This is a limited-time-only preview of TNR’s newsletter Fighting Words.

Sign up to continue receiving it every Friday.

This is Fighting Words, a weekly newsletter about what got me steamed this week. Let’s dive in.

Item One: Kevin McCarthy and technology

Remember when then Senator George Allen of Virginia was caught on camera saying the word “Macaca” with reference to a young campaign aide to his Democratic opponent? The young man was of Indian ancestry, and it was his job to follow the Republican senator around and film what he said just in case he said something like, well, Macaca. It went viral, arguably cost Allen the election, and was the first time, in my memory, that the general political culture became aware that you have to be careful what you say all the time these days.

That was 2006; 22 years later, House Minority Speaker Kevin McCarthy has just done a George Allen—albeit one having nothing to do with race or bigotry—that might cost him his putative speakership. It’s delicious to watch, but it’s also revealing of McCarthy’s total lack of character.

Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns of The New York Times reported on Thursday, from an excerpt of their own upcoming book, This Will Not Pass, that Senator Mitch McConnell and, in particular, Kevin McCarthy were at first apoplectic after January 6, and the reporters add several new interesting details to what is known, such as that McCarthy vowed to other Republicans that he would push Donald Trump to resign immediately. McCarthy and McConnell quickly backtracked, of course, when they saw that their GOP colleagues wouldn’t support them.

After the story broke Thursday, McCarthy’s camp denied up and down that he had ever said any such thing about Dear Leader. This despite the fact that the article included a sentence that said (italics mine): “Mr. McCarthy went so far as to say he would push Mr. Trump to resign immediately: ‘I’ve had it with this guy,’ he told a group of Republican leaders, according to an audio recording of the conversation obtained by The New York Times.”

Then, Thursday night, Martin and Burns went on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show and played their recording of McCarthy talking with Liz Cheney, whom he had not yet booted from House leadership and in whom he was at the time confiding. (Cheney’s office denied that she recorded the conversation or leaked it.) And the recordings of course verified everything the paper had reported: McCarthy told Cheney that he planned to call Trump to say, “It would be my recommendation that you should resign.”

Now, McCarthy’s future in the GOP hangs in the balance, dependent entirely on how Trump reacts to the tape. If Trump cuts what’s-his-name loose (Trump called him “Steve” in 2019), that would seem to be curtains for McCarthy. Worth watching how McCarthy handles this Friday. Also worth watching the right-wing media. I assume they will collectively take their cues from Trump.

As to the story’s larger point, that McCarthy and McConnell were privately aghast at Trump but publicly craven: Not to take away from the Times’ dogged reporting, but in a sense none of this is surprising. Over two decades, they’d created a monster, or stood by and allowed it to be created and passively went along. The monster was (and is) a hard-right base that ever since Newt Gingrich has just been driven further and further to the right by donors with a narrow, radical agenda and a disinformation media spreading fake news and caricaturing liberals in various ways. The conservative movement spent two decades awakening the authoritarian impulse in millions of Americans. Then along came a candidate who took that awakened impulse and injected it with the political equivalent of crystal meth. And conservatives layed down.

That was the crucial moment. As I wrote more than once at The Daily Beast, where I worked at the time, 2016 was the time to arrest all this, but the party had (a) a very weak leader in Reince Priebus and (b) a bunch of candidates who all hoped that Trump would drop out of the race at some point and they’d gobble up his supporters, so they didn’t want to offend him. And, as Thomas Edsall wrote in the Times on Wednesday, Trumpism rules now: “Whether Trumpism is more powerful with Trump or without him is still an open question, but the MAGA movement shows no real sign of abating.”

Anyway, with respect to McCarthy, this is truly Shakespearean: The scheming and ambitious prince who seeks power only for power’s sake undone by letting the truth slip from his lips that one crucial time. “Though I do hate him as I do hell pains, Yet, for necessity of present life, I must show out a flag and sign of love—which is indeed but sign.” —Iago on Othello, Act I, scene i

Item Two: The hidden problem behind the mask mandate ruling.

