Today’s Lineup

Here are some of the topics that have caught my attention as I’ve been browsing the internet: 

Leonard Leo begins revealing how he will spend the largest-known political advocacy donation in U.S. history, President Biden wrongly capitulates to conservative pressure over the D.C. crime reform bill, a new map allows us to see just how difficult it is for many people to access reproductive health services, why Fox News viewers don’t care about the lies, a sunset on Mars, scammers are now using AI voice imitation technology, the impact of local news deserts, and a famous doctor was in the house. 

Leading Off 

Despite never holding elected office, Leonard Leo has been one of our country’s most influential political activists over the past 20 years. As a long-time leader of the Federalist Society, Leo helped to create an effective network of conservative lawyers and judges. 

Leo’s great achievement, though, is the current radical conservative supermajority on the United States Supreme Court. Greg Olear explains how in his Prevail Substack newsletter: 

In the 50 years since Roe v. Wade, many individuals played a role in the fascistic assault on safe, legal abortion—not least the odious Supreme Court Justices who ignored popular opinion, medical science, and stare decisis in issuing the abominable Dobbs decision.

But if we pull back a little, we see that the reversal of Roe is largely the work of a single man. His name is Leonard Leo. He is a staunch—and, in my view, a radical—Catholic. He is the master of puppets behind the Federalist Society, the Judicial Crisis Network, Becket, the 85 Fund, and other dark money groups. As Trump’s “judge whisperer,” he is responsible for the installation of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, where they joined his radical Catholic chums Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, and John Roberts.

And, as Olear explains later in his post, Leo has also made out quite well financially while doing this unpaid advisory work for Trump. Interesting how often that happens. 

Leo now has even grander ambitions to remake the country, and thanks to the largest known political advocacy donation in U.S. history—worth an estimated $1.6 billion—he has the resources to try to build on his judicial success. ProPublica’s Andy Kroll and Andrea Bernstein joined together with Documented’s Nick Surgey to report on how Leo has started to spend that money:

“Now, Leo declared in a slick but private video to potential donors, he planned to “crush liberal dominance” across American life. The country was plagued by “woke-ism” in corporations and education, “one-sided journalism” and “entertainment that’s really corrupting our youth,” said Leo amid snippets of cheery music and shots of sunsets and American flags.

Sitting tucked into a couch, with wire-rimmed glasses and hair gone to gray, Leo conveyed his inspiration and intentions: “I just said to myself, ‘Well, if this can work for law, why can’t it work for lots of other areas of American culture and American life where things are really messed up right now?’”

Leo revealed his latest battle plan in the previously unreported video for the Teneo Network, a little-known group he called “a tremendously important resource for the future of our country.”

Teneo is building what Leo called in the video “networks of conservatives that can roll back” liberal influence in Wall Street and Silicon Valley, among authors and academics, with pro athletes and Hollywood producers. A Federalist Society for everything.”

Liberals ignored the Federalist Society until it was too late. Obama’s first Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, infamously told a group of activists he didn’t “give a fuck about judicial appointments.” 

Yeah, that didn’t work out so well. 

Hopefully, we won’t make the same mistake with what Leo is now trying to do with Teneo. He has started to explain what he plans to do. Will any liberal donors step up to help fight back?

Things I Find Interesting by Craig Cheslog is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Biden’s Appalling D.C. Law Capitulation

President Biden last week announced that he had changed his mind and would now sign legislation pushed by Republicans to overturn the District of Columbia’s attempt to update its criminal codes. 

So much for D.C. home rule!

Conservative activists have been lying about what the bill would do. But rather than fight back, Biden capitulated and handed the Republicans a win. Biden also hurt Democratic members of the House because he announced his change of heart after they had already voted to support D.C.’s reform effort. Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern outlines what was at stake: 

“In a single tweet, the president reversed more than two years of staunch support for home rule—abandoning his principles the moment they became politically inexpedient. Biden announced that he would sign legislation nullifying the modernization of D.C.’s criminal code. His action will, perversely, make the District less safe, preserving an outdated 122-year-old criminal code whose ambiguities actually make it harder for prosecutors to charge violent crimes.

Just as importantly, Biden’s decision will empower congressional Republicans to continue overriding D.C.’s democratically enacted legislation, including progressive laws expanding the rights of immigrants, abortion providers, LGBTQ people, and other vulnerable groups. The president has, in effect, declared open season on the District’s democracy.”

In a January 2023 Slate article, Stern went into even more detail to explain the Republican lies about this effort to update D.C.’s legal code:

“The legislation that D.C. passed in January is not a traditional reform bill, but the result of a 16-year process to overhaul a badly outdated, confusing, and often arbitrary criminal code. The revision’s goal was to modernize the law by defining elements of each crime, eliminating overlap between offenses, establishing proportionate penalties, and removing archaic or unconstitutional provisions. Every single change is justified in meticulous reports that span thousands of pages. Each one was crafted with extensive public input and support from both D.C. and federal prosecutors. Eleventh-hour criticisms of the bill rest on misunderstandings, willful or otherwise, about its purpose and effect. They malign complex, technocratic updates as radical concessions to criminals. In many cases, criticisms rest on sheer legal illiteracy about how criminal sentencing actually works.

