Liz Cheney’s Challenger Is a Nightmare
  August 16, 2022 Greetings Meteor readers, I wish I could say it’s a great day to be here—but polio is back, and cleaning solution has been found in Capri Sun packets. I don’t know how much I believe in the End Times, as explained in The Book of Revelations, but I could be convinced if we get hit with one more plague. Speaking of, in today’s newsletter, we’re talking about Harriet Hageman, the Wyoming Republican who is projected to win her primary tonight against U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney. Hageman is just the latest addition to our frightening era of right-wing politics, so we’re especially grateful to have Meteor editor and Wyomingite Julianne Escobedo Shepherd give us the full breakdown from the state that out-Trumps them all—and explain what Hageman’s potential win means for the rest of the country. But before that, let’s run through some news. Eyes peeled for the seventh seal 👁, Shannon Melero  WHAT’S GOING ON The Gem State: Last Friday, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that the state’s extreme abortion ban can still go into effect despite the lawsuits filed against it, including one from the Biden administration. Beginning August 25, Idaho will enforce a near-total abortion ban with some exceptions for rape, incest, or preserving the life of the pregnant person. However, a different law also tied up in suits will go into effect immediately: Under this one, “potential relatives” of a fetus aborted after six weeks can now sue abortion providers for $20,000. That means a person’s grandmother, or a partner’s parent, can complain on behalf of a grouping of cells they never met. You can donate to abortion funds in Idaho here. Explain the logic: A 16-year-old in Florida who is reportedly “parentless” asked a court to grant her permission to seek an abortion, per Florida laws requiring minors to have parental consent to obtain one. The court said no, an appeal was filed, and the appellate court upheld the original decision, stating that the 16-year-old “had not established by clear and convincing evidence that she was sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy.” So she’s not mature enough to make a decision over her own body but is mature enough to carry a pregnancy to term? Something I, at 30, don’t feel entirely mature enough to do? Make it make sense! AND:
  HOME ON THE RANGEHarriet Hageman Will Be a Nightmare for WyomingLiz Cheney is a staunch conservative, but at least she believes in democracy.BY JULIANNE ESCOBEDO SHEPHERD  THE FUTURE OF WYOMING WEARS A LOT OF APPROPRIATIVE TURQUOISE. (PHOTO BY NATALIE BEHRING VIA GETTY IMAGES) It should come as no surprise if Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming—who has made it her mission to carve a path for anti-Trump Republicans—is ousted in today’s primary election by virulently conservative, pro-Trump Cheyenne lawyer Harriet Hageman. But for me, as a born-and-raised Wyomingite, this race has been especially excruciating to watch. First of all, it has been psychically painful to feel vaguely protective of any member of the Cheney family—let alone the staunchly conservative Liz, daughter of Wyoming’s Dark Father Dick. Is this how ass-backward national politics have become that I, a Xicana with progressive-left politics and a Brooklyn zip code, am rooting for Liz Cheney to win her primary simply because she has the huevos to stick up for democracy? But I am because the alternative—Cheyenne lawyer Harriet Hageman, an election and climate-change denier and federal government hater—is certainly much worse. And I’m not alone: some Wyoming Democrats, who don’t have a chance in national contests, have switched their party affiliations to cast their primary votes for Liz. How did this happen? Cheney is a Republican stalwart by any measure—she’s anti-abortion and pro-fossil fuels and generally espouses historically popular values in the sparsely populated state. (In the last 70 years, the only Democratic president Wyoming sided with was Lyndon B. Johnson.) But Wyoming has also prided itself on a kind of libertarian ethos that falls squarely in the mythical bootstraps-pulling framework of “rugged individualism,” making it more susceptible to right-leaning “populist” movements that disdain entrenched politicians and the federal government overall. And that susceptibility has only increased. By 2015, a study at the University of Wyoming found that nearly four in 10 Wyomingites agreed with the Tea Party, the right-wing precursor to the MAGA movement. Today, Wyoming is the most pro-Trump state in America, with 69.9% of the vote going toward him in 2020.  