<Late last month, a bill that would have banned nearly all abortion (and likely would have been used to restrict hormonal birth control as well) was defeated in the South Carolina state senate, despite it being one of the most conservative legislatures in the country. The defeat drew national headines in no small part because of how it went down: The only five women in the Senate, three of whom are Republicans, filibustered the bill into oblivion. At times, the Republican women sounded downright, well, feminist.

"Once a woman became pregnant for any reason, she would now become the property of the state of South Carolina," state senator Katrina Shealy declared angrily during debate.

South Carolina is not some outlier state where the rare bird of the pro-choice Republican flourishes, to be clear. In the same speech denouncing abortion bans, Shealy insisted she is still "pro-life." It's just that these women are learning a hard lesson, as are many other Republican women, both leaders and voters. It was easy enough to be "pro-life" when Roe v. Wade was the law of the land. That meant you could sit in judgment of other women, without ever worrying that you or your loved ones would lose access. Indeed, it was easy enough to pass restrictions that made it harder for poor women or young women to get abortions, so long as Republican women could be assured their privilege would smooth the way for their abortions.

But outright bans on abortion, the kind that actually threaten the access not just of marginalized women, but well-to-do white ladies? That cannot stand! This phenomenon is joked about on social media as the "leopards eating people's faces party," due to a viral tweet by author Adrian Bott.

They can't yell at condescending husbands or abusive fathers, not without losing status in their communities. But that angst can be projected onto bogeymen. Bullying LGBTQ kids or banning books provides a socially acceptable outlet for that rage.

The humor of this tweet depends heavily on the imaginary sobber being female. For better or worse, people understand why white men are Republicans: Because the GOP is built around the preservation of white male domination over everyone else. But why so many women vote Republican is a question that causes great consternation, since the party is not exactly subtle about its hostility to women's rights. Their last president and current party leader bragged, on tape, about sexual assault! Is it that these women hate themselves?

The tweet gets closer to the real answer: Republican women, like Republican men, enjoy cruelty to others. They also assume their class and race privilege will shield them from the misogyny of their party. But when that assumption gets rattled, they often panic.

There's more to the situation than a mere love of punching down. Republican women understand that they live in a sexist society. They just tend to see feminism as a pipe dream not worth fighting for. A safer bet, to most of them, is to accept second-class status to men, and then try to leverage femininity and conservative politics to scratch out some level of status and power for themselves within a patriarchal system. That's how old school anti-feminists like Phyllis Schlafly played the game: By organizing against the Equal Rights Amendment, she and her army of housewives gained political power and a voice, without stepping on any male toes and risking backlash.

The Republican Party has gotten downright crafty in creating opportunities for middle and upper class white women to feel powerful by punching down, while maintaining a submissive posture towards the men in their lives. Recently, David Gilbert of Vice published an in-depth look at how the new astroturf movement, Moms for Liberty, offers conservative women a chance to pull off that balancing act. The group focuses its efforts on banning books in schools and libraries, harassing organizations that advocate on behalf of LGBTQ kids, and bullying teachers and other school officials for offering real education instead of fact-free right-wing propaganda. Moms for Liberty has unleashed some deeply antisocial behavior in these women....>

The rest right behind....

<....In Pennsylvania, the leader of a local Moms for Liberty chapter allegedly hijacked a dead woman's Facebook page to harass her enemies, including using the N-word and saying they should hang from a noose. In Arkansas, the head of communications of the Lonoke County chapter said that librarians should be "plowed down with a freaking gun." In Chattanooga, Tennessee, a member of a local Moms for Liberty chapter harassed an opposing group, threatened to report them for child abuse, and called them "pedophile sympathizers." In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, police had to be called to a school board meeting after members of Moms for Liberty accused attendees of being "groomers" and wanting to show explicit pictures to children. In Charleston, South Carolina, a Moms for Liberty-affiliated member of the local school board publicly stated he would show up at his son's teacher's doorstep with a gun if the teacher came out as transgender.

Hat tip to Natalie Wynn at Contrapoints for reminding me of the 1983 book "Right Wing Women" by Andrea Dworkin. Dworkin was a feminist polemicist who had a lot of ideas that don't age well, but in this book, she's got conservative women dead to rights.

"Women cling to irrational hatreds, focused particularly on the unfamiliar, so that they will not murder their fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, lovers, the men with whom they are intimate, those who do hurt them and cause them grief," Dworkin wrote. "Because women so displace their rage, they are easily controlled and manipulated haters."

They can't yell at condescending husbands or abusive fathers, not without losing status in their communities. But that angst can be projected onto bogeymen. Bullying LGBTQ kids or banning books provides a socially acceptable outlet for that rage. They can wallow in being domineering and mean, and get commended for it, because they're doing it in the name of "family values."

The face of this was neatly illustrated last week, when a bunch of Republican women in Montana decided to bully trans state representative Zooey Zephyr, by taking the only seat she could work at after the Republican majority barred her from the floor for speaking out about trans rights. The photo of these women, who are downright gleeful in their cruelty, speaks volumes.

