Bullying Republicans on IVF Hypocrisy Works. Look at Michelle Steel.

At least one Republican representative has finally taken a concrete step to demonstrate support for IVF, after widespread backlash for apparently only paying lip service to the issue.

California Representative Michelle Steel revealed Thursday that she has removed herself as a co-sponsor of the Life at Conception Act, which would have established that life begins at conception—and put medical workers at risk of lawsuits if anything happened to an embryo.

“As someone who struggled to get pregnant, this is of personal importance so let me be clear,” Steel said in an op-ed in The Orange County Register. She slammed “Washington insiders” for misrepresenting her stance on life.

“I believe life begins at conception. I am pro-life with exceptions for rape, incest, and the health and life of the mother. Unlike my opponents, I do not support harmful late-term abortions,” she wrote, using a medically inaccurate term.

“Having experienced it firsthand in starting a family, I am an ardent supporter of IVF. I believe nothing is more pro-life than helping families have children and I do not support federal restrictions on IVF. Which is why when a recent court ruling in Alabama raised questions as to whether the Life at Conception Act, if passed, would ban IVF, I removed myself from that bill to not create confusion about my support of IVF.”

The Life at Conception Act was introduced first in 2021 with 166 co-sponsors (all Republicans) and then again in 2023 with 124 (again all Republicans). Many opponents of the bill, which has not advanced since, have warned that, if it became law, the legislation would heavily restrict access to in vitro fertilization. The bill and its sponsors have come under increased scrutiny in light of the Alabama Supreme Court ruling establishing that embryos can be classified as human children.

Since the ruling, which severely restricted IVF in the state, Republicans have rushed to portray themselves as ardent defenders of the medical procedure, particularly those who represent districts that voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Steel, who is up for reelection in November, is one of those vulnerable Republicans.

Steel was quick to post on social media about how much she supports IVF access after the Alabama ruling, and was immediately called out for declining to acknowledge that she was still listed as a co-sponsor of the Life at Conception Act at the time. She did not specify in her op-ed when she removed herself as a co-sponsor.

Still, Steel is one of the first Republicans in Congress to take real action to demonstrate her support for IVF. In contrast, Representative Nancy Mace introduced a nonbinding resolution last week expressing support for IVF and calling on elected officials to protect access to the treatment. The measure is nonbinding and does nothing to actually protect IVF. Five of the resolution’s six co-sponsors represent vulnerable districts.

House Republicans needed a wrist slap ahead of Thursday’s State of the Union address, with House Speaker Mike Johnson privately pleading with party members to keep decorum during Congress’s annual visit by the president.

“He just said, ‘Let’s have the appropriate decorum,’” one GOP lawmaker told The Hill on Wednesday.

“We don’t need to be shrill, you know, we got to avoid that. We need to base things upon policy, upon facts, upon reality of situations. Let them do the gaslighting, let them do the blaming,” the lawmaker added, referring to Democrats. “I think the American people know who is responsible for the many worldwide crises that we have.”

As sad and embarrassing as the classroom reminder is for the nation’s elected officials, it is, unfortunately, necessary.

Last year, Republicans launched a series of outbursts during Biden’s address, essentially becoming props in an unscripted call-and-response with the president. While Biden dissected the topic of immigration, lawmakers cried out “secure the border,” and when he explained the potential for cuts to Social Security and Medicare in talks on the debt limit, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, clad in a fur-trimmed white coat, shouted “liar.”

Still, it’s not completely clear if party members are willing to heed Johnson’s advice and resist the urge to interject.

“Will they do it? Somebody asked me that earlier and I said, ‘Does the Baptist Church got a bus?’ Of course they will because he’s gonna say some very offensive things, he’s gonna attack us,” Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett told The Hill.

“I think we just need to try to be a little classy,” he continued. “Consider where we’re at, let the other side do that. You know, they did it to Trump, and nobody said boo, but when we do it we’re gonna get made an example of it.”

Apparently quoting Hitler isn’t enough for North Carolina’s Republican nominee for governor. Mark Robinson also wants to take away women’s right to vote.

Robinson—a Hitler-quoting, LGBTQ-bashing, feminist-hating, conspiracy-pushing antisemite—won the Tar Heel State’s Republican gubernatorial nomination on Super Tuesday. Since then, a four-year-old video has resurfaced of him making yet more questionable comments.

