The House passed an amendment Thursday afternoon, by a 221-213 vote, officially adding a provision to limit abortion access for military personnel to the National Defense Authorization Act — the legislation that authorizes the annual budget for the U.S. military, which congressional leaders aim to pass each year without drama.
Continue reading “House Dems And Swing District GOPers May Sink Defense Spending Bill Over Anti-Abortion Amendment”Where Things Stand: Desperate DeSantis Zeroes In On Evangelicals With Tucker Carlson’s Help
Ron DeSantis is struggling in the polls, and at acting like a human being in public. The Murdochs are losing patience with his flailing efforts to become the alt-Trump for voters exhausted by MAGA. He’s getting a lot of negative headlines now that his Republican-dominated state legislature back home has ended its legislative session and is therefore no longer producing anti-woke bills for him to sign into law and pump into Fox’s news cycle.
So naturally he’s turning to a key voting bloc that — at times reluctantly — got behind Donald Trump in droves in 2016 to propel him to the White House: white evangelicals. It’s an intrinsic shift for any Republican but especially for one who is banking his entire 2024 bid on what he perceives to be his unique ability to scoop up disaffected Trump voters looking for an alternative to the former president’s various disagreeable features.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Desperate DeSantis Zeroes In On Evangelicals With Tucker Carlson’s Help”DOJ Gives Glimpse Of Approach To Secret Docs In Trump Case
Federal prosecutors on Thursday offered a look at the way in which they plan to handle a central question to their prosecution of President Donald Trump: how will they protect secret materials at the heart of one of the most publicized cases in American history?
Continue reading “DOJ Gives Glimpse Of Approach To Secret Docs In Trump Case”Listen To This: The Endless Hunt For Hunter Biden
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss Very Serious Republican Investigations, the Supreme Court’s upcoming term and Iowa’s new abortion ban.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
Will There Be a New GOP Presidential Memestock?
I want to follow up on Nicole’s Where Things Stand from yesterday afternoon, where she notes that the Murdoch family seems to be wearying of Meatball Ron⁽™⁾ as his hapless campaign continues to stumble and the prospect of his ridding billionaire GOP donors of Donald Trump seems ever more remote.
At the moment, DeSantis’s zombie campaign rests on the support of an odd-couple mix of the incel-adjacent far right, the GOP donor class and the operatives who serve them. But if you accept that DeSantis won’t be the GOP nominee, which you should (trust me), who replaces him as the Great Hope of the GOP Donor Class? Or, to put it differently, who is the next non-Trump GOP memestock who will get all the investment and attention before plummeting back to the ground?
Continue reading “Will There Be a New GOP Presidential Memestock?”New York Court Orders Redraw Of Congressional Map That Helped Republicans Flip Seats In ‘22
A New York court ordered Thursday that the state’s congressional maps be redrawn, setting up a big potential win for Democrats who could ultimately redraw themselves into a handful of seats currently controlled by Republicans.
Continue reading “New York Court Orders Redraw Of Congressional Map That Helped Republicans Flip Seats In ‘22”MTG Claims She’d Rather Be A ‘Free Agent’ Anyway
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Wednesday signaled she has no interest in being part of the House Freedom Caucus, the far-right group that reportedly ousted the Georgia Republican for aligning herself with GOP leadership and being too critical of the group and its MAGA members.
Continue reading “MTG Claims She’d Rather Be A ‘Free Agent’ Anyway”Planned Parenthood Immediately Takes Iowa’s New Six-Week Abortion Ban To Court
Planned Parenthood of the Heartland went to court Wednesday to block Iowa’s six-week ban, a product of a one-day special session marathon on Tuesday Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) had called for the sole purpose of passing abortion restrictions.
Continue reading “Planned Parenthood Immediately Takes Iowa’s New Six-Week Abortion Ban To Court “FDA Approves First Ever Over-The-Counter Birth Control Pill
The Food and Drug Administration approved the first ever over-the-counter birth control pill in the United States Thursday, a huge advancement in contraceptive accessibility amid an ever more restrictive abortion landscape.
Continue reading “FDA Approves First Ever Over-The-Counter Birth Control Pill”WHOA! DOJ Appeals Oath Keepers Sentences As Too Light
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
BFD
In a highly unusual move, the Justice Department is planning to appeal several of the sentences meted out to Oath Keepers for their Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy convictions, including founder Stewart Rhodes, who was put away for 18 years, not the 25 years prosecutors sought.
