Will Ted Cruz be liberated from his day job over abortion?

The most punchable face in the Senate may finally be free to pursue his podcasting dreams full-time.

Few in Washington would dispute that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is the most hated man in Congress, by both Democrats and Republicans alike. “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said of his colleague in 2016. Former Minnesota Sen. Al Franken (D) once likened Cruz to “the toxic in the office—the one who microwaves fish.” “I like Ted Cruz more than most of my colleagues,” Franken said. “And I hate Ted Cruz.”

And this was all before Cancun Ted tried to cosplay as an alpha male by forcing a group of men to chug a beer with him at a Texas ranch on TV and quipping, “If liberals want to limit us to two beers a week, frankly they can kiss my ass.” Perhaps he was trying to save face after a Texas man literally chucked a beer at his head at a parade the year prior.

Anyway, our bearded boy now finds himself in a bit of a tough spot: He can’t talk about his own abortion record without potentially losing his job to his Democratic challenger, former NFL player Colin Allred. Allred, as I wrote this week for the Guardian, is in a dead heat with Cruz and nipping at his heels as Texas reaps the consequences of having stripped away a half-century of women’s abortion rights. Cruz, of course, wasn’t just a cheerleader for the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and for Texas imposing a bounty hunter-style law on women—he personally helped reshape the federal judiciary to pave the way for all these horror stories pouring out of Texas and across the country.

Abortion bans are so unpopular at this point that Donald Trump is openly warning down-ballot Republicans to shut their mouths about the entire topic if they want to have any hope of succeeding in this election. And while, on the one hand, it is a special kind of blessing to see Ted Cruz shut his mouth about anything, I will also personally make sure the public remains aware of the full extent of his culpability in hospitals torturing pregnant women nationwide. (Here’s the link again!)

I’ll add here for the sake of realism that it remains unlikely that a Democrat can win a statewide race in Texas—especially a Black Democrat in a state that overwhelmingly prefers to elect white men. But as an Allred campaign staffer told me on the phone last week, they are actually in punching distance of Cruz now, and the race should at least be a nail-biter.

In other news…

• Men in red states are speaking out more loudly these days in favor of abortion rights as they watch their wives and partner suffer post-Roe, per a new Washington Post story

• Kamala Harris has agreed to ABC News’ muted microphone rules and will debate Trump on Tuesday, though it remains hilarious to me that Trump’s campaign insists their boy be muted in between answers so the public can’t hear his unhinged outbursts

• My friend Lorena O’Neil wrote a fantastic profile of Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R), the guy who ignored a child fainting behind him while he signed a bill into law mandating that the 10 Commandments be displayed in public school classrooms

• A 14-year-old boy is accused of carrying out the deadliest school shooting this year at a high school in Georgia, which killed two students and two teachers and injured nine others

In conclusion: Fire Ted Cruz, ban guns, and definitely watch that debate.