Nikki Haley Wants to Talk About Abortion.
Plus: After Years of Waiting, E. Jean Carroll Testifies on Trump and Trauma.
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AMANDA CARPENTER: Nikki Haley Wants to Talk About Abortion.
POLITICIANS USUALLY SCHEDULE big policy speeches when they have bold plans to roll out. Not Nikki Haley.
The GOP presidential contender went to the headquarters of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America on Tuesday to deliver a convoluted talk about talking.
At the outset of her remarks, Haley declared, “I am pro-life” and “I am unapologetic and unhesitant about it.” Anyone interested in pro-life issues and reproductive health might expect the woman who envisions herself as president to follow up on these preliminaries with some detailed thoughts about what it means, policy-wise, to be pro-life after last year’s Dobbs ruling overturned Roe v. Wade. But that’s exactly what she didn’t do.
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KIMBERLY WEHLE: After Years of Waiting, E. Jean Carroll Testifies on Trump and Trauma.
Opening statements in E. Jean Carroll v. Donald J. Trump took place in a federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday before a jury of Trump’s peers, six men and three women. It’s the first in what could be two trials in the Big Apple against the former president of the United States. This one is a civil action for defamation and the tort of battery (not to be confused with criminal battery, a charge that can be brought only by the government). Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg has separately charged Trump criminally with 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments made, prior to the 2016 election, to two women with whom Trump allegedly had extramarital affairs.
Given Trump’s frontrunner status for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, the unifying theme between these cases is unmistakable: Donald Trump’s vile misogyny and contempt for women. The voting public blinked away this fact back in 2016 when the Access Hollywood tape of him bragging about his penchant for sexual assault leaked. Yet now, it’s the women—including Stormy Daniels, whose story is a linchpin of the Bragg indictment—who are finally having their day in court.
CLARE COFFEY: You Have Permission to Be a Smartphone Skeptic.
Recently, the news that minor British celebrity Sophie Winkelman had pulled her children out of a posh school because students there were going to be issued iPads occasioned the brief return of one of my favorite discursive topics—are the kids all right?—in one of my least-favorite variations: why shouldn’t each of them have a smartphone and tablet?
Whenever this subject arises, there are more or less two camps. One camp says yes, the kids are fine; complaints about screen time merely conceal a desire to punish hard-working parents for marginally benefiting from climbing luxury standards, provide examples of the moral panic occasioned by all new technologies, or mistakenly blame screens for ill effects caused by the general political situation.
🚨OVERTIME🚨
Happy Thursday! Meet Stubbs! As we get situated in the new office space, I figured my corner of the space needed a cactus along with some IKEA furnishings. (How can you say no to this KUPONG desk clock for $1.99?)
Devin Nunes’s BS case mooved from docket… A federal judge ruled that stories about his family’s dairy farm were not defamatory. Sad news for his EarthLink lawyer! (No offense to any EarthLink users reading.)
The alleged intel leaker… Wanted to murder people, a lot of them. And… had a bazooka and a bedroom decorated like a spiderhole?
Nobody sold out harder than Tucker Carlson… At The Daily Beast, Anthony Fisher argues that he “said a lot of terrible things he didn’t believe because he thinks his audience is stupid—and he thirsts for money and clout.”
RIP Jerry Springer… The former Ohio pol was born in a Tube station and immigrated to America when he was five.
DeSantis asked about Gitmo… And seemingly cracks. Perhaps isolating from critical media and buddying up with sycophants was a mistake? Which reminds me…
Meddlin’ Miyares? The Gov. and AG of VA are accused of using the power of the state to meddle in a GOP primary.
Shut up and take my money… Casio is bringing back the Twin Graph.
And now, your daily moment of Zen. The President of South Korea singing “American Pie” at The White House.
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