It's no surprise it's all women. Transphobia gives them a chance to step out of the thankless role of being servile and deferential, letting them play the role of the bully. It's hard for most of us to imagine being so incredibly petty as to spend even one moment of your limited time on earth doing something like this, but it's safe to guess these women don't have a lot else going on in their lives.

Indeed, anti-abortion politics has long provided this outlet for a lot of Republican women. They could go to clinics and harass patients going in. They could work at anti-abortion centers, trying to trick vulnerable women into not getting an abortion. They could post lengthy diatribes on Facebook about how feminists are man-haters, and collect the accolades for their supposed Christian purity. It's all fun and games, as long as Roe stood and they knew they could quietly access abortion as needed.

<People magazine sent correspondent Natasha Stoynoff to Mar-a-Lago in late 2005 to write a wedding anniversary story about Donald Trump, who had then recently married Melania Knauss.

Almost two decades later, her experience of the future president allegedly “forcing his tongue” down her throat could prove essential testimony in the E Jean Carroll civil rape trial that began on 25 April in a federal court in New York City.

Ms Stoynoff took the stand at the Manhattan courthouse on 3 May.

Before joining People magazine, Ms Stoynoff was a reporter and photographer at The Toronto Star, a columnist at The Toronto Sun, and a freelancer for Time Magazine. She then worked for People magazine for almost 20 years. She now lives in New York, where she writes books and screenplays, according to her bio on Goodreads.

The Trump legal team failed to stop the inclusion of Ms Stoynoff’s testimony in the trial.

Ms Carroll claims that Mr Trump raped her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in 1995 or 1996 and that he later defamed her in 2019 as president when he rejected her allegation.

About a decade after the alleged rape of Ms Carroll, the People magazine journalist was at Mar-a-Lago to interview Mr Trump and his new wife.

“Now, I’m a tall, strapping girl who grew up wrestling two giant brothers. I even once sparred with Mike Tyson. It takes a lot to push me,” Ms Stoynoff wrote in 2016. “But Trump is much bigger – a looming figure – and he was fast, taking me by surprise and throwing me off balance. I was stunned. And I was grateful when Trump’s longtime butler burst into the room a minute later, as I tried to unpin myself.”

“The butler informed us that Melania would be down momentarily, and it was time to resume the interview,” she added.

Mr Trump then asked, “You know we’re going to have an affair, don’t you?” according to the reporter, adding that the following morning, she went to the spa at the private club, where the receptionist told her Mr Trump had been waiting for her, but that he had left to attend a meeting.

Ms Stoynoff later told her editors to not have her cover Mr Trump again.

Ms Carroll wrote for The Atlantic in 2020 that “each new boxing trainer tells Natasha that she should turn professional. Her punch is between hospitalization and murder”.

About the 2005 incident with Mr Trump, Ms Carroll wrote that Ms Stoynoff “wishes” that she had punched the former president.

Alyssa Shelasky wrote for The Cut that “Stoynoff was my mentor when I worked at People magazine, about ten years ago. She was the brilliant, hilarious, confident, and warm writer who got all the good assignments because Larry Hackett, the editor-in-chief at the time, knew she was the best. Naturally, I worshipped her”.

“Trump is frustrating to interview,” Ms Stoynoff told Ms Carroll in The Atlantic. “If all you need are sound bites, he’s easy. He’s got his one sentence ready for you. If you want something deeper, that’s a challenge. Because he doesn’t do deep.”

Ms Stoynoff noted that Melania Trump was “upstairs changing. Nothing led me to think he would do such a thing,” she said of Mr Trump’s alleged actions.

“I remember it being a dark room,” she said of where the incident took place. “But there are windows, so not too dark. We go in. I’m looking around, wondering what he wants to show me. I hear the door close.”

“I turn around. And he’s right at me, pushing me against the wall,” she added.

In an op-ed for The Washington Post in October 2019, Ms Stoynoff wrote, “After the election, I told myself his supporters hadn’t believed” the women who had stepped into the public arena and accused Mr Trump of misconduct.

“How else could they have voted for such a man? It took months before the cruel truth dawned on me — Trump supporters knew we were telling the truth. They just didn’t care,” she added.

“Within a year of my story being published, the #MeToo movement exploded ... but still, the reckoning skipped Trump,” she wrote at the time.

But Ms Stoynoff and her testimony of what happened in Florida in late 2005 is now a part of what law professor Harry Litman called “Trump’s biggest date yet with accountability”.

On 25 April, he tweeted: “Trump’s biggest date yet with accountability is the E Jean Carroll [civil rape] trial that begins in NY federal court today. The pieces are arranged for him to be absolutely shellacked. And to come off as a liar, bully, and sexual predator.>

<Actor Kevin Sorbo tried a new approach in defending assault weapons amid a wave of mass shootings: they don’t exist.

The star of TV’s “Hercules” in the 1990s but who now focuses on Christian films and right-wing conspiracy theories wrote on Twitter:

Sorbo’s tweet came one day after a gunman killed eight and wounded seven others at an outlet mall in Texas, and as a recent wave of mass shootings leads to renewed calls for increased gun control.

