Comment on Rand Paul is still waiting on call from President Obama

The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial. On Monday, the three wealthiest men in the world—Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg—are scheduled to be at the Capitol as honored guests for Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, seated where four years ago Christian nationalists, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, militia members, and other extremists, incited by his brazen lies about the 2020 election, violently attacked Congress to overturn American democracy and keep Trump in power.

Donald Trump’s return to power and a Republican-controlled Congress are set to mark a new era in US political history, one steeped in rule-breaking, authoritarian tendencies, and an overwhelming hostility to long-established civic institutions. And, according to the president-elect, a herculean portion of this agenda will kick into gear immediately after he is inaugurated, with over 100 executive orders expected to drop on Day One.

A Fort Collins woman will undergo a surgery to prevent pregnancy. A Thornton couple has decided to embrace male birth control through a vasectomy. A mother in Evergreen plans to stock up on morning-after pills. And a transgender man in Colorado Springs worries about his access to testosterone. Although voters enshrined abortion access in the state’s constitution last fall, some Coloradans still feel uneasy about the permanency of reproductive health care and gender-affirming care under President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration.

COLORADO SPRINGS — Voters here chose to legalize recreational marijuana sales for the first time in the city’s history last fall, casting 22,372 more votes in favor than against Question 300 on the Nov. 5 ballot. But for some members of the Colorado Springs City Council, the more-than-9-percentage-point electoral margin backing the establishment of a retail cannabis industry in Colorado’s second-largest city wasn’t definitive enough.

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Even before President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House on Monday, California got ahead of things. Anticipating more of the federal meddling they’d seen in the past, like when Trump’s first administration tried to block the state’s vehicle emissions standards, lawmakers met in a special session to start preparing a defense of its progressive civil rights, reproductive freedom, and climate policies.  The incoming president brings renewed threats to climate progress.

President-elect Donald Trump may be famously inconsistent on abortion rights, but his picks to run federal departments and agencies haven’t been. They have defended anti-abortion laws in court, spread disinformation about the procedure, and openly celebrated the Dobbs decision. Some nominees you’ve likely heard of because their troubling reputations preceded them; others are lesser-known. Abortion restrictions are often viewed as being enacted through the judicial or legislative processes, through federal and state laws and court cases.