Republican House members are craven tools

Buyer's remorse? Please...

Republicans in the House who forced Donald Trump's spending-and-death-panels bill on us now claim to regret their votes. The New York Times reports: "Republicans who rallied behind the bill are claiming buyer's remorse about measures they swear they did not know were included."

The job of a congressperson is to write and pass legislation. The entire form of republican government is based on the idea that regular citizens cannot be expected to familiarize themselves with the intricacies of governing, so we vote for other people to do it for us. If you are a congressperson who doesn't even read, much less understand, the bills you are voting for, then you are doing a disservice to the entire nation and failing at your one core function.

Of course, "Republican Congresspeople Fail Job, America" is hardly news.

Still, there is a lie at the heart of the Times' reporting. The implication is that, if these Republicans had done their job and read the bill, they wouldn't have voted for it. That's untrue. Republican House members are craven tools of Trump's authoritarian regime. They would have voted to let Trump strangle their own loved ones if Trump told them to.

The Bad and The Ugly

Speaking of the spending bill, it's now projected to add $2.4 trillion to the national debt. Republicans have been lying about being "fiscally conservative" for literally my whole life.
Republicans in red states are making it easier for people to get Ivermectin because… "freedom." I can't wait till Trump orders Congress to take some—perhaps after it's been dissolved into Kool-Aid.
Trump rescinded the Biden order under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act that requires hospitals to provide lifesaving care to patients in distress, even if that care requires an abortion. It's a straight-up order to let women die. I'd say that Trump and the Republicans will pay an electoral price for this, but 53 percent of white women voted for Trump in 2024. So he won't.
Cardozo Law professor Kate Shaw testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing organized by Republicans to "investigate" why Trump is being sued so often in federal courts. Apparently "BECAUSE HE'S A CRIMINAL" was not a satisfactory answer. In any event, Senators Josh Hawley and John Kennedy went hard after the accomplished legal scholar. She held her own, as she always does. All the same, I am once again asking for somebody to PLEASE nominate me to the federal bench so I can have a hearing with these people. I will not be confirmed—and it will be glorious.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka is suing Alina Habba, the interim US Attorney for New Jersey, over his illegal arrest and detention while conducting an oversight visit at an immigrant detention camp in his city. The thing I'm most excited about is that the lawsuit will likely force Habba to hire a real lawyer, and there is a chance she'll learn something from watching an actual professional.

Inspired Takes

Not gonna lie, I read Jeet Heer's piece in The Nation about Elon Musk's "real" drug problem with a sense of moral (and chemical) superiority that would make the pope blush.
This week saw the publication of a story by New Yorker writer (and former Nation intern) Ava Kofman about the growing movement in favor of monarchy that I just don't know what to do with. It seems ridiculous that people want this to happen, but, then again, Trump got 77 million votes, so it's clearly not ridiculous.
The Nation's Chris Lehmann says the Democratic Party has a lot to learn from Tea Party conservative Joe Walsh. I read the headline and then opened my e-mail with the intention of sending my colleague a very nasty letter, but then I remembered that I've actually been on Walsh's show, and found him to be reasonable (on the scale of white Republican men, at least). So I decided to read Chris's piece and… he has a point. I guess that means that instead of starting an inter-office war, I'll just look out of my window, staring into the middle distance, while sighing deeply.

Worst Argument of the Week

I'm about to talk about forces I don't fully understand, so I'm going to tread lightly. On Sunday, Mexico held judicial elections for the first time in its history. Voters elected over 3,000 judicial officials—from Supreme Court justices all the way down to local district magistrates.

In my view, judicial elections are an incredibly bad idea. That opinion surprises some people, given that I like "democracy," believe judges to be mere politicians in robes, and regularly write about how the judicial appointment and confirmation process is broken. If judges are political figures with incredible power to shape policy outcomes, why shouldn't they be elected by the people they rule over?

Well, I've got two reasons: Judges are there to do unpopular things, and voters unduly punish leniency and mercy.

When functioning properly, the judiciary is supposed to be a check on the popular will. It's supposed to be a defender of minority rights that would otherwise get trampled by broad majorities. It's supposed to equalize the playing field between the powerful and the powerless, and reach outcomes that are not predetermined by whichever side has the most money and influence to throw around.

I'm not saying that the judiciary actually functions like that, only that it should. And popular elections do not bring us any closer to that "more perfect" goal. Think about how much money Elon Musk threw into the state Supreme Court election in Wisconsin this year. He lost, but he had an opportunity to play the game because of judicial elections.

My second problem with judicial elections is their impact on criminal justice reform. Put simply: Voters regularly punish judges who show leniency in criminal sentencing, especially toward Black defendants. Elected judges are thus incentivized to be "hanging judges," handing out the harshest criminal penalties in the most-high-profile cases so that none of their rulings come back to bite them in the ass during election season. It only takes one mercifully treated former prisoner to reenter society and kill again to ruin a judge's entire career, so they go out of their way to never let that happen. Judicial elections encourage leniency toward white boy rapists who were caught in (what they describe as) "boys will be boys" situations, while encouraging draconian punishments for Black teenagers who steal cars.

Of course, I've been talking about the judicial election system in the United States. In Mexico, things may be different in ways I don't fully appreciate. What little reading I've done on the matter suggests that corruption is rampant in the Mexican judiciary (though, again, I don't know if those reports are coming from Americans unfamiliar with just how much Harland Crow has paid for his Supreme Court). The Mexican government defends judicial elections as a progressive reform aimed at cutting the power of elected leaders who hand out judicial seats as patronage positions.

Turnout for Mexico's judicial elections was just 14 percent, however. And that is my last problem with judicial elections: The people don't actually care. Judges don't go on TV and hold campaign rallies and make wild promises about how the taps will flow with milk and honey if they are elected. Voters don't know who these judges are and are not particularly motivated to find out.

In my perfect world, people should not be asked to vote for the judiciary. People should be asked to care about the judiciary when they're voting for the popular branches of government.

Leonard Leo, former head of the Federalist Society, and Donald Trump.

What I Wrote

Like I said, the appointments and confirmation process for federal judges is completely broken. One of the people who broke it, Leonard Leo, just got his face eaten by the guy who wants to treat the judiciary as his personal legal strike force. I wrote about the war between Donald Trump and the Federalist Society.
The Supreme Court opened the floodgates to a raft of "reverse" discrimination claims from white folks. I tried to explain why the court was right on the law, even though I'm still salty about it.

In News Unrelated to the Ongoing Chaos

In some personal news, this week I learned that AI lies. Okay, I guess I already knew that, but this week I learned that it lies about me. A reader e-mailed me to ask why I support Trump's tariffs. I don't, of course, but the reader had asked AI what I thought about them, and the chatbot just made up an answer completely untethered from anything I've actually said or written about the issue. This led me (and my family) into a deep rabbit hole of asking AI all kinds of questions about my opinions, leading to often wrong, sometimes hilarious answers. As just one example: It took a comment I once made comparing working at a law firm to entering a "pie-eating contest where the prize is more pie" and spun it into an entire story about how I hate pie, especially in a competitive environment.

I bring this up because I write and publish thousands of words a week. I've published two books. I'm on television and radio, regularly. My views are not hidden or unknown. And my style for making my opinions known is not… subtle. No (human) reader leaves my work wondering what I "really think."

If AI can't get me right, what the hell can it get right? People who rely on this stuff for research or answers are just deluding themselves.