Republican Lawmaker Brazenly Threatens Another Basic Right

With nationwide abortion access off the table thanks to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Republican Party is setting its sights on a new civil rights target: recriminalizing gay marriage.

The sentiment is apparently popular enough among those on the right that Michigan state Representative Josh Schriver unwarily shared his opinion on the topic Monday, writing in a late-morning post that he believed same-sex unions should be made “illegal again.”

“This is not remotely controversial, nor extreme,” Schriver posted on X.

Gay marriage was effectively legalized in 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that keeping marriage licenses from same-sex couples was discriminatory. The decision mandated all states to issue licenses to gay and lesbian couples and required them to recognize marriages performed in other jurisdictions as well.

Marriage equality was further protected at the federal level in 2022, when the Respect for Marriage Act became law, requiring all 50 states to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. It did not, however, formally legalize gay marriage, so if the Supreme Court were ever to overturn Obergefell, gay marriage rights would fall with it.

And Schriver has at least one ally on the nation’s high court: conservative Justice Clarence Thomas. In his concurring Dobbs opinion, Thomas urged the Supreme Court to revisit cases ruling on same-sex marriage and contraception.

If Schriver’s loud-mouthed opinion on the intimate issue is any indicator, then conservative politics in the country have considerably regressed in the seven years since the Supreme Court ruled on Obergefell. But his opinion would also be wrong when blown out on a national scale. Roughly 69 percent of Americans support same-sex marriages, according to a 2024 Gallup poll. Republican support for gay couples’ equal rights has dipped in recent years, however, dropping from a record high of 55 percent in favor of it in 2021 to 46 percent in 2024.

Donald Trump promised “HELL TO PAY” in the Middle East if hostages held by Hamas in Gaza aren’t released by his inauguration on January 20, 2025.

In a Truth Social post on Monday afternoon, Trump promised consequences “for those who perpetrated these atrocities against humanity,” saying those responsible “will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”

Trump’s comments came after Hamas issued a video statement saying 33 of its captives have been killed during Israel’s brutal war on Gaza dating back to October last year, when Hamas attacked Israel and took more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Israel has killed more than 44,000 people, including 17,492 children, in its war on Gaza.

Last month, Israeli Prime Minister and accused war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly promised Trump a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon before Trump’s inauguration. A U.S.-brokered ceasefire was agreed upon last week, although it is already showing signs of unraveling.

Now Trump seems to want the release of hostages before his presidency begins but made no mention of a Gaza ceasefire as a prerequisite. The president-elect has remarked that Israel should “finish the job” in Gaza, basically endorsing the country’s yearlong campaign that has resulted in a humanitarian crisis and war crimes charges.

Trump’s latest comments raise the question of what “hell to pay” would mean for Gaza, whose infrastructure has been reduced to rubble. Is Trump threatening to use the U.S. military in airstrikes in the Middle East against Hamas’s allies in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran? If so, that would very much set off the regional war that Trump has claimed he doesn’t want.

Elon Musk is butting his head into the auction of Alex Jones’s InfoWars.

Satirical outlet The Onion purchased InfoWars’ parent company last month for $1.75 million in conjunction with the families of children murdered during the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, to whom Jones lost a $1.5 billion lawsuit for repeatedly claiming that the mass shooting was a hoax.

That sale included InfoWars’ websites, its studio equipment, its dietary supplements, its branding—as well as its heavily trafficked social media accounts.

The deal appeared to be cut-and-dried, but on Monday, Musk alerted the court that he would not accept the ownership transfer of InfoWars’ X accounts. In filings with a Texas bankruptcy court, X argued that the sale violated its terms of service, which prevent the sale of its accounts, writing that the company objects “to any proposed sale or other purported transfer of any account used by Jones or FSS that is maintained on the X platform (‘X’).”

“Elon Musk, hands down, is a hero,” Jones previously said in a video message posted to his account, praising the world’s richest man for lending him a hand in maintaining his connection to the brand.

