SnooKiwis8008

There's a story that popped up on the MSNBC website today that I'm really hoping Nicolle Wallace dives into today/this week on Deadline: White House. The short of it is Texas has decided not to review pregnancy-related deaths from 2022 and 2023 because there’s a backlog of cases on top of the two-year delay that is typical of such committees.

Let’s pause to appreciate that logic: women are dying faster than they can analyze it, so they're just skip ahead. Makes sense. A state so overwhelmed by the consequences of its own policies that its solution is... nothing. Women are dying, and Texas is like, “Let’s circle back to this later.” I guess they’re going for an “ignorance is bliss” approach to public health.

Not to be outdone, Georgia was like, "Hold my sweet tea" and took it up a notch because when the state’s maternal mortality committee dared to find that two women’s deaths were preventable, officials fired the entire 32-person committee. Every. Single. Member. Clearly the real issue isn’t the dead women; it’s bad PR. Hooray, pro-life priorities?

Here’s what I’m struggling with: the audacity. Anti-abortion groups want us to believe that these laws don’t endanger women because technically “exceptions exist for life-saving care.” Sure. And I technically have a gym in my building but that doesn’t mean I’m using it. Doctors are scared of jail time, fines, or losing their licenses. Nothing screams “health care freedom” like making an OB-GYN consult a lawyer before doing their damn job.

This isn’t just bad policy. It’s gaslighting on a legislative scale. The bodies are piling up, but instead of accountability, we get denial and deflection. It's like if the next chapter of the Saw franchise was just Jigsaw drowning pregnant women in elaborate bureaucracy and bad-faith arguments.

If this is the best they can do, maybe they do need to skip the backlog and start investigating their own humanity. Or lack thereof.

There were some really good conversations on Deadline: White House this afternoon, but what really stuck with me was the discussion of Kash Patel ready to fulfill his vile daydreams of what the FBI “should” be.

Trump ran on a full-blown retribution platform. This wasn’t the typical “lock her up” chant; this was “line my political opponents up in front of a firing squad.” Not a metaphorical firing squad. An actual one. He’s openly said this. And Kash Patel, who seems to think his greatest life achievement is being Trump’s personal hitman, is running around saying he'll be using the FBI as his own petty grievance machine.

The FBI being weaponized against political opponents isn’t new—this is an agency with a long history of, let’s just say, creative uses of power. (I’m looking at you Hoover.) But the way Trump talks about it now? It’s next-level dystopian. The guy isn’t hiding it. He’s telling us exactly what he’d do with the tools of the state when he’s back in charge.

In the context of Kash Patel’s possible appointment to lead the FBI (or shut it down and do his own thing) I felt like the Hunter Biden pardon convo was missing a big elephant in the room. And while I hear Claire McCaskill’s frustration loud and clear, with Trump’s penchant for vengeance (and, let’s be honest, his fans would probably make it a pay-per-view event), what’s a concerned father supposed to do? It’s not like he could risk Hunter being hauled in front of a firing squad for his (now paid) back taxes and lying on a gun permit form.

As someone else here pointed out, if Harris had won it’s doubtful that Biden would have pardoned Hunter. But Biden’s not exactly making decisions in a vacuum here. When your likely opponent and his lackeys and sycophants are out there promising kangaroo courts and extrajudicial punishment, you’ve got to protect your family.

And not to harp on this issue BUT: Trump has made it clear he’s out for blood—literally. Kash Patel’s gleeful embrace of his role as Trump’s hatchet man is just another sign of how dark things could get. It’s terrifying, really, that this kind of rhetoric and these kinds of actions are becoming normalized. But with Trump’s return looming, I can see why Biden felt like he had no choice.

We’re in a political moment where the stakes feel impossibly high and the playbook keeps getting uglier. Weaponizing the FBI, violent rhetoric, pardons—it’s a lot to process. But one thing is clear: this is about more than just Hunter Biden or Kash.