Nick Fuentes is bad news, and I’m glad some in the GOP are recognizing that.

The effect on university budgets is among the least objectionable parts of the Big Beautiful Bill, and it’s still devastating.

The rules seem to be that it’s okay to do whatever in the GOP, but no Democrat can even seem to be in a sticky situation. What a joke.

Masnick is excellent at balancing “Musk has a right to do this” with “the hypocrisy is shameful.”

Torn on this article. I think you can choose to patronize a platform without being associated with its worst users, so I wonder if the Fuentes connection is overstated. That said, choosing to livestream on Rumble is absolutely pandering to Fuentes-type right-wingers, so it’s a bad, bad move.

Pete and Sarah were mainstays of my Mormon experience growing up. Their oldest—a famously rowdy boy with several rowdy younger brothers—was present on the Sunday when I was introduced in children’s classes as a newcomer to the congregation. When I outgrew children’s classes and made my way to youth Sunday School, Pete was our teacher for a while—the kind of teacher who tried to suppress a giggle (and usually unsuccessfully) whenever the word “ass” (especially “dumb ass”) appeared in the KJV. Somewhere in there, he served in congregational leadership; somewhere in there, they might have moved away before returning to Kentucky (my memories are fuzzy).

Masnick makes a good point here. I’m sympathetic to “for the kids” motivations, but I’m increasingly convinced that Masnick is right, that it’s meant to make bad policy sound impossible to argue against.

This is indefensible, and no amount of spin from a comms director can change how harmful this is.

Two years later, and we’re still learning just how bad this event was. Only two years later, and large parts of the country are ready to sweep it all under the rug.

Republicans’ reaction to this just makes the story more and more tragic. We have a real problem on our hands, and while I don’t believe all Republicans are this far gone, I’d like to see more from them condemning this behavior instead of trying to keep the party together and ahead.

Just sickening.

McDaniel can say what she wants—and its true that not all criticism of Pelosi is violent in nature—but in my mind, there’s no denying that two decades of GOP demonization has had a role to play in this terrible attack.

I’ve been worrying about 2024, but 2022 is going to be bad enough. GOP needs to do something about this.

What a cheap, cynical about-face. The fact that candidates think this is something they can do to drum up voters and then change strategy is worrying.

This is very interesting—it gives me some hope that I haven’t had over the past couple of months.

I don’t know that any of this is surprising, but it remains worrying.

McConnell gets so close to recognizing the danger other Republicans pose to democracy, but he always stops just short.

I’ve been thinking this since yesterday. It’s telling how so many “law and order” conservatives who make a big deal about being pro-police reverse on those positions as soon as law enforcement is inconvenient for them.

So much of modern right-wing politics boils down to concerns about masculinity.

Look, there may be less of a coordinated defense, but ignoring the Jan. 6th hearings is almost as bad as defending Trump from them.

It’s funny how conditional the GOP’s concerns about free speech are. That’s not to say that free speech isn’t a complicated topic to be weighed in conjunction with other concerns—it absolutely is. But if a party wants to use a simplistic view of free speech as a rallying cry, stunts like this show how just how simplistic that view is.

I get that some of this is bluster and posturing, but that doesn’t make it any less worrying. This is the same state GOP that leaned into Gab a year or two ago.

This is more worrying to me—and more damning for the GOP—than anything that happened on January 6th.

GOP has some reckoning to do.

I don’t think I want a Pence presidency any more than another Trump one, but I do want to see the GOP wrestle with what it’s going to be going forward.