🏳️‍⚧️ 🐭 🙄

OF MICE AND MORONS

House Republicans, led by Mike Johnson, unveiled their latest midterm message this week: "trans-ing the mice"—a phrase derived from their inability, or unwillingness, to distinguish between transgender and transgenic, the decades-old scientific term for genetically modified laboratory mice used in research on cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and other diseases.

When your campaign strategy depends on purposefully confusing a biology textbook with a culture-war meme, you've run out of arguments. All that's left is ignorance.

And even setting aside the scientific illiteracy, it's revealing that Republicans once again find themselves relying on the demonization of a tiny, vulnerable minority—well under 1% of the population—to frighten the most gullible voters into supporting them.

Oh, and by the way: Republicans are touting tax cuts averaging $3,400 per household. That's what happens when tax breaks for the ultra wealthy are averaged together with everyone else's. Most families see far less, and rising costs for groceries, healthcare, housing, insurance, gas, utilities, childcare, prescription drugs, and everyday necessities have already wiped out whatever modest gains those tax cuts might have provided.

Voters should take a cue from what George did for Lennie at the end of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and bring this unfortunate chapter to a merciful close in November. ∎

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