In this week Elijah v. UNITED STATES, our legal correspondent marvels at Trump’s enduring hold on the psyche of the Republican Party. Plus: the stupidest CEO in the video game industry.
A supporter bows his head in prayer at a Get Out The Vote campaign rally in Texas.
(Brandon Bell/Getty Images)) Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican Party is absolute. In two Texas primary runoffs this week, Trump-backed Attorney General Ken Paxton beat Incumbent Republican Senator John Cornyn will become the Republican nominee for Senate. Cornyn has been a staunch MAGA servant in the Senate, but Paxton, whose tenure as AG was marred by corruption scandals and rank extremism, is an election denier, so he got Trump’s support and ultimately won.
In the other Republican runoff, Mayes Middleton, election denier beat Republican Rep. Chip Roy in the race to replace Paxton as AG. Trump did not support this race, but he once again appeared to favor the election denier over the devoted MAGA servant. Clearly, the best way to gain access to Trump’s Republican Party remains to falsely claim that Trump won the election he clearly lost.
And once you’re there, you’re pretty much guaranteed victory. Across the primaries, Trump-backed candidates are clearing the floor with Republicans Trump doesn’t like. Republican Representative Thomas Massie lost his primary last week, and Massie did nothing but call for the release of the Epstein files. (OK, he also opposed the war in Iran.) Massie immediately went to Costa Rica, where he was spied on this week, on vacation with Marjorie Taylor Greene, another MAGA Republican who didn’t even bother running in a primary after also pissing off Trump by calling for the release of the Epstein files.
I have never seen a president exert such control over his party, and certainly not one with a 34 percent approval rating. Trump is an incredibly unpopular and lame-duck president (or should be, if the Constitution is to be believed), and yet Republicans who support every one of his horrible and unpopular policies are being voted out of office for not showing enough loyalty to the dear leader.
What really amazes me is that the loyalty Trump demands is not even backed up by overt acts of violence. Crossing paths with Joseph Stalin, Maximilien Robespierre or Augustus Caesar would get you imprisoned and, probably, killed. Trump did not need to impose party discipline using any of these methods. He threatens people with… mean tweets? And they all collapse in front of him. And those who do not self-deport to Costa Rica.
The GOP is not a political party, it is a cult. I don’t know what to do about it, or how to fight it – and I feel like anyone who tells you they know is lying.
Current number
The bully and the ugly
Speaking of Ken Paxton, Texas AG is now going after the popular online platform Discord, accusing him to be a “hunting ground” for child predators. For the uninitiated, Discord is a social media app used primarily by gamers and particularly useful for voice chat during gaming sessions. It’s not something I let my teenager use (yet), but it’s also not the place I’m most concerned about child predators. That place would be Roblox, which I have tried to warn parents about many times in this space. But what’s really interesting about Paxton’s decision is that Discord is one of those safe spaces for white-winged manosphere troglodytes. (It’s also safe for non-trolls, as long as you join more thoughtful servers.) These are the kind of guys who vote for Republicans because they hate “woke” Democrats, but they never seem to care that it’s the Republicans who are constantly pushing regulations that try to bring these gaming spaces under government control. They are so obsessed with hating women and LGBTQ+ people that they don’t even know which political party supports free speech. South Carolina Republicans rejected a redistricting plan that would have erased the majority-black district currently represented by Jim Clyburn. People called this a rare post.Callis “victory” for blacks, and it is, but it’s also very difficult to draw a map in South Carolina that weakens Clyburn while protecting his congressional neighbor, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace. Trump apparently wants to make federal employees sign confidentiality agreements as a way to prevent leaks. I would say the idea is downright unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court will disagree with me. He forced staff to sign NDAs after the Dobbs flee. The attorney representing a Washington state tourist who was filmed throwing a large rock at an endangered sea lion in Hawaii. said his client was trying to protect sea turtles. I saw the video. I don’t see any sea turtles. I see a giant asshole who I hope will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And then I hope that they will reform the law to provide for even more draconian sanctions. The UC Berkeley Law School has adopted what is probably the most restrictive ban on AI we’ve seen it in higher education. Students are prohibited from using AI, even to check their grammar. Even though I’m not a fan of use AI in lawmy instinct tells me that Berkeley has gone too far.