It is, nonetheless, a stark reversal of how Musk felt about Jones’s social media presence in the wake of his court judgments. In 2022, shortly after Jones lost his lawsuit to the Sandy Hook families, Musk said he wouldn’t allow Jones back on his social media platform, paraphrasing the Bible in his explanation that Jones deserved “no mercy” for using the “deaths of children for gain, politics or fame.”

Meanwhile, social media attorneys have been stunned by the intervention, noting that this appears to be the first instance in which a social media company has gotten involved in a legal dispute over account ownership.

“This is the first time I’ve seen a social media platform arguing to a court that no one can transfer ownership during a dispute over who owns an account because they will just switch it off,” Toby Butterfield, a professor of social media law at Columbia University Law School, told CNN.

Jones repeatedly claimed that the 2012 shooting that left 20 first graders and six teachers dead was a front to lure voters toward gun control policies.

In the run-up to the auction last month, Jones had appeared to be under the impression that “good guys” on the right would buy his fringe network, though he did not reveal who they were. Several groups expressed interest in InfoWars assets, including a coalition of liberal and anti-disinformation watchdog groups, according to The Daily Beast, as well as some of Jones’s own supporters, such as Donald Trump ally Roger Stone. The sale, however, has effectively crushed what was arguably Jones’s most successful endeavor while marking the beginning of his descent into irrelevancy.

Jones is currently working to appeal the sale.

Representative Jamie Raskin launched a campaign Monday to replace Representative Jerry Nadler as ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee.

In a letter to his colleagues, the Maryland Democrat warned that they were in “the fight of our lives.” Raskin asked for the party to support his burgeoning bid, explaining that “the stakes have gone way up since the election” as “this time the MAGA movement has not only a trifecta but a complicit Supreme Court waiting in the wings and a dominant media propaganda system parroting all the lies.”

“House Democrats must stand in the breach to defend the principles and institutions of constitutional democracy. That is our historic assignment now. We dare not fail,” Raskin wrote.

“After a week consulting most of our Colleagues and engaging in serious introspection about where we are, I am running today to be your Ranking Member on the House Judiciary Committee in the 119th Congress,” he wrote. “This is where we will wage our front-line defense of the freedoms and rights of the people, the integrity of the Department of Justice and the FBI, and the security of our most precious birthright possessions: the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the rule of law, and democracy itself.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was among several House Democrats who spent days urging a rather reluctant Raskin to challenge the 77-year-old Nadler, a pillar of the House’s older Democratic guard. Democrats have reportedly grown concerned that Nadler wouldn’t be as meaningfully effective in quashing Donald Trump’s abuses of power as Raskin, who headed the House’s investigation into the deadly January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Democrats and Republicans alike would prefer Chris Wray to continue as FBI director and not be replaced by the controversial Kash Patel.

President-elect Donald Trump announced that he plans to replace Wray—whom he appointed in 2017—with election-denying, far-right loyalist Kash Patel. FBI directors have a 10-year tenure unless they are fired or resign. And most people in Congress seem to think Wray has done a fine job and deserves to fulfill his term until 2027.

South Dakota Republican Mike Rounds called Wray a “very good man” and had no issues with how Wray led the FBI. Other Republicans, however, like Senator Chuck Grassley, have been quick to fall in line behind Trump, whose primary beef with Wray was that he didn’t investigate Joe Biden for election fraud in 2020.

“Chris Wray has failed at fundamental duties of [FBI Director]. He’s showed disdain for [congressional] oversight & hasn’t lived up to his promises It’s time 2 chart a new course 4 TRANSPARENCY +ACCOUNTABILITY at FBI,” Grassley wrote on X. “Kash Patel must prove to Congress he will reform &restore public trust in FBI.”

Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin offered his own take, telling NBC that Wray had “demonstrated too much independence and objectivity in the job for Donald Trump, who wants much more of a personal loyalist in the position. And that’s why he’s gone to Kash Patel.”

Patel is a staunch Trump advocate with a thirst for political revenge, and he’s made that very clear. To fire Wray and hire Patel would just be another shameless effort on Trump’s part to surround himself with highly unqualified yet deeply vindictive yes-men. It seems to be working.