In the Season 3 finale of Bravo‘s “The Valley,” succinctly titled “The Valley of the Damned,” Danny Booko — who does voice work for movies and video games when not reigning as secret-glugger #1 in this Vanderpump-adjacent reality show — takes his maddening schtick one silly voice too far, introducing “Count Bookula.”
While attending a vampire-themed party at castmate Brittany Cartwright’s house, Booko goes to work on making damn sure he ends the season in the cringiest way possible — having spent the previous episodes speaking down to his wife, Nia Sanchez, making women on the show uncomfortable and frat-boy screaming ‘Let’s Go,’ constantly — adapting a pickle-tongued “Bookula” voice upon entry and not dropping it until he gets too drunk to bother and, later, has a plastic cup bonked off his head by Janet Caperna. (And here I will go on record to say: TEAM JANET!)
Roughly 15 years or so, I twice attended an immersive fright house called “Blackout” in New York that was really nothing more than a cheaper way to have a date with a dominatrix. During these occasions, myself and other paying attendees entered a pitch-black warehouse, one by one, and were made to do such things as dance with short naked men, spit in strangers’ hands so another person could slurp it up and be chased until our only option was to fall over the back of a couch. These experiences came to mind while hearing Danny take on a yet-to-be-previously attempted vampire voice as he dodged dirty looks and jettisoned drinkware.
Danny, my love (said in Nia voice), you sucked the most this season, and that’s for sure.
Adeyemi co-wrote the script with director Gina Prince-Bythewood and shared in an Instagram reel posted on Wednesday that she worked on the film “to make it a little better for us to be alive.” She also described the experience as “the worst thing I have ever had to live through.”
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“Even though it feels awful to share this, it’s better to share it and have it known and understood before I see a bunch of you for this new book,” Adeyemi said, referring to her upcoming tour for “The Siren,” which releases in September. “I never want to hear about this project again.”
When authors divorce themselves from film versions of their work, it’s usually a matter of creative disagreement. But Adeyemi describes suffering somatic pain and panic attacks, alleging she is still being antagonized behind the scenes.
To echo what former Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah said in a Substack post, an “Odyssey”-obsessed moment rife with cultural erasure demands to be countered by popular culture built on the civilizational myths, heroes and heroines of the Black diaspora. “Children of Blood and Bone” is one way of doing that. How unnerving that its creation scarred its creator.
“Children of Blood and Bone” debuts in theaters on Jan. 15, 2027.
These days, there are a million different possible answers to either question. Our culture has confused sex — a relatively uncomplicated, biological thing — with desire, which is an entirely different, much more complex can of worms just waiting to be opened. While the two frequently meet one another on the bed, on the floor or in a back alleyway behind that dive bar on Cherry Street after a few well-tequilas, both of these things are their own animals. It’s act versus thought, performance versus feeling. And yet, sex and desire have become irrevocably intertwined in our modern age, like two sweaty bodies, tangled together, realizing halfway through the deed that they don’t actually have as much in common as they initially thought.
In his first feature film in 12 years, “I Want Your Sex,” veteran counterculture director and perennial cool guy Gregg Araki is looking to have some fun in the technicolor midpoint where sex and desire meet. Sex has played a major role throughout Araki’s filmography, but never in quite such explicit terms as this. His characters — impulsive adolescents and young adults, slicing through their disaffection with sharp bursts of hormonal momentum — typically experience sex as a product of their furious youth. In their eyes, it’s an act of heady rebellion, more in line with the drugs and crime that permeate these underground, nihilistic worlds than it is with true romantic intimacy. So for Araki to dispose of all that to home in on sex itself, rather than building his characters and their worlds around it, there must be a good reason.
(Magnolia Pictures) Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman in “I Want Your Sex”
By steeping his film in modern hypersexuality, Araki fashions a humorous how-to guide on how to find real, memorable sexual connection in a world where everything is designed to be sexy, but isn’t actually stimulating.
