A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is now live. Josh and Kate discuss the fate of the January 6 commission as Kevin McCarthy struggles to unify his caucus.

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When impeachment was on the table, the House minority leader was all about putting together a Jan. 6 commission in lieu of a trial.

We’ve covered an endless number of stories over the twenty year history of TPM. But if there’s one through-line, one consistent and especial focus throughout, it’s voting rights and democracy. The site started in a contested election, our big stories in 2002 were big voter suppression stories in South Dakota and New Hampshire. The US Attorney Firing scandal was in fact a voter suppression story. Firing those US Attorneys was just a step to get the suppression moving.

I’m proud to say there’s no publication in the United States that has devoted more of its resources to this issue over a longer period of time than TPM. The franchise is the central architecture of equality and the sheet anchor of the American republic. That’s always been the case. But people are especially attuned to that fact now after the shocking events of the 2020 election and the Republican party’s current effort to clamp down on voting across the country.

That’s why we’re launching The Franchise, a weekly newsletter devoted to democracy and voting rights in the United States.

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There’s a rural county in California where the local militia is threatening violence if the local government doesn’t do what it’s told on COVID.

“I’m a politician out of the womb.”

This is how the son of Rudy Giuliani announced his bid for the Republican nomination in New York’s gubernatorial race, a fittingly bizarre statement for an under-the-radar bizarre boy.

Yesterday in a close door Senate GOP caucus meeting, Mitch McConnell announced he can’t support the Jan 6th commission deal which Kevin McCarthy’s negotiator negotiated apparently because McCarthy assumed nothing would ever come of it before it blew up in his face. According to Axios, McConnell hasn’t yet come up with any clear reasons why he opposes such a commission other than vague suggestions about its work interfering with the DOJ’s probes. The main concern is that the commission might subpoena members or “alienate members of the GOP base, as well as former President Trump.”

Earlier this week, the number two GOP Senate leader John Thune expressed support for the Commission and said he expected it to pass. Yesterday he said that after hearing that McCarthy had pulled his support he wasn’t so sure.

On a January 6th Commission, ex-President Trump tells congressional GOP leaders that “this discussion should be ended immediately.”

Just this afternoon we’ve seen two developments on a possible Jan 6th Commission. The House GOP will formally ‘whip’ the vote, i.e., they’ll use the party apparatus to get all their members to vote no. This seems more than anything to be a signal to Donald Trump from McCarthy and Scalise that they are all-in to protect him. Does anyone GOP member not know what’s expected of them from Trump, McCarthy and Scalise? Of course not.

At the same time, TPM alum Sahil Kapur reports that Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) seems to be in support of the bill. Rounds isn’t a Senate fire breather. But he’s not a Romney/Murkowski type either.

For a few years now, I have covered voting rights closely for TPM. Needless to say, the developments around ballot access and representation are moving more quickly than ever. The stakes have only gotten higher in the wake of President Trump’s election reversal crusade and the restrictive laws that have flowed from it. So we’re happy to announce that we’re launching a weekly voting rights newsletter — The Franchise — that will go right to TPM members’ inboxes every Monday.

In it, I’ll keep you up to speed on the state-by-state voting rights battles, as well as the national trends I am seeing in the war over the ballot box. There’s a lot of noise out there, so I am hoping to distill things down in a way that makes it easy to understand just how and where democracy is under attack across the country. I always appreciate reader feedback, so don’t be shy, particularly if something is happening in your neck of the woods that’s worth a mention in The Franchise. And thanks for reading!

And they hardly see it as a pressing issue, at least not right now.