Bluesky

The death toll from the flooding in Texas has climbed to at least 120 people as of this writing. That number includes at least 36 children who had been campers at Camp Mystic, in Kerr County, Texas, which we now know was built on a dangerous flood plain. We also know that local officials were well aware of the dangers, and did nothing. Reports indicate that an early-warning system for floods would have cost Kerr County around $1 million—and when it didn’t get a grant for that money, the effort stalled. Meanwhile, the Texas Legislature didn’t pass a bill this spring that would have supported grants for local disaster-warning systems.

Texas has spent $11 billion on “border security” since 2021 as part of “Operation Lonestar” (I’ve written about that unconstitutional stupidity here). But it wouldn’t direct funds to the town to help keep children safe.

If Kerr County had asked for $1,000,000 to booby-trap the river with alligators and other sadistic death traps to drown immigrants who tried to swim across it, Governor Greg Abbott would have found the money. But keeping children safe from preventable disasters is not Abbott’s priority.

Or America’s.

The Bad and The Ugly

• Crisis actor and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has criticized the “slow” response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to the flooding. She’s using the disaster to renew her calls to eliminate the agency. But that slow response is a direct result of a FEMA policy instituted by Noem herself. Any FEMA contract costing over $100,000 now requires Noem’s personal, written approval. If FEMA is slow, it’s because Noem is too busy picking out her next dog for target practice to do her actual job.
• Speaking of things that are a direct threat to children that this country does nothing to stop, a new report tells us that the leading source of stolen guns is… parked cars. These guns then go on to be used disproportionately in crimes. So not only is the proverbial “good guy with a gun” actually useless in preventing crime; it turns out that the good guy probably left his gun in his car, which was then stolen by the bad guy.
• The trial over Trump’s attacks on foreign students at Harvard got underway this week. I will be ignoring this for a while. Eventually there will be a verdict, which Trump will lose; then that verdict will be appealed, and the Supreme Court will find some way to make Trump win. I’ll pay attention again then.
• I’m not being flip about what’s going to happen in the Harvard trial. This is what happens all the time now. A new report shows that, in May and June, Trump lost in district court 94.3 percent of the time. But when cases went to the Supreme Court in this past term, Trump won 93.7 percent of the time.
• Speaking of this year’s Supreme Court term, Adam Feldman has written up a year-end statistical analysis of all the court’s cases on Empirical SCOTUS. He finds that what’s emerged is a “structural majority” where the six Republicans consistently outvote the three liberals on critical partisan issues, even though this year the liberals happened to win more than usual. There’s no more “swing” vote on the bench. I didn’t need to pull out my calculator to tell you that, but if you like numbers, Adam’s can be compelling.

Inspired Takes

• David Dickson and Mark Hertsgaard explain in The Nation that the children in Texas did not have to die.
• Paramount proves yet again that corporate profits are more important for media conglomerates than democracy. In The Nation, Victor Pickard explains that we need to wean our media off corporate ownership.

Worst Argument of the Week

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis is retiring. Apparently, that means now, and only now, he’s able to locate a spine. Tillis voted against Trump’s spending bill. In a statement announcing his retirement, he said, “I look forward to having the pure freedom to call the balls and strikes as I see fit and representing the great people of North Carolina to the best of my ability.”

I freaking hate this. Tillis has been a senator since 2015. He’s had the “pure freedom” to “call balls and strikes” this whole damn time. Indeed, it’s been his job to represent the people of North Carolina “to the best of [his] ability” ever since he was elected. The idea that he can only fully perform this job when he has one foot out of the door is infuriating.

We accept this warped logic all the time, especially from Republicans. Somehow, we’ve absorbed the idea that a US senator, elected to a gigantic six-year term (which is the longest term of office for any elected official in the country), is somehow “not free” to do what they believe to be right as long as they wish to seek reelection. Only upon announcing retirement do we even dare to hope that Republicans might place themselves in the service of the people of this country, instead of Donald Trump.

Even then, however, that hope is often dashed anyway. Tillis will have many opportunities to frustrate the Trump administration when it comes to judicial appointments, for instance. He sits on the judiciary committee, and Trump’s nominees are universally awful. But will he?

Court Accountability’s Alex Aronson predicts that Tillis might turn out to be like former Nevada senator Jeff Flake: a person who talks a good game but votes for Trump’s nominees whenever the chips are down. People might remember that Flake famously called for an investigation into attempted rape charges against Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, after a constituent yelled at him in an elevator and changed his mind on the issue. But people should never forget that Flake did, eventually, vote to confirm Kavanaugh, even though no serious investigation ever took place.

I expect Tillis will take the same route. He will achieve a Susan Collins level of “concern” and then go right back to achieving a Susan Collins level of complicity.

A senator who feels free to “vote their conscience” only when they no longer want to be in politics shouldn’t have gotten into politics in the first place.

What I Wrote

Nothing from me this week digitally, as I’ve been working on a print piece. Also, I’m recovering from the end of the Supreme Court term. I’ve been playing a lot of No Man’s Sky with my children.

In News Unrelated to the Current Chaos

There’s a new Superman movie out. Superman is not my favorite comic book hero: He’s too powerful, which means that most of the stories about him have to invent dumb ways to make him less powerful to add tension, drama, and stakes. But, whatever, I’ll probably watch it.

Apparently, when I go see it, I will not have to deal with any Republicans in the theater. The white wing has turned on the Man of Steel because of a comment made by the movie’s director, James Gunn.

Gunn said: “Superman is the story of America. An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”

Can you figure out how that statement angered bigots? For those who do not speak Republican, the problem is that Gunn called Supes an “immigrant”—and “immigrants” are bad, according to Republicans.

The white-wing outrage machine went into overdrive, with various white culture warriors vowing to boycott the movie. Former Superman TV actor and notorious MAGA pinhead Dean Cain said that the new movie is “too woke.” Still, my favorite hysterics come from Stephen L. Miller (the white-wing journalist Miller, not the Trump deputy chief of ghoulishness Miller). He said, “Superman isn’t an immigrant. He is an orphan. The fact that they can spend $300 million on a film and can’t get this very basic concept right is something.”

The fact that Stephen Miller gets paid to publish words for a living is really something.

Superman is, of course, an immigrant—he’s not from America, or even Sol 3 (Earth), yet he lives here—and he’s an orphan. As usual, Republicans have trouble with concepts that require multiple things to be true at the same time. He’s also an “illegal” immigrant, according to MAGA logic, because he was sent here without proper documentation, and never went back to Krypton to “wait in line” behind all the other space aliens who came to Earth “the right way.” And he’s a “refugee.” His home planet was literally destroyed, and he’s here seeking asylum in the vastness of space.

Still, notwithstanding Miller’s demonstrable ignorance of Kal-El’s backstory—or, for that matter, Kal-El’s creators’ backstory—I welcome his newfound care and respect for orphans. I can only assume that Miller will now welcome, with open arms, all of the “not immigrants” from Gaza who have been orphaned by Israel’s bombing. Welcome to the progressive wing, Steve.

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