Independent News

Liz Cheney/WaPo:

The GOP is at a turning point. History is watching us.

History is watching. Our children are watching. We must be brave enough to defend the basic principles that underpin and protect our freedom and our democratic process. I am committed to doing that, no matter what the short-term political consequences might be.

Charlotte Klein/Vanity Fair:

CONSERVATIVE MEDIA’S OLD GUARD IS UNLIKELY TO SAVE LIZ CHENEY

National Review and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board defended the No. 3 House Republican for not going along with Trump’s election lies—but congressional Republicans remain in the former president’s thrall.

As Trump continues to push the Big Lie that the election was stolen, Cheney has taken the lonely path among GOP leadership by actually pushing back against the dangerous falsehoods. As a result, she has been accused of drawing attention to herself “for her personal views,” the Review notes, rather than focusing on policy—despite the fact that “some Trump supporters have displayed more passion about taking her out than opposing Biden’s $6 trillion agenda.” Policy, the editors argue, is not the reason Cheney is likely about to lose her job. “She has maintained an overwhelmingly conservative voting record and, while noninterventionists may object to her hawkishness, that does not explain the movement to oust her.” What may explain the expected purge, the Review suggests, is the fact that Rep. Elise Stefanik, who voted to overturn the election and has vocally backed Trump, is almost certain to take her place. “It’s a sad commentary on the state of the House GOP that this has now become a condition of advancement,” the Review writes. On Wednesday, Stefanik was endorsed by Trump himself.

Susan B Glasser/New Yorker:

Forced to Choose Between Trump’s “Big Lie” and Liz Cheney, the House G.O.P. Chooses the Lie

And yet Trump has successfully proved throughout the past few months that the repetition of these lies over and over again—even without accompanying evidence—is more than enough to get millions of Americans to believe him. He has run this play before. He knows that it works. Fake News indeed.

The striking difference is that, this time, Liz Cheney has chosen to fight him on it. If Trump does manage to reinvent “the Big Lie” in service of his own corrupt ends, Cheney will at least have forced members of her party into admitting, on the record, that they are making a choice between truth and Trump’s untruth—and choosing the latter. There is no hope among her supporters and advisers that she will win the fight, when the House Republican Conference votes, likely next week, to boot her. Instead, there is a recognition that Cheney has finally decided to do what most of the Trump skeptics within the Party were reluctant to for four years: publicly challenge not only Trump’s lies but the enablers within the G.O.P. who give his lies such power. “It’s all got to do with fealty to Trump and the Big Lie and the fact that Liz is a living reproach to all these cowards,” Eric Edelman, a friend of Cheney’s who served as a national-security adviser to her father, former Vice-President Dick Cheney, told me.

…

Cheney’s rupture with the House Republican Conference has become all but final in recent days, but it has been months in the making. Edelman revealed that Cheney herself secretly orchestrated an unprecedented op-ed in the Washington Post by all ten living former Defense Secretaries, including her father, warning against Trump’s efforts to politicize the military. The congresswoman not only recruited her father but personally asked others, including Trump’s first Defense Secretary, Jim Mattis, to participate.

If the report about Defense Secretaries is accurate, this is a stunning revelation. 

Axios:

Trump’s spell over the media broke once he lost his megaphones

Between the lines: Trump’s ability to broadcast his thoughts to major social platforms disappeared in recent months, but so too did the imperative for news organizations to cover him.

• Post-presidency, Trump has tried to get his thoughts out through tweet-like press releases, which only get seen if media outlets pick them up.

“Trump’s social media superpower was never his ability to tweet — it was his ability to get the media to cover what he tweeted,” SocialFlow CEO Jim Anderson tells Axios.

Thomas B. Edsall/NY Times:

Why Trump Still Has Millions of Americans in His Grip

By the 1970s, many white Americans — who had taken their own centrality for granted — felt that they were being shouldered aside, left to face alone the brunt of the long process of deindustrialization: a cluster of adverse economic trends including the decline in manufacturing employment, the erosion of wages by foreign competition and the implosion of trade unionism.

These voters became the shock troops of the Reagan Revolution; they now dominate Trump’s Republican Party.

Liberal onlookers exploring the rise of right-wing populism accuse their adversaries of racism and sexism. There is plenty of truth to this view, but it’s not the whole story.