A Fox News poll released last month, for example, found the majority of Americans want tighter gun control laws and better enforcement of existing regulations.

More specifically, 61 percent favor bans on the assault weapons that Sorbo claims “aren’t real.”

As a result, his tweet was widely shared ― but probably not for the reasons he would’ve hoped>

<Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) received a scolding from former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) Sunday after she ripped into Republicans on the issue of mass shootings and mental health.

Ocasio-Cortez tweeted after Saturday’s mass shooting at a mall in Allen, Texas, that left nine people dead, including the gunman.

“Republicans keep blaming mass shootings on mental health, but then defend the killing of the mentally ill too,” she wrote.

Kinzinger, known as a moderate Republican while serving in Congress from 2011-2023, responded, “Statements like this whether from the left or the right is what is wrong with American politics at the moment. We need to do better.”

The first happened Friday, when a former Marine killed Jordan Neely by putting him in a chokehold on a New York subway after passengers felt “threatened” by Neely’s behavior. Neely’s family said that the 30-year-old was mentally ill and had a history of behaving erratically. Some conservatives claimed the killing was justified and reminiscent of “subway vigilante” Bernie Goetz, who shot and seriously injured four Black men on a subway train in 1984.

The second tragedy happened in Texas on Saturday when a gunman opened fire at a crowded outdoor mall using an assault-style rifle. At least eight people were killed before police shot and killed the gunman, who was kitted out in tactical gear. Police said the suspect may have been motivated by far-right extremism. This latest mass shooting stoked the flames of the ongoing gun rights vs. common sense gun reform debate in America.

Many conservatives argue that mental illness, not guns, is responsible for mass shootings.

Kinzinger broke with many Republicans to disavow Donald Trump‘s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. He served on the select committee to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack and announced late in 2021 that he would not seek another term.>

<I had to add this tid-bit about Cmdr (Ernest) Evans. Evans was a native American (half Cherokee and one quarter Creek) who made it into the Naval academy. In those days, there was no hand outs or affirmative action that enabled minorities. In fact, all too often, the opposite was true, (in all the academies for that matter). But Evans earned his selection the old fashioned way: hard work, determination, guts, smarts and persistence. His qualifications could not be denied

He graduated in 1931 and after paying his dues, he finally received orders to take command of the new Fletcher class destroyer USS Johnston. When Johnston was commissioned in Oct 1943, Evans gave a short speech to his crew:

"This is going to be a fighting ship. I intend to go in harm's way, and anyone who doesn't want to go along had better get off right now"

His men loved him and would follow him anywhere. He never upbraided subordinates in front of the crew. He gave his men the opportunity to fail knowing they would learn and not fail him again

<Two conservative co-hosts on "The View" assigned blame for the wave of mass shootings on Republican elected officials.

A gunman killed eight people and wounded seven others Saturday in Allen, Texas, and co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin said it was long past time for Congress to enact meaningful gun safety legislation.

"I want to make something unequivocally clear," Griffin said. "There is a disconnect between what the American public wants to see on gun safety and what elected officials in Washington and states want to see. This is a Fox News poll, not a liberal outlet -- a Fox News poll, 87 percent of Americans support background checks for guns, 81 percent support raising the minimum age to get a buy a firearm to 21, 80 percent support red flag laws [and] mental health checks to buy a gun, 77 percent a thirty-day waiting period.

"The list goes on. I'm a legal gun owner, my husband is, most of my friends are legal gun owners, and all of us are horrified when guns get into the hands of people wishing to commit crimes and we want to do more."

"I would be willing to jump through more hoops to be able to legally own a gun, to stop having kids and innocent people be massacred," Griffin continued. "D.C. is disconnected from it, Republicans in D.C. are disconnected from it, and they've got to act."

Co-host Ana Navarro agreed, saying only one side was to blame for the problem.

"That's right, I'm glad you qualified it at the end, because it's a Republican issue," Navarro said. "It's frankly not elected officials because most Democrats want what I want, which is a ban on assault rifles, and I want it right now">

This is a problem for <everyone>.

<Speaking on the far-right Newsmax network this week, former Fox News host Megyn Kelly complained that she just wants advocates of gun reform legislation to zip it, reported The Daily Beast.

"Despite yet another mass shooting over the weekend — this time at a shopping mall in Allen, Texas by an apparent neo-Nazi armed with an AR-15—former Fox News host Megyn Kelly is fed up with seeing debates over gun control in the news," reported William Vaillancourt. "Kelly essentially reiterated sentiments she put on Twitter in response to the shooting, which killed eight and wounded seven others. In one tweet, she posed a question for gun control advocates: 'Must we just stay here sad, concerned, lamenting? Could we possibly talk OTHER SOLUTIONS?' In another, she considered the gun control debate essentially pointless, telling the same crowd, 'You are ruining any chance at change by not admitting that the gun debate is lost.'"

