The connections are pretty clear. Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society helped bankroll the work of Ginni Thomas. He also arranged for Clarence Thomas to attend Koch fundraisers.
propublica.org/article/claren…


The shared purpose of Leonard Leo, Ginni Thomas, Clarence Thomas and the Koch network was to put right-wing judges on the court. And Clarence Thomas used his public position on the court to raise money for that.

Holy shit, its the original Avocado Toast guy!

https://twitter.com/FinancialReview/status/1701440109948887057

Also this guy: young people today can't afford a house because they occasionally buy new clothes

America has 22 times the firearm homicide rates as the European Union.
We are less safe and less free because of how available guns are in this country.
healthdata.org/news-events/in…
America makes up about 15% of gun homicides, and together with five other countries constitutes half of gun homicides in the world. vox.com/2018/8/29/1779…

New, from me: I wrote about how the emerging debacle at New College (one-third of faculty gone, students can't find classes, housed in airport hotels) reflects the incompetence of populists like DeSantis. Competence, the ability to perform organizational core tasks, is an underrated quality. It is an especially overlooked quality by people who value other things, like ideological goals, or believe that existing institutions are corrupt, or who have never actually run things.

The DeSantis takeover of New College was meant to offer a model of a conservative-run higher ed.

The result is chaos, which is what happens when incompetent people who don't actually care about organizational mission take over public services. insidehighered.com/news/students/… The NY Times recently featured Chris Rufo to explain how DEI was undermining liberal education.

You know what actually undermines a liberal education?
Losing one-third of faculty.
Not offering core classes to students.
Raging incompetence and blind indifference.

Update: Kathleen McElroy receives a settlement of $1M from Texas A&M, who had offered her a senior tenured position, and then pulled that offer.

https://twitter.com/McGeeReports/status/1687177053139771392?s=20

https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1683968622283173888

From the internal Texas A&M reports: it was A&M Regents who signaled their opposition to McElroy, at which point the university figured out they would not tenure her.
Seems like the Regents cost A&M $1M. Nice job.
: ... tamus.edu/wp-content/up

A Texas A&M professor and expert on opioids made a speech. A student, the daughter of a politician, reported her for being critical of the Lt. Governor. The Lt. Governor contacted the Chancellor. She was suspended and investigated.
Academic freedom in TX!
texastribune.org/2023/07/25/tex… The Chancellor at Texas A&M just resigned because of political interference in the hiring of a prominent Black scholar to lead their journalism unit. But the powers that be want political control over what faculty say, not expertise.

https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1678821081757413381?s=20

New, from me: Tommy Tuberville's blockade of career military appointments reflects a broader problem with US governance.
America simply has too many political appointees.

Here is an explainer of an increasingly dysfunctional system.
https://t.co/lQaWZp0ogrdonmoynihan.substack.com/p/america-has-…
The US is an outlier in terms of its existing level of politicization. We use about 4K political appointees to run the executive branch. Up to the top five layers of leadership in a department are appointees. For most peer countries only the top layer is political

This American Life is always excellent, but their story about DeSantism in Florida is truly terrific and captures some of the themes I've been writing about for a while now.
thisamericanlife.org/805/the-florid… The first act captures the "medical freedom" movement, which is riven with anti-vaxx conspiracy theories.
These beliefs, fanned by DeSantis, led to a lot of unnecessary deaths in Florida.
https://t.co/DUz0y63Wc9donmoynihan.substack.com/p/republicans-…

Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society organized the trip, asking the billionaire for access to his private plane for both himself and Alito. The billionaire had several cases before SCOTUS on the years that followed. Alito failed to report or recuse.
propublica.org/article/samuel… Same Leonard Leo who has helped pick the majority of the court and push it further right, an effort funded by billionaires. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that he keeps finding ways to connect with these judges and billionaires on paid vacations! open.substack.com/pub/donmoyniha…

Must be nice to be able to call up a national paper owned by a big conservative booster to reiterate that you have no conflicts of interests with big conservative boosters

https://twitter.com/jaywillis/status/1671295594680430592

Alito's prebuttal: I took a free plane trip from GOP megadonor with business before SCOTUS, but
1. Only I should judge what is improper. Not the appearance of impropriety.
2. Did not report a plane ride to Alaska b/c seat would otherwise have been empty!

https://twitter.com/LeahLitman/status/1671298514817540097?s=20

Reality check: Hunter Biden was pursued by a Trump appointed prosecutor for years, who was not interfered with by President Biden. Best they could do is tax charges which rarely get this level of attention. If Comer has anything real, the prosecutor would have used it.

https://twitter.com/repjamescomer/status/1671157621120962562

Hunter Biden should be punished for tax evasion. Unlike Trump supporters, Dems will not call for defunding the DOJ over this. But the idea he got some sweet deal here does not fit with the facts. If he has a better outcome than Trump it’s because he listened to good lawyers.

