A panel of 5th Circuit Court of Appeals judges — all Republican appointees — unapologetically carried water for the anti-abortion litigants Wednesday during oral arguments in a case where those litigants are trying to get an abortion pill, mifepristone, yanked from the market.
Continue reading “Right-Wing Judges Mulling Restricting Abortion Drug: Isn’t The Real Problem Here How Mean You All Were To Kacsmaryk?”Congressional Black Caucus Chair Calls On Gosar To Stop Allowing ‘Hate To Seethe From His Office’
Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, called on Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) to apologize for allowing “hate to seethe from his office” following a TPM report that detailed evidence tying Gosar’s digital director, Wade Searle, to Neo-Nazi leader Nick Fuentes.
Continue reading “Congressional Black Caucus Chair Calls On Gosar To Stop Allowing ‘Hate To Seethe From His Office’ “Hmmmm
Sen. Josh Hawley says that if he were Joe Biden he consider simply ignoring the debt limit. “Because I would just be like, ‘Listen, I’m not gonna let us default. So end of story. Y’all will do whatever you want to do.’ But I’m not necessarily giving him that advice. It’s against my interest.”
Continue reading “Hmmmm”Wyden Strikes Back At Harlan Crow’s Lawyer For Dodging His Inquiry About Thomas Gifts
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) sent a lengthy letter to the attorney of Harlan Crow—the GOP mega-donor who was recently exposed for showering Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in luxury trips and gifts for decades – rebutting claims that Congress didn’t have the authority to inquire about Crow’s gifting.
Continue reading “Wyden Strikes Back At Harlan Crow’s Lawyer For Dodging His Inquiry About Thomas Gifts”Republican Jewish Coalition Blasts Gosar Over Staffer’s Ties To White Supremacist: Fuentes Has ‘No Place’ In Congress
The Republican Jewish Coalition slammed Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) following a TPM report that detailed substantial evidence tying Gosar’s digital director, Wade Searle, to Neo-Nazi leader Nick Fuentes.
Continue reading “Republican Jewish Coalition Blasts Gosar Over Staffer’s Ties To White Supremacist: Fuentes Has ‘No Place’ In Congress”The Big Picture
One other point on Trump/Russia as we put the sad tale of the “Durham Report” to bed.
The Russian government intervened in the 2016 presidential election to assist Donald Trump. The Trump campaign was repeatedly informed of this assistance, welcomed it, asked for more of it and took numerous affirmative steps to profit from the assistance. While we can never know with certainty, given the closeness of the election there is every reason to believe that that assistance provided Trump with the margin of victory to become President. The fruits of that subversion campaign dominated much of the final months of the election.
Given the narrow bounds of the subsequent investigation, there is almost certainly much more we still don’t know about the cooperation between the two sides. But in any normal universe the proven facts alone would have fatally discredited Trump’s presidency and led to his forced resignation or removal from office.
Paul Gosar Has No Comment On His Staff’s Ties To Nick Fuentes
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
NO COMMENT!
TPM’s Emine Yücel caught up with Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) as he was leaving the House floor Wednesday to get his response to the TPM report on the substantial evidence tying certain extreme right-wing online personas to members of his own staff.
“You have to contact my communications,” Gosar said.
Reminded that TPM had reached out to him and his press team multiple times, Gosar said: “No comment.”
‘We Are Tired Of His Gaslighting’
Haaretz: Jewish Groups Slam Rep. Gosar After Staffers Revealed as Followers of White Supremacist Fuentes
House Dems Decry Gosar’s Extremist Ties
TPM’s report on Gosar staffers began to get some traction among House Democrats.
Where’s Kevin McCarthy?
The man who famously ended Rep. Paul Gosar’s banishment from committee assignments and reinstated him on the Oversight Committee has yet to publicly address TPM’s Sunday report on substantial evidence tying extreme right-wing online personas to his digital director.
TPM’s Hunter Walker On Democracy Now
Santos Expulsion Vote Expected Today
House Democrats will likely get a floor vote today on expelling serial fabulist and now-indicted Rep. George Santos (R-NY). Expulsion would require a two-thirds vote.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is trying to take the wind out of the sails of the expulsion vote by moving to refer Santos to the Ethics Committee for what he’s billing as a speedy disposition.
Narrator: The House Ethics Committee is never speedy.
Crunch Time On Debt Ceiling
At their White House meeting Tuesday, President Biden and Speaker McCarthy agreed to shrink the number of participants in their hostage negotiations over the debt ceiling.
