Let me be clear. This was not a dog whistle. This was a car alarm going off at 4 a.m. underneath your bedroom window.

It’s not just that Trump is denying the legitimacy of people opposed to a decision he made. He’s also using anti-Semitic tropes to single out the group as different and as an other — not American, not committed to good, old-fashioned American values. This is the language of authoritarians, or would-be authoritarians.

The motivation is obvious. Kavanaugh’s appointment was forced through by a minority. Polls found more people opposed to Kavanaugh than in support. The 5o senators who voted to confirm his nomination represent 44 percent of the population. Trump himself is a minority president. He received less of popular vote than Hillary Clinton and found himself moving into the White House only because of the undemocratic electoral college. His signature achievement — a tax overhaul that showers goodies on the tippy-top of the 1 percent — remains widely unpopular.

So what to do? Turn to a tried-and-true dynamic, the place where gaslighting meets racism. Trump’s a champ at this game, and statements that reek of anti-Semitism are hardly the only ones he uses. While running for president, he attacked Mexican immigrants and claimed Muslims in New Jersey cheered when the World Trade Center collapsed, a claim literally no one has ever been able to corroborate. Shortly before the election, he ran a commercial featuring Soros, then-Federal Reserve Chair Janet L. Yellen and then-Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein, along with Hillary Clinton, replete with references to “global special interests” and a “global power structure.” (I doubt you need me to tell you that intimations of a global conspiracy, especially one that has much to do with banking and money, are a longtime anti-Semitic trope.)

On the campaign funding platform Crowdpac, father and activist Ady Barkan joined forces with advocacy groups Maine People's Alliance and Mainers for Accountable Leadership to raise pledges for Collins' not-yet identified Democratic opponent if she supported President Donald Trump's high court pick. As of at 3:40pm ET Friday, it had raised $2,020,366 in pledges, an increase from the $1,804,551 it had amassed by Wednesday. A week ago, the total was $1,605,182.

While the site crashed, Barkan announced on Twitter that another portal existed to fund Collins' 2020 opponent:

As an ambitious young senator with plans for the future, Young Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, has a brand to protect. In brief, Young Ben Sasse's brand is that we all should love each other more, send our kids to dairy-farm boot camp, and, by all means, don't take the politics that are inextricably bound up in our politics as seriously as we take our bowling leagues and our parent-teacher conferences. This, to Young Ben Sasse, is especially true of those politics inextricably bound up in the governing of the nation. If this sounds ridiculous to you, congratulations on passing ninth grade civics.

So, in the interest of protecting not only his brand, but also his plans for the future, Young Ben Sasse got up on the Senate floor Wednesday night and apparently delivered a lachrymose address on the terrible time it is these days in Washington, in which good people like Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and her accused attempted rapist are being ground up in the politics of our politics. From Talking Points Memo:

"I'm here to talk about the false choice that is being repeated hour after hour after hour on television that this confirmation vote about one vacant seat on the Supreme Court, in that vote we are somehow going to be making a giant binary choice about the much broader issue of whether we do or do not care about women. That is simply not true."

If you don't believe him, ask any one of the 11 other Republican men on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which never has had a Republican woman on it. Ever.

Even those who believe that Ford fabricated her account, or was mistaken in its details, can see that the president’s mocking of her testimony renders all sexual-assault survivors collateral damage. Anyone afraid of coming forward, afraid that they would not be believed, can now look to the president to see their fears realized. Once malice is embraced as a virtue, it is impossible to contain.

The cruelty of the Trump administration’s policies, and the ritual rhetorical flaying of his targets before his supporters, are intimately connected. As Lili Loofbourow wrote of the Kavanaugh incident in Slate, adolescent male cruelty towards women is a bonding mechanism, a vehicle for intimacy through contempt. The white men in the lynching photos are not merely smiling because of what they have done, but because they did it together.

We can hear the spectacle of cruel laughter throughout the Trump era. There were the border patrol agents cracking up at the crying immigrant children separated from their families, and the Trump adviser who delighted white supremacists when he mocked a child with down syndrome who was separated from her mother. There were the police who laughed uproariously when the president encouraged them to abuse suspects, and the Fox News hosts mocking a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub massacre (and in the process inundating him with threats), the survivors of sexual assault protesting Senator Jeff Flake, the women who said the president sexually assaulted them, and the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting. There was the president mocking Puerto Rican accents shortly after thousands were killed and tens of thousands displaced by Hurricane Maria, the black athletes protesting unjustified killings by police, the women of the #MeToo movement who have come forward with stories of sexual abuse, and the disabled reporter whose crime was reporting on Trump truthfully. It is not just that they enjoy this cruelty, it is that they enjoy it with each other. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to each other, and to Trump.

U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes' family farm has been in northwest Iowa for more than a decade and may employ undocumented immigrants, according to Esquire.

Nunes' parents and brother moved their dairy farm operation from Tulane, California, to Sibley, Iowa, in 2007, according to an Esquire story published Sunday. Nunes, a conservative California politician who has mentioned his family farm often, has not publicly acknowledged that the farm moved out of state.

The story alleges the Nunes' family farm uses undocumented labor, citing multiple unnamed sources who live in Sibley, including one who claimed to be undocumented and to have worked for the Nunes' operation, NuStar Farms.

Nunes, a stalwart supporter of President Donald Trump, has supported moderate immigration reform policies such as giving amnesty to many undocumented people living and working in the country, but has not pushed back on Trump and Republican calls for more deportation and resources for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, in recent years.