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| |  POLITICO illustration by David Badders/Getty Images | If you read between the lines of coverage of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, it seems like quite a few journalists think he's not the sharpest tool in the shed. He's "a golden retriever of a man" (New York Times), "not known to have a mind for policy" (Boston Globe), and "there are those who privately question his policy chops and intellectual abilities" (that one's on us). It's not hard to conclude that the authors of these lines may be trying to tell us something. But why aren't they just coming out and saying it? "It turns out that stupid may be one of Washington's last taboos," writes Mike Schaffer in his latest column . "Insiders will bandy about all kinds of notions about prominent pols: Who's a liar, who's losing their marbles, who's a dupe. But … out-and-out accusations of dopiness are rare." That is, until you offer anonymity. "I would never consider him to be smart," says a TV figure who has interviewed McCarthy several times. "In a strange way that is hard to explain, he's gotten more stupid the longer he's here," opines a longtime Capitol Hill reporter. "He's a lightweight," says one veteran political journalist. But this isn't a column about McCarthy's intellect. Rather, it's a column about how Washington talks: If someone is in line for an important job, and people in the business of telling it like it is think that person is a dimwit, why doesn't this conclusion get shared with the broader public? Read Schaffer's column.
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| "He's a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off." Can you guess who started saying variations of this line in the late 1960s about then-House Minority Leader and future President Gerald Ford? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.
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| |  Hialeah, Fla. has five abortion clinics. | Photos by Mary Beth Koeth for POLITICO | Florida's Abortion Contradiction … Hialeah, Florida is a Republican city. Its mayor is a Republican, its state senator and representative are Republicans. It went for Trump in 2016 and again in 2020. It also has five abortion clinics, one of them likely the busiest in Miami-Dade county, which has by far the highest number of abortions in the state of Florida, which in turn has one of the nation's top abortion rates. Kathy Gilsinan went to Hialeah to report on the profound disconnect between state abortion politics and citizens' personal behavior. "Which makes Florida an especially vivid laboratory to study the limits of the GOP's anti-abortion agenda," she writes. "At what point does the Republican-dominated legislature discover it has awakened a constituency that had come to rely on abortion as an essential option in navigating their lives?"
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| If you had no idea who those seven identically dressed guys at a White House briefing this week were, you're in trouble — they're BTS, literally the most popular band in the world. Here are a few factoids if you want to avoid looking like a total idiot to your Gen Z pals. (From POLITICO's Catherine Kim.) - K-pop groups aren't usually political, but BTS is an outlier: The group and its label donated $1 million to Black Lives Matter during the 2020 racial justice protests, and showed up at the WH to speak out against anti-Asian violence. - Don't be fooled by the dark suits: BTS' looks are flashy and constantly changing. During their "Boy With Luv" era, their hair styles were all colors of the rainbow. - You don't swoon over your fave member; you "stan" your "bias." Jungkook isn't the youngest in the group; he's the "maknae." And if you're so moved you want to cheer, but you don't want to sound like grandpa, scream "BTS fighting!" - Deep cut: Casually muse about whether the appearance could affect the ongoing debate about whether BTS should be drafted into the South Korean military.
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POLITICO illustration by David Badders/Paramount, Getty Images, AP Photo | Why America Needs Tom Cruise … Thirty-five years after the Reagan-era original, "Top Gun: Maverick" set a record at the Memorial Day weekend box office. But it's not just simple nostalgia that drove fans — many of whom probably hadn't even been born when Tom Cruise first dropped into the cockpit — to the cinema. "After years of Twitter, Trump, Covid, social upheaval, and an ever-more-bland, oppressive pop-cultural sameness," writes Derek Robertson, "a large number of Americans are desperate for permission to collectively feel good about our life, country, and culture, without any of the attendant political baggage. Who better to give it to them than Tom Cruise, the ultimate icon of pre-irony, can-do Americanism?"
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| 73 percent … of ideological liberals say that extraterrestrial life definitely or probably exists, compared to 52 percent of ideological conservatives. But among believers, conservatives (66 percent) are more likely than liberals (56 percent) to say that extraterrestrials have visited Earth. Every week, The Weekend inserts a question in a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll and see what the crosstabs yield. Got any suggestions? Email us at politicoweekend@email.politico.com.
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Rebecca Gomperts leads a chant at a 2018 abortion rally in Ireland. | Charles McQuillan/Getty Images | The Doctor Supplying Red States With Abortion Pills … If Roe v. Wade is overturned, Rebecca Gomperts may quickly become the most controversial abortion provider in America — even though she isn't in America. For more than two decades, the Netherlands-based doctor has worked to provide abortions to women in countries that restrict access. Now, her organization Aid Access, which conducts telehealth services and sends abortion medication through the U.S. mail, is the only organization openly providing services in the 19 states that restrict telehealth abortion. It could soon become the only source of physician-supported pills-by-mail. Chelsea Conaboy spoke with Gomperts about what she sees as America's backsliding democracy and the future of criminalized abortion.
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Harry S. Truman Library | On October 3, 1948, more than 40 of the country's top cartoonists arrived at the White House with their sketch pads to draw then-president Harry S. Truman while he posed on the terrace of the rose garden. The event marked the beginning of a 17-city tour by the group of artists, aimed at drumming up enthusiasm for the Treasury Department's U.S. savings bonds program. The tour featured performances and an exhibit, "20,000 Years of Comics," involving a 95-foot-long traveling display.
**Who Dissed? answer: It was President Lyndon B. Johnson who started making this dig about Ford's intelligence. The insult provoked quite a response: In 1968, a Ford staffer was tasked with proving Ford's smarts, and he decided to fight comedy with comedy. "The first thing he asked Ford to do was look around home for his old football helmet," the Times wrote in 1974. Ford wore it to the Gridiron dinner, tried to pull the flaps down over his ears, and said, "On the Gridiron, I always wear my helmet."
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