Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi addressed students at Greybull High School last Thursday, and a sophomore asked him what he had done to help Wyoming live up a bit more to its nickname, the Equality State. He responded with this: "We always say that in Wyoming you can be just about anything you want to be, as long as you don't push it in somebody's face. I know a guy who wears a tutu and goes to bars on Friday night and is always surprised that he gets in fights. Well, he kind of asks for it. That's the way that he winds up with that kind of problem."
Yes, that's the message he shared with high school students -- and middle school students, who were also there. And this in Wyoming, the state where Matthew Shepard was beaten to death.
A Wyoming reader of this newsletter heard about the comments and tipped me off. (I didn't launch this email to keep in touch with sources from all over the country, but that's been an accidental and happy byproduct of it.) A local reporter from the Greybull Standard was there but hadn't written anything yet, because their paper only publishes weekly; nevertheless he was kind enough to confirm everything for me.
After our story went up, Enzi apologized, which is a good thing. But he apologized to people who took offense, and that kind of misses the point: the comments are wrong not because they're necessarily offensive, but because they appear to condone violence agains LGBT folks, or at least it explain it away as understandable. I mean, yes, that's offensive, but it's so much more than just offensive. Here's my story with Amanda Terkel, where you can read his full comments and a long statement he provided us. (And here's the story from the Greybull Standard, which decided to publish early. Read all the way to the bottom for their reporting on his comments.)
And for those of you following the battle for the Democratic nomination between Tom Perriello and Ralph Northam, I broke some news on that: in an interview with me yesterday, Elizabeth Warren endorsed Perriello, saying she actually had tried to hire him at the CFPB once upon a time. Story and video here.
On Capitol Hill, some House Republicans are still pretending they're working on a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. I don't believe they're serious yet, but will let you know if it approaches anything even resembling seriousness.
And in a sign that Donald Trump gets that he has no power in the debate this week over the spending bill to keep the government open, he has infuriated Ruch Limbaugh and caved on funding for his wall.
Okay, if you're still reading, I wanted to try something fun. One of my colleagues, Igor Bobic, was dismayed that our local sandwich shop, Taylor (where Obama himself once went for a sandwich!) has discontinued his favorite salad. He complained, and they told him that if he could get 3,285 people to retweet his complaint, they'd keep the salad going. He now has 1.5k, meaning he needs another 1,785 retweets. Let's see if we can put him over the top tonight and save the poor guy's salad. Just go to Igor's tweet and retweet it: https://twitter.com/igorbobic/status/852275435606028288
This is not an ad for Taylor; if it was I'd tell you. I kind of just want to shock Taylor and Igor and make them keep making the salad.
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