Where’s the nonbinary restroom at the Supreme Court?

Lincoln in the Bardo

“The economy has never been better,” top Democrats and their surrogates told voters during the 2024 elections. It turns out that’s because the economy was doing just fine for a lot of the party’s top vendors. After all, Kamala Harris’s $1 billion of campaign expenditures had to wet some beaks, if not win votes. 

One series of outlays stood out in particular: the millions of dollars spent by the Lincoln Project, despite the Democratic Party’s top infrastructure rolling out focus groups showing that the group’s work had zero impact on the 2020 presidential election. 

“Tragic,” elections analyst Rob Pyers wrote on X. “After raising $15.5 million for the year and burning through $16.2 million, The Lincoln Project limped out of the election with $412,624 on hand and $632,329 in unpaid invoices (though it’s mostly to the LLCs of Lincoln Project members, so no real harm).” 

Cockburn sheds no tears for the Lincoln Project’s stiffed staffers. Pyers noted that they nevertheless made out like absolute bandits:

“Lincoln Project payments to its principals since January 1st, 2023:
$2,137,296 – Joe Trippi (Lever Communications)
$2,074,065 – Joey Wartnerchaney (Manhattan Creative)
$1,522,582 – Ben Howe (Third Act Media)
$934,629-  Rick Wilson (Intrepid Media)
$758,571 – Reed Galen (Summit Strategic)
$535,000 – Stuart Stevens (Message Mountain)
$435,916 – Trygve Olseon (Viking Strategies)
$391,851 – Tara Setmayer (Veracity Reigns)
$387,391 – Jeff Timmer (Two Rivers Public Affairs).” 

It turns out that “defending democracy” is very profitable. Now, founders like Rick Wilson are raising big bucks (the reported minimum investment is $1 million!) to spy on Elon Musk via a new entity that will “operate as an opposition research firm but with a military-grade intelligence-gathering operation that went far beyond the document vetting typical of a political campaign.” Sounds lucrative.

SCOTUS stalls

As the Supreme Court heard arguments against a Tennessee law banning puberty blockers and hormones for transgender minors, the nation’s highest court was flooded with LGBTQ+ reporters who quickly inquired about the bathroom situation.

One of Cockburn’s spies says a nonbinary reporter was quite distressed to find out that there were only male and female bathrooms. “What about bathrooms for nonbinary people, particularly given the subject matter today?” the reporter asked an older female staffer who was showing the scrum where they could find the facilities. The woman appeared confused by the question.

The spy said that later when he was placing his coat on the coat rack, he heard one black trans woman telling a small gay man how Wicked is “the musical of our time.” Maybe the justices ought to break out into song and dance when they announce their decision on the case.

Georgia on my mind

Move over Florida men: the Georgia gang is taking over the Trump transition process.

President Donald Trump picked former senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who both lost close reelection bids in 2020 as Trump was losing the state, to serve as the head of his Small Business Administration and as his ambassador to China.

Both Loeffler and Perdue were forced into runoffs in January 2021 after neither notched an outright majority against Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, respectively. Both then narrowly lost their head-to-head races on January 5, 2021 — losses that were overshadowed by the events of the next day. Trump, at the time, was preoccupied with Georgia for all the wrong reasons, putting pressure on secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to overturn the result of the presidential election rather than campaigning for the two Republican runoff candidates, to the chagrin of many in the party as the Democrats took control of the US Senate.

Perdue then mounted a failed primary challenge against Georgia’s popular Republican governor, Brian Kemp — who is probably happy to see his former rival shipped off to Beijing.

But Loeffler and Perdue aren’t even the only unsuccessful 2020 Republican candidates for Senate in Georgia who have gotten top jobs in the Trump administration. Former congressman Doug Collins, who unsuccessfully primaried Loeffler, also got tapped to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, which, as it turns out, is home to at least one too many veterans’ affairs…

Christmas, cocktails and congressmen

Cockburn has been rocking around the Christmas tree, bopping from one seasonal soirée to the next. Wednesday saw him at a liquor-soaked shindig for journalists hosted by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States at their Constitution Avenue office. Your correspondent rubbed shoulders with reporters from Politico, CNBC and Fox News as he supped on Mexican hot chocolate spiked with mezcal and wolfed down mac ’n’ cheese balls. He then snuck into Sazerac House, a nineteenth-century townhouse on Stanton Park stuffed to the brim with Hill staffers. At the second-floor bar, he sampled a glass of an extremely limited-edition Buffalo Trace, blended from four of its earliest vintages, that apparently has a retail price of $15,000 a bottle.

On Thursday, Cockburn braved the brutal winds to cross the Potomac for the Pacific Legal Foundation’s do in their Clarendon office. Despite nearly being flattened by the stench of Brussels sprouts upon arrival, he fought his way to the bar for cocktails and red wine and fraternized with the gathered hacks and think tankers. The later hours of the party saw some of the hosts crack out the karaoke machine and run through some Disney classics.

Also on Thursday, Cockburn clocked basically every House Republican gathered at Sonoma Wine Bar on Capitol Hill for Elise Stefanik’s sendoff as she prepares to become Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations — Senate confirmation pending, of course. Spotted: Representatives Marc Alford, Mike Ezell, Darrell Issa, Kevin Kiley, Doug LaMalfa, Laurel Lee, Marc Molinaro and Stefanik, obviously.

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