"Even if the Supreme Court were to allow a ban on AR-15s, it would serve no purpose, insisted Kelly, apparently no fan of incremental progress on an issue that sets the U.S. apart from other developed nations," said the report. "'Everybody would just use their semi-automatic pistols. That’s what was used at the most deadly school shooting of all time, Virginia Tech,' she said. “So we need to face reality, okay? The states that have the strictest gun laws — New York, California, Connecticut, where I am now — have had multiple mass shootings in this past decade. They don’t work any better than the states that have lenient gun laws like Texas.'"

In fact, studies have consistently shown that states with tighter gun laws see fewer shootings, including mass shootings.

Kelly failed to mention that gun legislation is passing at the state level, with Colorado's governor signing four new measures into law last month alone.

"In lieu of gun control legislation, Kelly suggested improved mental health services, as well as boosting security measures for 'soft targets' like malls and schools — a common refrain from conservatives in the wake of gun violence," said the report. In fact, adding armed officers to schools can actually lead to more incidents.>

<An Australian politician told anti-LGBTQ+ protesters to "get to Florida" after they forced the shutdown of a drag queen story-time event that was slated to happen later this month.

Premier of Victoria Daniel Andrews called "ugly scenes" by the protesters "shameful" and a "disgrace" after death threats were made against other council members and the drag performer set to host the sold-out event at a local library on May 19.

"And my message to those people is very clear: If you want to behave like the worst elements of the Floridian Republican Party — well, get to Florida," Andrews said during an impassioned speech Thursday on the state's parliament floor.

"Head over there, where your hateful views might be worth something. They're worth nothing here," Andrews said. "We won't stand for this sort of behavior. It's appalling."

Andrews added, "It's not about free speech — this is hate speech plain and simple, plain and simple. It is wrong. It is out of step with the values of fair-minded and decent, mainstream Victorians. It is on the fringe."

A spokesman for Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declined to comment to Insider Monday about Andrews' remarks, saying, "party politics are outside the purview of the official office," and instead referred Insider to the Republican Party of Florida.

A rep for the Republican Party of Florida did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Insider.

The DeSantis administration has been targeting drag shows and the LGBTQ+ community through certain policies in the Sunshine State for months.>

<<"Before me, apart from Ragozin, it was I.A. Kan who had played training games with Botvinnik. And also at the dacha. He too, had to listen to the world champion's monologues, in the intervals of play.

<<<'You cannot imagine what a strange chap he is,'>>> Kan once told me, regarding Botvinnik. <<<'Once, we were discussing something quite peacefully, when suddenly, for no reason, he went into a sulk, stalked off into the woods, and very demonstratively refused to come to lunch!'>>>

Later, I risked asking Ilya Abramovich about this incident. He remarked sarcastically: <<<'Botvinnik thinks that he is world champion not only at chess, but in everything else. He- a totally ordinary person!'>>>>

<A New York City judge imposed a protective order Monday in the Manhattan district attorney's criminal case against former President Donald Trump that is meant to ensure evidence shared by the DA's office doesn't wind up on the internet.

Trump pleaded not guilty last month to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in connection to what prosecutors call an "illegal scheme" to influence the 2016 presidential election by directing his then-personal attorney Michael Cohen to pay $130,000 to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to prevent her from publicizing a long-denied affair with Trump.

Trump reimbursed Cohen through a series of monthly checks, which prosecutors say resulted in falsified business records in order to disguise the true purpose of the payments.

"Any materials and information provided by the People to the Defense" during the trial "shall be used solely for the purposes of preparing a defense in this matter," the order, signed by Judge Juan Merchan, said.

The order said that "any person who receives the Covered Materials shall not copy, disseminate, or disclose the Covered Materials, in any form or by any means, to any third party including, but not limited to, by disseminating or posting the Covered Materials to any news or social media platforms, including, but not limited, to Truth Social, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Snapchat, or YouTube, without prior approval from the Court."

Prosecutors sought the protective order because of what they called Trump's "extensive history" of making inflammatory remarks about witnesses, prosecutors and others associated with legal matters pending against him, assistant district attorney Catherine McCaw said at a hearing last week.

Merchan made clear the order does not stop Trump from speaking generally about the case on the campaign trail as Trump runs for a second term as president.

"I'm straining to give him every opportunity to make his candidacy," Merchan said at last week's hearing. "This is not a gag order."

Trump will be required to attend a virtual hearing during which the protective order will be read to him. Prosecutors sought the hearing, and the judge agreed, to make sure Trump understands the order.>

<That didn’t happen. And if it did, it wasn’t that bad. And if it was, that’s not a big deal. And if it is, that’s not my fault. And if it was, I didn’t mean it. And if I did, you deserved it. You’re just making excuses!>

<A jury has found former President Donald Trump liable for battery and defamation in the E. Jean Carroll case.

Carroll, who brought the lawsuit in November, alleged that Trump defamed her in his 2022 Truth Social post by calling her allegations "a Hoax and a lie" and saying "This woman is not my type!" when he denied her claim that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s.