Inspired Takes
Grace Ginsburg shared a intensely personal essay In The nation about his decision to take GLP-1. I don’t want to summarize her article, because it is a complicated struggle between a feminist rejection of body shame and her own desire to love the way she looks. Instead, I’m going to share a little about my journey, as I’ve been taking GLP-1 for over a year now, and between that and a lot more exercise, I’ve lost about 50 pounds.
Unlike many people who are morbidly obese, which is, in one way or another, the literal medical term for my weight class, I’ve never been particularly morbid about it. I’m fat (a word I much prefer to “morbidly obese”), which I consider to be unfortunatebut I have the body confidence of a man half my size (and the unwavering self-confidence of a mediocre white man). I integrated my weight into my “personality”. More importantly, I appreciated the lifestyle of a fat person: eating what I want, when I want, without being obsessed with the mirror or the scale. Hell, I didn’t even do it own a scale until I started down this path. I look at people who spend hours at the gym every day and snack on salads for lunch with pity more than the desire.
But as I got older, my weight started to have a negative impact on my health. Not in the “oh no, heart attack and stroke” sense, but on a daily basis, “my knees can no longer support my massive figure.” It affected my quality of life and my decision-making: I wouldn’t go up the stairs to see my children because I didn’t want to go up the stairs. Once your lifestyle starts to stop you from doing what you want to do in lifeit’s time to at least consider change.
So I started taking miracle drugs and hired a personal trainer out of concern for my short-term health and quality of life, not because of societal pressure (admittedly much harder for women than men) to look different. Two years ago, I needed a cane if I was going to walk for more than a few minutes. Last summer I took over 100,000 steps at Disney World without any form of assistance other than comfortable shoes. My plan is working, more or less.
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But I’d be lying if I didn’t say the benefits have been exclusive to my personal health and well-being. The feedback loop based on how I look was… shocking and intense. Some people, strangers and even friends, treat me better (even though I’m still objectively fat) simply because I’m not as overweight. People are nicer to me. People smile at me more often. People say I look “happier,” even though I am objectively discouraged from trying to make a living under white wing fascism. I almost feel like I’m in the Sketch of Eddie Murphy where he pretends to be a white man. I don’t think it’s just in my head, because, again, my (high) opinion of myself hasn’t changed.
And I’m a guy! Male privilege means I can look like an ogre and still win a popularity contest and become president of the United States. I can only imagine what this feedback loop is like for women.
I was ambivalent about taking GLP-1 before I started. But I can’t deny that the social life of a slightly smaller person is better than before. I always suspected this was true, but, man, am I appalled by how true it is.
The worst argument of the week
On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Rutherford v. United Statesa case involving the First Steps Act, which sought to combat mass incarceration. The case involved two men who received mandatory minimum sentences of 32 and 57 years before the law was passed. If they had been convicted today, they likely would have received sentences of 14 and 32 years. They requested compassionate release due to the disparity between their sentences and the current standard.
You don’t need me to tell you that the six Republicans on the Supreme Court are only “compassionate” toward white people who use God as an excuse for their bigotry. The prisoners were denied compassionate release, 6-3, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett writing the majority opinion for the Republican Klavern.
Barrett got stuck on the fact that the First Step Act was not made retroactive. Congress could have (and, I argue vigorously, should have), but it did not. Indeed, the fact that Congress could have made the law retroactive, and did not deliberately do so, is Barrett’s strong point.
But the First Step Act was not Really the problem in this case. Instead, the main legal issue was an opinion from the U.S. Sentencing Commission that courts could consider disparities between the First Step Act and sentences handed down before its enactment when considering compassionate release applications.
Barrett and Supreme Court Republicans rejected this guidance and instead barred courts from considering such disparities when considering compassionate release requests. In other words, the Commission said that judges could think about the blatant hypocrisy of one sentence over another, and Barrett actually said, “No, judges are not allowed to think about reality.”