Jan Hoffman/NY Times:

Poll Shows Parents Are Reluctant to Get Their Children Vaccinated for Covid-19

The new survey also found only 9 percent of adult respondents hadn’t gotten the shot but planned to do so, suggesting the country is nearing the limit of people planning to get immunized

The survey also showed that confidence in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had suffered a significant blow after the 10-day pause in dispensing it while the authorities examined rare incidents of life-threatening blood clots in people who had taken it. While 69 percent of people said they had confidence in the safety of the vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna, only 46 percent felt confident about the safety of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Among adults who have not been vaccinated, one in five said that the news about the Johnson & Johnson shot had prompted them to change their minds about getting a Covid-19 vaccine.

The survey did show that there had been some progress among Republicans, who have been among the firmest holdouts. Among that group, 55 percent said they had gotten a shot or intended to do so, up from 46 percent in March. The percentage who will “definitely not” get the vaccine is shrinking as well, down to 20 percent from 29 percent in March.

WAMU podcast:

Going Medieval On White Supremacists

The Middle Ages spanned roughly a thousand years – and encompassed all seven continents. 

But when most Americans think about Medieval times (not the restaurant), our brains go straight to an all-white version of Medieval Europe that never really existed. 

The myth is so pernicious, white supremacists have used it to draw people to their cause for more than a hundred years. 

Last month, it was even alluded to in a memo calling on Republicans to form a caucus driven by “Anglo-Saxon political traditions.”

So, while we still hear a lot about the Vikings, the Celts, and the supposed “Anglo-Saxons,” what were those groups really like? And what does our misunderstanding of the Middle Ages mean for how we view our world today?  

Olivia Messer/Study Hall:

The COVID Reporters Are Not Okay. Extremely Not Okay.

An underprepared industry is losing a generation of journalists to despair, trauma, and moral injury as they cover the story of a lifetime.

When I told my editors at The Daily Beast that I needed to quit my job as the newsroom’s lead COVID reporter, I couldn’t even say the word “quit.”

Even now, weeks later, it feels like admitting failure.

I was working my dream job in a newsroom I loved where I was writing about what felt like the most important beat in the world. I felt lucky to be employed and alive in the middle of a global pandemic.

But in between meetings and interviews and filing stories, I was falling apart. I was writing poems about suicide. I went whole days without eating at all. At one point, I collapsed onto the floor from dehydration. I was vomiting from stress. I developed a stye in my left eye. I wasn’t getting out of bed most days. I was crying all the time. My nightmares, in which I was shot or raped or watching coworkers burn alive in front of me, scared me so much that some nights I refused to sleep at all. When I wasn’t too afraid to sleep, I was still restless because I was too angry or too anxious or too sad or too filled with shame. I sometimes woke in the early morning hours with bile climbing up my throat and the simmer of heartburn in my chest. There were times I took sick days because I couldn’t stop sobbing long enough to string even a few pitches together.

I was struggling to stay above water when the footage of the January 6 insurrection triggered the post-traumatic stress disorder I thought I’d shaken years ago. By the time someone I loved died a few weeks later, I was already drowning.

In the news today: While the hoped-for “herd immunity” is still in doubt, vaccinations are still expected to make serious headway against the COVID-19 pandemic within the next few months. But will Fox News let it happen? A U.S. Capitol police officer beaten severely by insurrectionists is still pleading with Republican lawmakers to stop downplaying the attack that led to at least five deaths. And Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis dispenses with the free press for a bill signing meant to curry Trump’s favor, because that’s the nation we live in now.

Here’s some of what you may have missed:

• A series of models all make the same prediction: COVID-19 cases will take a sharp dip by July

• Biden admin officially reverses policy retaliating against so-called sanctuary cities

• DeSantis turns signing of Florida voter suppression bill into a Fox News-exclusive partisan circus

• Fox News is playing a deadly game with its viewers, and death is winning

• ‘Even as I write this it brings me to tears’: Police officer Michael Fanone pens letter to Congress

From the community:

• By ousting Cheney, House Republicans are laying the groundwork for nullifying the 2024 election

• Attention White Republicans: How Do I Know You’re a Bigot? Because You’re Racist to Me, a White Man

So Rudy “Up From His Head Come a Bubblin’ Crude” Giuliani, who represented Donald Trump in his effort to overturn the 2020 election, is now learning where Trump’s loyalties really lie—i.e., with the Adderall fairies whispering in his ear 24/7 about the impudent hobgoblins trying steal his pouch of magic beans.