In short: There are plenty. The ’90s-era nihilism that threaded so many of Araki’s films has taken a hard slant toward technological despondency. Many young people act as though life begins and ends with the digital ecosystem. And even if that fact might make you depressed, scrolling will deplete one’s cynicism until it’s replaced by another attention-grabbing post. The simple fact of the matter is that, with so much time spent solitary and online, there’s less time for sex — or even the possibility of it.
And yet, sex (or at least the implication of it) is everywhere. OnlyFans is its own viable economy, with some users raking in millions per year from people who want to live the fantasy through a screen. Manufactured eroticism not only pays the bills but stops the scroll. And, of course, there’s the fact that anyone in the world can access hundreds of terabytes of porn in two measly seconds. It used to be that, if you wanted sex, you had to be forward about it, seek it out to some degree. Now, the proliferation of sex and sexuality has resulted in an ironic prudishness among digital natives, who, as a result of growing up with sex quite literally in the palm of their hands, abstain from intercourse and all the lessons and joy it has to offer. And it’s that reserve that Araki aims at with “I Want Your Sex.”
Yet, for a film with such a bold, George Michael-ripping title, “I Want Your Sex” is curiously unerotic. The characters have sex, sure, but their coitus is so instantly excessive it veers on silly. But that’s also the kind of frisky fun Araki wants his viewers to remember, the outrageous sexual dynamics that are the byproduct of our wildest adventures — exploits that don’t always begin with carnal intentions. By steeping his film in modern hypersexuality, Araki fashions a humorous how-to guide on finding real, memorable sexual connection in a world where everything is designed to be sexy, but isn’t actually stimulating.
And if anyone knows stimulating, it’s hotshot mixed media artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde, in her second hoot-and-holler role this summer), who’s made a name for herself in the Los Angeles art scene with a dedication to provocation. Her work is suggestive and boundary-pushing, and she’s exactly the kind of person that neurotic Gen Z art scene sycophant Elliot (Cooper Hoffman) would love to work for. After a chemistry-rich interview in her office, Erika hires Elliot on the spot — strange, considering his complete lack of experience and the spate of promising applicants that preceded him in the interview process. But Elliot doesn’t question it. Only later, when he’s tasked with chewing gum to stick onto the outline of a massive portrait of a vulva, does he learn that Erika has a habit of sleeping with her interns.
This piece of gossip soon begins to cloud Elliot’s life and better judgement. His girlfriend, the uptight med student Minerva (Charli xcx, speaking in an accent no one’s ever heard before, with a name no one’s had in 60 years — brilliant), is as cold in the bedroom as she is in the operating room. But Elliot also has no idea how to verbalize his desires. He’s of a generation that overthinks and underperforms. That is, until a wide-ranging chat with Erika in her home results in a proposition: Erika would like to enter into a consensual, primarily physical boss-employee relationship with her inferior, and use their inverse power dynamic to rock Elliot’s world: leashes, S&M, dildos, spanking, the works. But Erika calls the shots. If she says it’s over, it’s over. And there’s nothing like a suspicious, sudden disappearance to pull the plug on a burgeoning sexual connection.
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Araki’s screenplay, written alongside his “Now Apocalypse” series co-writer Karley Sciortino, hops back and forth between the time before Erika’s vanishing and immediately after. Her disappearance is mystifying and arousing — for both Elliot and the police. Elliot is abruptly without his sensual supervisor, and his loss is seismic. Left to his own devices with a new sexual skillset, yet still pining for his boss, Elliot is unsure of how to move forward. And it’s this impasse where Araki fleshes out his clever, if not entirely unique, ideas about the innate limits of the libido.
For as much handwringing as there has been about Gen Z’s attitudes toward sex — and whether they’re having it at all, which is debatable — Araki is careful not to indict the youth. He is, after all, famously still babyfaced at 66, a physical spriteliness mirrored in his bright visual aesthetics and effervescent directorial tone. Araki is very much in touch with what young people enjoy and how they operate. He simply wants more for them. Youth is wasted on the young, after all, and Araki’s mission with “I Want Your Sex” is to make it patently clear that the clock will continue to tick whether they choose to get physical or not. So why not give it a try?
