Quotes of the Week
Plus links to some of the best articles and essays.
Note for new subscribers: On Fridays I send out a post with a list of notable quotes from the past week, along with links to some of the best longform essays and articles that I’ve come across. You can opt out of these posts by clicking “manage subscription” on the top right.
“We believe in merit as Democrats.” — Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries
“Coming into the country illegally is a civil offense. It’s not a criminal offense.” — CNN’s Abby Phillip1
“Americans are going to think of Joe Biden the way post 1918 Viennese thought of Franz Josef: ‘maybe he was a little confused in his final days, but at least we could then have real cream in our coffee.’” — David Frum
“So I had to go around the country and educate people about what immigrants do for this country, or the fact that we are a country of immigrants. The fact is ain’t none of y’all trying to go and farm right now. OK, so I’m lying? You’re not! You’re not! We done picking cotton!” — Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett, speaking at a historically black church over the weekend
“The fact that everything around us is burning to the ground and some people still have no clue that they voted for the arsonist or are complicit in the arson is absolutely mind boggling. People are ok with it so long as the black woman isn’t their President.” — Also Jasmine Crockett
“But to date, almost all of the 140-plus lawsuits against Trump administration policies have been filed in federal circuits where Democratic appointees predominate. And while the government has won rounds in many of its court fights, most of the judges issuing early restraining orders and injunctions against administration initiatives were appointed by Democrats.” — WSJ’s Jess Bravin
“This is what kicking the shit out of fascism looks like!” — Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, speaking at the “Hands Off” rally in Washington, D.C.
“I am undocumented, unafraid, queer, and unashamed.” — Greisa Martinez Rosas, executive director of United We Dream, speaking at the same rally
“How do you think [Elon Musk] got to where he’s at? I have people who come up to me and say ‘Maxwell, why would they be stealing? Elon Musk is already the richest person in the world, he has enough money.’ The question is how do you think he became the richest person in the world?” — Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost
“If you pretend that your differences with friends and coworkers and family are about ‘politics’ when in fact they’re about right versus wrong and fascism versus the rule of law, you’re doing your country a grave disservice.” — George Conway
“Do you know what’s going to happen? Do you know how this ends? Do you know what the country is going to feel toward collaborators with this regime? After Paris was liberated, they didn’t take very kindly to the collaborators. No, it was not a very pretty sight in the streets of Paris. I’m not saying that these people should be placed in pajamas and have their head shaved, marched down Pennsylvania Avenue and spit on. I’m not saying that, but I’m saying that that did happen. And I’m saying that these people betrayed the French nation in the same way that I think that these law firms and these giant corporate conglomerates are betraying the United States. What their comeuppance is, I can only guess.” — James Carville
“I’m not on the Left.” — CNN’s Jake Tapper
“I bet you there are a lot of people that voted for Trump that wish that Kamala Harris is in the White House.” — The View’s Sunny Hostin
“The reason Democrats don’t want voter ID is because they make it much more difficult for elderly people, people who don’t travel. Poor people don’t have cars, don’t have driver’s licenses. It’s sort of a vestige, I think, of post-slavery laws where black people had to prove their right to vote, and often times they couldn’t vote because they couldn’t pass some crazy test.” — Also Sunny Hostin
“We are currently living through a president who wants to be a dictator. In America, we do not accept dictators and we do not accept kings. We have a billionaire who has bought a seat next to the president and is using him as a puppet.” — Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar
“We chose a felon who is more interested in loyalty, who is more interested in retribution, who is more interested in grift than in democracy. And we chose a felon because we didn’t want to elect a black woman. So, to read that, to actually explicate that, is to say we would rather destroy the republic than for that to have happened.” — Princeton professor Eddie Glaude, speaking on MSNBC
“The entire country as we know it is on the line with these people and they are in a full-on effort to turn the government into a gangster state. And Donald Trump’s doing everything in his power to disable the crime and corruption-fighting capacity of the FBI and the Department of Justice so he can just use it to go after his political adversaries. But meantime, the real corruption is just running amok. These people are not opponents of corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse as they keep saying, they are agents of corruption and instruments of waste and fraud throughout the government.” — Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, during an appearance on MSNBC
“I think she’s the reason there are directions on a shampoo bottle.” — Republican Sen. John Kennedy, regarding AOC
“We’re living under an openly fascistic government whose express goal is to wrench any remaining agency, sexual or otherwise, from anyone who is not a white man with an upsetting hairline.” — New York magazine’s Rachel Handler
If you need to get past a paywall, try Archive Today or 12ft.io.
Harper’s: “The Last Detail: On Patrol With the Guardian Angels”
The New York Times Magazine: “The Deserter”
Daily Beast: “How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s Monopoly Game and Stole Millions”
Time: “The Return of the Dire Wolf”
American Mind: “The Border Crisis is Over”
Manhattan Institute: “Mental-Health Trends and the ‘Great Awokening’”
The Washington Post: “Nearly 200 cows disappeared. The case remains cold.”
The Washington Post: “A beloved skier, an audacious jump and the complex grief left behind”
This is false. Overstaying a visa is a civil offense but crossing the border illegally is a misdemeanor under 8 USC 1325, and illegal re-entry is a felony.
David Frum's metaphor is apt: For the elite Viennese, it wasn't that the young men were dying futile deaths in muddy trenches, that the Hapsburg empire was crumbling into fragments, that Austrian culture would never return to its past preeminence. It was that the David Frums of Vienna would be deprived of the full range of perks due to people of their status, and would have to take their coffee with milk instead of cream.
John Kennedy is such a hoot! He's a quintessential southern gentlemen with a flare for cutting people down to size. Hopefully AOC can follow those shampoo directions!