The former Elle magazine columnist added a charge of battery under a recently adopted New York law that allows adult survivors of sexual abuse to sue their alleged attacker regardless of the statute of limitations. Trump has denied all allegations that he raped Carroll or defamed her.

The jury awarded Carroll a total of $5 million in the lawsuit. Jury members found that Trump did not rape Carroll but sexually abused her, and awarded damages of $2 million in compensatory damages and $20,000 in punitive damages for battery.

The jury awarded $1 million in damages, $1.7 million for reputation repair, and $280,000 in punitive damages.

The jury reached its verdict after just under three hours of deliberations.

Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by about two dozen women. Carroll's battery allegation was the first to make it before a jury.

Carroll was seated between two of her attorneys, Roberta Kaplan and Shawn Crowley, as the verdict was read. At one point Crowley put her arm around Carroll, who held hands with Kaplan.

Defense attorney Joe Tacopina was seen conferring with co-counsel Chad Siegel and Perry Brandt.

Before deliberations started, Trump posted on social media, "Waiting for a jury decision on a False Accusation where I, despite being a current political candidate and leading all others in both parties, am not allowed to speak or defend myself, even as hard nosed reporters scream questions about this case at me. In the meantime, the other side has a book falsely accusing me of Rape, & is working with the press. I will therefore not speak until after the trial, but will appeal the Unconstitutional silencing of me, as a candidate, no matter the outcome."

Early in the trial the judge had admonished the defense over Trump's social media posts about Carroll and her allegations. The judge did not address this most recent post, but previously indicated that if Trump wanted to speak about the case he should testify under oath, which Trump declined to do.

In a civil case jurors are allowed to draw a negative inference when a defendant decides not to testify.

"He just decided not to be here. He never looked you in the eye and denied raping Ms. Carroll. Never did that," Carroll's attorney, Michael Ferrara, told jurors during the trial.

Carroll testified during the trial that she ran into Trump near the Bergdorf Goodman entrance and that he asked her to help him buy some lingerie as a gift. The two were laughing and joking, she said, when he led her into a dressing room, shut the door, shoved her up against a wall, and sexually assaulted her.

She told the jury that she first met Trump in 1987 -- but she struggled to pinpoint the date that she alleges he attacked her, which she estimated was sometime around 1996.

"And why is there no date to an event as significant as this in someone's life?" defense attorney Joe Tacopina countered. "It's not a coincidence. With no date, no month, no year, you can't present an alibi."

Carroll's attorneys seized on Trump's deposition last year when he was shown a 1980s-era photograph of Carroll, her then-husband John Johnson, Trump, and his then-wife Ivana Trump -- and he momentarily mistook Carroll for his second wife, Marla Maples.

"That's Marla, yeah. That's my wife," Trump said regarding Carroll, according to the deposition.

"The truth is that E. Jean Carroll, a former cheerleader and Ms. Indiana, was exactly Donald Trump's type," Carroll's attorneys argued in court.

Carroll's attorneys juxtaposed Trump's mistaken identification with his remarks on the infamous 2005 "Access Hollywood" tape, on which he is heard saying about women that "I just start kissing them ... I don't even wait" and that when you're a star you can "grab them by the p----."

"What is Donald Trump doing here?" Carroll's attorney said. "He's telling you in his own words how he treats women. It's his modus operandi."....>

More on the travails of the Orange Slimepot....

<....The jury also heard from two other women who claimed they had been sexually assaulted by Trump, in what Carroll's attorneys said showed a pattern of behavior on Trump's part. Former People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff testified that she was at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in late 2005 when Trump asked to show her a room in the estate, then closed the door behind her, pushed her against the wall, and started kissing her. She told the jury that she tried to shove him away, and that the alleged encounter ended when a butler entered the room.

Jessica Leeds testified that she was seated next to Trump in the first-class section of a flight to New York in 1979, "when all of a sudden Trump decided to kiss me and grope me." She said that she freed herself when Trump started putting his hand up her skirt, and went "storming back" to the coach section.

Trump, who chose not to testify in his own defense, has previously denied the allegations from both women, as well as from Carroll.

The defense called no witnesses but Trump's attorney, Joe Tacopina, told the jury that Carroll's claim was "an unbelievable work of fiction" and that if the alleged attacker was anyone but Donald Trump, "we're not here. Not on this story."

"What they want is for you to hate him enough to ignore the facts," the attorney said.

"There is no objective evidence to corroborate her claim, including a police report," Tacopina told the jury. "She never went to the police, because it didn't happen."

Tacopina said Carroll "falsely alleged that he raped her," and that's why Trump publicly attacked her.

Tacopina said there was no reason for Trump to appear because Carroll's story was "completely made up" and lacked credibility because she could not pinpoint when the alleged rape occurred.

"And if Donald Trump testified, what could I have asked him?" Tacopina said. "Where were you on some unknown date 27 or 28 years ago?"

Carroll's lawsuit was her second against Trump related to her rape allegation.

