Poison Pills & Useless Bills

Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕

About a month ago, we outlined how Republicans could shut down the government in the next few months, lawmaking that was legislatively distinct from the debt ceiling negotiation but intrinsically connected to it because of some provisions the final debt deal contained to guide the appropriations process.

Now, we’re in the thick of appropriations season. And House Republicans are already following the pathways to shutdown.

As the House appropriations committees have started writing their funding bills, Republicans have attached all manner of poison riders they know Democrats could never vote for: cutting off abortion access, slicing transition-related health care out of coverage plans, attacking programs geared towards the LGBTQ community and obliterating Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs.

They’ve introduced some of these provisions, sources told me, without any warning to their Democratic counterparts, springing them on the ranking members in the middle of markup hearings. That’s eroding what little bipartisan cooperation still exists on the Hill, particularly within the less scrutinized subcommittees.

It also creates a legislative dead end. While Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) caters to his right flank — in a defensive crouch after they punished him for days for cooperating with the White House on the debt limit bill — its members are crafting bills that have no hope of passage in the Democratic-majority Senate. That effectively boxes them out of the process, while Republicans and Democrats collaborate in the upper chamber to write realistic legislation.

“With a four-vote majority, it would not surprise me if they continue to use the strategy they used with the debt limit ceiling,” a senior Democratic aide told me. In other words: a bill that passes on the backs of a bipartisan coalition in the Senate, plus House Democrats and whatever House Republicans are left that are interested in governing. The far-right House flank, again, would have obstruction-ed and culture war-ed itself into irrelevance.

But if enough House Republicans take their partisan obstinance to the extreme, they could withhold their votes — and force a government shutdown as soon as October. 
 

More on other news below. Let’s dig in. 

— Kate Riga

Caught In Limbo

Trump claimed on Tuesday that he received a target letter from Jack Smith, inviting him to appear before a grand jury in a signal that he’s likely to be indicted in the January 6 investigation. It’s a long-awaited stab at accountability from the DOJ. But for now, we’re in a bizarre waiting period.

Trump’s announcement, predictably and perhaps intentionally, set off a wave of anticipation for when the grand jury will likely vote on his indictment and for when the charges themselves will be released. There’s a lot to salivate over: though the main crimes around Trump’s effort to reverse his loss in 2020 took place in public, the work of the House January 6 Committee last year demonstrated that there’s still a lot we don’t know. The new indictment may reveal elements of Trump’s scheme which we haven’t yet glimpsed.

More than that, the indictment symbolizes something bigger: Trump finally being held to account for the one example of corruption and self-dealing that literally nobody else in American history has attempted, refusing to recognize his loss in a national election and using the tools of the government to nullify its result. We don’t know when, if, or how the grand jury will vote, and when the charges will eventually be released. But we’re waiting and watching.

— Josh Kovensky

Inside The Showdown Between A Florida Sheriff And Neo-Nazi ‘Scumbags’ 

After being essentially chased out of Northern California, neo-Nazi Jon Minadeo II and members of his so-called “Goyim Defense League” set up shop in Florida hoping to find more friendly turf. Instead, they found Sheriff Mike Chitwood, a former Philly cop who is now waging what he calls a “war on anti-Semitism.”

Chitwood is a second-generation cop whose father became one of the most decorated, famous, and controversial officers in the City of Brotherly Love for his hard-nosed style and habit of hurling insults at criminals.The younger Chitwood has used a similar approach to go after his local neo-Nazis, complete with merch featuring cartoons of the sheriff stuffing extremist “scumbags” into a toilet.

I talked with Chitwood about how he ended up on the front lines of the fight against America’s rising tide of far-right hate. Along with exploring how a distinctly old school cop found himself engaged against a decidedly new school band of extremely online Nazis, we talked about how he has allied with local minority communities in his fight and what he’s doing to look out for extremists on his own force. Chitwood also discussed how he believes federal agencies need to do more to confront hate groups. 

— Hunter Walker

“Trusting the experts is not a function of science. It’s not a function of democracy. It’s a function of religion and totalitarianism and it does not make for a healthier population.”

That’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the infamous anti-vaxxer and troll 2024 presidential candidate — during a Thursday congressional hearing on supposed internet censorship. The hearing was… well as chaotic and crazed as the rest of the hearings that have been launched out of the House Republicans’ “Weaponization” subcommittee in the past couple of months.  

But when it comes to this quote… all I would like to say about it is: Do you even science bro?

Anyone who knows anything about science — and that includes attending your fifth grade classes — knows that science does not require blind faith and obedience towards anyone. In fact, the scientific method — which I’m fairly certain every student learns about — makes you ask a question, do background research, create a hypothesis, experiment and gather data, analyze the data and draw conclusions. And to even be close enough to being called an expert you need to repeat that cycle thousands of times — in a much more sophisticated way than you did in your middle school science lab — over years of work which is often critiqued or overseen by other experts.

Now, doing this right does require proper grounding. Which not all of our fellow Americans, including Kennedy, seem to have. You might like to do your own research by Googling “Is vaccine bad?” but I’ll take my chances with those who have years of higher education, create meticulous research, perform data analysis, and subject their work to peer reviews.

I rest my case. 

— Emine Yücel