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Internet Hilariously Roasts Nancy Mace’s Latest Hypocrisy

The South Carolina representative can’t outrun her own actions.

Nancy Mace sits in front of a microphone
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

South Carolina Republican Representative Nancy Mace bragged about her record supporting civil rights—but was quickly called out for leaving out a major detail.

Mace appeared on CNN Wednesday night to discuss the House vote to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over audio of President Joe Biden’s classified documents case interview with special counsel Robert Hur. Speaking with Laura Coates, Mace bravely posed as a guardian of due process.

“I work on a lot of civil rights issues. I was the ranking member of the civil rights subcommittee last session on oversight. Due process is a really important issue,” she said. Mace did not, however, mention why she’s no longer the ranking member of the subcommittee: She helped lead the charge to disband it.

It’s not the first time Mace has trotted out this defense. In January, at a House Oversight Committee hearing during which Hunter Biden testified, she tried to beat back criticism from Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett that she had misused the term “white privilege” while questioning Biden, citing her former ranking position on the subcommittee.

“I take great pride as a white female Republican to address the inadequacies in our country,” Mace said.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quickly pointed out, though, that Mace’s position appeared more valuable to her as a title to be wielded over Democrats than an actual leadership role in safeguarding the rights of minorities across the country. After all, the subcommittee did not just cease to exist. Mace, along with Kentucky Representative and abortive Biden impeachment architect James Comer, had overseen its elimination in early 2023.

Crockett had noted during the hearing that “rather than squandering their authority on investigations of the president’s family, the chairman and House Republicans should use their authority to conduct oversight and investigate the merciless murders of innocent Americans—mainly Americans who look like me—at the hands of law enforcement.”

That hasn’t stopped Mace—who has been in the news recently for potential ethics violations and mistreatment of staff—from loudly proclaiming her civil rights bona fides when they are of political use to her. Right-wing retconning of the conservative civil rights record is nothing new, however; they’ve done it about Martin Luther King Jr., the Civil Rights Act, and plenty of other now-popular causes they once opposed. But as the right continues to openly repudiate those civil rights achievements, Mace’s convenient lie of omission may become increasingly rare.

J.D. Vance Reaches Pathetic New Low in Audition for Trump’s V.P.

The Ohio senator will do whatever he can to get the gig—even if it means desperate flattery.

Senator J.D. Vance
Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

Hoping to be Donald Trump’s running mate, Senator J.D. Vance is trying to butter up his son Donald Trump Jr.

On X (formerly Twitter) Wednesday morning, the Ohio politician shared an Axios post calling the younger Trump “MAGA’s new kingmaker,” and called him “one of the best people I’ve met in politics.”

Twitter Screenshot J.D. Vance: Don is one of the best people I’ve met in politics. He genuinely believes in America First and works his ass off to make it a reality.

The post was immediately mocked online, as users pointed out the pathetic suck-up attempt.

Twitter Screenshot: Well, every king needs a court jester and every village needs an idiot so here you are.
Twitter screenshot: J.D. Vance isi sucking up so hard, I'm wondering how depressed he will be if he's not Trump's choice for V.P.

It’s only the latest move from Vance to curry favor with the former president and convicted felon. Vance has introduced a performative bill to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion principles from the federal government, and implied that he would have carried out a coup in favor of Trump if he were vice president on January 6, 2021. He said he would accept the 2024 election results—if Trump is the victor. He also criticized the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over Trump’s hush-money trial, on Trump’s behalf since the Republican presidential nominee was bound by a gag order.

When Trump will pick a vice president is anyone’s guess, but Vance is supposedly among his top four, along with Senators Marco Rubio and Tim Scott and North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. With Vance’s claim to fame being the narrative of climbing out of rural poverty to wealth and education (before embracing MAGA and attacking the elite institutions he benefited from), he may have an advantage over the other candidates. Trump also supposedly “likes people who are rich and have hot wives,” according to one source.

According to Vance, the Trump campaign has ironically asked prospective vice presidential candidates whether they have been convicted of a crime.

More on election hell:

Supreme Court Shocks Everyone by Saving Abortion Pill—for Now

The conservative-majority court ruled against a challenge to mifepristone, one of the medications used to induce an abortion.

People hold up pro-abortion protest signs outside the Supreme Court
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The Supreme Court decided Thursday that an anti-abortion group does not have legal standing to sue the Food and Drug Administration over mifepristone, guaranteeing national access to abortion medication under U.S. law.

A coalition of anti-abortion doctors and activists challenged access to mifepristone in November 2022, alleging that the FDA had overstepped its role by taking several steps that expanded access to the drug in 2016. The plaintiffs, represented by the right-wing Christian organization Alliance Defending Freedom, sought to overturn the FDA’s approval and have mifepristone pulled from the market.

In a unanimous opinion, the court ruled that the group had no standing to sue the federal agency and that it had failed to demonstrate how it was personally harmed by the drug’s existence on the market.

“Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue. Nor do the plaintiffs’ other standing theories suffice. Therefore, the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge FDA’s actions,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote, later specifying that “citizens and doctors do not have standing to sue simply because others are allowed to engage in certain activities—at least without the plaintiffs demonstrating how they would be injured by the government’s alleged under-regulation of others.”

Mifepristone and misoprostol comprise the two-step prescription referred to as “the abortion pill.” Together, they account for more than half of all the abortions in the United States, according to a 2022 report by the Guttmacher Institute.

