Texas’s Hail Mary pep talk

Fumbled…

As Texas digs out from last weekend’s catastrophic flooding, the state’s leaders are using the only metaphor its residents understand – football – to try and shift blame. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a great protector of the Republican establishment, said at a Tuesday press conference, “Every football team makes mistakes. The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who is to blame. The championship teams are the ones that say ‘Don’t worry about it, man. We got this. We’re going to make sure that we go score again and then we’re going to win this game.’”

But the “losing team,” in this case, appears to be the Republican-run Kerr County, which did not have a proper flood warning system in place. On CNN on Wednesday, liberal Congressman Lloyd Doggett, from Austin, said, “For the governor to treat this as if it were a football game, this is not a game. People’s lives are at stake, and there’s so much more that should have been done.” 

This being Texas, the Democrats have their own football player in the wings – former Baylor University and Tennessee Titans linebacker Colin Allred, who’s running for Senator against John Cornyn (or whoever MAGA Republicans primary Cornyn with) in 2026, after losing to Ted Cruz by more than eight points last year. It remains to be seen if Texans want an actual football player representing them, or just someone who invokes football to score cheap political points. In Texas, the playbook hasn’t changed for a long time.

On our radar

FEMA’S SECOND CHANCE Ahead of Trump’s trip to Central Texas to visit flood victims today, White House officials said they will not abolish FEMA but “rebrand” it to give state leaders roles in disaster response.

DoGE LOYALTY By July 18, the Senate must vote on Trump’s $9.4 billion DoGE cut package. The President has said any Republican senator who votes against it will lose his endorsement.

FORD VS FORD Luck is not on Ford Motors’s side in 2025. In the last six months, the company recorded more safety recalls than any other car company has in an entire year.

Our (alpha) man in Kuala Lumpur

An ambassadorial posting to a distant land can be a fitting reward for a loyal subject. Take Kimberly Guilfoyle: after being unceremoniously catapulted out of the Trump inner circle when Don Jr. ditched her, the TV personality landed on her kitten heels in Athens, becoming the nominee for America’s ambassador to Greece. So congratulations then to Nick Adams, who yesterday was appointed US Ambassador to Malaysia. Longtime readers of this Diary will recognize Adams as the self-identified “Alpha Male,” ostensible author of tweets such as, “Joe Biden has never set foot inside a Hooters” and “I will never apologize for being an alpha male.” The Australian-born MAGA man has also posted some controversial comments about Islam in his time – making him an interesting choice to represent the US in a country that’s nearly two-thirds Muslim…

Hakeem, please just be yourself

After desperate efforts by Democrats to fill their party’s authenticity gap, Cockburn has noticed that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (or whoever runs his Instagram account) appears to have been messing around with his proportions on Facetune or some other photoshop software.When Jeffries posted a photo of himself (which has since been deleted) suavely leaning against a bench in Brooklyn, gazing off into the distance, the Instagram hecklers started roasting the rep in the comment section. “This is some very, very bad photoshop. You should be ashamed of yourself,” Instagram influencer Tyreak said. “Is the bench being sucked into a black hole? And if it is, why are you just standing there?”

Then poor Jeffries’ Instagram was suddenly thrust under the microscope for artificial body enhancements. In one post from May, it looks like the minority leader made his right shoulder a little broader, and in another of him decked out in Yankees attire, it looks like Jeffries used an app to deftly push up his sleeves a little.

This whole fiasco is humorous to Cockburn, especially after the Minority Leader told a flock of earnest Harvard students that “House Democrats” are “the most authentic representatives of the American people in the institution,” in 2021. Authentic indeed…

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