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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 20, 2025

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Related to down-thread discussion, "Trump nominee Paul Ingrassia withdraws after rare Republican pushback over text messages" (Reuters)

What is the situation with Senate confirmation whipping? There's been very little pushback from the Senate, but also the WH nominates low quality appointees without verifying the Senate will approve them.

Related to that, does Trump have a clear strategy for managing the caucus, in general? He commuted George Santos's sentence, for the stated reason that Santos always voted Republican, which is a pretty strong signal, but is he doing anything to prove his reliability to non-criminal members of the party?

Paul Ingrassia is evidence that, contrary to magicalkittycat, the GOP really doesn't like the Nazi thing. The senatorial class isn't into WWII revisionism. Even the senators generally open to unorthodox views didn't like him. I suspect that a normal republican wouldn't have nominated him, but Trump isn't an ideologue and nominates based on personal loyalty, not ideology.

And as a groupchat, it's important to note that this was less 'nazi group chat' and more 'groupchat where one guy went crazy and became a nazi'.