(Magnolia Pictures) Charli xcx and Cooper Hoffman in “I Want Your Sex”
Sex is great, but what we remember most is what led up to it. We recall the excitement of shared energy, the potency of possibility, the spark so palpable it culminated in something intimate and naked. That’s the kind of animal electricity that points us toward our purest selves.
Araki posits that it’s fear holding people back; not just the fear of rejection, but a broader fear of the unknown. As much as I hate to parrot the sentiments of irritable older people who grumble about every kid getting a participation trophy, it is true that we live in a world that caters to our fragile egos. Every possible result for any conceivable situation is spelled out for us via a few quick internet searches. In a time when explainers and how-to guides exist for everything, influencers tell you how to dress and what to buy, and making a phone call has become a Herculean task for many, the margin for error has grown so slim it’s invisible. That also means the potential for surprise has dwindled, too. Humans have adopted an aversion to the casual risks that used to be a part of everyday life. Hazarding heartbreak and embarrassment is too dangerous. But the alternative, as Araki suggests, is an utterly boring existence, where, either way, you’ll always wonder “what if?”
(Magnolia Pictures) Margaret Cho and Johnny Knoxville in “I Want Your Sex”
But just depicting the pleasures of sex wouldn’t be enough to quell all that fear. Members of Gen Z might just fast forward through those scenes anyway, given that they want to see less sex onscreen as it is. Though Erika and Elliot’s intercourse is raucous and sultry, it’s their unpredictable relationship outside of the bedroom that keeps their fire — and the film’s madcap pacing — fueled. Elliot runs around LA doing Erika’s menial tasks until he drops everything at her beck and call. He upends his relationship with Minerva and screws up his best friendship with his roommate, Apple (Chase Sui Wonders). And he demolishes his own ego by throwing himself into something wild and capricious headfirst. He’s chasing the spark and expanding his horizons in the process. Great sex is no longer the goal, but rather a nice bonus.
To some, it may feel like Araki is flattening complex social mores and misunderstanding the anxieties behind this era of semi-celibacy. And at times, “I Want Your Sex” does sorely miss the sharp, scrappy bite of Araki’s early films, which had far more to say than his one-track-minded latest. But there’s an amiable flair to the way Araki conveys an old adage in a new way. It’s not the destination; it’s the journey — and if anyone knows this, it’s someone whose youth was spent pursuing sex, art and feeling at risk of mistake and failure. Sex is great, but what we remember most is what led up to it. We recall the excitement of shared energy, the potency of possibility, the spark so palpable it culminated in something intimate and naked. That’s the kind of animal electricity that points us toward our purest selves. When we fear the act of sex, we don’t experience the desire that leads up to it. And when we don’t have desire, we don’t truly live.
I walked up to the wizard and asked him, “What do they call you?” He clearly got the reference.
“Some would call me Tim.” he said with a smile.
I turned around to see a man dressed as a World War II aviator. “Hey, Amelia Earhart, how you doing?” I asked.
That “Caddyshack” reference got a laugh. I hope I made that joke my own.
I certainly wasn’t in Washington, D.C., anymore, Toto. No, I had abandoned the freakshow capital of the world and was in the exhibit hall at the San Diego Convention Center, watching thousands of people walk by dressed as their favorite character from comics, sci-fi, fantasy or video games. One guy I noticed looked like Alex Jones as an Ewok. I turned to my left and saw another guy who looked like Stephen Miller dressed as Lord Voldemort. To my right was a woman who looked like Karoline Leavitt dressed as Dolores Umbridge. Behind her? A guy who looked like Tom Homan dressed as the Kingpin.
It was certainly more enjoyable than seeing the real people in D.C. Hey, if you can’t enjoy yourself at Comic Con, the most famous fan convention in several worlds (if the fans are to be believed), then your ability to have fun is even below that of the religious zealots spouting biblical quotes who gather on the streets outside the convention center every year to protest the event, while becoming part of it. Who looked sillier, the guy wearing a crown of thorns or the guy dressed as the Green Lantern? Actually, I still think that was Pete Hegseth — no matter what he’s wearing.
