Beep, Beep 🌴 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🌴

The Blame Game: Forget about ratcheting down the rhetoric.  Trump, JD Vance. and their red echo chamber are all in on blaming Democrats for last weekend’s assassination attempt by Ryan Wesley Routh.  Vance, like Trump fan Elon Musk, isn’t hiding his disappointment that Kamala Harris and President Biden haven’t been similarly targeted, ignoring of course that they are routinely threatened.  Vance blames “the Democrats” for “whipping supporters into a violent frenzy,” while Musk actually questioned on X why “no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala,” emphasizing his post with a thinking face emoji/nudge.  Despite receiving significant backlash for that tweet, he left it in place for nine hours before finally taking it down, perhaps only because it was publicly noted by the FBI.  As to Routh, though he’s reported to have made $140 in ActBlue donations since 2019, he is far from a left-wing radical.  In fact, having grown disillusioned with Trump over his pro-Russian stance, the pro-Ukraine Routh’s 2024 dream ticket included Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy rather than Biden or Harris though he also liked Tulsi Gabbard, odd because like Trump, Tulsi and Vivek are Team Vlad rather than Team Zelenskyy. Worth noting, despite his support, Ukrainian officials early on realized that Routh was a delusional and dangerous kook and wanted him to stay as far away as possible. As to Trump’s vulnerability, apparently, for years he’s been told that providing adequate protection while he’s puttering around on his golf courses, most of which are too close to public roads and all of which are open to other players, is near impossible. Congress is now considering increasing Secret Service funding in order to provide Trump with more security, and while it’s fair to believe that former presidents and current candidates should be well protected, particularly while campaigning, it shouldn’t be a stretch to say that they should act responsibly.  Trump should cut back on the golfing because maybe our tax-payer dollars could be better spent elsewhere?  As to those tax dollars, concerned about “Komrade” Kamala’s rise in the polls, Trump who’s already promised Nevada’s casino workers that he’ll end taxing tips, now claims that he’ll also end taxing overtime pay and that he’ll restore the State and Local Tax deduction that he capped when he was president.  Forget about the burgeoning deficit, that only matters when Democrats are in office or when they are trying to provide child tax credits.

Reproductive Politics: Apparently, Senate Republicans missed it when Trump said that he would not only protect access to IVF but would also have either the government or insurance companies cover the cost of IVF and other fertility treatments. Yesterday, with the exception of Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, they all voted against advancing an IVF protection bill.  JD Vance was not present for the vote, he was too busy campaigning and doubling down on Haitian hate because apparently 30 bomb threats aren’t enough.  When asked about the IVF vote, he said that there was no need to protect IVF because why bother. Meantime, back in the real-world women are dying as a result of the Supreme Court’s Roe overturning Dobbs decision.  And we’re not just talking about nameless statistics but real people, like 28-year-old, mother of one, Amber Nicole Thurman who died of sepsis related complications after being deprived of an emergency D & C by a suburban Atlanta hospital where doctors were so afraid that providing her with what was previously routine care would be a violation of Georgia’s new six week abortion ban, a violation that could land them in jail for up to ten years. There will be many more Ambers and there will be many more maternity care deserts as trained Ob-Gyn’s flee states where laws restrict their ability to provide medically necessary care.  When the Dobbs decision was announced, there was some suggestion that Chief Justice Roberts was really just a right leaning moderate being pushed to the dark side by forces out of his control.  Forget about that, the NY Times reports that he’s actually quite happy with the Court’s recent right-wing decisions, particularly the one that protects Trump from suffering consequences for most, if not all, of his actions. That could be a bigly problem for the country if November’s election ends up in the courts.

Endorsements:  Add, Martha Stewart, Billie Eilish, her brother Finneas O’Connell and a slew of military and former Bush, Reagan, and Romney related officials to the list of people who’ve endorsed Kamala over Trump.  It’s not clear that those endorsements will really matter but maybe they will on the edges.  The Teamsters union which met with Kamala Harris earlier this week but whose leader also spoke at the Republican convention may or may not be issuing an endorsement of one of the candidates today.  And then there’s the Pope who did a both sides thing last week, saying it’s up to his flock to determine who is the lesser of two evils, the woman who supports reproductive freedom and IVF or the one who treats living migrants like dirt.

Fog:  In case you missed it, a whole bunch of beepers exploded in Lebanon yesterday. It turns out that beepers are the communication device of choice for members of Hezbollah who eschew cell phones over concerns that using them makes them easy targets for Israel’s military.  Well, it looks like beepers aren’t safe either. Maybe relentlessly launching missiles into Israel and making northern parts of the country unlivable has consequences. In any case, one thing is clear: peace is not around the corner and also beepers aren’t safe. 

#BringThemAllHomeNow