It was not so long ago that President George W. Bush won a presidential election thanks to a series of anti–gay marriage referenda put on the ballot by GOP legislatures in states like Ohio. Things have definitely changed since then, with the Supreme Court declaring marriage equality a constitutional right in 2015. Now, conservatives are facing a setback in their one fallback issue when it comes to LGBT rights: preventing transgender people from using the public bathroom of their choice.

The new Monmouth University poll for North Carolina finds that Governor Pat McCrory (R), who signed a restrictive bathroom law earlier this year, trailing Democratic state Attorney General Roy Cooper by a solid margin of 52 percent to 43 percent.

The poll drilled down on the bathrooms issue—and the public doesn’t seem to be happy about it, after it resulted in corporations leaving the state and the loss of the NBA All-Star game:

15. Do you approve or disapprove of H.B. 2 – the state law that prohibits local governments from allowing transgendered people to use the public restroom of their choice?

36% Approve
55% Disapprove
9% (VOL) No opinion

16. Regardless of whether you approve of the law do you think passing H.B. 2 has been good or bad for North Carolina’s reputation nationally, or has it had no impact on the state’s reputation?

9% Good
70% Bad
14% No impact
7% (VOL) Don’t know

When the Republican Party and the conservative activist movement try to put themselves back together after this election, they could be facing a stark reality: Any kind of anti-LGBT campaign could be a vote-loser in the swing states.

Fifteen towns have now banned the full-body swimsuit, citing possible links between its religious symbolism and recent terror attacks in the country. The deputy mayor of Nice, the latest town to implement the ban, explained that the burkini was “not in keeping with our ideal of social relations.” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls also expressed his support for the ban, because a garment ““founded on the subjugation of women” was “not compatible with the values of France.”

Those French values were on full display in photographs shot on a beach in Nice, which appear to show armed police forcing a woman to take off her outer clothing. The spectacle struck many as menacing, almost medieval, revealing a deep intolerance for religious expression as well as an absurd notion of what constitutes national security. And in general, the practice of politicians legislating what women can or cannot wear is an unwelcome relic from the past.

The burkini ban is only the latest instance of the French government stigmatizing Muslim women in the name of secularism and security. Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2010 burqa ban also sparked debate about whether religious garb threatened French cultural values and whether the state could impinge on the religious expression of Muslim women. Of course, nuns’ habits, priestly robes, and the vestments of other faiths were not targeted in these waves of legislation. Laïcité, a near-sacred principle of secularism often cited in these instances, only seems to target Muslims.

Many argue that such bans only isolate Muslim women, therefore achieving the opposite of the integration that French politicians claim they desire. The burkini ban, in particular, contradicts the garment’s intended purpose. The swimsuit was invented in 2004 by an Australian woman, Aheda Zanetti, to encourage Muslim women to go outdoors, play sports, and swim, key aspects of life in Australia. As she wrote today for The Guardian:

When I invented the burkini in early 2004, it was to give women freedom, not to take it away. ... It symbolizes leisure and happiness and fun and fitness and health and now they are demanding women get off the beach and back into their kitchens? This has given women freedom, and they want to take that freedom away?

Former UK Independence Party leader and lead Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage says he will appear tonight at Donald Trump’s rally in Jackson, Mississippi, where he will discuss “the Brexit story”—though Trump campaign officials would only tell Sky News that they “highly doubt” the two will share a stage.

Either way, the really fascinating thing is just how easily Farage would fit in with the Trump crowd. Just last week, Trump posted a tweet dubbing himself “MR. BREXIT!” And the campaign’s recruitment of Steve Bannon from Breitbart, which has praised right-wing nationalist movements in Europe, signals the morphing of the GOP under Trump into a far-right vehicle.

This will come as little surprise to Muslim families living in America’s most religiously diverse city. NYPD’s Inspector General Philip Eure revealed on Tuesday a wildly disproportionate number of investigations into Muslim communities without authorization and past court-mandated deadlines.

The 67-page report shows that “in 100 percent of the cases reviewed by the inspector general, the department also didn’t adequately explain why it was extending investigations that hadn’t turned up evidence of unlawful activity.”

This is not the first time the NYPD has been caught pursuing unlawful practices against Muslims in the name of enforcing the law.

In 2012, an AP investigation highlighted that, with unprecedented help from the CIA, the NYPD was paying informants $1,000 a month and placing them in communities with the explicit goal of baiting Muslims into making inflammatory comments. Informants were instructed to “create and capture”: provoking conversations about jihad and terrorism at study groups and mosques, and capturing the responses.

According to the ACLU, the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslims spans across different departments, including its Demographics Unit, the Intelligence Analysis Unit, the Cyber Intelligence Unit, and the Terrorist Interdiction Unit. All of this law enforcement scrutiny is based on the unconstitutional targeting of a religious belief.

According to NBC, Heather Bresch, the CEO of Mylan, a pharmaceutical company that bought the rights to EpiPens in 2007, has raised the price of the pens, which are used in emergencies to treat severe allergic attacks, by 400 percent over the last eight years. (Bresch’s pay, in the meantime, has increased by 671 percent.) That means that EpiPens, which used to cost around $94, now sell for an average of $608. Bad news for kids with life-threatening allergies! Members of Congress are demanding more explanation from Mylan on the price increases.

