5 am train back to New York for another event; Booker was still speaking. My train arrived on time and I did my event, then got into an Uber to head home. I was exhausted, but as I pulled out my phone, I saw that Booker was still speaking.

Booker ended up speaking for just over 25 hours, breaking the record set by racist Senator Strom Thurmond, who spoke for 24 hours to oppose the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

Booker's rhetorical marathon reminded me that I do not get to be tired. I do not get to be exhausted. I do not get to throw up my hands and sleep through the fascist takeover of America. All I get to do is use every ounce of my strength, every stroke of my keyboard to fight these people.

If all Booker did was remind people like you and me about what we must do, then it was a job well done. We'll sleep when we're dead, or when they've been defeated—whichever comes first.

The Bad and The Ugly

Republicans in Congress have taken up Trump's white-supremacist banner and are pushing a law to require people to present proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. They say the goal is to keep noncitizens from voting, but that is a preposterous canard because noncitizens already can't vote—and don't. The point of their plans is to make it harder for citizens to vote, especially citizens who are unlikely to cast their ballots for Republicans.
Wisconsin voters handed Elon Musk a big "L" and elected Susan Crawford to the state Supreme Court, beating back Musk's candidate and the millions of dollars he poured into the race. Unfortunately, Wisconsinites also enshrined a voter-ID law in the state Constitution. It is a poll tax, but people who can afford identification simply refuse to see it that way.
Eric Adams's deal with the devil has officially paid off for him. On Wednesday, Judge Dale Ho dismissed the corruption case against him as requested by the Trump government. The case was dismissed "with prejudice," however, which means that the state cannot charge Adams again, and that is actually a good thing. It means the Trump administration cannot use the threat of renewing charges Adams as leverage to force him to do its bidding. Not that Adams will need to be forced. He is now merely another complicit member of Trump's ruling junta.
Big law firms continue to capitulate to Trump like sniveling cowards. I really hope some of these law firm partners end up in the same cell block as I do in Trump's future gulags, because I will make it my mission to torment them. They'll need to join a gang or convert to the Nation of Islam to get protection from me.
The Supreme Court threw out a lower-court ruling preventing the FDA from regulating the sale of flavored liquids for e-cigarettes (vapes). I agree with the Supreme Court's unanimous opinion as a matter of law, even though I vehemently disagree with this particular FDA regulation as a matter of policy. You see, I'm not a Republican, and thus I can separate my personal policy preferences from my legal analysis. So I'm just going to sit here and cope and seethe. At least sniffing glue is still legal.

Inspired Takes

Clarence Lusane's piece in The Nation "Black MAGA Supporters Have Made Their Peace With Racists" does what it says on the tin. I was so happy reading it because it meant I didn't have to write it. All the points have now been made.
Joy Reid writes about MAGA's "control-alt-delete" approach to American history. This approach isn't new, of course. White people have never wanted future white people to know what they have done to us.
My colleague Joan Walsh spent a weekend embedding herself in the Trump "defiance" movement. People are fighting, and they're not fighting alone.

Worst Argument of the Week

Speaker of the House and Trump valet Mike Johnson tried to rescind "proxy voting" for members of Congress who are new parents. Proxy voting is just a fancy way of saying "remote" voting: it allows congresspeople to vote on bills without physically being in the chamber for up to 10 weeks after they have given birth. Given that we live in the freaking future, voting remotely presents absolutely zero technological challenges; in fact, all of Congress did so during the Covid lockdown.

But you know how much the allegedly "pro-family" Republican Party hates situations where mothers are allowed to unshackle themselves from the home, put on shoes, and participate in "professional" business. Johnson tried to get rid of the proxy voting rules, and he tried to do so in a particularly dastardly way: by tying the rule change to the Republican legislation requiring proof of citizenship for voting—something he knew his members would be jazzed to support.

Johnson failed. Eleven Republicans broke ranks and voted against the rule. That's funny—but you know what's even funnier? After he lost, Johnson canceled all congressional business for the rest of the week. He literally acted like a petulant little boy who didn't get his way and grabbed his ball and went home.

I continue to be flabbergasted that so many Americans regard MAGA men as "strong" leaders. They are not. They are punks. And every time you hit one of them in the face, they go home and cry about it. Ralph Macchio could kick every single one of their asses in a karate tournament.

What I Wrote

I'm still on book tour, so I haven't been writing this past week—but I have been talking. The event that had me racing to catch a 5 am train on Tuesday was an appearance on The View. You can watch the segment here. I made Whoopi Goldberg laugh, and you can best believe that is going into my scrapbook of professional accomplishments.

In News Unrelated to the Ongoing Chaos

Nintendo announced the upcoming release of its Switch 2, which will go on sale June 5. I have been involved in many roiling debates with other parents about the issue of "screen time" and children—and the only company I will stake my parenting credibility on is Nintendo. I trust it more than Disney, more than Lego, more even than most books sold to kids. Seriously, when my children were smaller, someone gifted us The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh, and I was only a few stories in before I was screaming to all my parent friends: "DID YOU KNOW CHRISTOPHER ROBIN OWNS A GUN, CARRIES IT EVERYWHERE, AND ACCIDENTLY SHOT POOH ONCE!!??"

Core Nintendo games, like Super Mario Brothers, Mario Kart, and the Legend of Zelda are appropriate for children. Full stop. And I'd rather have my kids playing anything in Nintendo's library than falling down the YouTube Kids hole or into the predatory Roblox vortex. When Nintendo says that little children can play and enjoy the game, they mean it.

More importantly, I think video games, especially Nintendo's games, offer a myriad of "teachable moments" that you just can't get from static media like television. I worked on my kids' reading and problem-solving skills with Zelda, drove home the importance of practice and study with Super Smash Brothers, and helped them become gracious winners and honorable losers through Mario Kart.

I'll be buying the new Switch for my kids. And I might even donate one to Mike Johnson. I promise you that if he spent more time playing Nintendo and less time reading the Bible (especially the Republican version of it, which evidently contains only the mean bits), he'd be a better person.