Kagan Laments America’s Dark History Of Voter Suppression In Dissent, Citing The Court As A Primary Antagonist

Posted on by Kate Riga

In a dissent to Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee stretching longer than Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion, Justice Elena Kagan recites the United State’s brutal history of suppressing minority voters, ultimately pointing to Thursday’s opinion as just the latest chapter in the quest to bar those voters from the ballot box.

Continue reading “Kagan Laments America’s Dark History Of Voter Suppression In Dissent, Citing The Court As A Primary Antagonist” →

Watch The New Episode Of The Josh Marshall Podcast: The Rocky Road To An Infrastructure Deal

Posted on by Jackie Wilhelm

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is now live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the infrastructure negotiation dance, as well as the dynamics around the Jan. 6 select committee.

Watch below and email us your theme song submissions and questions for next week’s episode.

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

Biden Expresses ‘Disappointment’ With SCOTUS Voting Decision, Reemphasizes Need For S1

Posted on by Kate Riga

President Joe Biden expressed his “deep disappointment” with the Supreme Court’s major voting rights case decision Thursday, in which the six conservative justices further weakened the Voting Rights Act.

Continue reading “Biden Expresses ‘Disappointment’ With SCOTUS Voting Decision, Reemphasizes Need For S1” →

Considering the Meaning of the American Revolution and the Promise of Liberation

Posted on by Josh Marshall

As we move into the July 4th weekend, I wanted to make a bid for an appreciation of the liberationist impulse at the heart of the American Revolution and its radical character.

As I explained a few weeks ago, there is a strong argument for the deficiency of the first American Republic, which in this view is the constitutional order created in 1787 and reconstructed through war and constitutional revision in the late 1860s. But the constitution created in 1787 is not synonymous with the American Revolution. Indeed, in critical respects it was in tension with it. Some of the constitution’s greatest opponents viewed it as a betrayal of revolutionary tumult.

The Declaration of Independence is the work of the Continental Congress, a revolutionary and illegal body which managed the process of the disintegration of Britain’s American empire. The document was drafted by a committee made up of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston, with Jefferson, because of knack with words, writing a first draft.
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Cheney Joins Jan 6 Select Committee In Face Of McCarthy Threat To Punish GOP Participants

Posted on by Summer Concepcion

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on Thursday announced that Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) will serve as a member of the select committee tasked with investigating the deadly Capitol insurrection that then-President Trump helped incite. Continue reading “Cheney Joins Jan 6 Select Committee In Face Of McCarthy Threat To Punish GOP Participants” →

Defying McCarthy’s Ban

Posted on by Josh Marshall

Kevin McCarthy overnight threatened to take committee assignments away from any member of his caucus who agreed to serve on the new Jan 6 select investigative committee. That’s the equivalent of the death penalty for a member of a political party. Liz Cheney has just agreed to join the committee at the invitation of Speaker Pelosi.

Pelosi just announced these members in a just released announcement.

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6-3 SCOTUS Further Scales Back Reach of Voting Rights Act

Posted on by Tierney Sneed

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority ruled Thursday that two restrictive voting policies in Arizona did not violate the Voting Rights Act. The majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito laid out the “guideposts” for courts to consider in deciding whether a state’s election rules have the effect of discriminating against minority voters.

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Morning Memo: Trump Organization CFO Surrenders To Law Enforcement

Posted on by Cristina Cabrera

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things.

Time To Face The Music

Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer, turned himself in to authorities early this morning, a day after a Manhattan grand jury returned an indictment against him and ex-President Donald Trump’s company, Weisselberg’s lawyer told CNN.

  • The specific charges are still unknown at this time. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has been investigating Weisselberg and the Trump Organization for alleged untaxed fringe benefits. The indictment will reportedly be unsealed this afternoon.
  • The top executive’s surrender comes after prosecutors attempted to get him to flip. They have been unsuccessful so far, though they’re still hoping he might still give testimony on Trump, according to the Washington Post.
  • Trump himself is reportedly not expected to be charged in the case. Nor are any other executives at the firm.
  • Outgoing Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance has been investigating the Trump Organization for three years. He has also managed to get ahold of Trump’s tightly-held tax returns in his probe.

