Here are this week’s SWAJ Research Links, compiled by SWAJ Team Member Mark Kurth.
National Inquiries
A lot of moms can’t see themselves in Katie Britt’s kitchen
When Britt did appear, it became clear she’d gone balls-to-the-wall with the mom theme, broadcasting solo from her Alabama kitchen in such a way that, if you were watching with the volume down, you would have assumed you had stumbled upon a commercial for either stain remover or Il Makiage. Turn the volume up and there was Britt opening by saying that her proudest role was being a “wife and mother,” before segueing into describing a violent gang rape, before calling Biden “dithering and diminished,” and explaining that we were all “steeped in the blood of patriots,” which, ladies — if that’s a menstruation euphemism, I hadn’t heard it before. Somehow she wrapped up by talking about how America put a man on the moon.
GOP Rep. Michelle Steel rescinds her co-sponsorship of the Life at Conception Act after winning her primary
I do not support federal restrictions on IVF,” Steel said on the House floor. “I’m removing myself from the bill because it could create confusion about my support for the blessings of having children through IVF. I hereby remove my name as cosponsor.”
The reversal comes two days after Steel won her primary to advance to the general election this fall, securing enough support from Republicans to move forward. Also on Tuesday, NBC News reported that Steel was voicing support for IVF even as she co-sponsored the bill, which could threaten the use of IVF for pregnancy, a process in which unused embryos can be discarded. At the time, her office didn't respond to queries about how she reconciles those stances.
Biden says he regrets using the word ‘illegal’ during State of the Union
President Joe Biden on Saturday said he regretted using the word “illegal” during his State of the Union address to describe the Venezuelan man charged with killing a Georgia nursing student, who authorities say entered the U.S. illegally.
“I shouldn’t have used illegal, it’s undocumented,” Biden said in an interview with MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart.
After Trump ballot ruling, critics say Supreme Court is selectively invoking conservative originalist approach
For critics, it was just another example of how the conservative justices appear to selectively apply the legal methodology known as originalism, which focuses on the original meaning of the law at the time it was written.
The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, was unanimous in ruling that Section 3 of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment cannot be enforced by states, but critics were quick to point out the absence of originalist arguments.
“What struck me is how much attention was devoted to questions of original meaning in the briefing and at oral argument and how cursory and frankly unpersuasive the discussion of the history was in the published opinion,” said Evan Bernick, a professor at Northern Illinois University College of Law.
‘Heartbroken’ Biden accused of ‘exploiting’ Nex Benedict’s suicide after nonbinary teen’s beating inside Oklahoma school
“In memory of Nex, we must all recommit to our work to end discrimination and address the suicide crisis impacting too many nonbinary and transgender children,” Biden stated. “Bullying is hurtful and cruel, and no one should face the bullying that Nex did.
“Parents and schools must take reports of bullying seriously. My prayers are with Nex’s family, friends, and all who loved them – and to all LGBTQI+ Americans for whom this tragedy feels so personal, know this: I will always have your back.”
But Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters, who leads the state’s public schools, panned Biden’s statement hours later.
“Quit playing politics. @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris have chosen to embrace the lies of the most radical groups in their party,” Walters tweeted. “Their party has found a new low of exploiting a child’s death.”
Sex trafficking victim says Sen. Katie Britt telling her story during SOTU rebuttal is ‘not fair’
The woman whose story Alabama Sen. Katie Britt appeared to have shared in the Republican response to the State of the Union as an example of President Joe Biden’s failed immigration policies told CNN she was trafficked before Biden’s presidency and said legislators lack empathy when using the issue of human trafficking for political purposes.
“I hardly ever cooperate with politicians, because it seems to me that they only want an image. They only want a photo — and that to me is not fair,” Karla Jacinto told CNN on Sunday.
What the Press and Pollsters Get Wrong about a Biden-Trump Rematch
Slightly more than half of Republican voters wanted someone other than Trump on the 2024 election ballot, according to a New York Times poll. Meanwhile, only 26 percent of Democrats wanted Biden renominated.
Political reporters endorsed the polls with a slew of stories about voter unhappiness with the repeat card. NewsHour weighed in. “It’s the presidential election no one is really jazzed about,” the site concluded. POLITICO seconded the idea, as did The Hill, Reuters, the Christian Science Monitor and other outlets. Then, as Trump knocked Nikki Haley completely out of contention on Super Tuesday, the chorus against the rematch was sounded at USA Today, the Washington Post, the New York Times, ABC News and even The Daily Show. “That’s like choosing between a hedgehog and porcupine,” one voter just told the Guardian.