She previously sued Trump in 2019 after the then-president denied her rape claim by telling The Hill that Carroll was "totally lying," saying, "I'll say it with great respect: No. 1, she's not my type. No. 2, it never happened. It never happened, OK?" That defamation suit has been caught in a procedural back-and-forth over the question of whether Trump, as president, was acting in his official capacity as an employee of the federal government when he made those remarks.

If Trump is determined to have been acting as a government employee, the U.S. government would substitute as the defendant in that suit -- which means that case would go away, since the government cannot be sued for defamation.

<The Religious Right has repeatedly claimed that the "separation of church and state" concept is not in the U.S. Constitution, and that the United States is a "Christian nation." But there is nothing in the Constitution that favors one religion over another.

The Constitution's 1st Amendment, adopted in 1791, reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This means that while Catholics and Protestants enjoy freedom of religion, Christianity will not have preferential treatment over Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or any other faith.

When Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), both Muslims, were sworn into Congress using the Koran, it was perfectly in keeping with the 1st Amendment. Similarly, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Illinois), a Hindu, used the Bhagavad-Gita for the swearing-in ceremony.

A variety of faiths are being practiced in Texas. But according to liberal Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman, far-right Republicans in the state legislature are expressing their disdain for that diversity by trying to legislature white Christian nationalism.

"Texas is growing more purple with each passing year, which is exactly why the Republican-dominated legislature is reasserting the right's political and cultural power with ever more radically conservative laws," Waldman explains in his May 9 column. "Part of that effort is a series of bills meant to impose not just religion, but Christianity, into public schools.

The columnist continues, "One bill would allow schools to mandate 'a period of prayer and Bible reading on each school day.' Another says school personnel must be allowed to 'engage in religious speech or prayer while on duty.' Yet another would allow schools to replace school counselors with 'chaplains' — no training or certification required. The centerpiece is the bill requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments, which has already passed the (Texas) State Senate."

Waldman notes that one of the outspoken opponents of the Ten Commandments bill is Democratic Texas State Rep. James Talarico, a Mainline Protestant who is enrolled in a Presbyterian seminary in Austin. Talarico said the bill "not only violates our American values, but I think it violates my Christian values."

The Post columnist argues, "Christian nationalism rejects our legal and cultural tradition of religious pluralism. It holds that the United States was a Christian nation from its founding and that Christianity should be the basis of public policy and political power. Prominent national Republicans are increasingly emphasizing Christian-nationalist themes…. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA) calls herself a 'proud Christian nationalist.'"

Talarico describes Christian nationalist-inspired bills as "the death rattle of a dying worldview."

The Texas Democrat told Waldman, "In some ways, the far right is like a wounded animal here in Texas. They know that Texas is becoming increasingly diverse, Texas is becoming younger, and that new Texas is not going to stand for these extreme policies.">

<Texas State Representative Frederick Frazier (R-61st District) joined a small but growing group of GOP lawmakers demanding reforms to firearm laws following Saturday's mass shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets, which left nine people including the gunman dead and seven others wounded.

On Monday, The Texas Tribune reported that the Texas House Select Committee on Community Safety advanced a measure — House Bill 2744 – that would "prohibit selling, renting, leasing or giving a semi-automatic rifle with a caliber greater than .22 that is capable of accepting a detachable magazine to a person younger than 21 years old. Parents and relatives of children killed in the Uvalde shooting, as well as King, have said the shooting may have been thwarted had the bill been law last year. A recent University of Texas at Austin survey found a sizable majority of Texas voters — including Republicans — support raising the minimum age to buy all guns from 18 to 21."

Two Republican State Representatives — Sam Harless (126th District) and Justin Holland (33rd District) — voted in favor of the legislation.

Frazier explained his position with WFAA correspondent Teresa Woodard on Tuesday.

"You saw two Republicans come out yesterday and you look on their social media and they're just completely attacked and you knew they're doing it from their heart. They're not doing it cuz they hate guns. I mean, we're gun wearers. We're gun we're police officers. We're in the communities. Why would we go want to take guns away from citizens to protect themselves?" Frazier retorted.

"We want citizens to be armed. We want citizens to protect themselves. But we also don't want maniacs that have pure evil in their heart to go out there and kill our families and everyone else's family," Frazier continued. "So that's a hard, the hard look we have to look at and that and that something right there is gotta be pulled."

Frazier also blasted those in power who refuse to protect the public.

"If you don't feel that, then there's something wrong with you right now," Frazier said. "If you saw those videos and you saw those bodies piled up and you saw what happened there, and that doesn't make you think we've got something wrong, then you have something wrong. And that's how all – most of us feel."

"So you're willing to consider some measures?" Woodard asked.

"I absolutely am," Frazier confirmed. "And we have to sit down and have these conversations."

According to Woodard, Frazier then remarked on the prevalence of AR-15 usage in massacres.

"That's something we have to take a hard look at and that hard look needs to come from the Second Amendment grassroots. It has to come from the N[ational] R[ifle] A[ssociation]. That sitdown has to happen," Frazier said.

Frazier further added that "there's somewhere in the middle" where compromise can be found.