The people claiming “Weaponization of government”? They are using government resources to investigate disinformation researchers at universities, hoping to shut down such research. nytimes.com/2023/06/19/tec… It’s not just Congress: GOP officials are working with some of the worst spreaders of conspiracy theories to sue researchers in court. This is because disinformation has become a central means of communication to maintain GOP support

New, from me: Taking stock as we approach the one year anniversary of the Dobbs decision.

One inescapable conclusion: the law has worsened health care for women in America, putting their bodies and lives at risk by deprofessionaling medical services.
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/dont-look-aw… One way of measuring the effects of Dobbs is counting the number of abortions and where they occur. In the nine month period after the ruling, there were 93K fewer abortions in states with restrictions, and 24K fewer overall. fivethirtyeight.com/features/abort…

South Carolina teacher blocked from discussing Ta-Nehisi Coates and systemic racism after students complained it was against the law. This was for an AP class, where students are supposed to wrestle with complex and difficult ideas. Let’s be honest - these laws are only going in one direction, which is to censor progressive views about gender and race. thestate.com

Not only does unitary executive theory (which is what “article 2” is code for) only apply to Republican Presidents, it applies to them after they leave office and covers actions they take as private citizens! Very cool constitutional interpretation there! The biggest change that Trump has accelerated among the far right is to shift away from the ideal of small government to an ideology that justifies authoritarian abuses of power arising from a contrived sense of victimhood donmoynihan.substack.com/p/from-access-…

The Mar-A-Lago raid provides a blueprint for how Trump's newest indictment will affect our politics. As I wrote then, it will embolden the anti-statist element of the GOP, where a sense of victimhood justifies actual abuses of government power. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/from-access-… The thing that has changed since the MAL raid is a lot of other GOP candidates have jumped in the ring. Interesting to see how many will follow Trumps “corrupt Biden administration” line vs. “first ever President under federal criminal charges is bad” (or thread the needle)

New, from me: There is a useful distinction between cheap talk and revealed preferences.

For the far right, the cheap talk is about election integrity, but Republican abandonment of ERIC reveals a preference for the Big Lie and voter suppression.
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-far-righ… Dems have always claimed GOP election policies were about voter suppression. To sort out these narratives, it would be nice to have a clean example of where Republicans walked away from an election tool that unambiguously improved election integrity.

ERIC is that example.

GOP officials say they oppose voter fraud, but have withdrawn from the most effective tool to detect the rare cases of fraud. What they want, in fact, is to protect and feed the Big Lie, and evidence-based tools don't let them do that. npr.org/2023/06/04/117… ERIC is a cross-state tool to check if voters have voted in multiple states. This is a real, but rare, type of fraud, and ERIC is a good tool to detect it. But once conspiracy mongers at Gateway Pundit started falsely claiming it was "Soros funded" GOP officials started to exit.

New from @pamela_herd: the conventional wisdom is that the new debt-ceiling work requirements are not a big deal.
But this misses how SNAP provides a crucial safety valve to older adults with poor health who are trying to get on disability. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/publish/post/1… The debt ceiling deal added more work requirements to TANF and expanded the age for which they apply in SNAP. But avoided work requirements for Medicaid, and even added exemptions e.g. for the homeless. So the first response of progressive pundits, incl. me, was: not so bad.

Gov Sanders, AR: “We’re simply removing ineligible participants from the program to reserve resources for those who need them and follow the law"
Reality: Most of those losing coverage are for procedural reasons. Its the administrative burdens, stupid.
nytimes.com/2023/05/26/us/… Shout out to my colleague @JoanAlker1 @GeorgetownCCF who has been documenting how eligible Medicaid clients are being kicked off the program.