WHO WOULD’VE THOUGHT LIZ CHENEY WOULD BE A REASONABLE CHOICE? (PHOTO BY BILL CLARK VIA GETTY IMAGES) And because Cheney has been unwilling to capitulate to Trump, the state’s rightward tilt has cast her as a careerist “RINO.” Last year after she voted to impeach Trump, she was excommunicated from the state’s Republican Party by its chair, Frank Eathorne, a former cop and alleged January 6 participant affiliated with the white supremacist Oath Keepers militia. To a lot of people in my home state, Cheney’s opposition to Trump’s election lies and inaction on January 6—despite having voted with him over 92% of the time—has been received as unforgivable heresy. (Last month, I took a reporting trip through some of Wyoming’s most rural areas and lost count of how many supersized “Trump 2024” and “Fuck Biden” flags I saw, most planted right next to the entrance signs for million-dollar ranches.) In 2021, Eathorne told Steve Bannon that “Western states have the ability to be self-reliant” and flirted with the idea of Wyoming seceding from the United States entirely if Texas were to lead the effort. And now Wyoming will likely elect Harriet Hageman, who’s currently 30 points ahead of Cheney in the polls. Though Hageman is a former friend of Liz and a former opponent of Trump, she is currently an election denier assisted by Trump campaign goon Bill Stepien, and who courted the former President’s endorsement in an effort to further her own political career, previously defined by a failed 2018 bid for governor (third place in the primary). Hageman’s victory would be a nightmare for Wyoming, particularly for constituents interested in maintaining the ecological integrity of public lands. Hageman prides herself on her 20-year war with the Environmental Protection Agency and has launched campaigns against endangered species, the Clean Water Act, and “radical environmentalists,” which led activists to nickname her the “Wicked Witch of the West” in the early 2000s. Having grown up on a ranch, she is adamant about protecting Wyoming landowners from “federal overreach” but would seemingly prefer its beautiful landscape be tended by the protective hands of the coal, oil, and gas industries. Last week she described Biden’s climate-change efforts as a “war on fossil fuels.”  WHAT IS SHE GOING TO DO TO THAT FARMER? (IMAGE COURTESY OF JULIANNE ESCOBEDO SHEPHERD) More recently, she has acted as senior litigation counsel to the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a right-wing law firm that might sound innocuous enough but is on the wrong side of history in every issue imaginable. They’ve represented the losing employers in the landmark LGBTQ+ discrimination case Bostock v. Georgia, which held that employers could not discriminate against gay and trans workers; they’re currently crusading against vaccine mandates and helping a professor use Title IX’s gender discrimination clause to defend himself from the consequences of a student’s rape allegation. In July, Hageman ran a local TV ad that featured her standing alone in the plains, wearing boots and a dress and a king’s ransom’s worth of turquoise jewelry, simultaneously casting her as a rugged white homesteader—an image that carries great weight in Wyoming—and vaguely and confusingly invoking Native Americans. (What is it about horrible conservative white women wearing Native jewelry?) At the end of the clip, Hageman intoned menacingly: “As we so often say here, you’re in Wyoming. Act accordingly.” (For the record, we don’t actually say that.) Ostensibly “act accordingly” was a dig at Cheney’s refusal to genuflect at Trump’s altar, but it also seemed directed towards voters, instructing them to fall in line “or else.” I saw the ad incessantly on local TV throughout early July, but it was replaced with a slightly less portentous clip by early August. But Hageman’s main selling point to Wyomingites is, simply, that she will lick Trump’s jackboots. It’d be foolish for the rest of the country to ignore the tenor of right-wing extremists in the least populous state; as election deniers gain ground in the midterms across the U.S., it behooves us all to know what we’re up against. Wyoming’s unique political landscape is a microcosm of hardliner thought, and what happens there is a warning bell for the rest of the country. It’s ringing real loud.  Julianne Escobedo Shepherd is a Wyoming-born Xicana journalist and editor who lives in New York. She is currently at work on a book for Penguin about her upbringing and the mythology of the American West.  FOLLOW THE METEOR    Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays. |