"I'm a Republican through and true," he stressed. "But this needs to be where we come together and figure out how to fix this.">

<Former Donald Trump attorney Jenna Ellis has maintained an active presence on social media, often tweeting in support of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and conservative causes.

But lawyers representing two Georgia election workers in a defamation case against Rudy Giuliani say Ellis, who is a witness in the case, is nowhere to be found.

Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss aresuing Giuliani on allegations that the former New York City mayor, who also served as a Trump attorney, spread conspiracy theories about the election that led to threats of violence.

Freeman and Moss settled with One America News over the same allegations.

According to court documents Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney posted on Twitter, Ellis is identified as a third party who was “involved with providing Giuliani with information and discussing with Giuliani allegations regarding Plaintiffs that Giuliani relied on when making statements about Plaintiffs, in his deposition testimony Defendant Giuliani highlighted Ms. Ellis as his ‘assistant’ who had knowledge of an alleged USB drive video, and discovery has illustrated her critical involvement in the defamatory allegations at the heart of Plaintiff’s claims.”

Giuliani amended his initial disclosures on March 24 to add the names of several people who he admits are likely to possess relevant information on which he plans to rely, including Ellis.

The plaintiff’s lawyers say they’ve been trying for months without success to issue Ellis a subpoena.

They claim Ellis moved from Colorado to Florida but haven’t determined her new address.

“Plaintiffs requested the assistance of Kleinbard Counsel and counsel for Defendant Giuliani in contacting Ms. Ellis and/or her new counsel, or to reach an agreement that would obviate the need to secure Ms. Ellis’ testimony. To date, Plaintiff’s efforts have been rebuked,” the plaintiff’s lawyers said in court documents.

“Plaintiffs have incurred significant time and expense, including hiring a private investigator in an attempt to locate Ms. Ellis’ new Florida address, and still have been unable to locate and serve Ms. Ellis. Defendant plans to rely on Ms. Ellis in his defense at trial and Plaintiffs would be severely prejudiced if they were unable to depose Ms. Ellis.”>

<The Walt Disney Company’s (NYSE: DIS) fight with Floria Governor Ron DeSantis took a new turn on Tuesday after the entertainment giant amended its free speech lawsuit against DeSantis and now references legislation that was passed last week by Florida lawmakers that revoked agreements between Disney and a previous oversight board (consisting of Disney supporters) which had given the company control over design and construction at Disney World.

The amended lawsuit will also now include a measure passed by Florida last week that had given the state the authority to inspect Disney World’s monorail system. This inspection had previously been conducted in-house.

The amended lawsuit states that the new measures passed by Florida lawmakers “was precision-engineered to target Disney alone, just as Governor DeSantis intended and previewed.”

The Disney lawsuit asks the federal judge to grant void Governor DeSantis’ takeover of the “theme park district, as well as the oversight board’s actions, on the grounds that they were violations of company’s free speech rights.”

Governor DeSantis had earlier warned Disney that the state could make its business very difficult after the company’s opposition to the “Don’t Say Gay” laws.>

<Donald Trump’s hometown newspapers are pulling no punches with their front pages after a civil jury found the former president liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

The New York Daily News put “SEX ABUSER” right on its front page along with a picture of the former president:

Trump was sued by writer E. Jean Carroll, who said Trump raped her in a department store in the 1990s. The jury found him liable not for rape, but sexual abuse and defamation, and awarded Carroll $5 million in total damages.

The New York Post ― part of Fox News boss Rupert Murdoch’s media empire ― put a new spin on one of Trump’s most infamous quotes:

Trump was a longtime resident of New York City but now lives at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. >

<No one was more suspicious of the widely showcased newest ABC-Washington Post poll then ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos who questioned its accuracy live on air on its Sunday May 7 release. Stephanopoulos was suspicious given the inconsistencies in the survey which both purported to overwhelmingly condemn Trump’s likely illegal conduct supposedly showing Trump leading Biden in a prospective 2024 presidential election matchup.

Stephanopoulos was right to be suspicious of ABC’s co-sponsored survey as this poll was apparently designed for media drama but not an accurate public opinion metric. For just this reason, Robert Kaiser, the longtime managing editor of The Washington Post, this poll’s other co-sponsor told us he refused to showcase such polls in an earlier era calling it “manufactured news.”

Of course, political professional point out, polls done this far out have little value, and much can and will change in eighteen months by November 2024. In fact, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama are just three recent presidents who rebounded from comparable sagging public polls to ultimately win 18 months later. We acknowledge the polling around 40 percent favorability is nothing for the Biden Administration to gloat over, however, according to the Gallup Poll, it is consistent with almost all the seven presidents at this time except for President H.W. Bush following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and President George W. Bush following the 9/11 attack on the U.S. In fact, George H.W. Bush enjoyed a 73% favorability in September 1990 but then went on to lose his reelection to Bill Clinton.”

In fact, there are piles of contrasting polls. There are some polls where Trump beats Biden – such as the right-leaning Rasmussen polls and Stagwell’s Harris Poll. Trump has consistently dominated across both polls dating back years. But most major opinion polls, on average, Biden leads Trump by 2 percent, including recent polls done by Yahoo News, The Wall Street Journal, Quinnipiac University, and Morning Consult among many others. Even Rupert Murdoch’s right-leaning New York Post grudgingly concedes that “Biden beats Trump big” across early polling.