As a political reporter, I came away from Comic Con with one overriding impression: If world politics were more like the comic book world, reality would be a safer, saner and healthier place. Who wouldn’t enjoy watching world leaders cosplaying their favorite sci-fi or fantasy characters at U.N. meetings, peace-treaty negotiations and other staged events? True peace in the Middle East could one day come with the headline; “Batman and the Joker have signed a historic agreement in Beirut. Details at 11.”
Comedian Bill Hicks famously once said that he not only supported the legalization of marijuana but thought its use should be mandatory. “Shut up and smoke this. It’s the law,” he said, imagining a peaceful world where people stopped taking life “too seriously.” Walking around Comic Con, I couldn’t help thinking that dressing up in gaudy costumes wouldn’t be a bad idea either. Doing both? Well, that’s up to you.
If politics were more like the comic book world, reality would be a safer, saner and healthier place. Who wouldn’t enjoy watching world leaders cosplaying sci-fi or fantasy characters at U.N. meetings, treaty negotiations and other staged events?
If you think that’s an absurd idea, I will say that it’s less absurd than what we see in the White House every day, and it would be a lot more enjoyable. Donald Trump has long since lost his appeal, whatever that was. He offers never-ending reruns of the same speech, and at this point it fails to entertain, enlighten or move anyone. How many more times do we have to hear about how “hot” the country is, how only losers support wind power, how 2% of the people commit 90% of crimes, or how prescription medication is now 600 percent cheaper?
Trump is dull and lackluster. He looks somnambulant. He is about as entertaining as a stale powdered donut and even less nutritious.
In a Comic Con panel discussion with a “Superman historian” — a man who has relentlessly tracked down every salient fact about Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster — I learned that the two comic book innovators met in their Cleveland high school in the late 1920s and first proposed Superman as a newspaper comic strip in 1933, during the Great Depression. One was a ladies’ man and one was a partier. They sold the rights to their creation to DC Comics and much controversy ensued. Siegel apparently wrote letters putting “curses” on people and telling the world he got screwed. Shuster was once found on a park bench and thought to be a vagrant. He told the police he was the original Superman artist, and to prove it he drew the Man of Steel convincingly enough to stay out of jail.
I loved these stories, but the most fascinating thing I learned that night was that I knew far more about the creation of the comic strip that became a billion-dollar empire after listening to a single historian for one hour than I know right now about the Iran war or the condition of Mitch McConnell, the senior U.S. senator from Kentucky, whom I have covered since the 1980s and who disappeared on June 14 into the back of a D.C. ambulance and hasn’t been seen in public since.
Future historians may make their living trying to figure out what happened to McConnell — hell, that story might become a comic book, though not one as popular as Superman. But right now, McConnell and Trump are at the heart of the loathsome divisiveness that defines American politics, makes it so disreputable and nowhere near as much fun as Comic Con.
“United we stand. Divided we fall.” Believe it or not, that’s the state motto of Kentucky. No one in politics today seems to care about our divided nature. They seem to nurture it.
Comic Con, on the other hand, was the embodiment of the Kentucky motto.
The panels featured lengthy, often in-depth discussions. Sometimes they featured celebrities recounting past glories or promoting their newest releases. Only one panel I encountered, featuring action star Alan Ritchson of “Reacher,” ventured directly into politics. Ritchson said that Trump was “raping the world” and that he chose to speak out because “I want to live a life that feels meaningful.”
It appears Trump was not pleased. White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast, “Alan Ritchson is a talentless hack who clearly suffers from a severe and incurable disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome that has completely rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
Keep it classy, Trump people.
Inside the exhibit hall I ran into actor Sam J. Jones, the former football player who played Flash Gordon back in 1980. Younger fans may remember him playing himself in “Ted,” conducting the wedding ceremony and doing the “Flash” jump at the end of the movie. He was signing autographs and handing out football cards showing him, as Flash Gordon, wearing legendary quarterback Johnny Unitas’ old number 19.
“I recognize you,” he told me.