The case, FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, was the biggest challenge to national reproductive access since the court’s conservative supermajority overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. The battle truly kicked off in April the following year, when a Trump-appointed judge in Texas halted access to the drug.

Four months later, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the plaintiffs, ruling that while the pill was safe for market, the FDA had improperly approved expanded access. Those steps included allowing women to access mifepristone 10 weeks into pregnancy instead of seven, lowering the standard dosage, and allowing the prescription to be accessed via telemedicine.

To be clear, the Supreme Court’s decision hinges on the legality of the case, not on whether people have a right to bodily autonomy. The high court ruled that the Fifth Circuit’s decision failed to find a basis in the U.S. Constitution.

“The plaintiffs have sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to elective abortion and to FDA’s relaxed regulation of mifepristone,” Kavanaugh wrote. “But under Article III of the Constitution, those kinds of objections alone do not establish a justiciable case or controversy in federal court. Here, the plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that FDA’s relaxed regulatory requirements likely would cause them to suffer an injury in fact. For that reason, the federal courts are the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs’ concerns about FDA’s actions.”

Instead, Kavanaugh suggested that the plaintiffs take their issues to the president, setting up another fight to maintain abortion access should Donald Trump win in November.

By and large, most Americans support abortion access. In a 2023 Gallup poll, just 13 percent of surveyed Americans said that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. Meanwhile, 34 percent said it should be legal under any circumstances, and an additional 13 percent said it should be legal in most circumstances.

This story has been updated.

Watch: Witness Brilliantly Shuts Down GOP Senator’s Abortion Question

Jocelyn Frye of the National Partnership for Women & Families did not have time for Senator John Kennedy’s deceptive line of questioning.

Senator John Neely Kennedy speaking
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Images

“Well, Senator, first of all, don’t ask a question if you don’t want to know the answer.” Wise words were offered on Wednesday by Joceyln Frye, president of National Partnership for Women & Families, during testimony to a congressional subcommittee on the freedom to travel for abortion care.

The comments came as Frye was asked by Republican Senator John Neely Kennedy about a woman who allegedly asked for an abortion at 34 weeks.

“Should the mother at that juncture have the right—clearly a viable child—to abort the child?” Kennedy asked Frye, who quickly shut down the entire premise.

“One percent of abortions happen at 21 weeks or later,” says Frye. “So I think the premise of your question sets up a conversation about abortion that is unfair. It is rarely—is that ever the instance. Most, the vast majority of pregnancies and abortions that are considered late in a pregnancy have to do with severe, devastating medical circumstances.”

“And I understand your point. Senator, I understand your point. But with all due respect, I also think the chances of people sort of getting all the way through a pregnancy, and just sort of saying, ‘I don’t want it,’ it’s disrespectful to women.”

Kennedy is an anti-abortion conservative who proudly touts an “A” rating from the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List. Kennedy has often gotten shut down for asking questions detached from reality and espousing anti-abortion disinformation.

Last week, all but two Senate Republicans voted against protecting the right to contraception, as conservative lawmakers steadily chop away at access to abortion care and Trump continues to platform extreme anti-abortion stances.

More on the war on women and gender minorities:

Trump’s F-Bomb Rant to Mike Johnson Sparks Desperate GOP Moves

Trump begged the House speaker to save him after his hush-money conviction.

Mike Johnson stands behind Donald Trump as he speaks at a podium
Joe Raedle/Getty Images

After a jury found him guilty on 34 felony counts, Donald Trump knew exactly who to call for a solution: House Speaker Mike Johnson.

In a conversation reportedly laced with F-bombs, Trump urged the Louisiana Republican to find  a political solution for his legal comeuppance, Politico reported Thursday.

“We have to overturn this,” Trump told a sympathetic Johnson, according to Politico

Johnson already believed that the House had a role to play in overturning Trump’s conviction, but since that call, he’s practically done backflips to make it happen. During an interview on Fox and Friends last month, Johnson urged the Supreme Court to “step in” and overturn the jury’s verdict.

“I think that the justices on the court—I know many of them personally—I think they are deeply concerned about that, as we are. So I think they’ll set this straight,” Johnson said, before effectively promising to viewers that the nation’s highest court would step in to make the ruling go away. “This will be overturned, guys, there’s no question about it; it’s just going to take some time to do it.”

The House Speaker is looking to unravel Trump’s other criminal charges, as well. Johnson is reportedly examining using the appropriations process to target special counsel Jack Smith’s probe, and is already in talks with Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan to do so. It’s a near reversal of a position he took early last month, when Johnson told Politico that a similar idea proposed by Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene would be “unworkable.”

“That country certainly sees what’s going on, and they don’t want Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg and these kinds of folks to be able to continue to use grant dollars for targeting people in a political lawfare type of way,” Jordan told the publication.

But other Republicans aren’t exactly on board with the idea of defunding the special counsel—even if they disagree with the case against Trump.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea unless you can show that [the prosecutors] acted in bad faith or fraud or something like that,” Idaho Representative Mike Simpson told Politico. “They’re just doing their job—even though I disagree with what they did.”

Another, unnamed Republican went even further in torching the effort, claiming that attacking Smith’s case would completely undermine their calls against Democrats for “weaponizing” the justice system to their political benefit.