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Politico illustration / Getty Images / AP Photo | For years, Tim Miller worked as a political consultant for Republicans, even as the party drifted further from his own beliefs. Now a well-known Trump critic horrified by the party's embrace of the Big Lie, he's written a reflective, incendiary new book from behind the scenes of the GOP's rightward realignment. How did so many normie Republican operatives — the so-called "adults in the room" — pave the way for Trump's worst impulses? "As a gay man who contorted himself into defending homophobes and a Trump abhorrer who didn't hesitate to spin for Trump's EPA toady, Scott Pruitt, I still know a thing or two about being an enabler," Miller writes. In this excerpt from his book, he lays out the 11 types of people who rationalized, agonized over or outright embraced Trumpland — a taxonomy of enablers, a field guide to the various subspecies of worker bees swarming around the "Mango Monstrosity." And he names names. Read the full David Attenborough treatment of the Trumpian right. Our Michael Kruse also sat down with Miller for a wide-ranging Q & A. The two discuss exactly what it was like to work behind the scenes as a Republican operative, not only as a closeted gay man ignoring the homophobia of his clients, but also as a Never Trumper in a party of loyalists. "The thing I feel most guilty about," Miller says, "is that my life's work, frankly, was a net drag on the country and on our society." Read the full interview.
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| "That dark designing sordid ambitious vain proud arrogant and vindictive knave ..." Can you guess who said this about George Washington in 1779, before he was president? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.
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A Montgomery County Police officer stands guard as protesters march past Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's home on June 8, 2022. | Nathan Howard/Getty Images | D.C.'s Feeling of Menace … In the middle of the night on June 8, a young man carrying a suitcase stood outside the Chevy Chase home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and called 911. He allegedly told the dispatcher he was having suicidal thoughts, had a firearm in his suitcase and had come from California to kill a Supreme Court Justice. In the Washington news cycle, it was a blip. Why? For the right, it's simple liberal media bias. But Michael Schaffer has a scarier theory in this week's Capital City column: "Potential violence and intimidation in Washington's political world has stopped seeming quite so newsy. Man-threatens-man has become the new dog-bites-man."
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| The world is rapt by the overturning of Roe, but that's not all the Supreme Court has been up to. Here's how to sound like an eagle-eyed court-watcher now that SCOTUS has wrapped up its term: - "Chevron deference" is on the wane. The "major-questions doctrine" (cited in an opinion on Thursday for the first time) is on the rise. - A "surprise decision" of the term came when the three liberal justices joined Roberts and Kavanaugh in allowing a man on death row to choose firing squad over lethal injection. Could this help liberal justices build bridges to their conservative colleagues? - You obviously knew the Supreme Court had sent out its last opinion of the day when the R numbers (those little numerals on the left-hand column on the court's opinion page) went up on the website — a trick reporters use to tell when SCOTUS is done for the day. - Feeling prophetic? Hazard a guess on the outcome of a big case next term: Moore v. Harper, which will test a legal theory that would consolidate elections power in the hands of state legislatures. Just do yourself a favor and don't tweet your theory or we'll write about it if you're wrong.
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| 56 percent … of Republicans own a dog, compared to 47 percent of Democrats. For cats, Dems are slightly ahead, with 36 percent owning felines compared to 34 percent of Republicans. 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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Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow. | Photographs by Jason Berman for POLITICO | Dems' Secret Weapon? … When a Republican baselessly accused Michigan state Senator Mallory McMarrow of grooming and sexualizing children, she fought back, delivering a viral speech that Hillary Clinton retweeted and President Biden complimented via voicemail. Now, the 35-year-old former creative director for Gawker is designing a playbook for Democrats fielding culture war onslaughts, with the backing of high-profile consultants like Lis Smith, who helped Pete Buttigieg become a star. Adam Wren went bowling with McMarrow to learn more about the playbook she offers Democrats in a dispiriting election year.
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Animation by Loulou João | What to Read This Summer … Top thinkers and political change-makers from Chelsea Clinton to David Petraeus share the books they're showing off in their Zoom backgrounds — and the books they're taking to the beach.
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| Everywhere from prestigious auction houses to humble yard sales, political artifacts can be yours for a price. In Politico Weekend, historian Ted Widmer will take you window shopping for the past, telling the tale behind a storied item he's found for sale. | 
This ticket to see the electoral vote count for the disputed 1876 Hayes v. Tilden election recently popped up on eBay. | Hakes.com | This ticket would have gotten you into the Capitol at a moment when the future of the republic hung in the balance. No, not January 6. Go back some 145 years. The 1876 presidential election resulted in a stalemate when four states produced disputed results. Democratic nominee Samuel Tilden had the lead over Republican rival Rutherford B. Hayes (184-165), but neither could win until the final 20 votes from these four states were counted. So on January 29, 1877, Congress appointed a special commission that ultimately gave all 20 votes to Hayes after a secret deal exchanged Southern support for a promise to remove federal troops from the South, dooming African-American voting rights for the better part of a century. The commission did its sordid work far from view, but the Constitution still demanded that the president of the Senate count electoral votes in the presence of Congress. So, on February 21, Congress held a cynical ceremony to "count" the electoral votes in the House chamber, issuing tickets like this one, signed by the speaker, Samuel J. Randall, and the president pro tempore of the Senate, Thomas W. Ferry. Number 211 just surfaced on eBay, where it can be yours for $425.
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U.S. Navy/Harry S. Truman Library | President Harry S. Truman (right) in vacation mode on the flying bridge of the USS Williamsburg with his military aide, Major General Harry H. Vaughan (left), and the Secret Service's James Joseph Rowley — who would later go on to be its head. In August 1946, Truman's crew voyaged to Bermuda, docking at the U.S. naval base that was leased from Great Britain just before American entry into World War II. It was Truman's first real vacation after 16 months in the top job, and he spent a week on the island. One of the activities included a fishing contest. Truman's team — composed of secretary Charles Ross, naval aide Captain J. H. Foskett and treasury secretary John Snyder — emerged victorious, catching 40 fish totaling 75 pounds. The opposing team — comprising adviser George Allen and three others — caught just 20 fish amounting to 60 pounds. The president left Bermuda "deeply tanned, rested and relaxed" according to the Tampa Times.
| | | Who Dissed? answer: The barb came from Revolutionary War General Charles Lee, who believed that Washington wanted him assassinated. The Continental Congress later dismissed him from service. | | | | Follow us | | | | |