Perhaps even more insidious is the fact that Mylan spent millions on lobbying over the past decade. In decisions that directly benefited Mylan, the FDA in 2010 recommended that EpiPens be prescribed not only to patients with confirmed allergies, but also those who are at risk. The agency also recommended packaging two pens together as opposed to selling single doses.

Martin Shkreli, who is one of the most hated men in America, weighed in on the matter this morning, stating that the price was actually “quite a bargain,” especially if you consider the much higher costs of going to a hospital for anaphylactic shock.

In other words, suck it up you allergen-whining, free market–hating goons!

He is supposed to launch his long-awaited campaign follow-up project today. But The New York Times reports that Our Revolution might already be in trouble:

The announcement of the group, which will be livestreamed Wednesday night, also comes as the majority of its staff resigned after the appointment last Monday of Jeff Weaver, Mr. Sanders’s former campaign manager, to lead the organization.

Weaver is reportedly unpopular with younger staff, who took umbrage with his abrasive leadership style and his perceived disregard for the digital campaigning that made Sanders a surprise threat to Hillary Clinton’s bid.

Our Revolution is intended to channel his campaign’s momentum into supporting progressive candidates in down-ballot races. One of its key beneficiaries will be Tim Canova, who’s challenging Sanders foe Debbie Wasserman Schultz in a heated primary race. But if Sanders can’t bring peace to his camp, the revolution might be dead on arrival.

In the main, the Clinton campaign is probably correct in its belief that it can count down the clock to November without seriously addressing the twin controversies that continue to dog her candidacy: her use of a private email server as secretary of state and the suspicion that unsavory entities made large donations to the Clinton Foundation to curry favor with the Clintons. And yes, the Clinton campaign is mostly right that neither of these controversies has produced anything remotely as disconcerting as what Donald Trump offers on a daily basis.

Still, Clinton’s attitude towards what amount to a serious lapse in judgment in one case and a cesspit of conflicting interests in the other is baffling:

Clinton remains, as one ally described, as decidedly and defiantly “puritan” as she was 17 months ago that the email investigation is nothing more than a partisan attack. Close allies characterize her as frustrated by the ongoing focus on the issue of her email server because she still fundamentally believes she did nothing to bend the rules. She is also resentful that Trump is only trailing by single-digits in national polls when she thinks there is no comparison between her baggage and his and that a Clintonian double standard is at play.

The use of the email server was a clear violation of State Department rules, and was plain stupid to boot. The Clinton Foundation was a problem you could see coming a mile away, back when the Times reported that Canadian mining magnates were plowing millions of dollars into the foundation even as they helped Rosatom purchase uranium interests in the United States. But for the Clintons, all controversies, even the legitimate ones, are seen through the prism of persecution, and nothing is going to change that.

The hilarious part is when allies like James Carville complain that the work of the Clinton Foundation is pure. “I will lay back and mourn for those who will die because they’re not going to get the vaccines they need,” he told Politico. Seems to me that if the crown prince of Bahrain really cared about those vaccines, he could find some way of funding them other than through the Clintons, right?

Last night, Colbert took a look at the pernicious way Rudy Giuliani has used the hermetically sealed world of Trump to spread conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton. (It’s a phenomenon which we’ve also noted.) Colbert examined Giuliani’s role in perpetuating rumors about Clinton’s health, and his having encouraged people to simply look it up on the internet for proof.

“I took Giuliani at his word; I Googled ‘Hillary Clinton illness,’” Colbert explained. “And this is true—the very first result is ‘Giuliani fuels Clinton health rumors again … and again.’”

“So let me get this straight, let me explain this to you. Here’s what’s happening: Giuliani says she’s not healthy, and then look it up on the internet. And when you look it up on the internet, it says Giuliani says she’s not healthy, and to look it up on the internet. It’s like an endless loop. It’s like a snake with a tail in its mouth—or a man with his head up his own ass. By the way, something you used to be able to see in Times Square before Giuliani came along.”

“But here’s the thing, I just want to say this to the Trump people out there,” Colbert concluded. “I don’t know why they keep saying things like ‘frail’ or ‘weak’ or ‘low-energy.’ You’re just tip-toeing around the medical condition that you’re really upset about—one that she has that no other president in history has ever faced. Hillary Clinton has chronic no-penis. It’s congenital—every woman in her family has had the same thing.”

Trump’s “Lock Her Up” campaign against Hillary Clinton is the perfect example of how this loop works. Conspiracy theorists say that Clinton belongs in prison, the Trump campaign embraces the theme—in a manner unprecedented in modern politics—and then everyone is disappointed and angry that Clinton isn’t actually getting locked up. 

In the latest example, Trump called on Monday for a special prosecutor to investigate any illicit coordination between the State Department and the Clinton Foundation. Trump told an audience in Akron, Ohio: “Some former prosecutors have even suggested that the coordination between the pay-for-play State Department and the Clinton Foundation constitute a clear example of RICO—Racketeering, Influence, Corrupt Organization—enterprise.” 

So who are these former prosecutors saying that Clinton was involved in RICO violations? One of them may very well be Rudy Giuliani, a highly visible Trump campaign surrogate. “She is the consummate, corrupt, Washington insider. And she is thoroughly corrupt, and so is the Clinton Foundation,” Giuliani declared on Fox News Sunday. “If I were back in my old job as U.S. Attorney, I would probably indict the Clinton Foundation as a racketeering enterprise.” 

So there you have the Trump campaign’s primary citation for its accusations against Clinton: the Trump campaign itself.