This article in the Post suggests that John Fetterman’s heart issues are considerably more serious than the initial reports suggested. His stroke was the result of a fairly significant cardiac issue — an underlying cardiomyopathy — that he just ignored or largely ignored for five years.

TPM Readers will be familiar with this argument which I made in a series of posts last month. But this is the Democrats’ best strategy for turning the tide in the midterms and saving abortion rights in the United States. I wrote it up for The New York Times.

I got invited to go on a podcast about Bob Dylan in which the guest chooses one Dylan song to discuss and that’s the basis of the episode. The podcast is called Pod Dylan. I demurred for a while because I really couldn’t figure out how to pick a single song. But eventually it kind of came to me in a moment of clarity. So we recorded it this week. And it came out today. If you’re interested, here’s the video version of the episode after the jump.

I’ve been working on a column about abortion politics. And as part of pulling that together, I’ve been sifting through recent polling data, especially surveys taken after the release of the Alito draft opinion. As is often the case, polling data on abortion can seem scattered and inconsistent, in large part because responses turn so closely on subtle differences in wording and framing. I’ll get to that in a moment. But looking at all these numbers really confirmed me in thinking that this is a powerful midterm issue for Democrats but … it won’t activate itself. It’s going to take specific actions to activate it for its full potential.

In the wake of three recent mass shootings in America in the last two weeks, Republicans are once again showing their collective ass, deploying a litany of talking points about random stuff to clog up the national discourse on gun violence with anything and everything but guns.

It’s all very pellucid — a distraction tactic to avoid engaging seriously on the issue of our nation’s unprecedentedly lax gun laws and the need for national — or even state level! — gun control reform. And Republican Rep. Billy Long (MO) just dangerously added a befuddling new culprit to the mix: abortion is to blame for mass shootings.

In Kentucky today Mitch McConnell said there can only be a deal on guns if it doesn’t do anything on guns but rather focuses on the “real issues” of mental health and school safety. So it seems we’re getting to the end of the standard Republican cooling off period in which Republicans make sounds about moving on gun legislation until the initial shock of the latest child massacre has worn off and they can go back to “no.” But I wanted to address a question that has come up in many of your emails in recent days about a notional bipartisan Senate deal on guns.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss American gun culture and President Biden’s current menu of various crises.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

Last week, TPM’s Kate Riga hosted a virtual panel discussion with experts and practitioners on the reality of a post-Roe world. Panelists for the TPM LIVE event were Jennifer Haberkorn of the L.A. Times, Lauren Rankin, writer, and columnist for Dame Magazine, and Kulsoom Ijaz, staff attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights. In case you missed it, you can watch a recording of the event below.

Just yesterday a federal jury essentially toppled ex-President Trump’s victimhood-laced line of attack against the Russia probe when it acquitted DNC-connected lawyer Michael Sussmann.

The acquittal was a significant swing and a miss, not just for special counsel John Durham, who was handpicked by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to look into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, but for Trumpers everywhere who have built a brand off of the long-unsubstantiated belief that the Mueller probe was nothing more than a politically motivated conspiracy of the elites to undermine Trump’s legitimacy as president.

A recent report from MIT Technology Review sheds light on the ways in which anti-abortion activists have collected data on-site at abortion clinics over the past several decades to go after doctors and others carrying out the procedure.