The buffet of absurdity

This is the fourth week* of my bathroom renovation project, which is twice as long as I thought it would take given the size of the room. It is tiny. It is basically a closet (now with upgraded tile). There are postage stamps larger than this bathroom. I know construction always runs behind schedule, but I just couldn’t see a way that this would take longer than maybe three weeks. 

Obviously I was wrong, but my assessment wasn’t really that far off. The work isn’t complicated, but the crew members have other projects and conflicting schedules, which is hard to coordinate for a room that only allows for one person at a time to work. So it’s all very inconsistent. Some days, they’re here for hours, and others (like today), nobody shows. This is all fine — the bathroom is ugly, but not urgent — but it does mean that I never know what the morning will bring. Sometimes, it’s peaceful solitude. Other days, it’s a big noisy mess.

*I think? What is time?

The Big Takeaway

I’ll admit that this is a less-than-perfect metaphor for our little newsletter universe. Here, we may not know exactly which kind of fresh hell awaits us in the news each day, but we can pretty reliably assume that it will, in fact, be some type of fresh hell. (A joy to be here, as always.) 

Today’s headlines offer the usual mix of reasons to scream into the void. We’ve got hypocrisy! We’ve got fantasy! And just to keep you on your toes, there’s also a hurricane! It is a buffet of absurdity and we are the only guests, so let’s grab some plates and head down the line. First stop: Oregon, where a Republican congressional candidate who bills himself as tough on crime has an arrest record he never quite got around to disclosing. So his Democratic opponent did it for him, the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported.

Mike Erickson, the GOP nominee in Oregon’s 6th congressional district, has based his entire campaign on being anti-crime. He supports law enforcement! His dad was a police officer! He will vote against legislation that’s “soft on crime.” Erickson backs the blue, but claims his opponent — state Rep. Andrea Salinas, a Democrat — wants to make life harder for cops by loosening punishments for things like theft, reckless driving and drug use.

A lot of Republicans are pro-law enforcement, but most of them haven’t been taken into police custody. Not so for Erickson, who was arrested in 2016 for driving under the influence and faced a felony charge for possession of a prescription opioid — oxycodone — that wasn’t prescribed to him. The drug charge was dropped after Erickson pleaded guilty to the DUI, which was then dismissed after he completed a one-year diversion program.

Salinas highlighted the arrest earlier this month in a 30-second ad, in which an ominous voice describes the charges while a photo of Erickson (looking unamused) hovers over various police-related video clips. “We can’t trust Mike Erickson to keep us safe,” the voice concludes before pivoting to Salinas’ pro-police bonafides.

Erickson described the ad as “misleading,” but admitted he’d “made a mistake” by driving under the influence and by holding the oxycodone for his wife, who couldn’t do it herself because she wasn’t carrying a purse that night. It wasn’t drug possession, it was chivalry!

“I have never used drugs, oxycodone, or even marijuana and have been extremely careful since,” he said. 

Again, Erickson’s entire campaign hinges on the idea that he’s “tough on crime,” which is sort of hard to promote after you’re forced to give a statement about your own arrest. But at least it’s familiar ground for Erickson, whose personal life first conflicted with his political persona during a 2008 congressional campaign that focused on “family values.” In conservative circles, that tends to mean “anti-abortion,” which Erickson couldn’t sell to voters after allegations that he paid for a girlfriend’s abortion — and drove her to the clinic.

Controversy is also nothing new for Greg Medford, a knife-maker and podcast host with a track record for racism who thinks his haters need a good “case of lead poisoning.” Honestly, I feel like that’s already more than I want to know about Greg Medford, and that puts me at odds with a never-ending roster of Arizona Republicans who keep lining up to appear on his show.

It’s no longer surprising when Republicans align themselves with questionable people (it’s 2022, you have to try harder than that to shock me), but it’s especially unsurprising from this specific group of Republicans. Per the Arizona Mirror, the list includes such luminaries as U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs (pressured state officials to overturn the results of the 2020 election and helped get protesters to D.C. on Jan. 6, then refused to testify before the Jan. 6 committee about any of that) and Abe Hamadeh, a GOP nominee for Arizona secretary of state (accepted campaign donation from an election denier, then hired him on as a staffer).

I do not expect a lot from this particular set of conservatives, is the point. If they’re setting the bar, it’s scraping the floor, and yet they still, somehow, fall short. Take Hamadeh, who used his time on Medford’s podcast to espouse baseless racist theories about the detrimental effect of social safety net programs on Black people.

“Remember, they used to wear suits, right?” Hamadeh said on the show. “They were, like, very proud of — and they — you’re so right where it’s become — they want the government — you want to be dependent on the government. And now it’s not just in the African American community, it’s spreading all over.”

The interview was just before a cutlery trade show in Atlanta, where Medford’s knife company distributed free T-shirts with racist Chinese caricatures. Medford refused to apologize for the shirts, which he described as “political commentary” that would only be offensive to “dumb f***ing c***s.”