I said I recognized him too. We talked a bit about politics and he offered this observation: “I’ve worked a lot of these Comic Cons. These are the best people you’ll ever meet. They’re genuine and they are here to enjoy themselves. The world needs more of that.”
All day on Saturday I walked through a world I rarely get to visit and didn’t know I wanted to. From the panels to the exhibit hall, I was floored by the number of artists, the collectibles and the displays. It was like a theme park. Outside in the streets, the cosplayers enjoyed mugging for the cameras or taking selfies and laughing at themselves and others while interacting with their favorite celebrities.
As I walked out of a restaurant, I passed a guy who had the most authentic Deadpool costume I’d ever seen. He was prancing about and really getting into it. Hey, I’m sorry for elbowing you, Ryan Reynolds. I didn’t know it was you. But you did step on my arthritic foot.
As Saturday afternoon turned into Saturday night, I felt like I was detoxing from the Friday night debacle back in D.C. — the rescheduled White House correspondents’ dinner. Late on Friday, my phone started buzzing with alarms from the speech. I feared the worst. But if anything, it was worse. The president was on stage, trolling reporters, insulting his own speechwriters and questioning why he was even there.
I’m sorry for elbowing you, Ryan Reynolds. I didn’t know it was you. But you did step on my arthritic foot.
For an hour, Trump meandered through a variety of subjects in a freak-show appearance, always landing with an insult aimed at the press. He stood in front of a backdrop celebrating free speech, something no one in his administration actually celebrates. Hegseth has tried to kick reporters out of the Pentagon. Trump has subpoenaed reporters, ejected them from the White House press (or tried to), and never mentions us without saying “fake news.”
“This is so toxic. I’m leaving,” a friend of mine texted me from the event. “I didn’t even want to go.” Well, I didn’t either. But unlike my friend, I don’t have a boss who insisted that I do so.
Instead, I was in San Diego at an event that was nothing like anything in politics. I’ve been to a dozen of those dinners. None were nearly as much fun as Comic Con. And that’s coming from a guy who never read comic books as a kid. The closest I got was Mad Magazine. Oh, yeah: I think I saw a guy who looked like Kevin Hassett dressed as Alfred E. Neuman. “What? Me Worry?”
I’m genuinely sick and tired of today’s politics, and I know I’m not alone. I can only take so much of Trump’s nonsense and divisiveness. “I hate some people,” he said on stage Friday night. My friend called it “toxic,” but I would call it corrosive. It destroys the ties that bind and encourages anger and petulance. It is a modern plague on humanity.
Instead of suffering through that, I watched people of every imaginable race, creed, sexual orientation and color enjoying life. Some of them were dressed as aliens. Some of them might have been aliens. Nobody cared. Nobody judged.
Saturday night ended with some friends at a barbecue place across from the convention center, a spot made famous by the movie “Top Gun.”
The weather was amenable and the company was great. I listened as people sitting at a nearby table spoke about who made “the best Batman” with all the fervor and passion I hear from those involved in politics in D.C., but none of the vitriol. After a while they laughed, changed the subject and found something they could agree upon. Their biggest area of agreement was that Ewoks were horrible, just an effort “to give the kids something,” and that while “Stargate” was a terrific movie, “Stargate SG1” was an even better series.
Other stuff that Comic Con people seemed to agree upon, in no particular order: Grogu is cool, “Rogue One” is the best Star Wars movie and “The Wrath of Khan” is quintessential “Star Trek.” Furthermore, if anyone asks you the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, the proper answer is “African or European?”
I looked up from my table, and thought I saw a guy who looked like Hegseth dressed as the surgeon general of Beverly Hills from “Escape from L.A.” kissing his husband, who looked like Josh Hawley dressed up as Mr. Poopybutthole from “Rick and Morty.”
I hadn’t even been drinking but, boy, I felt buzzed.
