Abbreviated Pundit Roundup is a long-running series published every morning that collects essential political discussion and analysis around the internet.

Greene won’t move against Johnson just yet
With House Democratic leadership vowing to vote to table Greene’s motion, it appears unlikely that Johnson is in any real danger of the fate that befell former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., at least for now.

Greene, R-Ga., said she would huddle with Johnson, R-La., again Tuesday morning. She introduced a resolution to vacate the speaker’s chair in March but has not moved to make it privileged, which would require a vote within two legislative days.

“I just had a long discussion with the speaker in his office about ways to move forward for a Republican-controlled House of Representatives,” she said. “We’re talking to him again tomorrow based on our discussion today, and I’ll have more information.”

Johnson said after the meeting that he shared the frustration felt by Greene and other conservatives about lack of movement on some of their top issues. But he said the party’s slim majority — which dropped to one seat after the Monday night swearing-in of Rep.-elect Tim Kennedy, D-N.Y. — makes it very difficult to pass conservative priorities, and he stressed the importance of Republicans winning this November’s elections.
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Meat, Freedom and Ron DeSantis
Still, if and when lab-grown meat, also sometimes referred to as cultured meat, makes it onto the market at less than outrageous prices, a significant number of people will probably buy it. Some will do so on ethical grounds, preferring not to have animals killed to grace their dinner plates. Others will do so in the belief that growing meat in labs does less damage to the environment than devoting acres and acres to animal grazing. And it’s at least possible that lab-grown meat will eventually be cheaper than meat from animals.

And if some people choose to consume lab-grown meat, why not? It’s a free country, right? Not if the likes of Ron DeSantis have their way. Recently DeSantis, back to work as governor of Florida after the spectacular failure of his presidential campaign, signed a bill banning the production or sale of lab-grown meat in his state. Similar legislation is under consideration in several states.

On one level, this could be seen as a trivial story — a crackdown on an industry that doesn’t even exist yet. But the new Florida law is a perfect illustration of how crony capitalism, culture war, conspiracy theorizing and rejection of science have been merged — ground together, you might say — in a way that largely defines American conservatism today.
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New York attorney general sues facilities promoting ‘abortion pill reversal’
The organization, Heartbeat International, is affiliated with more than 2,000 facilities that aim to convince people to continue their pregnancies. In recent years, many such centers, which are often Christian and sometimes known as crisis pregnancy centers, have started to promote a controversial practice known as “abortion pill reversal”, which claims that people can halt a medication abortion midway through.

The first randomized, controlled clinical study to attempt to study this “reversal” protocol’s effectiveness came to an abrupt stop in 2019, after three participants landed in the hospital hemorrhaging blood. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the pre-eminent membership group for OB-GYNS, has said that claims about abortion reversal are “not based on science and do not meet clinical standards”. James’s lawsuit accuses Heartbeat International and a slew of New York-based crisis pregnancy centers of making claims about abortion pill reversal that violate New York laws against deceptive business practices, false advertising and fraud. The lawsuit calls for the defendants to pay thousands of dollars in civil penalties.
Judge’s warning provides dilemma for Trump over whether he will risk jail for a political point
The brief episode between Merchan and Trump on Monday epitomized in just a few sentences the unprecedented circumstances of the first trial of an ex-president, the collision between Trump’s criminal trials and the 2024 election, and the broader implications of the former president’s assault on institutions that hold him to account but often face corrosive consequences for doing so.

The encounter was also a graphic personification of the principle that everyone – even former presidents – is subject to the same treatment under the law and must obey the same rules to protect the integrity of the legal process. With his daily fulmination to the media outside the courtroom – and his searing social media posts, Trump has shown he’s got little respect for such judicial niceties. And his refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election and false claims of fraud show his contempt for the rule of law more generally.

The judge’s comments also included a rare admission of the political context of a trial that is taking place six months before the general election and that is keeping the former president in court four days per week until it ends.
How would Americans react to Trump in jail?
A CNN poll last week found that Americans said by a 17-point margin, 42 percent to 25 percent, that Trump’s conduct in his Manhattan trial had been “mostly inappropriate” rather than “mostly appropriate.” (The poll was conducted before the judge initially found Trump had violated his gag order nine times but after Trump’s offending statements and after the judge rebuked Trump for potential juror intimidation.)

Many Americans were undecided, but it would seem telling that less than a majority of Republicans (48 percent) vouched for Trump’s conduct at the trial. And independents viewed Trump’s conduct 2-to-1 as inappropriate.

Americans have also viewed Trump’s conduct — even aside from this trial — as a strike against him.

The same CNN poll mentioned above provided another instructive finding: Just 34 percent thought Trump was being treated more harshly than most other criminal defendants.
Autocracies Are Winning the Information War
I recommend that you read Anne’s article in its entirety to see the full spectrum of these autocratic efforts around the world, but I want to focus here on what’s happening in the United States. Americans are being targeted by foreign propagandists who are using the internet and social media to pump their toxic slurry directly into American veins. “A part of the American political spectrum is not merely a passive recipient of the combined authoritarian narratives that come from Russia, China, and their ilk,” Anne writes, “but an active participant in creating and spreading them. Like the leaders of those countries, the American MAGA right also wants Americans to believe that their democracy is degenerate, their elections illegitimate, their civilization dying.”

As is always the case, this propaganda has found willing customers in a bored and listless society that alleviates its ennui by gorging on entertaining conspiracy theories. Americans don’t have to seek out foreign propaganda when plenty of their fellow citizens are eager to sell them lies that have been altered to suit American tastes. But why does American society have so many takers for such soul-destroying nonsense? Anne points out that after the ISIS terrorist attack on a concert hall in Moscow in March, the former PayPal entrepreneur (and close pal of Elon Musk’s) David Sacks posted on X that “if the Ukrainian government was behind the terrorist attack, as looks increasingly likely, the U.S. must renounce it.” This inane and baseless charge has been viewed 2.5 million times.

More than David Sacks himself, however, the problem is a culture that even thinks to take people such as David Sacks seriously. Democracies have always had conspiracy theorists and other cranks wandering about the public square, sneezing and coughing various forms of weirdness on their fellow citizens. But even in the recent past, most people with a basic level of education and a healthy dollop of common sense had no trouble resisting the contagion of idiocy.

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