What Were They Thinking About Insurrection?
Amanda Carpenter on the hopes and fears of the participants in the Capitol attack, government officials, and Donald Trump.
Leading The Bulwark…
What Were They Thinking About Insurrection?
AMANDA CARPENTER: The hopes and fears of the participants in the Capitol attack, government officials, and Donald Trump.
🎧 On the Pods… 🎧
Mona Charen on The Big Lie and Death of China's One Child Policy
On today's Bulwark Podcast, Mona Charen joins Charlie Sykes to discuss the growth of Donald Trump's Big Lie, the filibuster and election reform, China and COVID-19, and the death of their one child policy.
AFV: The First Spark of Resistance
Sarah and Ben discuss how Nazis used child separation as a tool as they break down a difficult pair of episodes.
For Bulwark+ Members… 🔐
MORNING SHOTS: The Doom Loop of Crazy 🔓
CHARLIE SYKES: Manchin's move and a warning to Democrats
THE TRIAD: Joe Manchin Just Killed HR 1. How Do Democrats Save Democracy Now? 🔓
JONATHAN V. LAST: Move on. Quickly.
WEEKEND SHOTS: The Bulwark Gets Mail ✉️
WEEKEND TRIAD: Don't Give Your Attention to the Bad Guys
JONATHAN LAST’s Newsletter of newsletters, volume 3.
From The Bulwark Aggregator…
Biden quietly moves back to the middle – Josh Kraushaar, National Journal
Dems Worry the GOP Will Try to ‘Benghazi’ Jan. 6 Probe – Sam Brodey, The Daily Beast
The Biggest Supreme Court Decisions Coming This Term – Ed Kilgore, Intelligencer
Don’t Try To Fix Big Tech With Politics – Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason
Cheney compares Trump claims to Chinese Communist Party: ‘It’s very dangerous and damaging’ – Michael Schnell, The Hill
After hitting pause, PACs begin to press play again – Kate Ackley, Roll Call
In Today’s Bulwark...
The Surprising History of Jews in the South
DANIEL LELCHUK: New museum calls attention to an overlooked but influential population.
🚨OVERTIME 🚨
Happy Monday! It was a hot one, as predicted, and I am sunburned. Not just from the pool visits, but from the weekend BBQ. Let’s go now to Laurynn Ricketts at the weather desk for a look at the radar: Oh, it’s cicadas. On the radar. (Though not by me, thankfully.)
Speaking of cicadas, check out this bonkers story about a restaurant in the D.C. area that wanted to serve them in tacos, but couldn’t. Because regulations.
A man who marched with the Proud Boys is running for Mayor. Of Batesville, MS, which is 46% black.
Gee, where did this strategy fail?
Why you should be reading Judd Legum. An interesting profile in Bloomberg, and a must-read on the dirty secret behind the success of GOP fundraisers and how scammy they are. It’s insane.
The Nation’s Nanny Strikes Again. Among my least favorite agencies is the Consumer Product Safety Commission. I am not against product safety, but I am against hysteria.
Four infant deaths in six years? And in those cases the parents didn’t follow the directions and restrain their child? The problem is not the product, it’s the parents. When we were raising the twins, the Rock’n’Play sleeper was recalled. It’s also been in the news lately. If we have more kids, I am going to keep using it.
I don’t recall ever seeing marketing that this was for overnight sleep, and we never used it for anything but naps, but SIDS is often, well, a result of parenting mistakes. All parents make mistakes. Some of them result in death. And that’s tragic, but our society and its products are getting safer all the time, and with millions of these on the market being safely used, you don’t want to become a Craigslist criminal, do you?
What is Rep. Mo Brooks doing? He’s in some bizarre Twitter spat with Rep. Swalwell who is suing him (and having trouble serving him the papers). But in posting a response after his wife was served, a few things became apparent…
Mo Brooks’s staff haven’t taught him how to take a screenshot on his computer because, well, in taking a photo of his computer screen with his phone, well:
The tweet was promptly deleted and reposted after they realized: whoopsie! Mo Brooks is 67, so, maybe not Mr. Computer. (No offense to any older reader who is good with computers.)
Brooks also revealed his recently downloaded documents to his PC desktop.
I’ve blurred out the passwords and pins in the unlikely event that Brooks and his staff haven’t changed them. But zoom in on Rainmakers - Mo Brooks [unknown].xls and Capitol Hill Club in[unknown].pdf. Was it an invite or an invoice? Those seem like the two most likely options.
Rainmakers in political fundraising are people who raise a lot of money for candidates. Yes, like the song. And the Capitol Hill Club? It’s a members-only Republican club connected to the RNC on First Street across from Congress where members wine and dine donors and hold fundraisers because they cannot do that from their office. Using taxpayer funded resources, be they an office, a phone, or a computer, is against the House Ethics rules.
I asked his office if this was an official computer issued by the House of Representatives, and have yet to hear back. Will keep you posted if I do!
The upcoming remote work culture war. Read every word of this from Ed Zitron:
[I]t’s going to make hiring more difficult for them too, because you can’t offer fringe benefits like Summer Fridays or Ping Pong or Office Happy Hours. When they want someone in the office three days a week, they’re going to have to answer why, and that answer is going to have to be multitudes more satisfying than “I want to make sure we have spontaneity,” which is definitely how spontaneity works. Remote work inherently messes with the power dynamic of the worker and the boss, and it is going to make many, many brains malfunction.
In case you were wondering what Rep. Anthony Weiner was up to… The NYT has you covered.
That’s it for me for today. We’ll see you back here tomorrow. Tech support questions? Email support@substack.com. Questions for me? Drop me a line: swift@thebulwark.com
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Editorial photos provided by Getty Images. For full credits, please consult the article.