Donald Trump doesn’t pay his bills. When will these knuckleheads ever learn? Did Rudy think his preternatural ability to gross out his own intestinal flukes would somehow make Trump more likely to pay him? It hardly matters that you’d get better legal advice from an AOL furry chatroom. The man did the, erm, “work.” He deserves his payday.

But don’t tell Trump that. He’s stiffing Rudy. Not because Rudy did a terrible job—which he clearly did. But because this is how Trump treats everyone he’s indebted to.

From The New York Times:

As a federal investigation into Rudolph W. Giuliani escalates, his advisers have been pressing aides to former President Donald J. Trump to reach into a $250 million war chest to pay Mr. Giuliani for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election on Mr. Trump’s behalf.

The pressure from Mr. Giuliani’s camp has intensified since F.B.I. agents executed search warrants at Mr. Giuliani’s home and office last week, according to people familiar with the discussions, and comes as Mr. Giuliani has hired new lawyers and is facing his own protracted — and costly — legal battles.

You know the old saw: April showers bring … well, pretty things the next month.

Except that here in the world of statehouse action, GOP-controlled legislatures keep making things pretty ugly.

But yay, it’s May! … which means that a lot of state legislatures will be wrapping their business this month or next.

Here’s what one of them in particular is getting up to before heading home.

In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has just signed sweeping new voter suppression legislation into law.

Campaign Action

• And in a move that’s as troubling as it is weird, DeSantis signed the measure during an appearance on “Fox and Friends” and denied all other media access to the event.

Anyway, this new law is a doozy.

• The measure imposes several new voting restrictions targeting mail voting in particular, bringing the Sunshine State in line with many others where Republicans are enacting new measures making voting more difficult after the GOP’s 2020 election losses.
  • The law restricts absentee ballot drop boxes to only being available at early voting sites during early voting hours (instead of 24/7 availability, which is kind of the whole point of having a drop box) and requires that they be staffed by election office employees.
  • It also restricts who may turn in someone else’s mail ballot on their behalf with very limited exceptions, such as for family members.
    • Trusted friends or neighbors will not be able to return someone else’s ballot, which will voting more difficult for people in areas that lack reliable postal service and access to transportation.
  • The law also eliminates a policy that allows voters to make a single request to receive an absentee ballot for all upcoming elections held within the subsequent two federal election cycles.
    • Fun fact! The policy was put in place by Republican lawmakers.
    • Instead, voters will now have to make a new request each election cycle.
  • Additionally, the law echoes one of the more obviously outrageous provisions in the Georgia voter suppression law that effectively criminalizes giving food or water to voters waiting in line to cast ballots.
    • This—combined with the provisions making vote-by-mail more difficult and directing more voter traffic to early voting locations—will increase the odds that some voters in hours-long lines just give up, go home, and not vote.
  • Finally, Florida Republicans included another power-grabbing provision in the bill reminiscent of its Georgia counterpart: The (currently and frequently Republican) governor will have the ability to appoint (Republican) replacements when local elected offices become vacant.
    • This change might seem wonky and unimportant, but it’s actually going to have a huge impact on politics in the state, as well as on local governance itself.
      • For decades now, Florida has required that lower-level officials resign their seats when they run for higher office and be replaced in special elections (rather than via appointment).
      • So now, Democrats in those local government positions—even in heavily blue constituencies—seeking an electoral promotion will essentially automatically forfeit their existing position to a GOP appointee (until at least the next election).

Speaking of sunny places where Republicans are engaging in extreme “election security” theater, let’s talk about Arizona, where Republicans in the legislature still think that Joe Biden’s narrow victory in the state somehow means that the election was “stolen.”