During an event hosted in March 2020 by the Republican Women of Pitt County, Robinson, who was then running for lieutenant governor, mused on what would make America “great again.” He said someone had asked conservative activist Candace Owens which version of the U.S. was better: one where “Black people were swinging from cheap trees” or one where women weren’t allowed to vote.

“I absolutely want to go back to the America where women couldn’t vote,” Robinson said, apparently thinking that was an entirely normal and reasonable thing to say to a roomful of women.

According to Robinson, before women had the right to vote, “in those days we had people who fought for real social change, and they were called Republicans.”

The room was silent during Robinson’s comments, but apparently it wasn’t too off-putting to voters. Robinson went on to become lieutenant governor, and then he won his 2024 primary with 66 percent of the vote. Mathematically, some of those voters had to be women.

Robinson has long held other outrageous stances. He has said feminism was created by Satan, that feminist women are “fem-nazis,” and that feminist men are “about as MANLY as a pair of lace panties.”

In December 2017, he wrote on Facebook that, “The only thing worse than a woman who doesn’t know her place, is a man who doesn’t know his.”

Robinson has also quoted Hitler on social media. In 2014, he cited the genocidal German dictator’s stance on racial pride. Then, at a Moms for Liberty event in July, he defended his desire to quote Hitler.

In other posts, Robinson has downplayed the Holocaust, compared abortion to murder, and called LGBTQ people “filth” and “maggots.”

On Wednesday, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee pushed forward with its impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, inviting his son Hunter Biden to testify in a public hearing on March 20. It is not yet clear if the younger Biden has agreed to the date.

Last week, Hunter Biden finally gave in to monthslong requests for him to appear before the committee in a closed door hearing. Over the course of six hours, Republicans found themselves targeted more than the president’s son, being roundly accused of ignoring evidence supporting the president’s innocence and pushing a double standard by refusing to examine the financial gains pocketed by President Donald Trump and his family off of their official White House positions, including a $2 billion deal with a Saudi crown prince and Trump ally brokered by the former president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, shortly after he left the White House.

So far, Republicans have failed to provide any witnesses or concrete evidence that show criminal wrongdoing by Joe Biden. The committee’s former star witness, Alexander Smirnov, served as the singular source for claims that Biden had profited millions off of his son’s connection to Burisma. But that angle, which House Republicans had believed was their best bet at nabbing the president, completely blew up in their face last month when Smirnov was indicted by the Department of Justice for lying to the FBI. Since then, Smirnov has reportedly admitted to law enforcement that top Russian intelligence officials were involved in the smear campaign against the sitting president.

Meanwhile, all of the other witnesses that Republicans have called, claiming that their testimony will blow the case wide open, have instead debunked every single accusation against the Biden family.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says it’s OK that he hung out with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein a couple times because he also was friendly with plenty of other questionable characters.

The independent presidential candidate offered the staggering defense during a Wednesday appearance on the podcast Flagrant. Kennedy has previously admitted that he had flown on Epstein’s private plane twice.

“I’m in New York for most of my life. You run into everybody in New York,” Kennedy said. “I mean, I know Harvey Weinstein. I knew Roger Ailes. I knew, O.J. Simpson came to my house. Bill Cosby came to my house.”

Kennedy insisted that he wasn’t aware he was hanging out with a bunch of sexual abusers and an accused murderer. “You don’t know these people are swamp creatures until all this stuff comes out,” he said.

But at least with Epstein, who killed himself in prison before he could stand trial for sex trafficking minors, Kennedy said he “did see the creepiness immediately.”

But apparently not so immediately that he didn’t go on the disgraced financier’s private plane a second time.

The internet, of course, had jokes about Kennedy’s mind-boggling defense.

“Who name drops four rapists and a murderer???” one person tweeted.

Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer pointed out that someone seemed to be missing from the guest list.

“Never stop running for president, Bob,” another person quipped.

Kennedy’s presidential campaign has struggled to take off, and in recent weeks has been hit with some major mishaps. Kennedy ran a campaign ad during the Super Bowl that borrowed the iconic “Kennedy for president” jingle from his late uncle John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign. Kennedy was forced to apologize to his other family members, who were outraged that the anti-vaxxer had tried to leverage the family name for campaign clout.