Todd Blanche, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, promises Americans that he has no intention of going forward with a $1.8 billion slush fund designed to funnel money out of the Treasury and into the pockets of right-wing attorneys. The outcry that followed the Justice Department’s May 19 announcement of the fund, which would pay the legal bills of political allies charged with crimes ranging from fraud to storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, was deafening. In addition to blowback from many congressional Republicans, a federal judge halted the administration’s disbursement of the money, which was created as part of Trump’s agreement with the federal government stemming from his lawsuit for the leak of his tax returns. Blanche, in his role as acting attorney general, claimed the administration would voluntarily walk away from using the money.
Now, months later, he has resolutely avoided putting this promise in writing, and his failure to formally give up the slush fund is putting at risk his Senate confirmation to permanently head the Justice Department.
The reason behind Blanche’s refusal is obvious: He and Trump want to keep the option to re-open the fund at a later date, along with the ability to write fat checks, paid for with taxpayer money, to the lawyers working on behalf of unsavory right-wing figures.
Blanche knows that world quite well; he has become personally wealthy doing exactly this kind of work.
Blanche knows that world quite well; he has become personally wealthy doing exactly this kind of work. Before taking his job at the Justice Department, first as Pam Bondi’s deputy attorney general, and then as her replacement, Blanche was making millions representing Trump in everything from a civil rape case to criminal fraud. Blanche also knows how such funds pay for that type of work. According to ABC News, between March 2023 and December 2024, his law firm was paid almost $10 million, not by Trump personally, but by a political action committee that was supposed to be funding Republican campaigns.
Blanche’s nomination is imperiled by his refusal to let go of the chance to flood the coffers of right-wing lawyers defending shady characters like his former client and current boss. Thursday’s vote to approve his nomination by the Senate Judiciary Committee was delayed. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex. and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., both who are leaving the Senate at the end of the year, are threatening to vote no unless Blanche formally commits to rolling back the deal that created this slush fund and also gave Trump and his family eternal immunity from IRS audits.
“This is not popular,” Tillis told the New York Times. “It is killing some of our candidates because they can’t explain it. And now it looks like they weren’t being honest when they said it was inoperative.”
It’s not just a “looks like” issue. Anyone who said the fund was inoperative because of Blanche’s informal say-so is either ignorant or lying. As the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee wrote in June, Blanche and Trump remain committed to funding a “pipeline of taxpayer-funded payouts to political allies and convicted criminals.” Even the conservative National Review’s Andrew McCarthy agrees, writing on Wednesday that “Blanche has resisted memorializing in writing his claim that the fund is kaput, because President Trump wants the fund.”
The White House has already been funneling taxpayer funds to these bad actors through a slightly different but related process. As the Washington Post reported in June, the Justice Department has paid out millions to Trump allies who claim victimization because they were investigated or even convicted of crimes. The family of Ashli Babbitt got a nearly $5 million check over baseless claims that her shooting death during the Jan. 6 riot was unwarranted, even though video footage clearly showed her climbing through a window in an apparent attempt to chase down congressional members and staff fleeing in fear. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported on a seven-figure check written to Paul Vaughn, who was convicted of a federal crime in 2024 for conspiring to blockade an abortion clinic before being pardoned by Trump last year.
Vaughn’s legal representation by the Thomas More Society is a reminder of who really benefits if Blanche and Trump succeed in reviving the fund after the midterm elections: right-wing lawyers, who started licking their lips within moments of the Justice Department’s announcement.
“Everybody’s very excited about it,” Mark McCloskey, a lawyer representing Jan. 6 defendants, told the Washington Post. Even though his clients have been pardoned by Trump, he has been lobbying for the fund, hoping to see a big payday by claiming wrongful prosecution. Such a claim would be all but certain to fall apart in a court of law. But as the existing track record shows, the goal is to get the Justice Department to “settle” these claims by writing checks to people who otherwise wouldn’t see a dime. Clients would get money, but so would the lawyers — especially those who, like McCloskey, would get a cut of check after check.
At this point, it’s unclear if Blanche would be able to personally benefit from various schemes to pay off Trump’s political allies with government money. He could return to private practice and start taking on those kinds of clients after leaving the Justice Department. By then, though, it’s possible a Democrat will be in the White House again, and will have either shut down the fund or started blocking payments for phony claims made by right-wing operatives. But, as someone who was on a similar gravy train not that long ago, Blanche knows full well how rich his fellow right-wing lawyers could get from this.