• After the 2020 election, GOP-controlled Arizona Senate demanded the Maricopa County (which Biden won by more than 2 points) board of supervisors submit last fall’s ballots and voting machines to a forensic audit.
  • Republicans sent subpoenas to the county seeking access to 
    • 2.1 million ballots,
    • 385 voting machines, and
    • sensitive information including voting machine passwords and personal details on everyone who cast a ballot.
  • The Maricopa supervisors weren’t just going to hand all of that delicate material and information over, so they made a good-faith attempt to settle the matter by hiring two federally approved firms to conduct a forensic audit of the voting machines
    • … which, by the by, concluded that they’d performed impeccably.
  • But Arizona Republicans wanted another review, as though this would somehow produce a different result.
    • … and it might have, had the first firm selected for the task—Allied Security Operations Group—gotten the gig.

(And it might still, but we’ll get to that.)

• But news soon surfaced that ASOG had already produced a “widely discredited report” on voting in Michigan and had a well-documented history of spreading baseless lies about the 2020 presidential election being “stolen” and Arizona’s voting machines had been hacked.

So the Arizona Senate tried again.

• This time they went with a firm called Cyber Ninjas (it’s like someone let their 10-year-old name the company).
  • Cyber Ninjas claims to be “a Christian company” (seriously wtf does religion have to do with cybersecurity) whose founder Doug Logan purports to be an “expert in operating on the leading edge of cyber strategy.”
    • But then the Arizona Republic reported that Logan, who’s also the company’s chief executive, posted a bunch of stolen-election conspiracy theories on a Twitter account that he just happened to delete in January.

Whoops

• While the GOP-controlled Senate promised that this recount of 2020 ballots would be “transparent,” Cyber Ninjas fought to keep its procedures secret, though it’s finally been forced to publish some documents describing its practices. 

So with all this very cool and very normal groundwork laid for this totally unnecessary and completely performative “election audit,” everything’s going fine, right?

oh extremely not

• (Democratic) Secretary of State Katie Hobbs asked (Republican) Attorney General Mark Brnovich to investigate the Senate’s handling of the audit, noting
  • a lack of transparency regarding ballot security and
  • the fact that some of the legislature’s far-right members had apparent unfettered access to the coliseum it’s being conducted in while members of the press and other impartial election observers were being denied access.

(Brnovich isn’t doing squat, by the by.)

• This “audit” is clearly an unaccountable shitshow, and it’s definitely not on track to be completed by the May 14 deadline by which auditors and all elections materials are contractually obliged to vacate the facility.
  • Yes, that involves moving all 2.1 million ballots and 385 voting machines somewhere else.
    • There’s no word yet on a possible secondary location for this farce.
• Anyway, after the secretary of state and the Arizona Democratic Party filed a lawsuit against the audit for barring independent observers, the matter was settled with an agreement from the Senate and Cyber Ninjas to allow those observers and the press to access the audit.
  • And what these observers have observed points to the whole thing being … well, an unaccountable shitshow.
    • Observers from the secretary of state’s office have witnessed laptops sitting open, unlocked, and unmonitored and ballots left just sitting around on tables, totally unattended.
    • Procedures are reportedly shifting “constantly,” and workers are using different rules to count ballots.
      • Some workers are looking for watermarks that don’t exist.
      • Others are examining ballots’ weight, thickness, and folds because … seriously your guess is as good as mine.
    • And the workers themselves don’t appear to meet any standard of “unbiased,” since Republican former state Rep. Anthony Kern was spotted among the ballot counters.
      • Kern, who was in Washington for the carnage at the Capitol on Jan. 6, lost his race for reelection to his House seat last November.

Hm.

• The former GOP official acting as a “spokesman” for the audit has admitted that most of the volunteer observers recruited by the folks running the show are Republicans.
• And now that actual independent observers are eyeballing the situation, Cyber Ninjas is requiring all of them to sign non-disclosure agreements (which, incidentally, fail to explain what information is considered confidential).
  • … which kind obviates the whole point of having independent observers

And now Biden’s Justice Department may be stepping in.

• This week, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division expressed its concerns in a letter that
  • Ballots, voting machines, and other election materials are no longer in the custody of actual election officials—a possible violation of federal law—and are “not being adequately safeguarded by contractors,” and
  • Plans for door-to-door canvassing intended to “confirm if valid voters actually lived” at an address and plans to ask voters about their voting history may be directed at voters of color and raise concerns of the “significant intimidating effect” such an investigation.

