06/25/26
Good morning! It’s Thursday, June 25th.
National Work from Home Day
Oh, okay. That’s literally every day for me. If someone told me to put on pants right now, I’d be like… yeah okay that’s fine because I actually have pants on. But if someone told me to put on pants that weren’t sweatpants?
We’d be fighting in the streets.
Well no, I’d tell them I’d meet them in the streets and then I’d shut the door and stay inside because I feel like that’s too much effort.
I need… oh my god, I think I need a job.
And now, the news.
Trump Stuff
-via AP News, NBC News, NBC News, Brennan Center, Native American Rights Fund, and NPR
Hey, it’s the 100th episode of the news for the year!
And I was going to do a fun little like… looking back over 100 episodes this year. But then I couldn’t.
Because there’s an odd little story that has to be covered.
Let’s go back to Tuesday, when the House signed the bipartisan housing bill. I didn’t talk about it on Tuesday because they’d already signed it once, so that wasn’t really news. I talked about it when they first did it, and I talked about it when the Senate did it. And when I covered it in the Senate, I said: it now heads to the House for counter-signature and then to the president’s desk for signature.
It didn’t really seem like much more needed to be covered there.
But now… now it seems like much more needs to be covered.
Trump was all set to sign the bill on Wednesday, but instead that signing ceremony was abruptly cancelled after he took to Temu Twitter to say: “Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.”
A national emergency.
Oi noi.
Now, what’s currently unknown is whether he’ll ultimately veto the bill or not.
Republicans are SO mad about this. It’s so funny. They’re so mad at Trump, but they can’t like… say it? Here’s Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski last week, talking about how Trump’s recent behaviors have been a distraction for the Republican party:
"If some big distraction like a moose comes through these trees, and you got half the team going over here and half the team going over there, it is chaos. What that musher has to do is he's got to stop and spend all his time untangling this mess."
Okay well the other thing the musher could have done is not enable the moose at every single turn and ask the moose to be in the trees in the first place! You knew who Trump was!
Until they say “Trump sucks” I have no sympathy. And even then, I’m gonna look at it with a raised eyebrow emoji. Like how Tucker Carlson and his bowtie now say that they’re not Republicans anymore. But he’s also not voting for Democrats either. So then… what are you doing? Who cares. Take that man’s microphone away.
(How does he have a bigger audience than me? Does he talk about Parks and Rec as much as I do? Probably not! For Poehler sake, he better not!)
Anyway, hey stop distracting me, the reason the housing bill signing was punted is because Trump is, once again, doing everything he can to get this SAVE Act passed.
Because, you know, if you can’t beat em, Sweetem. (See? That’s a Parks reference. SUCK IT CARLSON)
As a reminder, the SAVE Act stands for Safeguard American Voter Eligibility. And on its face, it sounds like a good idea. Gotta safeguard those voter eligibilities. Except, hey guess what? They’re already safe. So… mission accomplished baybee!
But if there’s nothing to safeguard, then what? Then the opposite. The point of the SAVE Act is to disenfranchise voters. And that’s a provable fact. Because I might not know much (besides Kelly Clarkson’s entire discography and every single frame of Ted Lasso) but you better believe I know about voting. I didn’t master all of science for no reason.
First, the reason we know it disenfranchises voters is that there’s no reason for it. I’ve run the numbers in a million episodes, and you can go back and listen, I’ll link in show notes the one specifically called “The SAVE Act is Bad” that really runs it down, but all of that to say that I’m not going to do the full breakdown here but taking the numbers from the Heritage Foundation, which I do because they want to scare you about fraud by voters so they try and give you the highest numbers possible – they list 1620 of fraud by voters since they started tracking in 1982.
But since 1982, there have been 22 elections, 11 presidential, 11 midterms. That’s a total of about 2,189,518,776 ballots.
1620 cases of fraud by voters.
For a rate of .0-0-0-0-0-0-7%
Six zeros before the seven.
So no, it’s not like fraud by voters never happens. But it happens at a rate so infinitesimal that it has literally never changed the outcome of any election ever.
Now, here’s the next thing. Because a big Republican talking point is that it shouldn’t be that hard to show an ID when you go vote. You show an ID to get on a plane, buy beer, or drive a car.
Okay, well none of those things are constitutional rights.
Having an ID costs money. As soon as you ask someone to pay money, even a penny, to do anything regarding a vote, that’s called a poll tax.