Despite the borrowed ABC/Washington Post branding, the consultant who conducted this research makes for a case study in shoddy methodological practices.

Even other pollsters have attacked the methods of this Abt Associates poll for ABC/Washington Post pointing out that it strangely included all adults in its sample of 1,006, rather than just registered voters, and that breaking out registered voters brings the sample down to an even smaller 900. Furthermore, analysis of subgroups like young people, independents, Hispanics and Black Americans are so tiny they are not valid. Pollster Cornel Belcher commented “The poll really is trash, and I don’t say that lightly because I’ve had respect for their polling in the past.”

First, the ABC-WaPo sample size of 1,006 adults surveyed is jarringly small, compared to the sample sizes of peers such as 6,000 at Morning Consult. Even other Trump-favoring polls such as the Harris Poll had a sample nearly twice as large, with 1,850 respondents, increasing accuracy and reliability. The Edelman Trust Barometer samples up to 35,000 respondents.

Second, an amazing 25% of respondents in the flawed ABC-WaPo poll were reached by landline in lieu of cell phones. It has already been empirically shown, repeatedly, that landline respondents tend to skew Republican dramatically. Indeed, it is hard to find any other poll with such a high proportion of landline responses.

This was akin to the infamous old Roper Poll error which proudly but wrongly predicted for the Chicago Tribune Dewey beating Truman the worst call in political history. Amazingly, the defensive chairman of the Roper Poll still did not concede defeat claiming ““Clearly they were wrong in determining the election. I think the 1948 polls were more accurate than the 1948 election.” Surely a man ahead of his times – even if wrong!....>

<....By contrast, only 13% of the Quinnipiac Poll responses were landline, while cutting-edge firms such as Stagwell and Morning Consult have transitioned to online public opinion polling in lieu of phone calls. The WaPo-ABC poll also disclosed that of the “752 interviews completed via cell phone, 583 interviews were with adults in cellphone-only households.” Thus the 169 “cell” interviews also favors landline respondents which were especially inclined to pick up the phone on a cold call. Unlike with online polls there was no adjustment for phone call respondents’ propensity to respond.

Third, the pollsters even fudged the numbers in ways large and small. The pollsters supposedly “weighted to correct for differential probabilities of selection among individuals who are landline-only, cellphone-only, or dual users”, but this impenetrable technical jargon is actually nonsense. In simple English, the pollsters have baked in all kinds of unknown, unverifiable and likely inaccurate assumptions into their model – as they wouldn’t have ended up with 25% landline respondents with a more accurate model, or the fact that they had 13% more self-identified GOP respondents than Democratic respondents.

Likewise, unlike even other more careful Trump-favoring surveys such as the Harris Poll; the ABC-WaPo poll did not weigh the results to match the demographic makeup of the population along crucial vectors such as marital status, income, employment, household size, and political party, meaning the sample of 1,006 respondents could be massively unrepresentative along these dimensions. The only demographic factors considered by the WaPo-ABC poll were the bare minimum – sex, region, age, education, and race.

Given all these methodological flaws, it is hardly surprising that even the self-disclosed “sampling error,” or margin of error, of the WaPo-ABC poll is significantly higher than that of peers at ± 3.5%. This is 40% higher than the sampling error of the Quinnipiac Poll, 2.5%, and three times that of Morning Consult, 1%. If this were a rigorous quantitative exercise, with such a high margin of error, one would not be able to conclude that Trump is leading Biden at all, or vice versa, making this entire study basically useless.

Simplistic media headlines trumpeting its findings that Trump supposedly beat Biden gloss over the dubious numerical hogwash of the poll’s administrator, Abt Associates. Perhaps they even intentionally wanted to subvert best practices and generate provocative polling results to gain the prominence of stature and the expert academic authority they lack. After all, provocative, contrarian polls can help outlets compete commercially in the attention economy.

Considering even the most reputable pollsters got it wrong in 2018, 2020, and 2022, it is unfortunate that too many pollsters seek to obfuscate their underlying models through an artificial haze of impenetrable mathematical jargon. Yes, where was that predicted Red Wave to sweep the nation this past fall?

It is also past time for the political pundits to start asking more questions about shady polling practices and statistical sophistry rather than merely trumpeting inflammatory horse race headlines. Not all polls are created equal. There should be no shame in challenging double talk without being intimidated by technical jargon, and having confidence that you are not the village idiot when asking a question about polls of questionable quality.

I have no doubt that 92-year-old Abt Associates founder Clark Abt would shudder at such specious pseudo-science under his name if he examined this work. The first author of this article knew him decades ago as a pioneering MIT trained mathematical political game theorist and brilliant educational consultant.

Abt’s former Cambridge neighbor the Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith cautioned to one of us in 1974, “There are two kinds of forecasters: Those who don’t know and those who don’t know they don’t know.”>