Rutherford v. United States So this is another case where practical realities don’t matter in the eyes of Republican judges attached to their ideological obsessions. It is also another takeover of power by the Supreme Court over the administrative state. One agency simply said an issue could be considered in a judge’s opinion, but Barrett and the Supreme Court overrode those guidelines (which they’re not supposed to do) and ordered judges to bury their heads in the sand.
One of the Federalist Society’s greatest victories was convincing Republican judges that ideology must always trump reality. They have created an entire army of lawyers who treat facts as unimportant distractions – not to mention judges like Neil Gorsuch who simply make up whatever facts they need to support the results they prefer.
If Democrats ever reform the justice system, it will be important for them to appoint judges who believe in such controversial ideas as “black people and women are people and should get their rights.” But we also desperately need a new group of judges who think about how their decisions are reflected in real people and not in law review articles.
What I wrote
Jim Corbeau suffered a temporary setback in Alabama this week, when a panel of district court judges rejected an unconstitutionally racist map introduced by the Alabama legislature. Unfortunately, I’m not sure the decision will last. It’s because the Republicans on the Supreme Court are suddenly becoming very well versed in the real world when it comes to helping Republicans win elections.
In news unrelated to the current chaos
In 2021, Krafton, a South Korean game publisher, purchased independent game developer Unknown Worlds for $500 million. Unknown Worlds was known for creating Subnauticala popular underwater survival game where you crash land on a water world and must figure out how to survive and rebuild your ship while exploring the frightening ocean depths.
It’s a good game, even if it’s hardly worth $500 million. But the purchase was made in 2021, and the problem with 2021 is that the entire video game industry was just coming out of a Covid boom. People were cooped up inside, playing more games than ever before, and games were making more money than ever. Even though the industry was clearly in a bubble, companies went a little crazy and spent as if the inflated pandemic numbers would last forever.
They didn’t do it.
Regardless, in purchasing Unknown Worlds, Krafton included a small carrot for the company’s founders and their key collaborators: It promised them a $250 million bonus if Unknown Worlds hit certain revenue targets within five years. Unknown worlds had to work on Subnautic 2.
Fast forward to 2025, when it’s clear Krafton made a terrible deal. Again, Subnautical It was a good game, but it wasn’t worth the $500 million purchase price. That said, Subanautique 2 was likely going to meet the revenue targets needed to trigger most or all of the $250 million bonus.
That’s when Krafton CEO Changhan Kim took to ChatGPT and asked how he could get out of his deal. No, I’m not making this up. When Krafton’s own lawyers told him there was no way out of the contract, my man AI asked. how to rape him.
ChatGPT gave him an answer. Remember, AI is like that desperate kid in high school who just wants to be loved. ChatGPT told him to fire the founders and delay the release of Subnautic 2 to avoid having to pay the bonus. What Kim did next.
However, ChatGPT’s legal advice was completely wrong. The creators of Subnautic 2 sued and, after a trial in which all of these elements of ChatGPT had to be disclosed, a judge ordered the founders reinstated and the game released. The judge also extended the revenue target deadline to June 2026 (to account for Kim’s shenanigans) and ordered Krafton to pay a bonus amounting to $3.12 for every dollar of revenue, up to the cap of $250 million.
Subnautic 2 was released on May 14 for $30 on Steam. The game has sold over 4 million copies in less than a week. This far exceeds more expensive games you may have heard of, like the recent Resident Evil 9. Subnautic 2 will almost certainly hit all revenue targets and force Krafton to pay the entire $250 million bonus, which the founders say will be shared with the staff who helped create the game. And the judge still hasn’t ruled on what damage the founders of Unknown Worlds are entitled.
The lesson, as always: Do not follow ChatGPT’s legal advice. Well, don’t follow ChatGPT’s legal advice unless you are a greedy CEO looking to screw over his partners. If you’re this type, don’t hesitate to fail in whatever way you think is best.
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