A lot of people, including Timothy Noah at NewRepublic.com, have done an excellent job of explaining the overwhelming lame-ossitude of Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle’s ruling striking down the mask mandate. Many others have emphasized that Mizelle was appointed by Trump in the waning days of his tenure and was rated unqualified by the ABA.

Rather less attention has been paid to the plaintiffs. Two Florida women, Sarah Pope and Ana Daza, somehow linked up with a legal nonprofit from Idaho to file the suit. Their complaint argues that Daza used to travel to Colombia every year to see her family but had to stop once Covid hit. “She understands that she will be required to wear a mask on the flight, but strenuously objects to being required to do so,” the complaint says. Likewise, Pope “had to forego joining her family on a trip to Hawaii because the thought of wearing a mask for such a long flight gave her anxiety.” Gee, things like that didn’t happen to anyone else!

All right. Such anxieties can certainly be real. I’m not denying that. But: There was a lot of stuff I’ve wanted to do these last two years. Yet somehow, it never occurred to me to sue the president of the United States (that’s the caption on the case: plaintiffs v. “Joseph R. Biden Jr., in his capacity as president of the United States”). I somehow doubt it occurred to them naturally, either. It seems quite likely that this Idaho group, the Health Freedom Defense Fund, went out client shopping, found some people who were willing to take the audacious step of reversing a federal policy for the sake of their own convenience, and then, once they had clients, they went judge shopping, too, an increasingly prevalent practice by which litigants try to maneuver their complaints toward a friendly judge, knowing that one federal judge has the power to invalidate a nationwide policy in the way that Mizelle did.

Some federal judges blocked Trump initiatives in this way, too, and I probably agreed with those. But the principle is dubious. Two people plus one ideological nonprofit plus one ideological and unqualified judge can undo a federal policy? This is another reason why people lose faith in democracy, when 56 percent of the public supports something but some clever and well-financed minoritarians can get it undone.

Item Three: Sorry, Joe Manchin, but it turns out people didn’t use their child tax credit money to buy drugs.

Remember that story, which broke just before Christmas last year, right after he killed the Build Back Better deal, that had the West Virginia senator privately telling colleagues that he was of the view that parents were going to take their child tax credit money and go spend it on drugs? Well, there’s a study out now, from Washington University in St. Louis, Appalachian State University, and the Brookings Institution, and guess what?

Overall, we find that families used the CTC to cover routine expenses without reducing their employment. Eligible families experienced improved nutrition, decreased reliance on credit cards and other high-risk financial services, and also made long term educational investments for both parents and children. We find that these changes were especially promising for Black, Hispanic, and other minority families, along with low- and moderate-income families, suggesting that the expanded CTC may be an important tool for addressing both racial financial inequality and a widening income gap in the United States.

Well, duh. Read the full report. It’s 50 pages, but you can skip around to the salient bits. People used the money for three main purposes: They spent it, they saved it, they paid off debt with it. Spending came in first of course, in the following categories: routine expenses (70 percent), essential items (58 percent), and more food (56 percent) were the big three. Children’s activities and expenses, health expenses, and improving their homes also ranked in there. Heroin and Oxycontin are nowhere to be found.

Inevitably, some parents likely did spend the money on drugs, because some percentage of the population faces addiction issues. But clearly, the vast majority of people put this money to good use, and Manchin—an extremely rich man, by the way—is basing his perception on some anecdotal evidence from back home that I have no reason to doubt is true but that is hardly representative and is in any case a pretty punitive basis on which to make policy. There is, incidentally, a growing body of scholarly research showing that giving people money does not make them not want to work but instead makes them go out and use the resources to help their families or better themselves. But these toxic assumptions are so hardwired into our political discourse, changing them seems … well, it’d be a start if Democrats made these arguments.

Update your personal preferences for newsletter@newslettercollector.com by clicking here. 

Copyright © 2022 The New Republic, All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is:

The New Republic 1 Union Sq W Fl 6 New York, NY 10003-3303 USA

Do you want to stop receiving all emails from TNR? Unsubscribe from this list. If you stopped getting TNR emails, update your profile to resume receiving them.