The Justice Department rarely appeals the duration of sentences, for a mix of reasons, among them: most federal criminal cases are resolved by plea bargain, the sentencing guidelines don’t afford judges a ton of sentencing discretion but what discretion they do have isn’t easily second guessed, and the chances of winning on appeal aren’t great.
To the extent DOJ does appeal sentences rendered by trial courts, it’s usually on technical grounds. These latest appeals, in contrast, seem to be focused on the sentences not being long enough, despite the Oath Keepers sentences being among the longest handed down for the Jan. 6 attack.
It’s really an extraordinary move, definitely the biggest news of the day yesterday. But until we see the appeal itself and the arguments the Justice Department is making, there isn’t a whole lot to say about it. Still, former Alabama U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance makes an interesting, even tantalizing, point: “Strong sign DOJ wants clear precedent for long sentences for those even more responsible for the insurrection that the Oath Keepers.”
Jack Smith Gives Some Attention To Michigan
Prosecutors on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team interviewed Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) for “several hours” in March, she told CNN.
“[The interview] really underscored, I think, the depth through which the federal prosecutors are looking into everything and the seriousness with which they’re taking what occurred and the quest for justice to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” Benson told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
Mind Boggling
Former Attorney General Eric Holder contemplates the scenario of the Secret Service still providing protection to Donald Trump while he’s in prison.
Will Corporate America Finally Stand Up To Trump?
“I would worry about another Trump presidency,” says JPMorgan Chase boss, Jamie Dimon.
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) July 11, 2023
Watch the full interview: https://t.co/Oj9aqbNPSB pic.twitter.com/oHShIE8MWD
Ray Epps Sues Fox News
The man falsely tarred and feathered by Tucker Carlson as a government agent instigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is now suing Fox News for defamation in state court in Delaware. From the complaint:
Just as Fox had focused on voting machine companies when falsely claiming a rigged election, Fox knew it needed a scapegoat for January 6th. It settled on Ray Epps and began promoting the lie that Epps was a federal agent who incited the attack on the Capitol.
Fox quickly moved to remove the case from state court to federal court.
Wray Hearing Was A Shitshow
House Republicans did everything you and I would have expected them to do in yesterday’s Judiciary Committee hearing with FBI Director Chris Wray. Headline writers still struggled to capture the dynamic here, unable to “go there” in framing it as a dark and corrosive attack on the rule of law, but in general the coverage wasn’t as bad I expected. Not good, but not as awful as it could have been.
Conspiracizing Is Hard, Y’all
As repugnant a presence as Jim Jordan is in American public life, I have always marveled at his ability to spew his whacky accusations and made-up conspiracy theories so smoothly and confidently. I have trouble remembering and keeping track of all the real things happening in my life, let alone a made-up world of wispy connections and tendrils of innuendo full of logical inconsistencies. But the time finally came for Jordan to go off the rails:
Fun Read
Aaron Rupar and Judd Legum: Fox News won’t let new facts get in the way of a good conspiracy
LOL
The Daily Beast: GOP congressman banned from Wikipedia after self-editing spree
Wut?
The mother of a young Black man killed by Seattle police in 2017 is outraged and demanding an apology after learning officers kept a mock tombstone marking her son’s death on a shelf in a precinct break room.
The room at the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct also was decorated with a large “Trump 2020” flag, in possible violation of state law and department policy regulating officers’ involvement in partisan politics while on duty.
Kremlin Watch
- WSJ: Russia Detained Several Senior Military Officers in Wake of Wagner Mutiny
- WaPo: Russia fires top commander in Ukraine who criticized Defense Ministry
2024 Ephemera
- Chris Christie says he has hit the 40,000-donor threshold to qualify to participate in the first GOP presidential debate next month.
‘Cherry-Picked Legal Analysis’
Kate Klonick: The Future of Online Speech Shouldn’t Belong to One Trump-Appointed Judge in Louisiana
Climate Watch
- Jeff Masters: How fast are the seas rising?
- WaPo: Floods, fires and deadly heat are the alarm bells of a planet on the brink
Coolness
(Click for larger image)
Like Morning Memo? Let us know!