Ron DeSantis Short-Circuits When Asked About Dropping Poll Numbers

Ron DeSantis’s costume is beginning to rip at the seams.

Ever since the Florida governor began leaning more and more into the possibility of his 2024 candidacy, he’s more and more adopted mannerisms of the previous Republican president, Donald Trump: his vocal cadence, his hand motions, and his relishing of not answering questions and attacking the media. DeSantis is under the illusion that he’s projecting strength and not, in fact, looking incredibly pathetic.

But the laborious efforts are beginning to wear on the not yet announced presidential hopeful. During a visit to Japan to meet with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the Florida governor was asked about his thoughts about polling behind Trump.

And his face seemed to be glitching, perhaps while hearing the trigger word of what his blueprint is based off of.

The comments came while the Florida governor has constantly been everywhere but Florida. While Fort Lauderdale was flooding under the weight of the rainiest day in its history, DeSantis was journeying around Ohio to sell his book. Over the past few weeks, he’s visited other states and even Washington, D.C., courting Republicans and gloating about his radical agenda in Florida. It’s gone incredibly poorly, as DeSantis has a meager handful of endorsements, while Trump has already secured the approval of an array of members of Congress and governors—including many members in DeSantis’s own state.

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders unveiled a line of beer koozies celebrating the “real women of politics” with possibly the worst ad known to mankind.

While the video never mentions Anheuser Busch by name, it’s a clear response to a Bud Light ad featuring transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney. The sponsored video—less than a minute long and more than a month old—has sparked a bizarre, bordering on unhealthy obsession among conservatives.

Sanders’s koozies feature photos of her and other right-wing women governors. She promoted the launch on Twitter Sunday by announcing, “Real women don’t have to fake it.”

Frankly, she needs to fire her marketing team.

Women fake stuff all the time, from cheekbones to interest in men’s talking points to … other stuff.

Sanders herself also fakes concern for democracy, children’s welfare, and the truth.

The Supreme Court on Friday halted lower court rulings that would have restricted access to the abortion pill mifepristone, leaving national access to the pill in place—for now.

A Texas federal judge ruled two weeks ago that mifepristone, one of the medications used to induce an abortion, had been improperly approved by the Food and Drug Administration and should be yanked from the U.S. market. The Department of Justice appealed the decision, first to the Fifth Circuit Court, which only partially stayed the ruling. The Justice Department then appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which issued a temporary administrative stay while it considered the appeal.

The high court has now decided to temporarily stay the Texas court’s ruling. The court will issue a final decision on the abortion pill at a later time.

The stay means that nationwide access to mifepristone will remain unchanged as the lawsuit moves through the appeals process. The abortion pill is still available nationwide, without restriction.

Danco Laboratories, which manufactures mifepristone, had argued that a partial stay on the pill would “irreparably injure” its business because it would have to change its drug labels, recertify providers, and get approval for a supplemental new drug application, all processes that could take months. Danco also pointed out that it could not comply with both the Fifth Circuit ruling and the injunction out of Washington.

Medication abortions make up more than half of all abortions performed in the United States. These drugs can be ordered online and delivered via mail, making them a key resource for people who live in states that have cracked down on abortion access since Roe v. Wade was overturned last summer. The Supreme Court’s decision Friday is a temporary relief to nationwide abortion access.

A bigger issue at play, though, is that nonelected judges who do not have medical backgrounds are now making decisions about medication. As Rachel Rebouché, the dean of Temple University’s law school, previously told The New Republic, “The question for appellate courts is not just about abortion but about deference to a federal agency’s expertise.”

The Texas case “undermined” the FDA’s authority, she said. “To take seriously that it ignored risks, risks unsupported by any credible evidence, suggests questions as to what federal courts might decide about other federal agencies’ decisions.”

It has been 24 hours since Twitter purged all non-paid blue verification checkmarks, and not even Fox News is choosing to pay to get it back.

This comes just a few days after Twitter owner Elon Musk gave Fox an exclusive and absolutely bananas interview.

The only people who still have blue checks—once a coveted symbol of influence and credibility—are those who pay $8 a month for Twitter Blue (and a few celebrities Musk is trolling because they were mean to him once).

Only a handful of people who weren’t already subscribed to Twitter Blue have started paying for it since the purge.

Amid all the noise of the “liberal city infested with crime” narrative this week, you might have missed a report revealing the truth: New York City is one of the safest major cities in America, and may only be getting safer.

According to the NYPD’s weekly statistics report, shootings are down 23.1 percent relative to this point last year, while murders are down 6.6 percent. Hate crimes, a special concern over the past few years amid rising hate toward an array of marginalized groups, are down 40.6 percent.

Meanwhile, New York City recorded the third-lowest number of murders per capita among the 20 largest cities in 2022.

One of Republicans’ primary hobbies is criticizing cities (read: places with public transportation and lots of not-white people and queer people) as bastions of crime. The hobby has become all the more the rage as conservatives have tried to discredit Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg following his office’s indictment of twice-impeached former President Donald Trump.

The Republican pastime has fallen short of the facts (shocker) and has become more than just dumb posts online, but “official” House business too. On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee held a “field hearing” in Manhattan, attempting to deride New York as a center of crime. An expert witness pointed out that the city is in fact very safe, especially relative to some of the places that the assailing Republicans themselves hailed from.

There arguably is indeed a crime wave sweeping the nation. Just over the past month, America has been host to a wave of mass shootings, and an array of appalling instances of people being shot for accidentally pulling up to the wrong driveway, ringing the wrong doorbell, or trying to open the wrong car door. This record pace of shootings is sparked by inordinately easy access to guns and reactionary social distrust: issues instigated by Republicans and issues they seem to have no concern to actually rein in.