And on Monday, the Democratic National Committee accused a pro-Kennedy super PAC of violating campaign finance regulations.

But Kennedy appears to be slowly gaining support. While he notched no big wins on Super Tuesday, Kennedy did announce that he has gathered enough signatures to qualify for the New Hampshire and Nevada ballots in November.

In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump’s campaign officials were scrambling to find any means for the election results to work out in his favor, despite being unable to find actual evidence that he legitimately won the states that ultimately sent Joe Biden to the White House.

And it turns out, according to the Arizona state Attorney General’s Office, the campaign may have broken the law in the state.

In the past few weeks, people officiated with Trump’s campaign have received grand jury subpoenas from Arizona prosecutors as part of a criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, Politico reported. These subpoenas could help determine if some of Trump’s biggest allies in the state, including some who were fake electors in December 2020, will face criminal charges.

Arizona’s attorney general, Democrat Kris Mayes, is behind the latest move. It’s not yet clear if she will go after people in Trump’s national campaign, or if this investigation is focused on those in Arizona who tried to help Trump overturn the state’s election results. Mayes’s investigators have reportedly asked about Trump himself, his former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and Trump’s attorneys John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro.

A recent document release from a lawsuit settlement reveals the deranged depths Chesebro went to in the search of ways to undermine the 2020 election results. 

Fake electors in other states like Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada are all facing charges for their efforts.

When the Anti-Defamation League announced that it was giving an award to Donald Trump’s son-in-law and former White House official Jared Kusher, it received a lot of criticism, given the organization has a supposed reputation for opposing antisemitism and the Trump administration … did not.

On Wednesday, that criticism came in full view as protesters interrupted Kushner’s big award ceremony.

As Kushner was accepting his award for his “vital and deeply impactful work on the Abraham Accords,” he was jeered and heckled by protesters in the audience, who attacked his record and also called for a cease-fire in Israel’s war on Gaza.

“You’re not doing shit like that!” yelled one woman in the audience in response to Kusher using the line “Do unto others as they would do unto you.”

“You are not a civil rights ally, you fascist! You’re a fucking racist!” the woman continued as security escorted her from the room.

“Warmonger! What about the Palestinian people? It is not antisemitic to stop bombing the Palestinian people!” another protester shouted. “Cease-fire now!”

According to Forward, three people in total were removed from the ADL’s “Never is Now” conference for disrupting Kushner, while “several dozen” people walked out silently when Kushner began his remarks. Kushner finished the speech as protesters were removed from the room.

The Anti-Defamation League has been criticized in recent years for ignoring the threat of white nationalism and instead focusing on anti-Zionist activist groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, even admitting that it considers that activism as antisemitism. That shift seems to have been accelerated by its president, Jonathan Greenblatt, who on Wednesday introduced Kushner by stating, “I really don’t care how you vote.”

The Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and two countries, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, were signed in September 2020, during the last months of the Trump administration. Kushner is credited with helping to bring the parties together. In recent months, following Israel’s war on Gaza, the agreements have faced criticism for ignoring the fate of the Palestinian people.

Representative Elise Stefanik is a lot of things, but this week, she made a good case that she’s not a historian.

During a speech on Super Tuesday, Stefanik tried to insert a callback to a famous campaign line by Ronald Reagan, in which he coyly questioned the progress made during President Jimmy Carter’s term. But the House Republican Conference chair had none of the charm—or apparently any memory—of what happened during the previous administration.

“Are you better off today than you were four years ago? The answer for hard-working Americans around the country is a resounding no,” Stefanik said.

This time four years ago, the nation was being ravaged in a dystopian way by the Covid-19 pandemic, with former President Donald Trump ordering sick passengers to stay quarantined on the Grand Princess cruise ship to keep case numbers inside the country low.

Droves of viewers with working memories were quick to glom onto the scripted error, including several of Stefanik’s Democratic colleagues.

One user on X (formerly Twitter) pointed out that “4 years ago this month Covid exploded out as Trump endlessly lied about the seriousness of it and there were so many dead bodies from it that cities had to rent trailers to stuff full of corpses.”