And while it might be nice and easy for you to get an ID, that’s not always the case for everyone.
In fact, just Wednesday, hours after Trump decided that now he’s literally holding housing hostage for this bill, a federal judge ruled against Trump’s proof of citizenship requirement.
Which couldn’t have been that much of a surprise – that’s happened time and time again.
For decades.
Prior to 2013’s Shelby v Holder (now I’m going acapella! Put a dime in me, I don’t even need show notes!), multiple states tried over and over again to implement a voter ID law, but they were continuously turned down because those ID laws were found to be disenfranchising.
Hey, here’s a thought. If you want your voters to have an ID so badly, go door to door, go to every single eligible voter, and make them a voter ID.
Oh, you don’t want to do that?
So I guess you don’t really care as much about the IDs as you say you do then?
Going back to 2013, prior to Justice Roberts having his dream come true and finally getting his grub hands on the Voting Rights Act, the Department of Justice issued more than 1,000 Section 5 objections (because states that previously had disenfranchised voters had to go to the DOJ before they made voting law changes just to make sure they weren’t continuing to do so and uh… boi oh boi were they trying to continue to do so)
But then here comes Shelby v Holder and now all those states get the changes they want to make because it’s not like Section 5 went away, but the math section of the VRA, the one that decided which states or counties had done that prior disenfranchisement and still needed to ask permission, was gone. It was so sneaky!
So then the states got to make the changes they wanted to make.
You understand? If the changes didn’t disenfranchise voters before, they could have done it. They asked! They didn’t get permission before, because those changes disenfranchised voters. I talk about Texas a lot because that’s my villain origin story, but let’s look at Kansas.
The same year Texas implemented their voter ID law (Greg Abbott literally, within hours of that Shelby v Holder ruling, announced they were putting their voter ID law into action), Kansas implemented their own. A study out of Kansas showed that between 8-14% of eligible voters were prevented from registering because of the voter ID law.
And out of the 250,000 people that did end up registering or trying to register vote – a Kansas official says 80 were noncitizens. Although that number is contested, with court documents putting it at 30. But even if it were 80, that’s still just .032%.
Less than 1%.
And regardless, they didn’t get to register, because you have to attest to your citizenship when you register to vote.
But that’s just one element of the SAVE Act.
It would have also prevented mail ballots from being counted if they arrived after Election Day, even if they were postmarked by then, and then punished the states that didn’t comply by withholding certain federal money.
Meaning that people who vote by mail don’t get the full voting period to cast their ballot. You have a shorter period of time because you have to make sure it’s at the election’s office in time.
You’re not in charge of the mail! That’s not in your hands at all!
But here’s the thing – each state makes its election laws.
That’s why in Texas, your handgun license is an acceptable ID but not your student ID, in California, you don’t need to show your ID unless your ballot is a provisional ballot, and in North Dakota, they don’t even do voter registration.
Wait – no voter registration in North Dakota?
Certainly, if Republicans are so worried about fraud by voters, they’ve gotta be freaking out about that one there!
North Dakota is solidly red. SOLIDLY. North Dakota is so red that I’m pretty I’m not allowed to go there (just kidding – I’m a dang delight. They’d adore me.).
Their own Secretary of State said that, prior to 2006, there were zero cases of fraud by voters referred to his office for prosecution in the 14 years he was in office.
And since then?
Two that we know of. One was a woman who voted in Minnesota and North Dakota in 2016 after mistakenly believing one of the ballots would be voided, and the other was a man, also in 2016, who voted in two different counties, one in person and one by absentee ballot (though it’s contested as to whether he understood he was actually voting absentee when he did it.)
No voter registration!! It’s almost like… this fraud by voters thing isn’t really a thing?
What is a thing?
Trump has been trying to prove that elections, literally he’ll take any election at this point, were stolen from him since 2016. He’s had his day in court, as he should be allowed. But court after court has dismissed the case because he can’t prove actual evidence.
After losing in 2020, he first tried insurrection via asking states to overturn the election results. When they (shockingly, now that I think about it) said no, he asked his followers.
On January 6th, 2021, he stood out there, knowing, he had been warned, knowing this crowd contained people that were angry, dangerous, and looking for a fight. And he pointed them to the Capitol and told them: "you will never take back our country with weakness.”
He told them: “We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.”
And after they were in the Capitol for four hours and 17 minutes, Trump finally told them he loved them and that it was time to go home in peace. He watched it all. Officers being attacked. His vice president being attacked. Members of congress being hunted.