I mean, that’s pretty fair. If someone from a company called “Cyber Ninjas”—which I would assume was made up if I weren’t actually writing about this—showed up at my door and started demanding to know how long I’ve lived there and how I voted in past elections, I’d be legit kinda freaked out.

• While this farce of an audit is incredibly troubling all on its own, the bigger fear is that imitations of this destructive circus pops up in other GOP-controlled states that Biden won, like New Hampshire and Georgia.

Maybe this comes to pass, maybe not, but remember: Republicans’ goals here are

• To continue spoon-feeding lies about a “stolen election” to their Trump-loving base and
• To create chaos and uncertainty around elections won by Democrats.

… which this shitshow in Maricopa County seems to be pulling off rather effectively tbh

Okay, time to pivot to some real data, not made-up tallies from a GOP-controlled company that sounds like it was named by a third grader.

• Odd-numbered years are state-level election years in Virginia, and while most eyes are on the gubernatorial contest, I only moon over legislative races.

Lucky for me that all 100 House of Delegates seats are on the ballot this fall.

And maybe lucky for Democrats, too …?

Well, judge for yourself.

• As an erudite consumer of this missive, you no doubt recall that Virginia Democrats won majority control of Virginia’s legislature for the first time in a quarter century in 2019.
• In a … normal? world, Virginia would have already redrawn its legislative maps this year, and lawmakers would be running in those new districts this fall.
  • But nothing’s been normal for a long time, including the Census.
    • The delay in the release of 2020 Census data means that Virginia’s House candidates will be running on the same map in 2021 that was in place in 2019.
• So my Daily Kos Elections colleagues went ahead and calculated Joe Biden’s 2020 performance in each of those 100 House seats.
  • Though we already know that
    • Biden tended to outperform down-ballot Democrats last year, and
    • Off-off-year turnout is always lower than presidential year turnout,
      • … these numbers are still useful indicators of a district’s potential performance.
      • And obviously they shouldn’t be taken as definitive benchmarks.

But the numbers are in, and they indicate some pretty positive news for Virginia Dems.

• Under the current House map, Biden carried 60 House districts to Trump’s 40.
• Current partisan makeup of the House is 55 Democrats/45 Republicans.
  • Every Democrat represents a seat Biden carried, while
  • Five Republicans sit in Biden seats.
• So while Democrats are definitely playing defense to keep their majority this year (off-off-year turnout + Democrats in charge in D.C. and Richmond), they do have some pickup opportunities.

These races will be some of the country’s most-watched this year, but we’re not even past the primaries (June 8) yet, so this election is still very much taking shape.

It’s far too early to begin to speculate about outcomes, but don’t worry—that will come.

… I don’t think you were really worried that I wouldn’t talk more about Virginia this year

• Anyway, you can dig into this and all of Daily Kos Elections’ district-level data—state legislative and U.S. House—right here.

Welp, that’s a wrap for this week. I appreciate you hanging in!

Heck, I just appreciate you.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks for … being.

You’re important.

We need you.

The seemingly never-ending saga of Republican fraudsters Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman continues. These two losers have not stopped hitting new lows since coming on the scene as two-bit versions of already two-bit scam artists like Donald Trump and his “garbage can orbit.” They continue to make news because even though their actions would confine most other Americans to sentence after sentence in prison, they remain relatively free to continue to defraud the American public. Their latest alleged crime stems from racist robocalls they sent to Black voters in numerous states, that spread false voting information in a clear attempt to suppress Black votes. The racist robocalls were easily traceable to Burkman and Wohl as the two men had their full names added to the end of the calls.

In October, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced charges against the 22-year-old Wohl and 54-year-old Burkman. This was followed by charges in Ohio, and a civil rights lawsuit in New York for the pair of scumbags. Guess what? New York Attorney General Letitia James added a new piece of evidence in the case against Wohl and Burkman on Thursday. According to Forbes, a series of graphics and emails exchanged between the two men make it very clear that the robocall scheme was exactly as racist as one might imagine it was. With Burkman writing, “We should send it to black neighborhoods,” and excited reactions from Wohl to “getting angry black call backs,” as proof that their idea was working well, it isn’t looking good for these two.

In Attorney General James’ motion, filed on Thursday in the U.S. Southern District Court of New York, the AG says that while “discovery is in a very preliminary stage,” there is lots of evidence for the court to consider and any attempts by Burkman and Wohl’s attorneys to expedite the process does a disservice to the charges against them that include the “violation of several federal and New York laws.” 