The D.C. bill is not a liberal wishlist of soft-on-crime policies. It is an exhaustive and entirely mainstream blueprint for a more coherent and consistent legal system. “

This effort was worth supporting, even beyond the need to support D.C. home rule as part of efforts to get D.C. statehood.

And you know what? Republicans are still going to lie about crime issues in the upcoming election. Biden’s reversal just made that easier. 

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Abortion, Every Day

Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day recaps the news from across the country regarding reproductive freedom and sexual and reproductive health care. 

I wanted to highlight a new map that shows how difficult it is for many women and people who can become pregnant to receive reproductive health care services. As Valenti writes: 

“Middlebury College economics professor Caitlin Myers put together an epic analysis of abortion access, mapping things like travel time and distance to clinics from anti-choice states. FiveThirtyEight put together an interactive using her work and it’s an amazing tool that visualizes just how far patients will have to go in order to get care.”

Using this map, you can also see how much worse the situation could become if more states—like Florida or North Carolina—ban abortion access. On average, counties are 87 miles away from their closest facility. But people in Cameron County, Texas, are about 831 miles from the nearest facility. It is hard in the south and parts of the midwest. 

Also, Valenti’s This Week in Abortion features provides a quick recap of last week’s developments. Here you can catch up on stories, including California Governor Gavin Newsom revoking a contract with Walgreens after the pharmacy announced it would not distribute abortion medication in red states, Florida’s new six-week abortion ban proposal, and a Texas man who is suing three friends of his ex-wife because he claims they helped his ex-wife get abortion services. 

Quick Pitches

California

California Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that the state filed a lawsuit against the City of Huntington Beach after its city council passed several ordinances to defy the state’s housing laws. The result of this standoff will have a statewide impact and could determine whether California can force cities to deal with their share of the state’s housing emergency. (Taryn Luna, Hannah Wiley, and Hannah Fry, The Los Angeles Times)

California’s income tax receipts were 25 percent below projections in February because of a combination of larger-than-expected refunds to corporations and smaller-than-expected personal income tax withholding receipts. Legislators will also have a more difficult time knowing just how significant the revenue shortfall is because of the tax filing extensions many Californians have received because of the severe weather that has impacted the state. (Jason Sisney, #CABudget Info)

Will any prominent Republican run for the seat now held by retiring U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein? Even if they found someone, it’s clear that the candidate won’t receive significant financial assistance. (Seema Mehta, Los Angeles Times)

This new profile about former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger makes clear that he is looking for a meaningful final act for his career. In a rational political universe, California Republicans would at least ask him to consider running for a U.S. Senate seat no other leading Republican seems to want. Also, this profile has a great lede. (Mark Leibovich, The Atlantic)

Politics

Why won’t Fox News viewers hold Tucker Carlson and other opinion hosts responsible for the lies exposed in the legal filings from Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit? Because Fox News viewers like being in on the lie. “Carlson has learned something since he sent texts following the 2020 election questioning whether viewers were prepared to believe that Hugo Chavez was manipulating the nation’s election results from the grave: The right-wing viewership of Fox is willing to believe even the most obvious and absurd lies — as long as those falsehoods support their belief that they are on the side of righteousness and their adversaries on the left are evil.” (Aaron Rupar and David Lurie, Public Notice)

Author Jodi Picoult reacts to 20 of her books being banned in Martin County, Florida, by a school board implementing the authoritarian laws pushed by Governor Ron DeSantis (R). “Most of the books pulled do not even have a single kiss in them,” Picoult told us. “They do, however, include gay characters, and issues like racism, disability, abortion rights, gun control, and other topics that might make a kid think differently from their parents.” So the law is working just as DeSantis intends. (Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman, The Washington Post)

The ACLU is currently tracking 409 bills that have been introduced in State Legislatures targeting the rights of LGBTQ people. That number continues to grow. (American Civil Liberties Union)

Science

During its 45th flight, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter captured a sunset over the Jezero crater. We shouldn’t take for granted our ability to get such a photo from a helicopter on another planet. (Josh Dinner, Space.com)

A newly discovered comet could appear as bright as a star in our night sky by the fall of 2024. “Astronomers estimate that the comet orbits the sun only once every 80,660 years. This trip around, the comet will make its closest approach to the sun — known as perihelion — on Sept. 28, 2024, according to EarthSky.” (Stephanie Pappas, Space.com)

