This Halloween, the Ghouls and Zombies Are Real

The Hatch Act of 1939 prevents employees of the executive branch of government from engaging in partisan political activities while performing their executive functions. To put that more simply, the Hatch Act prohibits campaigning on the people’s time. The law exempts the president and vice president from this restriction (which makes sense, as nearly everything the president says is some form of politicking), but the employees of the federal government, including the political appointees, are supposed to at least try to look like they’re governing instead of pushing partisan propaganda.

It should come as no surprise that the Trump administration repeatedly and flagrantly violated the Hatch Act during its first term in office. It should also come as no surprise that the administration refused to enforce the act when it came to its own people. When he took the helm of the DOJ, Attorney General Merrick Garland could have prosecuted Hatch Act violations from the previous administration, but that would have looked too much like doing something, to ol’ Merrick the Meek.

Freed from the specter of consequence or accountability, the Trump administration 2.0 has paid less attention to the Hatch Act than a NASCAR driver pays to the speed limit. Entire government websites have been turned into Republican state propaganda. And the shutdown has only made things worse. This week, the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), squarely blamed the Democrats for the impending cancellation of food assistance.

The charge is not true. I wrote last week about Trump’s plans to greatly reduce SNAP benefits— plans Trump put in place long before the shutdown. But the point is that this kind of flagrant partisanship is outlawed by the Hatch Act. The Agriculture Department is not a campaign arm of the Republican Party. It should not be allowed to run an attack ad on a government website.

But nobody is going to hold USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins accountable. Nobody is going to hold Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accountable for her Hatch Act violations either. Nobody is going to apply ethical standards to the Trump administration, and that includes the Democrats (should they ever be allowed to hold power again), who seem to have an aversion to holding previous administrations accountable for their crimes.

We’re not a nation of laws. We’re a nation of suggestions that Republicans are free to ignore.

The Bad and the Ugly

• With the government still shut down and poised to end SNAP benefits, New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency because millions of New Yorkers are about to lose the ability to adequately feed themselves and their families. This will be the first time ever that a government shutdown has ended food assistance.
• A coalition of 25 states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration for withholding SNAP benefits.
• The Urban Justice Center sued the Department of Agriculture over the new work requirements imposed by the Trump administration that were going to kick millions of people off of SNAP anyway, regardless of the shutdown.
• Maybe we need courts to declare food a constitutional right? The First Circuit recently declared that running water is a constitutional right, and that seems like a step in the right direction. At least it is until the Republican Supreme Court tells people to drink sand.
• New York District Court Judge Sidney Stein allowed a copyright infringement claim to go forward against ChatGPT for stealing the work of authors. Apparently, our new AI overlord has been writing unauthorized Game of Thrones sequels. Best believe that if I had access to a dragon I would go full “dracarys” on OpenAI’s entire server farm.

Inspired Takes

• Friends, this Bill de Blasio story is amazing. Essentially, The Times of London conducted an entire e-mail interview with “Bill de Blasio” in which he slammed New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. But the de Blasio they spoke to was just some guy from New York, not former New York mayor Bill de Blasio. That actual Mayor de Blasio wrote about it for The Nation, because, here at The Nation, we know who we are talking to.
• Speaking of the New York City mayor’s race, The Nation’s Jeet Heer absolutely slams Andrew Cuomo’s bigoted last gasp.
• The billionaire class has figured out that we love our pets. And so the prices of keeping our furry companions alive are going up. Chuck Collins writes about it for The Nation.

Worst Argument of the Week

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue Brands, the former and current makers of Tylenol, claiming they knowingly hid the link between the medication’s use during pregnancy and the development of autism and ADHD in children.

I’ll keep this short. This is a terrible argument because there is not currently a scientifically confirmed connection between Tylenol and autism. There are a few observational reports that suggest there may be associations, but those studies fail to take a number of variables into account, and there’s nothing conclusive. There’s nothing for Tylenol to “knowingly hide” because there’s nothing the scientists “know.”

The crux of Paxton’s complaint is that “the Tylenol labels on these products contain no warning that there is any risk of ASD or ADHD if a woman ingests the drug while pregnant.” The problem is, you can’t sue people for refusing to put things that are not known to be true on their warning labels. It would be like Paxton saying, “Tylenol labels contain no warning that there is any risk of having an alien Xenomorph burst out of your stomach if a woman ingests the drug while pregnant.” Warning labels do not have to contain notes regarding mere conjecture.

If there were a link between Tylenol and autism, Paxton’s focus on the warning label would still be barking up the wrong tree. It’s the Food and Drug Administration that can require Tylenol to update its label, not the Texas AG. Indeed, the FDA recently required all opioid medications to contain warning labels mentioning the risks of misuse and addiction from taking those drugs. We have a system for handling this stuff, and Ken Paxton is not part of it.

In closing: This lawsuit is stupid. Ken Paxton is stupid for filing it. And because I just had to read about this stupidity, I now need to take a Tylenol to deal with my headache.

What I Wrote

Can Trump run for a third term in office? Legally, no. But then why are so many people talking about it as if it might happen? Well, I have a theory about that, and I wrote it down.

In News Unrelated to the Current Chaos

This newsletter should be hitting your inbox on Halloween, which gives me an opportunity to remind you that Halloween is the worst holiday on the calendar, and I hate it with a blinding passion.

I hated it as a kid. I didn’t like “scary” things to start with. Then, one year, I dressed up as Ted Kennedy (you read my stuff, right? Don’t act like you’re surprised) and the neighborhood kids jumped me and stole my candy. Even though I now realize that the neighborhood kids were totally in the right, it still soured my impression of the festivities.

I also hated the holiday as a young adult. The way Halloween has been turned into some kind of bacchanalian hookup festival has always struck me as… odd.

But it’s as a parent that I hate the holiday the most. I do not like sending my ridiculously privileged kids out into the streets to beg for candy. I do not like the fact that I can spend 364 days a year telling them to “not take candy from a stranger” as a foundational principle of basic childhood safety, but on one day of the year I’m supposed to just ignore that and let them take whatever some random neighbor drops into their bucket. It’s not that I’m one of those “oh noes, there could be hypodermic syringes or fentanyl in the candy” parents. I’m not, you know, Ken Paxton. I just think that sending your kids out to beg for treats is… gauche.

And while we’re here: I don’t like dressing up as whatever cartoon/anime character my kids have chosen to torture me with each year. I don’t like random people coming to my house. I don’t like white people trying to find an excuse to wear blackface. I don’t like anything in the entire gourd family. I don’t like bats, spiders, or anybody wearing a sheet for any reason. I don’t like pets wearing clothes. And the next person who puts a pumpkin in my coffee better be prepared to wear my coffee.

I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like it, Sam-I-Am.

Which isn’t to say that if you like it (like my kids and my beloved ultra-Halloween mother do) that you are wrong. Enjoy your day of adult dress-up. May all your apples be candied. Just, please, leave me out of it. I will be hanging out with the Grinch hoping all the goblins and ghosts have the good sense to pass me by.

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