Morning Memo: Merrick Garland Has Some Explaining To Do

Here are the stories that caught our attention.

Time For The DOJ To Explain Itself

Attorney General Merrick Garland will be meeting with CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times today to discuss the Trump administration’s seizure of electronic data from their reporters.

• What the journalists want: Assurance that this won’t happen again. “What we’re asking the attorney general tomorrow is to try to bind future administrations,” CNN Washington Bureau Chief Sam Feist said.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) isn’t buying denials from former top officials in the Trump DOJ that they knew about the data seizures. “That’s not the way the department works. I know from my experience on the Intelligence Committee that for special matters — whether it involves the members of Congress or senior members, you know, in the press — this would go to the attorney general’s office,” Swalwell told CNN on Sunday.

Jan. 6 Lives On

Rep. Tom Rice (R-SC), a staunch conservative who was one of the handful of Republicans to vote to impeach Trump over Jan. 6, told the Washington Post that House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) thought he’d pressed the wrong button when he cast his vote.

• Rice’s story: “I didn’t get to the bottom of the steps before Scalise called me and he said, ‘Tom, you hit the wrong button’ and I said, ‘No, it was the right vote.’ Then he said, ‘You sure?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely.”
• Still, don’t forget that the South Carolina Republican voted against certifying the 2020 election results and he backed Texas’ absurd lawsuit attempting to throw out swing states’ votes for Biden.

Sen. Ron Johnson still wants you to think that the insurrection wasn’t a big deal. “It doesn’t look like an armed insurrection when you have people that breach the Capitol – and I don’t condone it – but they’re staying within the rope lines in the Rotunda,” he told Fox News.

• Apparently those rope lines extend to the inside of the entire Senate chamber:

The Right-Wing Culture War: ‘Critical Race Theory’ Edition

“Far-Right Snitch Network Targets Schools That Talk Race” – The Daily Beast

The mask in Louisiana is slipping right off. Harvard’s Nieman Lab founder Joshua Benton shows how kids are about to “learn” the history of slavery:

There are two approved Louisiana history textbooks for the state's 8th graders.

This is how one of them introduces the Civil War: as tough times for a poor young white woman whose family owned 120 slaves. pic.twitter.com/oR617iSkFO

— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) June 14, 2021

The Fight For LGBTQ+ Liberation

“Deadly attacks on Black trans women are going up. This grieving mom is fighting back.” – CNN

This Is Still Happening

A woman at the site of a protest over a police killing of a Black man in Minneapolis was killed on Sunday night after a car drove into a crowd of demonstrators.

A Grim Pandemic Milestone

The U.S. is on the cusp of reaching 600,000 COVID-19 deaths, according to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.

Setting Fire To The Rain

Acosta: I don’t remember Dr. Fauci telling people to inject themselves with disinfectants. This sounds like Fauci derangement syndrome and they want to blame everybody but Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/u3bzXOuODu

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 13, 2021

A Buried Lead

Some salaries at the New Yorker stay under $60,000 even after 20 years on the job, according to this New York Times article on New Yorker writers who didn’t want to join their colleagues’ union efforts.

What Biden’s Up To Across The Pond

The President will be meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and take part in the NATO summit in Brussels today. Then he’ll meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

China warns G-7 leaders: Don’t get cocky. “The days when global decisions were dictated by a small group of countries are long gone,” a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in London said in a statement on Sunday. “We always believe that countries, big or small, strong or weak, poor or rich, are equals, and that world affairs should be handled through consultation by all countries.”

4+4=5

Former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who lied a lot, insisted on Sunday that she “never” lied because Jesus or something.

• No really, that’s what she’s trying to feed you: “As a woman of faith, as a mother of baby Blake, as a person who meticulously prepared at some of the world’s hardest institutions, I never lied,” she said during a Turning Point USA event.

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