Technology

Scammers are using artificial intelligence technology to imitate the voices of loved ones in schemes targeting the elderly. “Card, 73, and her husband, Greg Grace, 75, dashed to their bank in Regina, Saskatchewan, and withdrew 3,000 Canadian dollars ($2,207 in U.S. currency), the daily maximum. They hurried to a second branch for more money. But a bank manager pulled them into his office: Another patron had gotten a similar call and learned the eerily accurate voice had been faked, Card recalled the banker saying. The man on the phone probably wasn’t their grandson.” (Pranshu Verma, The Washington Post)

Meta is building a standalone decentralized social network for sharing text updates leveraging its Instagram user base. I have agreed with those like Casey Newton, who saw an opportunity for Meta here to take advantage of the degradation of Twitter since Elon Musk’s takeover. (Casey Newton, Platformer)

The BBC Monitoring Disinformation Team reviewed 1,100 accounts that Elon Musk restored after taking over the social media company. More than a third of these accounts are spreading disinformation or promoting hate and violence. (BBC Monitoring)

Elon Musk plans to build a town outside of Austin, Texas, that his team is calling Snailbrook. “In meetings with landowners and real-estate agents, Mr. Musk and employees of his companies have described his vision as a sort of Texas utopia along the Colorado River, where his employees could live and work.” Those elections should be fun to watch. (Kirsten Grind, Rebecca Elliott, Ted Mann, and Julie Bykowicz, The Wall Street Journal)

Culture

Nieman Lab explores how Gannett, the largest newspaper chain in the nation, has destroyed newspapers nationwide after its 2019 merger with what was then the second-largest newspaper chain. It has cut more than half of the reporting jobs that previously existed, and circulation has dropped by nearly 67 percent. This result has real consequences in communities. “When the local paper stops reporting, there’s often no one else to take its place. Everyone gets a little less informed about the world around them. And Gannett has increased local ignorance at a scale no other company can match.” (Joshua Benton, Nieman Lab)

That Nieman Lab report notes that Gannett should consider thanking Alden Global Capitol because the latter’s mismanagement of newspapers is better known and has helped to protect Gannett from criticism. Alden, though, is responsible for gutting the newspapers in the East Bay community where I live, creating a local news desert where coverage of what happens in city councils and school boards is now incredibly rare. Craig Lazzeretti, who used to write for the East Bay Times (one of the newspapers owned by an Alden subsidiary), explains how news deserts negatively impact communities. Lazzeretti focuses on a current situation where a lack of local issues coverage has made it difficult for people living in Martinez, California, to find out about the significant health ramifications created by a “spent catalyst” accident that occurred at a local refinery last Thanksgiving. “For many residents, however, this was all news to them, and it serves to underscore what many of us have been saying about the demise of local news in recent years, not just in Martinez but across the country: Residents (due to no fault of their own) are increasingly left in the dark about events that directly impact their quality of life and well-being, and there’s only so much well-meaning government officials can do to get the word out amid this information vacuum…” (Craig Lazzeretti, Martinez News and Views)

“Toblerone, the chocolate bar known for its distinctive triangular peaks, is losing the Matterhorn mountain from its logo after falling afoul of strict marketing rules on “Swissness.” (Rachel Pannett, The Washington Post)

Sports

Here’s the story about the growth of Gatorade and how the four scientists who created it became billionaires after a few twists and turns. (Joe Pompliano, Huddle Up)

FIFA, the global soccer organizing body, appears to be backtracking on its decision to allow Saudi Arabia to sponsor this summer’s Women’s World Cup. Numerous athletes—and representatives of the host nations of Australia and New Zealand—noted that a country known for violating the human rights of its women was not an appropriate sponsor for a women’s championship event. “If this hasn’t already sent a message to Fifa, it should: underestimate the power of these players at your peril. This is not the men’s game, where heads stay lowered beneath the parapet for fear of upsetting the paymasters. In the women’s game, participants feel a greater sense of ownership and harbour an inbuilt protectionism of their sport. Here, it really does feel like the game of the people, for the people. This is their tournament, not the sponsors’.” (Daniel Storey, iNews)

U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team player Tim Ream does a great thing here. 

Fulham captain Tim Ream takes the pitch wearing noise-canceling headphones, as show of solidarity with child he’s accompanying. 🎧🤍

— Men in Blazers (@MenInBlazers) 2:12 PM ∙ Mar 12, 2023

The Closer

When perhaps the most famous doctor in America happens to be in the house. Thankfully, the woman who needed help here was fine and could stay for the rest of the event. 

Last night at the Gridiron Dinner in DC, maybe 10 feet from me and @sarahagruen, a woman collapsed, hit her head on a table, and was laying on the floor without moving.

People gather trying to help, but no one is sure what to do. Someone goes to find a doctor.

They found one.

— Chandler Dean (@chandlerjdean) 4:01 PM ∙ Mar 12, 2023

Post-Game Comments

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