Joni Ernst Retiring From Senate, Will Still Be Huge Assh*le
No matter where you go, you're still you.
It was a mere three months ago that Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) told a roomful of her constituents to fuck off and die.
We’re not even exaggerating for comedic effect, much. Ernst was trying to defend (barely) the huge cuts to Medicaid that she and her Republican buddies in Washington were rushing to pass so they could get President Trump’s signature on it while he’s still alive. When someone pointed out to her that people would be deprived of health care and die because of the cuts, she responded, in a very supercilious tone for someone whose claim to fame is her experience castrating hogs on the family hog farm, that “we’re all going to die.”
Then she made it worse by filming a snarky video in which she walked through a graveyard mocking her constituents for not loving Jesus enough to go to heaven after they die, unlike her, Joni Ernst, who absolutely loves Jesus and his commandments such as Thou shalt be a huge asshole to people who understand my teachings about kindness and empathy a fuck of a lot better than you do.
Boy, you go to a town hall in an Iowa cornfield to ask your senator a question and you wind up in a cafe in Paris in 1952 with a milk-fed Simone de Beauvoir blowing smoke in your face and laughing maniacally when you cough up a lung, and she knows damn well you don’t have health coverage to see a doctor about this condition of your lung suddenly being on the outside of your body.
It was an arrogant comment for a politician who was up for re-election in a year and a half, even in reliably red Iowa. In fact, it was so arrogant that we wondered if Ernst even wanted to be a senator anymore. It turns out she maybe didn’t, because she’s made it official: She is not running for re-election in 2026. (It’s a Fox link, you don’t have to click.)
Guess this one Air Force officer will have to find some other senator on the Armed Services Committee with whom he can strike up an ethically dubious and possibly corrupt romantic relationship to gain undue influence in the Senate. We suggest Rick Scott, everyone already knows he has the ethics of a pack of sewer rats fighting over a moldy slice of bread.
Rumors about Ernst’s retirement had been flying around for a while. She’s had a tough year. First she was rejected for a leadership spot in the Senate GOP caucus. Then she reportedly lobbied for the job of Defense Secretary, only to lose out to a walking tin of Dapper Dan Pomade. She didn’t win by much in 2014 and 2020, so perhaps the idea of spending the next year and a half raising money and ooohing over the cow statue made of butter at the state fair was simply too exhausting.
Then there was this: A couple of days before the retirement news got leaked, a Democrat named Caitlin Drey won a special election for an Iowa state Senate seat by 11 points. This not only broke the Republican supermajority in the Senat; it was also the second seat in the Senate this year to flip from Republican to Democrat. The trend in special elections so far this year is that Democrats are winning them, and by a lot. The 2026 midterms might see a big Democratic wave, as midterms often do for the party that does not hold the White House.
If you are Joni Ernst, why would you stick around for all that when you can probably make ten times your Senate salary as a lobbyist? Frankly, castrating hogs on Iowa winter mornings so cold that the wind feels like a thousand needles being stuck in the skin of your face sounds like a better time.
But Ernst still has 17 months to be as big an asshole as she has always been, so at least we’ll have plenty of material for a little longer.
There was one other notable retirement in a Midwestern state last week. Rebecca Bradley, a justice on the Wisconsin state supreme court, announced she won’t seek another term. Wisconsin supreme court races can be notably vicious, which Bradley acknowledged was a factor in her decision:
“Wisconsin has seen only the beginning of what is an alarming shift from thoughtful, principled judicial service toward bitter partisanship, personal attacks, and political gamesmanship that have no place in court,” Bradley, who has served on the technically nonpartisan court since 2015, said in a statement.
Ha ha ha, lady, where have you been? Wisconsin politics turning into the Hunger Games predates your first election in 2016. You can thank former governor Scott Walker and state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos for their huge roles in that.
“The conservative movement needs to take stock of its failures, identify the problem, and fix it. I will not seek re-election to the Wisconsin Supreme Court because I believe the best path for me to rebuild the conservative movement and fight for liberty is not as a minority member of the Court,” she added.
Ah, maybe that’s it. The court currently has a 4-3 liberal majority after Susan Crawford won an election this past April. That was the election that Elon Musk threw millions of dollars at because in his ketamine-addled brain, it was the key race to save Western civilization or something, who knows, the man is more pickled than a Vlasic factory.
Bradley perhaps did not want to sign up for another decade of always being in the minority, which we suppose we can understand. And now this gives Democrats a chance to build a 5-2 majority on the court, plus make Republicans sad. It’s a win-win. Unless you’re a Republican, obviously.
[MaddowBlog / NBC News]
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The unimportance of being Ernst. (Someone made me do that.) . . .
Get thee to a piggery!