And it’s not just private practice lawyers, either. Groups like the Thomas More Society, Alliance Defending Freedom and other far-right legal nonprofits need funding for their legal crusades, as seen by the lawsuit that overturned Roe v. Wade, or the ongoing cases meant to curtail voting rights or LGBTQ+ equality. Taking on right-wing clients with baseless claims of victimization could be an easy way to get money, which could then be used to fund cases attacking reproductive rights or religious freedom.
That Cornyn and Tillis are taking this stand is surprising. The pair have a long history of supporting the right-wing legal organizations that could find themselves flush with slush money. As Tillis’s comments about the midterm campaigns show, it may not be anything deeper than a sense that this is politically toxic. Trump’s consideration of withdrawing Blanche’s nomination would be nothing more than a pause until after the midterm elections, when he is banking on new Republican senators to replace Cornyn and Tillis — and put his payola scheme back into action.
It may not even come to that. On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., was assuring reporters that Blanche’s nomination would be back as soon as next week, after “a resolution on the issues that Senators Cornyn and Tillis raised.” Thune’s comments suggest that as long as Trump does a slightly better job at deflecting attention from the fund, the two senators can claim victory and give Blanche their support.
Or perhaps this will really be the moment that Republicans, two of them at least, stand up to Trump for real, instead of just doing so as quickly-dispatched political theater. If so, it’s a hopeful sign that Republicans can read a poll and see his corruption is starting to wear thin, especially for a public struggling to make ends meet while the president enriches himself and his cronies.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on Monday asked state lawmakers to study ways to further infuse religion into public life as part of a new crop of interim charges unveiled by the Texas Senate leader.
One of the lieutenant governor’s directives tells senators to compare state and federal laws surrounding religious liberty, with specific instructions to look at whether state laws line up with the “establishment” and “free exercise” clauses of the First Amendment and determine if “additional protections are needed.” Another charge instructs lawmakers to examine ways to educate Texans about their right to practice their religion “in all settings, including, but not limited to: education, workplace, government, and healthcare.”
A third calls for a pulse check on a law passed by the Legislature in 2025 that lets public schools excuse student absences for off-campus religious instruction. All three charges are assigned to Patrick’s newly formed Religious Liberty Committee, chaired by state Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, that was announced in March.
The latest charges arrive as Texas’ Republican leaders continue to attack Muslims in the state. One of Patrick’s first charges, released earlier this year, called for “preventing Sharia law in Texas,” while party members at the Texas GOP convention last month tried to expel Muslims who arrived to participate in the event.
Patrick has long been a champion of Christian conservative values and has said he does not believe there is a separation between church and state. Last year, President Donald Trump tapped him to lead a new commission on religious liberty.
“There is no such thing as ‘separation of church and state’ in the Constitution. For too long, the anti-God left has used this phrase to suppress people of religion in our country,” Patrick said in April after the commission held its final hearing.
Interim charges are lists of issues that the lieutenant governor and speaker give to their respective chamber’s committees to study during the period between legislative sessions. They typically include reviews of recently passed laws and instructions to recommend laws for the upcoming session. Patrick has already released multiplewaves of interim charges ahead of the Legislature’s reconvening in January.
The lieutenant governor’s other charges Monday call for preventing unfair online ticket sales, studying gaming platforms that target children for inappropriate advertising, examining “inefficient or inconsistent” divorce and child custody proceedings, and assessing the Pecos River Basin’s water situation.
The Republican-controlled Legislature has already thinned the line separating church and state in recent years. A new law requires public schools to display the Ten Commandments and another lets schools set aside time for prayer, yet few school boards did so last school year.
Lawmakers have also required classrooms to hang donated signs that say “In God We Trust”; allowed unlicensed religious chaplains to supplant mental health counselors in public schools; and approved new curriculum materials that teach the Bible and other religious texts alongside grade-school lessons.
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