- Losing My Perspicacity
- Posts
- Losing My Perspicacity, July 29, 2025
Good morning and Happy Tuesday! Thanks for starting your day with me.
It’s impossible to avoid all things Jeffrey Epstein in the news these days. It’s sort of suboptimal that all this is happening after Donald Trump’s election to the highest office in the land, but better late than never, I suppose. Though I’m glad that so many people are concerned about men preying on young women, I can’t help but wonder why more than 25 adult women coming forward about Trump’s sexual misconduct didn’t have the same impact. Or Trump being found liable for sexual assault by a jury of his peers.
Something feels problematic about the right’s fixation on Epstein. ICE disappearing American citizens off the streets and sending people to a jungle gulag doesn’t bother them, nor does the US’ complicity in the genocide in Gaza, or taking food away from starving US school children. But billionaires trafficking young women for sexual abuse? Weirdly, that’s where they’ve drawn the line.
It’s been said often about the right that everything they hyperfixate on is a projection. It’s shocking how true that has been this week. We can start in Oklahoma, where the Superintendent in Charge of Public Instruction (God, what kind of Nazified title is that?), who also happens to be the state’s top anti-porn and book-banning czar, was caught with what appeared to be an “adult” video on his screen during a board meeting.
Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, has never shied away from controversy. A staunch Christian Nationalist, he’s tried to force religion into public schools, promote Trump Bibles, and rewrite social studies standards with heavy-handed pro-Christian mythology. He’s also loudly pushed for “porn-free schools,” using fear-mongering to rally his base.
***
During a closed-door session of the Oklahoma State Board of Education—held in Walters’ own office—two board members, Becky Carson and Ryan Deatherage, noticed something deeply inappropriate on the superintendent’s TV. It appeared to be a screen mirroring from Walters’ personal laptop, and what was displayed wasn’t education policy or budget spreadsheets.
It was nudity.
YIKES. You can read an in-depth account of what, exactly, was on Walters’ screen via the link above. It’s too early in the morning for me to get into the intricacies of porn. It’s always the book banners who are the closet freaks. What is going on in his brain that he can’t get through a single meeting without watching porn?
Then we have the former CEO of My Faith Votes, a nonprofit that tries to get Christians to flood the ballot box, who pled guilty to possession of child porn last week.
The former CEO of My Faith Votes, a nonprofit that encourages "Christians in America to vote in every election," has pleaded guilty to possessing child sexual abuse images, months after his arrest.
Jason Christopher Yates, 56, pleaded guilty to two of eight felony counts of possession of child pornography on Tuesday, July 22, in a district court in McLeod County, Minnesota, according to a plea petition obtained by USA TODAY.
Let’s not forget about this guy:
And then there’s Texas state rep Giovanni Capriglione, who co-authored the state’s draconian abortion ban, and also reportedly paid for several abortions for his young mistress.
Three days after state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione announced he was dropping his reelection bid, the conservative news site Current Revolt published an interview with a former exotic dancer who alleges she had a 17-year affair with the Southlake Republican.
The woman, Alex Grace, alleges that Capriglione paid her for “meetups” and “funded several abortions for his own personal gain.” She declined to provide additional details on the alleged abortions in the interview, saying, “you’re just going to have to go with my word.”
Her interview with Current Revolt was captured in a 25-minute video published Friday.
In a statement, Capriglione admitted he’d had an affair “years ago”, but said the other allegations are “categorically false and easily disproven.” He added that he had “never, nor would I ever, pay for an abortion.”
Of course, there are a whole lot more allegations of sexual misconduct, too often with minors, all up and down the Republican Party, from Matt Gaetz to Roy Moore to Jim Jordan to Justin Eichhorn to Pete Hegseth — culminating with allegations against the President of the United States. In 2016, a woman accused Trump of sexually assaulting her in 1994 when she was 13 years old, but ultimately dropped the lawsuit because of the threats she received from the MAGA base.
So if you’re curious as to why the GOP isn’t screaming for Donald Trump’s head over the Epstein files, there is a not insignificant trove of evidence that this is what the Grand Ole Party has become: A bunch of powerful men covering up each other’s misdeeds, lest their own be exposed.
At least the general public is starting to push back.
DeSantis is heckled at an event today
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com)2025-07-24T19:17:14.714Z
Imagine going after Disney for being inclusive in cartoons while protecting Donald Trump.
Today: Israel finally speaks out against Israel; Planned Parenthood gets another win in court; Bryce Harper goes head-to-head (literally) with Rob Manfred; and The High Note.
Here we go.
Israel calls out its own
It’s been difficult, I think, for those of us who are not Jewish to talk about what’s happening in Gaza. At a time when actual antisemitism is on the rise in the United States, Israel itself has systemically bombed and starved the Palestinian people to the point that there’s no question that the country that was born from the ashes of the Holocaust is now committing genocide.
I’ve always considered being antisemitic and anti-Zionist to be two wholly separate and distinct things, but I recognize that many people do not. Especially on Twitter, any criticism of Israel was often met with a bunch of bots calling the poster a Nazi and accusing them of wanting the destruction of the Jewish State. Not only that, social media platforms colluded to suppress pro-Palestinian content. I experienced this firsthand with a story I wrote about the decimation of places for kids to play in Gaza.
