Business motives don’t explain the right-wing turn of the Washington Post and CBS. Billionaire ideology does.
Growing list of MAGA sex scandals now includes Arizona congressional hopeful
As sure as the sun rises, the list of sex scandals involving a Trump ally continues to grow.
My colleague Steve Benen has been doing a great job tracking the Jan. 6 rioters who have been charged with sex crimes after receiving pardons from President Donald Trump.
The Epstein files remain a lingering headache for Trump, a onetime friend of the late sex offender’s, and for other Epstein associates working in his administration, even as the Justice Department continues to withhold documents from Congress and the public.
And let’s not forget the bevy of other sex scandals that have cast a pall over administration officials and Trump allies over the past year.
It now looks like we can add Arizona congressional hopeful Mark Lamb to the list. The Trump-endorsed candidate and former county sheriff is running in Arizona’s conservative-leaning 5th District, which is being vacated by Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, who is running for governor.
A sexting scandal seems unlikely to help his campaign.
The Arizona Republic reported Wednesday on accusations that Lamb sent sexually explicit messages to women before and after serving as Pinal County sheriff. The report, which includes screenshots of messages allegedly sent by Lamb, said he threatened some of the women not to share evidence of their exchanges and said he could have them prosecuted.
This excerpt basically sums up the Republic’s reporting:
Digital evidence reviewed by The Republic found the Arizona lawman invited intimate encounters and indulged a yearslong habit of sexting that he later denied or sought to conceal, sometimes with threats or intimidation.
Interviews and screen captures of photos, chats, social media posts and emails shared with The Republic stand in contrast
Florida university suspends students over racist group chat scandal
The crisis of neo-Nazism and other white supremacist delusion coursing through the conservative movement, infecting young and elder conservatives alike, appeared in stark relief this week.
On Tuesday, two teenage gunmen, who were reportedly inspired by neo-Nazi ideology and other white supremacist killings, shot and killed three people at a San Diego mosque. The attack occurred in a national environment in which President Donald Trump and some allies have promoted racist propaganda and embraced brazenly Islamophobic rhetoric. Days later, at a House hearing on the Southern Poverty Law Center allegedly “manufacturing” claims of racist extremism, several witnesses invited by Republicans refused to acknowledge that extremist organizations such as neo-Nazis and the Proud Boys have promoted white supremacist views.
And Thursday came with yet another reminder of the racism that seems to be metastasizing within the MAGA movement, when the Miami Herald reported that Florida International University suspended two Republican student leaders involved in a group chat in which fellow conservatives shared violent, racist messages.
The Herald cited court documents showing the suspensions of two years for the group chat’s creator, law student Abel Carvajal, and former FIU College Republicans’ Recruitment Chairman Dariel Gonzalez. Per the Herald, Carvajal was suspended for “‘affirmative act which aids, attempts, promotes, conceals, or facilitates’ violations of the Student Code of Conduct”; and Gonzalez, in part, “for violating a part of the conduct code that bars ‘verbal or written abuse, threats, intimidation and/or coercion that objectively endangers the health, safety or well-being of others.’”
Carvajal took responsibility for starting the group chat back in March, when its contents were made public, but he said he had not seen all of the
Trump’s GOP primary victories could spell general election headaches
It’s been a good primary season for President Donald Trump. In contest after contest, he’s seen Republicans who’ve opposed him — even in limited ways — fall to Trump-backed challengers. The streak faces a major test next week when GOP voters will decide between Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Sen. John Cornyn in a much-anticipated runoff election.
Just about everything that’s been reported about the last-minute endorsement of Paxton over the five-term incumbent Cornyn indicates that Trump’s guidepost wasn’t who would best serve Texas. For that matter, it doesn’t even seem to have been about who is most likely to win come November. And it’s the latter oversight that is poised to make Nov. 3 much more disappointing for the GOP than Trump might expect, given his primary track record.
Paxton is the latest in a string of anti-incumbent endorsements that Trump has made this year in contested primaries.
Paxton is the latest in a string of anti-incumbent endorsements that Trump has made this year in contested primaries. Over the past several weeks, targets of his ire who have lost include Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who voted to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial; Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who has forcefully denounced Trump on the Epstein files and war with Iran; and three Indiana state senators who refused to go along with his push to gerrymander the state’s congressional map into a 9-0 Republican delegation.
In each of those races, Trump’s triumph has its own potential drawbacks. As Politico reported, “For every apostate ousted by Trump this month, there’s a sign of not only his waning political capital on the
The branch of the LGBTQ community Barney Frank didn’t fight for
Former U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, a gay political trailblazer, died Wednesday at 86. Frank was the first member of the U.S. House of Representatives to publicly come out as gay and the first member of Congress to marry a person of the same gender.
Frank was undoubtedly a legend of his time. He represented his Massachusetts district in Congress for more than 30 years, and his high profile helped pave the way for the broader acceptance of gay people we see today. He founded the Stonewall Democrats, a pro-gay caucus focused on advancing LGBTQ rights within the party. He helped pass several pieces of landmark legislation. He was the “Frank” in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 and helped shape the legislation as a co-writer of the bill. He also played a key role in loosening federal regulations on marijuana use and helped pass the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which expanded federal hate crime protections to include LGBTQ people. As chairman of the House Financial Services Committee in 2008, he helped bail out the banking system during the Great Recession.
Frank was undoubtedly a legend of his time.
For all the above reasons, Frank was a memorable and monumental lawmaker.
But as eulogies marking his passing begin to flow, many queer people in the U.S. — particularly transgender people who were around for the fights on Capitol Hill in the late 2000s — will be remember other aspects of Frank’s political career with far less fondness and, indeed, with disappointment.
Even as he fought for protections for gay Americans, Frank insisted that trans rights not be