Four hours and 17 minutes.
And on day one of his second term, he pardoned all of them.
And it’s only because a federal judge has currently said no, that those insurrectionists aren’t getting part of a $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded payout.
It’s not that Trump is trying to protect voters or elections.
Trump is an insurrectionist.
And now he’s trying to mess with our elections again, this time by asking states to redraw their maps to give Republicans an advantage in the House. And they’re doing it.
But poll after poll shows that’s not going to be enough to prevent a blue wave. And so now he’s trying something else – what if they can get fewer people voting.
That’s all this is.
I know I threw a lot of numbers at you, but if you only take one thing from this episode… actually if you only take one thing from this episode I’ve really messed up but still, if you only take one thing from this episode, let it be this…
They wouldn’t be doing any of this… the redistricting, and Trump literally holding a bipartisan housing bill hostage, and the lawsuits, the bills… none of it… if Trump and his little buddies weren’t terrified, absolutely terrified, of your vote.
Of what it means when you cast your ballot this November. (And every other time after that.)
435 House seats. 33 Senate seats.
We’re coming for every. Single. One of them.
Medical Mystery
Okay just one last thing and I don’t even know what this is but it’s weird…
STAT News (you don’t know STAT News? I read them all the time. Don’t worry about STAT News. I gotcha covered on all the news you need.) reached out to the drug company Eli Lilly in April to ask who was the one person, in the entire country, that has been allowed access to a drug called retatrutide (reh-TAT-troo-tide).
There’s just one person in the whole country that’s been granted this access and it was through their “compassionate access” program, which allows patients to have access to experimental treatments if they have immediately life-threatening medical issues.
Obviously there are HIPPA laws, but all we know about the person taking the weight loss drug is that the patient was a 79 year old with refractory obesity, obstructive sleep apnea, and pulmonary hypertension.
The request came in in April, when Trump was 79.
The fact that he falls asleep easily during the day would suggest sleep apnea. Plus (and again, I can’t stress this enough – two seasons of Hart of Dixie and one of Grey’s Anatomy. I am basically a doctor), he has a thick neck, which increases the risks of sleep apnea.
As far as pulmonary hypertension, early signs are fatigue and decreased stamina. Then, as it progresses, you get (among other things) shortness of breath and DUN DUN DUN (oh wait, sorry, I didn’t say the thing yet) …swollen ankles and legs DUN DUN DUN
Now, I’m not saying he’s the patient.
But I am saying that every doctor’s note we get from Trump’s annual physical (which he now gets every 15 minutes) is “the boy’s fit as a fiddle! Handsome too! And funny, we were just laughing and laughing while we were in there. And when I asked him to draw a clock? He almost did it right!”
So we can’t trust those.
A White House spokesperson was asked if Trump is the patient in question and at first apparently didn’t say no. But then later, on twitter, the spokesperson said yes.
And look, whatever. I don’t care if he’s taking the medicine. I do think we deserve to know if the president has an immediately life-threatening medical issue (in the same way we deserve to know if Mitch McConnell is currently even conscious or not).
But more than that… whoever this person is, why are they more deserving of this life-saving medicine than your loved ones? My loved ones? How often is this happening? What else is Trump on that no one else has access to?
Lots of questions.
Zero answers.
Just how we like it.
Venezuela
-via NBC News
Right as I went to hit record, double earthquakes rocked Venezuela. A 7.1 and a 7.5. Deaths have been reported. This is breaking news literally as I speak. I’m going to cover this tomorrow so I can give it the space it deserves, but in the meantime obviously I’m just thinking about everyone in Venezuela and hoping that help can get there as fast as possible.
And that’s it. That’s the news.
This episode is so long! I guess it was a special episode after all! I’m telling you… you mention voting and I’m not kidding, good luck to you if you want me to stop talking about anything else.
This is not a joke, I was at my parents’ house the other day and we were talking about the Constitution (as one does) and I got into a whole thing about the Reconstruction Amendments. I was so upset that I was SWEATING… we were on the same side!! No one was arguing and I still was like… AND ANOTHER THING.
Yikes.
I’m proud of… my sweatpants. Super hard co-worker.
But more than… my sweatpants? No, that’s weird. Why did you make it weird?
It’s also Bourdain Day. As in Anthony Bourdain Day. And because you also have the best spirit and are also, frankly, a worldwide inspiration for generations past, present, and future… I’m proud of you.