So it was good to see two human rights groups in Israel call out the intentional starvation of the populace of Gaza.
Two of the best-known Israeli human rights groups said Monday that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, adding fuel to a passionately fought international debate over whether the death and destruction there have crossed a moral red line.
The two groups were B’Tselem, a rights monitor that documents the effects of Israeli policies on Palestinians, and Physicians for Human Rights — Israel. Their announcement was the first time major Israeli rights groups have publicly concluded that the Gaza war is a genocide, an assessment previously reached by some organizations like Amnesty International.
In a report titled “Our Genocide,” B’Tselem cited the devastating effects of Israel’s war on ordinary Palestinians to support their claim: the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza; the razing of huge areas of Palestinian cities; the forced displacement of nearly all of Gaza’s two million people; the restriction of food and other vital supplies.
Let’s hope all of this is not too little, too late. If you want to help, there is no shortage of GoFundMes popping up around Bluesky to help people trapped in Gaza get food and other necessities, assuming Israel allows aid in. “Never again” means “never again” for anyone.
Planned Parenthood wins in court again
Huzza for the courts! Planned Parenthood, which the GOP targeted mercilessly in the “Big Beautiful Bill,” gets another win in court. Yesterday, a federal judge indefinitely blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to defund the women’s healthcare organization.
A federal judge on Monday ruled Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide must continue to be reimbursed for Medicaid funding as the nation’s largest abortion provider fights President Donald Trump’s administration over efforts to defund the organization in his signature tax legislation.
The new order replaces a previous edict handed down by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston last week. Talwani initially granted a preliminary injunction specifically blocking the government from cutting Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood members that didn’t provide abortion care or didn’t meet a threshold of at least $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements in a given year.
Judge Indira Talwani found that the provision of the bill was intentionally targeted to punish Planned Parenthood as “retaliation” for the group’s political action.
She noted the expansive role that Planned Parenthood’s umbrella organization plays in political organizing, saying that the provision could also threaten “expressive” activity including advocating before Congress, supporting candidates and communicating with voters.
In withholding funding from the independent clinics that make up the organization’s network, Judge Talwani wrote that the provision effectively held the potential to minimize the organization’s footprint across the country. In many states, it could force clinics to vastly reduce services or close.
RFK Jr. and Health and Human Services will no doubt appeal.
I don’t believe that Rob Manfred faced down a bat-holding Bryce Harper
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall for this one. Let me set the scene: MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred met with the Phillies as part of a yearly meeting to “improve relations” with players. I don’t believe Rob Manfred cares any more about baseball than he does about widgets, but whatever.
"Quiet for the majority of the meeting, Harper, sitting in a chair and holding a bat, eventually grew frustrated and said if MLB were to propose a cap and hold firm to it, players "are not scared to lose 162 games," sources from the meeting told ESPN. Harper stood up, walked toward the middle of the room, faced up to Manfred and said: "If you want to speak about that, you can get the f*** out of our clubhouse."
Manfred, sources said, responded that he was "not going to get the f*** out of here," saying it was important to talk about threats to MLB's business and ways to grow the game."
Various reports of this meeting describe Harper and Manfred standing toe-to-toe during this exchange, which I really can’t imagine. I don’t know how tall Rob Manfred is, but Bryce Harper is 6’3" and probably weighs around 220 pounds. I hope someone bumped someone else’s chest. Was dirt kicked on anyone’s shoes? God, I hope so.
Then, Mark DeRosa, who was a beloved Cub but never the sharpest knife in the drawer, tried to “help.”
After Philadelphia Phillies star Bryce Harper got in the face of Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred during a heated meeting last week, Mark DeRosa, a former big leaguer who now works for Manfred, said something some players took as a threat, according to four people who attended the meeting or were briefed on it.
“The commissioner’s a powerful guy, don’t f— around with him,” was the tone of DeRosa’s message.
Some players were angry at his implication that a commissioner, who has oversight of so many on- and off-field personnel and processes in the sport, could retaliate if they didn’t fall in line with what a commissioner wants, the sources said. After DeRosa’s statement, a player in the room raised the possibility of MLB using the drug-testing program as a means of retribution.
Great job, Mark.
There aren’t many MLB owners who are multi-millionaires anymore. Most of them are billionaires a few times over. Yet every year, we get this song and dance from them about setting a hard salary cap. Baseball already has a “soft” salary cap in the form of the luxury tax. And, if you’ve forgotten how much more a billion is than a million, here’s my favorite reminder: If every second is $1, a million dollars is 11.5 days, while a billion dollars is 31.5 years.
I’m not sure what Manfred was trying to do by walking into a group of union members and bringing up capping their salaries. I would have gone ballistic, too. Then again, Manfred has been tripping over himself to bend the knee to Donald Trump, so all of this makes perfect sense.
The High Note
Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.
One of the very good things in the world is Ichiro Suzuki. On Sunday, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. Here’s his acceptance speech.
Survive and advance out there today. Don’t let the bastards get you down.
Reply