Doom Report (Week 25: You Got a Bit of Epstein Conspiracy Slop on You There)

So, obviously the biggest news this week was the Trump regime suddenly proclaiming that, in fact, there are no Epstein files.  Now, on the one hand, this is more amusing than newsworthy: the Epstein files are a conspiracy theory invented by right-wing nutjobs, and now many of those right-wing nutjobs are in charge of the government, and they’ve kind of been forced to admit that there are no Epstein files, and so the right-wing nutjobs who didn’t get into the government are now convinced they’ve been co-opted by the Deep State or some such twaddle.  So, it’s a bit of cosmic irony to hear people like Kash Patel and Dan Bongino—who, in both cases, derive their qualifications to run the FBI from their experience doing MAGA podcasts—go from spewing this nonsense to now having to try to quash it.  But, I gotta tell ya: I never belived there were any Epstein files ... until Trump said there weren’t any Epstein files, and now I know they exist.  Or, if you’d like to hear that put with more gravitas (and some legal perspective), you can listen to Brian Tyler Cohen and his frequent guest, litigator Mark Elias.  It’s weird times we live in.

And, also, the doom predicted in last week’s report has now come to pass: the Outlandish Bloated Beastly Buttfuckery is now law.  The Daily Show has a good summation of the consequences, and Christopher Titus summed it up rather succinctly as “Republicans kill people”.

Sadly, I have no time to inform you further, or depress you further (which at this point is just redundant), but I will point out that this week’s Strict Scrutiny contains this gem:

So, I know a lot of folks saw—and we have mentioned—the eyepopping statistic that political scientist Adam Bonica compiled a week or so ago, finding that from May 1st to June 23rd, federal district courts ruled against the Trump administration 94% of the time, and the Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration the same 94% of the time.  Just, like, pretty stunning data.  And, look: there are some caveats to the data, in that the administration only asked the Supreme Court to take up a small subset of the cases that they lost, ones where they thought they could make some kind of procedural argument that they could notch a win on.  But it’s still, like, that track record and this big win at CASA is hugely emboldening.

Because that’s just what we needed: Trump to be emboldened.  He was such the shy wallflower before.

In terms of hope, you’ll have to settle for something aspirational I happened to catch from an unusual source this week.  While listening to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, I was struck by something said by guest Jan Jensen, college women’s basketball coach who has mentored many WNBA stars, including Caitlin Clark (jump to about 23:35 for the quote):

I believe the best thing in life is, if you can get a team—I’d like to think if you can get a society—to be celebrators of each other, that’s the hardest thing.

It surely must be the hardest thing, but just the concept of our society becoming celebrators of each other is quite encouraging.  I think we might have to kick a few people out first, but surprisingly few.  At least I continue to believe that to be true.