All Eyes On SCOTUS On Its Final Day

One big voting rights case and one possible retirement.

  • The Supreme Court will be handing down what promises to be a watershed decision in the highly anticipated voting rights case of Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee today at 10 a.m. ET.
  • Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is also at the center of the stage. Progressives have been urging the 82-year-old liberal justice to retire ASAP while Biden still has a Democrat-controlled Senate that can greenlight his SCOTUS appointee before the 2022 midterms – when Mitch McConnell can potentially take back control of the chamber and gleefully steal yet another SCOTUS seat from the Democrats.

Behind Closed Doors

ExxonMobil is in damage control mode after one of its top lobbyists was caught on camera in a Greenpeace sting. The lobbyist, who thought he was talking to a recruiter, was candid about the energy giant’s efforts to oppose climate change science.

  • His exact words: “Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes. Did we hide our science? Absolutely not. Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that’s true.”
  • The lobbyist also revealed that ExxonMobil’s public support for a carbon tax was just for show. He told the Greenpeace activists that the carbon tax merely “gives us a talking point” while knowing that “nobody is going to propose a tax on all Americans.”
  • ExxonMobil is simply shocked to hear their lobbyist’s remarks, shocked I say! The company’s CEO, Darren Woods, insists in a statement that the lobbyist’s comments “in no way represent the company’s position on a variety of issues, including climate policy” and that “[w]e were shocked by these interviews and stand by our commitments to working on finding solutions to climate change.”
  • The lobbyist described Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV), along with nine other senators on both sides of the aisle, as “crucial” to ExxonMobile’s interests. The other senators were Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Jon Tester (D-MT), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), John Barrasso (R-WY), John Cornyn (R-TX), Steve Daines (R-MT), Chris Coons (D-DE), Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Marco Rubio (R-FL).

Must Read:

“All the right words on climate have already been said” – Nieman Lab

New Numbers Give A Clearer Picture Of Biden’s Victory

The Pew Research Center has released a sweeping report on voter data in the 2016, 2018, and 2020 elections showing how this last election went down.

  • A whopping 46% of 2020 voters cast their ballot through mail or absentee.
    Biden enjoyed a big swing with suburban voters. He won 54% of their support, compared to Hillary Clinton’s 45% in 2016.
  • Men shifted toward Biden. 48% of men voted for POTUS while 50% went for Trump, who had won among men by a full 11 points over Clinton.
  • Trump seemed to have pissed off fewer women this time. 44% of women voted for Trump in 2020, while in 2016 he won 39%.

Donald Rumsfeld, 1932-2021

  • “How Rumsfeld Deserves to Be Remembered” – The Atlantic
  • Taste the bitter irony:

Biden Is Visiting The Florida Condo Collapse Site Today

  • The death toll has risen to 18 after two children were found in the rubble. 145 people are still missing.

Anon Dem Donor Fumes Over Poor Customer Service

It hurts to be ignored, Politico tells us.

  • One of Harris’ friends who tried to connect the donor to the vice president was, well, AGHAST: “This is someone who has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars—millions, even—for your boss and you’re just blowing them off?” the friend asked in an interview with Politico. “Next time Kamala wants [them] for something, it’s like, ‘Hey, I couldn’t even get a call-back from your chief of staff!’”

Gold Metal In Mental Gymnastics

Despite attacking a special COVID-19 rule that allows proxy voting, dozens of House House Republicans have been using it themselves, including the ones who filed a lawsuit against it.

  • One GOP aide gave this dizzying explanation: “We are against proxy voting and will eliminate it on day one of our majority, but if Democrats are going to continue to extend and abuse this tool solely to protect their slim margins, it would be stupid of us to not participate until we can eliminate it.”

Cue The “Curb Your Enthusiasm” Theme Music

An alleged Capitol insurrectionist told a local Massachusetts news outlet that he was merely a “documentarian” who “just went there to document”-only for the outlet to point out immediately a photo of him allegedly stomping on camera equipment during the attack on Jan. 6.

The incredible video:

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