Trump praises ‘fantastic’ Viktor Orbán while hosting Hungarian autocrat at Mar-a-Lago for meeting and concert
“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic,” the former president told a crowd gathered for a concert at the Florida resort, as shown in a series of videos posted to Orbán’s Instagram account.
Orbán’s far-right populism, fierce anti-immigration rhetoric, Christian nationalism and hostility to LGBTQ rights has made him a popular ideological model for Trump’s “Make America Great Again” followers. He has spoken in the past at the Conservative Political Action Conference – an annual gathering of pro-Trump forces – and Hungary will host another edition of CPAC’s overseas conferences next month.
Death of transgender student Nex Benedict ruled suicide by medical examiner
The death of Oklahoma student Nex Benedict has been ruled a suicide, according to a medical examiner’s report released Wednesday.
The 16-year-old, who was transgender and used he and they pronouns, according to friends and family, died Feb. 8, a day after a fight at Owasso High School. His name has become a rallying cry among LGBTQ activists, who argue that an onslaught of legislation targeting the community has made schools less safe for queer and trans students like Nex.
Russian Dolls
Trump has finally remade Republicans into Putin’s playthings.
In 2024, the picture looks very different. The faction of Republicans willing to align themselves with Trump on Russia has swelled to the point where House Speaker Mike Johnson refuses to allow a vote on Ukraine aid. The Ukrainian military is starved of ammunition and retreating, NATO is contemplating its own mortality, and Europe is trembling at the prospect of future Russian aggression, which Trump says he would encourage. But his admiration of Putin no longer renders him strange or suspect within the party. Increasingly, the hawks are cast as oddballs. The metamorphosis Trump wrought through sheer force of personality may ultimately be the most globally significant ramification of his political career.
RFK Jr.’s VP prospect Aaron Rodgers has shared false Sandy Hook conspiracy theories in private conversations
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has confirmed that among his potential vice-presidential prospects is New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who in private conversations shared deranged conspiracy theories about the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting not being real.
CNN knows of two people with whom Rodgers has enthusiastically shared these stories, including with Pamela Brown, one of the journalists writing this piece.
The twin challenges of warnings about Trump’s support of authoritarianism
This sort of rhetoric is exactly what President Biden and others warn about with Trump’s elevation to his party’s presidential nomination. The former president has repeatedly made obvious his support for centralized, hard-line executive power in the United States and elsewhere, something that is clearly at odds with American democracy and divided government.
Because Trump has effectively framed Biden as behaving as an autocrat to his supporters and because modern autocrats don’t necessarily look like those in the past, many Americans are likely to consider those warnings hollow.
Donald Trump’s Unforced Error
“I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Trump said in Iowa in 2015.
But now, thanks to an unforced error, Trump has effectively opened the 2024 general election campaign with a return to the third rail he sought to abandon almost a decade ago. Asked in a CNBC interview Monday whether he’d changed his outlook on how to handle entitlements, Trump argued in a word salad-heavy answer that “there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and also the theft and the bad management of entitlements.”
Is Donald Trump a new King David? Ask California’s right-wing Sons of Liberty
Ultraconservatives in this town about 80 miles north of Bakersfield see the former president as an antidote to the liberal forces that have forsaken them, a billionaire chaos agent who has upended the system with nationalist fervor and a showman’s entourage. He is a vessel for their anger, the talisman of their grievances. He is flawed, they say, but who isn’t, and his threats to bend the government to his whims, which have alarmed Democrats and world leaders alike, are to his supporters the stuff of a robust, uncontainable personality.
The Sons have grown to about 100 members. They are more hard-line and politically active — sponsoring debates and candidate nights — than many Republicans. A number of them said they would vote for Trump, who recently was ordered to pay more than $450 million in a civil fraud case, even if he were convicted of charges related to the Jan. 6 uprising and other criminal counts against him.
‘License to kill’: Anti-abortion groups rage against the GOP
The tension over IVF underscores a deepening divide as Republicans grapple with new political and policy consequences of passing laws declaring that life begins at conception. After marching in lockstep for decades against Roe v. Wade, conservatives are clashing in the post-Roe era over what it means to be “pro-life.”
The split mirrors debates between Republicans and the anti-abortion movement over other popular policies, including exceptions from state abortion bans for rape and incest, and protections for contraception. That — and the unwillingness of many GOP candidates to talk about abortion on the campaign trail — has some in the anti-abortion movement accusing Republicans of caving to political pressure.
RNC fires dozens of employees after Trump-backed leadership takes over
The new leadership team at the Republican National Committee — picked by former president Donald Trump — started firing dozens of employees days after taking over, according to three people familiar with the firings who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.