This is one of those rare weeks where virtually everyone here knows what the NNR is about to say. It’s a nice unifying moment of surreality–we might not always know what is going on, but by God, we all know that Donald Trump is now twice as indicted.
Standard standing reminders still apply: I may be well into my seventh year of journalism, but I summarize news within my areas of expertise. NNR summaries often contain some detailed analysis that’s outside my expertise–I’m a lawyer, not an arraignment!–but all offroad adventures are marked with an asterisk. And, of course, for the things that are within my lane, I’m offering context that shouldn’t be considered legal advice. Okay, I think that’s about it for the disclaimers. Onward to the news!
Cleanup in Aisle 45:
This was a heck of a week for original flavor Election Rejection. Here’s what has happened:
- 45 Reasons to Indict (cont). As one might expect when last week’s news involved a literal tape of Trump announcing that he kept classified documents, Trump was indeed federally indicted on Friday in Florida. His first court appearance is tomorrow, and the man has already wasted no time in letting everybody know he’s definitely still running for President even if he has to rule from a jail cell. Unusually, his unsealed indictment document is available online and is quite a read, if you have the time to peruse it–but if you just want the Cliffs Notes version, it’s thirty-seven counts of That Dude Sure Stole Classified Docs On Purpose. Memewhile, photos of classified documents in the chandelier-encrusted toilet at Mar-A-Lago are already everywhere.
The main news story on the Biden Rebuilding front this week is the debt ceiling dealing. Here’s what I have for you:
- Debt Ceiling Dealing (cont). We’re continuing to see fallout from the debt ceiling deal, which appears to be the biggest news in the Biden administration for another week. To be fair to Biden though, the majority of news on this actually comes out of the House, where the GOP has been eating itself for the past week. More specifically, the far-right dregs of the party have been sticking it to McCarthy over anything and everything, which ultimately saw the House dismissing itself early on Wednesday evening. To be fair, this is almost certainly also exacerbated by the overstuffed clown car of 2024 GOP presidential hopefuls, which just keeps gaining occupants and increasing splintering of the party as the weeks go on.
Your New Normal:
- LGBTQIA+ Roundup. With one exception we’ll discuss below, this was a bleak week for LGBTQIA+ news. In Louisiana and Missouri, new laws were passed banning access to gender-affirming care for minors. Relatedly, the Southern Poverty Law Center documented Moms for Liberty and other parental hate groups in its annual retrospective, which was released this week. Similarly, the Human Rights Campaign this week declared a national state of emergency for American LGBTQIA+ people for the first time in its 43-year history. The HRC also released a Guidebook for Action that offers information about which places are still safe to travel for LGBTQIA+ people. It also offers guidance for how to move out of dangerous places. Needless to say, though I live in a place that is considered among the safest in the country for my household, it is deeply disheartening to review these materials–and even more disheartening to know how necessary they are for millions of Americans.
The Bad:
- Hard to Breathe AQI. Speaking of millions of Americans, pretty much the whole Eastern seaboard suffered low air quality this week, as Canadian wildfires spread high volumes of smoke further south. Air quality was particularly poor in places like Philadelphia and New York City, where geographic location and ambient industry combined to create extreme conditions. (Thankfully, both New York and Philly, along with the rest of the Eastern seaboard, appear to be more-or-less back to normal by the time that I type this.)
The Good:
- Recent Judicial Resilience. We have some more interesting court cases this week, even beyond the indictmas discussed above. In true stopped clock fashion, SCOTUS stunned everybody this week by actually deciding Alabama discriminated against Black voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act. Less bombastically but still interestingly, at least if you’re me, they also held that people can sue nursing homes even when they’re Medicaid funded. Meanwhile, in Florida, a federal judge blocked the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, saying that the state has no rational basis for limiting access to health care and noting that “gender identity is real” in his opinion.
So that’s what I have for you this week, and there will be more where that came from. For making it through, you deserve this master of disguise and a more functional government. I’ll be back next week with more restructured and improved news, and I hope you will be back as well–but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me recipes you like on hot days!
National News Roundup 