The robocalls, targeting Black communities, falsely claimed that voting by mail would provide police, debt collectors, and the CDC with personal information, allowing those agencies to “track down old warrants,” “collect outstanding debts,” and “track people for mandatory vaccines.” The information contained in the calls was a complete fabrication, and this voter suppression tactic was so starkly racist in its execution it makes your head spin. According to the motion, more than 85,000 robocalls went out on August 26, 2020. Of those 85,000, 5,500 of those calls went out to the New York area. 

Wohl and Burkman demonstrated a clear racial animus in carrying out their robocall campaign. For example, on August 25, 2020, the day before the robocalls were placed, Wohl emailed Burkman attaching the audio file for the call and stating that “[w]e should send it to black neighborhoods…” The next day, after the calls were sent and received by thousands of  voters, Burkman emailed to congratulate Wohl, stating that “i love these robo calls…getting angry black call backs…win or lose…the black robo was a great jw idea.”

The “jw” in that last tweet stands for little jacob wohl.

Attorney General James’ motion also points out that the very script fo the robocall is filled with Wohl and Burkman’s racism. The voice of the calls is a woman who identifies herself as Tamika Taylor.

“Tamika Taylor” bears resemblance to Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed by police while sleeping in her home in Louisville,  Kentucky in 2020. When Breonna Taylor’s death became an important part of the movement for Black lives and racial justice, the media often misidentified Tamika Palmer as Tamika Taylor. 

The dumbtastic duo is facing multiple lawsuits and charges in no less than three states. A judge has already ruled against the two’s attempts to separate the trials, saying that it would not violate their Fifth Amendment rights to have concurrent trials taking place for the same actions. In recent weeks, Wohl and Burkman’s attorneys sounded as confused and unorganized as their clients, with implications that they would like Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein’s buddy Alan Dershowitz to testify for some nebulous constitutional reason—with no evidence that Alan Dershowitz was aware of this. 

One of the serious charges Wohl and Burkman face is a violation of Section 2 of the Ku Klux Klan Act, of “two or more persons [from] conspir[ing] to prevent by force, intimidation, or threat” any “citizen who is lawfully entitled to vote, from  giving his support or advocacy in a legal manner, toward or in favor of the election of any lawfully qualified person as an elector for President or Vice President, or as a Member of Congress of the United States.” It’s an important reminder that the laws that Burkman and Wohl broke are laws put into place not only to protect our democracy from general voter fraud, but to protect our country against white supremacist KKK terrorists trying to turn our country into a white ethno-fascist state.

You can listen to the robocall sent to voters in Detroit below.

A few months into 2021, the news cycle can feel overwhelming, exhausting, and even demoralizing. The novel coronavirus continues to ravage people on a global scale. Republicans are looking for any distraction possible across the United States, including targeting transgender girls and trying to bar transgender folks in general from receiving lifesaving, gender-affirming medical care. Even with all of this going on, however, there are bright spots to celebrate. One recent example? Menstrual products will be free at schools across Washington State by 2022.

Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee signed House Bill 1273 into law on Monday, mandating that schools must provide free period products in all female and gender-neutral bathrooms by the start of the 2022 school year, as reported by local outlet KREM 2. Ideally, these products would also be available in the boys’ bathroom, as some trans boys and men do menstruate. Let’s check out the details of the bill, and why it’s so important, below.

Thanks to the legislation, products include both tampons and sanitary pads. The bill applies to both public and private schools, including colleges and universities. If a school serving students in grades six through 12 (basically, middle and high school) does not have a gender-neutral bathroom available, the free sanitary products must be available in either at least one bathroom for boys or in the nurse’s office. Again, it would be ideal to have these options available in all bathrooms, but it’s a step. In grades three through five, the products must be available in a location designated by the school principal or a health room, like a nurse’s office.

This isn’t the first time Washington State has taken a positive step in terms of menstrual products and equality. As of 2020, a new law came into effect that removed sales tax from products like menstrual cups, tampons, and sanitary pads. It’s estimated that menstruating people in the state could save as much as $3 million collectively in just one year thanks to Inslee signing Senate Bill 5147 into law. 