“Four years ago people were rationing toilet paper and dying in hospital hallways,” posted Virginia Representative Gerry Connolly.

“The gentlelady from NY seems to have forgotten about body bags in Central Park, a collapsing economy, loss of faith in US democracy around the world and a tax-dodging, COVID-denying rapist President who was preparing his final act of sedition,” said Illinois Representative Sean Casten.

Vermont Representative Becca Balint accused Republicans of “trying to literally rewrite history.”

“Four years ago we were on the brink of a deadly pandemic that killed millions of Americans because of Trump’s failed response and this same kind of denialism,” Balint said.

It’s no surprise that Stefanik is trying (and failing) to gaslight Americans. She is reportedly being weighed as a potential option for Trump’s vice president, though the presumptive GOP nominee’s shortlist is starting to look a little long.

Other contenders to be Trump’s Number Two include one-time Democratic presidential primary candidate Tulsi Gabbard, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, Florida Representative Byron Donalds, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the last of whom has already outright rejected the offer (“I am not doing that.”) And the list continues to grow. Just last week, Trump added Texas Governor Greg Abbott to his dumpster fire pick list.

Donald Trump is currently facing federal charges for involvement in the January 6 riot to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. In an effort to save his own skin, Donald Trump has claimed that he, as a former president, has legal immunity for any actions committed while he was in office.

The legal question, despite being discredited by several experts, has made its way to the Supreme Court, which announced last week that it would begin to hear the case the week of April 22. That announcement was already seen by many experts as a victory for Team Trump, as the federal election interference trial can’t begin until the Supreme Court weighs in. In other words, perhaps the biggest case against Trump has been pushed back by months.

On Wednesday, however, the nine-member court, three of whom were appointed by Trump, once again decided “what’s the rush?” and declared the case’s arguments will begin April 25. Putting the case on almost the last day of the week suggests another lengthy delay to ultimately decide it.

While seemingly minor, the change undoubtedly benefits the former president, the latest such decision from the Supreme Court to do so. The fact that the court is hearing the case at all could delay Trump’s January 6 case until after the election, giving him the benefit of voters not seeing him as a convicted felon on their ballots. Trump is still enjoying a victory from the Supreme Court ruling that Colorado, as well as other states, can’t enforce the Constitution’s disqualification clause against federal officeholders and remove him from their ballots. The entirety of that ruling also drew criticism from legal experts, even those who agreed with the gist of it.

Every legal case against Trump, a former president, is unprecedented. With the Supreme Court’s decision to drag its feet on the immunity question, Trump could potentially be reelected and then be found guilty of federal crimes shortly afterward. How would the country navigate that thorny legal question?

After winning a sum total of zero delegates in the Democratic Super Tuesday primaries, Dean Phillips has called it quits on his long-shot bid for the White House.

“I ran for Congress in 2018 to resist Donald Trump, I was trapped in the Capitol in 2021 because of Donald Trump, and I ran for President in 2024 to resist Donald Trump again—because Americans were demanding an alternative, and democracy demands options,” Phillips wrote in a statement Wednesday.

“But it is clear that alternative is not me. And it is clear that Joe Biden is OUR candidate and OUR opportunity to demonstrate what type of country America is and intends to be,” he said.

The Democratic challenger to President Joe Biden had brought several memorable moments to the 2024 presidential race, such as  when he announced he would run as a “generic Democrat” to no fanfare, when he forgot about population density, or when he launched a very human A.I. chatbot to help voters get to know him. 

Apart from his age, Philip’s only major policy differences with the sitting president included lowering costs for housing, health care, and childcare; changing the tax code to allow parents to deduct the cost of childcare; raising the minimum wage; and a proposal to legalize weed at the federal level.

Still, on his way out, Phillips couldn’t resist one last shot at the 81-year-old president.

“In 2011, I hosted then VP Biden at my home. Most notable was his empathy and kindness to my daughters and the catering staff, with whom he sat and had ice cream (surprise-surprise). His decency and wisdom were rarities in politics then, and even more so today,” Phillips said in his statement.

“Over a decade later, the only thing that has changed is time—which slows all of us down a bit, including presidents.”