Three months later, Hamadeh urged supporters to attend a campaign fundraiser hosted by Medford at his company’s headquarters in Phoenix. A website for the Sept. 23 event had described Medford as sharing “Abe’s love of country and concern for her future” — or at least it did before it was deleted. Campaign staffers pulled the page after the Mirror asked the campaign about Hamadeh's association with a guy who uses, and then defends, racist imagery.

Also worth a thousand words: (Alaska) In Fairbanks, Republican Rep. Bart LeBon faces challenges from the right and left … (Kansas) Adkins taps into anxiety of IRS audit surge, criticizes Democrats’ focus on abortion … Political notes: Mizeur’s homecoming, Marylanders at the CBC confab, Moore’s HBCU tour, and the weather report … Purged: Tennessee’s processes for maintaining voter rolls … Brazos County officials could restore Texas A&M early voting location after pushback from students

Reproductive Rights

Condoms distributed at the University of Idaho should only be used to prevent sexually transmitted diseases — not pregnancy. Emergency contraception is off-limits to students — unless they’re raped. University employees, including nurses, can’t dispense birth control to students — except those employed in student health facilities, which are managed by a non-university entity.

These very normal and super easy-to-understand rules were outlined for university employees Friday in a memo drafted by the University of Idaho’s general counsel in an attempt to clarify a 2021 state law that restricts the use of public funds for abortion, per the Idaho Capital Sun. Employees who violate the guidelines could lose their jobs, face felony charges and be barred from ever working for the state again, according to the memo.

Birth control is not abortion, nor is it explicitly mentioned in the law, but the wording of the policy is just vague enough to make officials err on the side of caution. (The law does specifically ban emergency contraception, which is also not abortion.)

“The language of this statute is not a model of clarity,” the memo said. “… Since violation is considered a felony, we are advising a conservative approach here, that the university not provide standard birth control itself.”

I’m just going to say it: This is all a stupid and unnecessary mess. Yes, the law is vague (probably by design!), which means that any real attempt to avoid punishment for violating it will be overly broad. This is the point! This is how the anti-abortion ultra-conservative crowd gets rid of contraceptives without actually having to do anything that explicitly gets rid of contraceptives: They make institutions do it out of fear. It is not surprising! It is the entire point! Abortion-rights activists have been warning about this exact thing for years. YEARS!

“We always knew extremists wouldn’t stop at banning abortion; they’d target birth control next. The University of Idaho’s announcement is the canary in the coal mine, an early sign of the larger, coordinated effort to attack birth control access,” Rebecca Gibron, CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, said in a statement. “These attacks on birth control are not theoretical. They are already happening. And the University of Idaho’s new policy is just the latest example of extremists and draconian laws threatening to strip us of all control over their reproductive health care.” 

The memo was broad (and stupid) enough to attract attention from the White House, which issued a statement Tuesday commenting on the overly broad (and stupid) guidelines. 

“To be clear, nothing under Idaho law justifies the university’s decision to deny students access to contraception. But the situation in Idaho speaks to the unacceptable consequences of extreme abortion bans,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in the statement. “The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in the right to birth control, as well as the right to abortion, without government interference.”

To recap: Idaho’s law does not mention birth control — not even once! — but on the off-chance that it still somehow bans birth control, the University of Idaho is telling employees not to distribute it. If that policy stands, it’ll become a blueprint for anti-abortion extremists across the country to ban contraceptives without involving voters. Just write a vague law, and wait for institutions to do it for you.

It’s not a game but you’re still losing: Indiana abortion providers accepting patients while state ban stays on hold … (Tennessee) Shelby County Commission funds midwife program … As maternal mortality rates rise in Virginia, health officials launch interviews into deaths … Republicans in Congress say they’d keep federal abortion funding in cases of rape, incest

From the Newsrooms

• Commission sets bigger targets for cutting emissions from Oregon fuel suppliers
• Limited-English voters face barriers to casting ballots in Arkansas
• (Ohio) Weaker concealed carry laws linked to increase in gun crimes, study shows
• (Georgia) Warnock pitches plan to extend veteran benefits to surviving Gold Star spouses who remarry
• (New Jersey) Cannabis workplace guidance creates more confusion

One Last Thing

People are making “butter boards,” which are like cheese boards except so much worse because there’s no cheese, just butter. A lot of butter. Topped with some stuff, like vegetables or edible flowers (which are like flowers, except so much worse because they taste like nothing but you still have to eat them and then, because they are expensive, pretend they are great).

I have yet to find a description of a butter board that explains what you do after your board is full of butter. Cry? Come to your senses and eat some cheese? Eat all of the butter and then have the butter sweats for a week? Is butter a carb?

This edition of the Evening Wrap published on September 27, 2022. Subscribe here.