What would be even better in the big picture? Making menstrual products free in all public bathrooms. Mind you, we’re a ways away from that, but people are talking about it. If the idea sounds ridiculous to you, consider how often you go into a public bathroom and expect to pay for toilet paper, soap, or paper towels—and how frustrated you may (reasonably) become to find that, for example, the soap dispenser is empty or the toilet paper is missing. It’s not your fault you have bodily functions, right? And it’s certainly not your fault you want to be responsible and hygienic. Similarly, people who menstruate quite literally cannot control it.

Even the issue of money aside (which is a big one in itself), the idea that people are expected to always have their own products on them suggests that people should always have their own toilet paper or soap on them—a ridiculous idea, at least in the way life in the United States functions. While this idea has yet to pick up majorly in the U.S., other nations are making moves on it. Scotland, for example, has made all period products free, including making them easily available in schools and universities.

If you’d like to read a particularly moving piece about menstruation and poverty, definitely check out this incredible personal essay by my colleague Jessica Sutherland.  

A Politico article last month detailed an explicit push by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his caucus to portray Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona as heroes and “guardians of democracy” for their stated opposition to reforming the Senate filibuster. It couldn’t be a more transparent political play—showering praise on the two Senate Democrats who are safeguarding the GOP’s veto power over President Joe Biden’s agenda. 

Asked about the Republican ploy by reporter Burgess Everett, Manchin registered a touch of unease he rarely displays when the filibuster comes up.

“I just hope they help me a little bit in bipartisanship,” Manchin said. “That’s all.”

But before Manchin whispered that wish to the universe and since, McConnell has made successive statements assuring the White House, Democrats, and anyone willing to listen that he and his entire caucus will absolutely not—under any circumstances—be helping President Biden deliver for the American people.

In early April, mere days after the White House had first unveiled the American Jobs plan, McConnell offered, “That package that they’re putting together now, as much as we would like to address infrastructure, is not going to get support from our side.”

This week, McConnell has mostly been in overdrive trying to disabuse people of the notion that Senate Republicans would be a partner in any way to the president in helping to find solutions to the greatest crisis the country has faced in a century.

On Monday, McConnell promised that “none, zero” members of his caucus would support Biden’s jobs and families proposals. On Wednesday, McConnell went even bigger—pledging that he was “100%” devoted to blocking every single piece of Biden’s agenda.

“100% of my focus is on stopping this new administration,” McConnell said, adding that everyone in his caucus “from Susan Collins to Ted Cruz [is] in opposition to what the new Biden administration is trying to do.”

Just to make sure no one missed it, Senate Democrats put together a helpful video.

Well, that all seemed pretty clear to CNN anchor Chris Cuomo when Sen. Manchin appeared on his show Wednesday night. 

As Manchin argued that Biden has “gotten more done in 100 days than any president in my time,” Cuomo countered, “But not with them, not with them,” referring to Republicans.

Cuomo repeated the phrase several times as Manchin continued touting Biden’s accomplishments.

“But you’ve heard Joe Biden, he wants it to work,” Manchin argued, referring to bipartisanship. “It will work.”

Cuomo responded, “But they don’t want it work. [McConnell] just told you, I’m stopping the administration. He just said it to you, sir.”

“You don’t know,” Manchin replied, “That was one person.”

McConnell is “the leader,” Cuomo noted.

“He’s not controlling all of that,” Manchin argued. “I can assure you, we would not be having discussions, there wouldn’t be an offer on the table of five or six hundred billion dollars of infrastructure.”

Manchin called that GOP offer—presented by his Republican counterpart in West Virginia and lead negotiator Sen. Shelley Moore Capito—a “good starting point.”

So a decade’s worth of evidence to the contrary, Manchin is still a believer that Senate Republicans are honest brokers and they might come through … for now. 

Oddly, on Thursday, McConnell appeared to soften his 100% obstruction pledge slightly. Asked about the remark, he told reporters, “I’m anxious on stopping the Biden agenda—depending on what it is.” 

For whatever that’s worth. Perhaps it’s an olive branch that Manchin can continue to clutch onto while he searches for the 10 GOP votes that most other Senate Democrats are certain will never materialize.

Don’t give us assurances, Joe, just show us the votes. That’s all.

Here’s Manchin’s CNN appearance.