Longtime Biden counselor Steve Ricchetti and OMB Director Shalanda Young will join White House Legislative Affairs Director Louisa Terrell in repping Biden in the talks with McCarthy’s team, which will include Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA).
House Dems Moving Ahead With Discharge Petition
WSJ: “House Democrats plan to begin collecting signatures Wednesday for a discharge petition to raise the debt ceiling, a long-shot parliamentary maneuver designed to circumvent House Republican leadership and force a vote.”
Biden Cuts Asia-Pacific Trip Short
With the debt-ceiling hostage-taking moving into the crunch phase, President Biden is ditching the back half of his Asia-Pacific trip that begins today. He will return to Washington Sunday.
John Durham’s Dirty Game
Paul Waldman: “The Durham investigation was a flop. But it’s a propaganda triumph.”
Harry Litman: “It’s a sort of time bomb, set in 2019 to go off now, as the 2024 campaign gets started.”
Marcy Wheeler: 8 things not mentioned in the Durham report
Rollins Out In Boston
Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins is poised to resign ahead of a DOJ inspector general report expected to be critical of her attendance at a DNC fundraiser featuring first lady Jill Biden.
Bizarro
Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan encountered an intruder in his house in the middle of the night last month who had managed to elude the detection of Sullivan’s Secret Service detail. From the WaPo:
Sullivan has a round-the-clock Secret Service detail. But agents stationed outside the house were unaware that an intruder had gotten inside the home, located in the West End neighborhood of Washington, until the man had already left and Sullivan came outside to alert the agents, the two people said.
The intruder appeared to be intoxicated and confused about where he was, according to people briefed on the incident. There is no evidence the person knew Sullivan or sought to harm him, they said.
Feinstein Fading Fast
Slate’s Jim Newell: A Brief, Concerning Conversation With Dianne Feinstein
A Clarence Thomas Hearing In All But Name
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is using his position as chair of a Senate Judiciary subcommittee to summon senior U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf, a Reagan appointee from the District of Massachusetts, for a hearing today titled: “Review of Federal Judicial Ethics Processes at the Judicial Conference of the United States.”
As Bloomberg’s Zoe Tillman first reported a couple of weeks ago, Wolf objected to the handling of a financial disclosure omission by Justice Clarence Thomas all the way back in 2012. Whitehouse seems poised to explore that episode as a way of coming at the current Thomas scandal over failure to report gifts and financial dealings.
Joyce Vance has more of the backstory.
N. Carolina Now Has A 12-Week Abortion Ban
Last night the GOP supermajorities in the North Carolina legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a 12-week abortion ban. Effective July 1, abortions in North Carolina shift from being legal up to 20 weeks to being legal only up to 12 weeks.
Yeah, There’s Something Wrong With Him
I was never an Elon fan boy, can’t bear to give him much of my attention, and hesitate to force him on you; however, this interview – as ham-handed as it was – felt especially revealing of the kind of person Musk is.
Priceless
The subject matter of this quote almost doesn’t matter:
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Remember
This doesn’t really tell us one way or another about the merits of what Joe Biden is currently doing or even what he’s doing — negotiating or not. But it’s a key part of this debt ceiling hostage drama that gets way too little attention: Kevin McCarthy isn’t able to negotiate on behalf of the people who run the GOP caucus, namely the House Freedom Caucus. Let’s say Joe Biden negotiates a deal with Kevin McCarthy. That will almost certainly lead to a follow-on stand off in which Freedom Caucus members make further demands which McCarthy has to accede to. I could play this out in 20 different ways. But you get the idea. It also matters since there’s not really time for that further drama before you hit the final cliff. McCarthy is not really operating as the leader of the House but rather the stalking horse of the House Freedom Caucus.
McCarthy Calls On Ethics Committee To Move ‘Rapidly’ On Santos Investigation Amid Dem Resolution To Expel Him
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said Tuesday he would like the House Ethics Committee to move rapidly and come back to Congress with a decision on whether the embattled Rep. George Santos (R-NY) should be expelled from the House of Representatives.
Continue reading “McCarthy Calls On Ethics Committee To Move ‘Rapidly’ On Santos Investigation Amid Dem Resolution To Expel Him “Dems Decry ‘Disturbing’ Ties Between Paul Gosar Staffer And Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, Call For Investigation
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), co-chair of the Latino-Jewish Congressional Caucus, has called for an investigation into TPM’s report that detailed evidence that links Rep. Paul Gosar’s (R-AZ) digital director, Wade Searle, to Neo-Nazi leader Nick Fuentes.
Continue reading “Dems Decry ‘Disturbing’ Ties Between Paul Gosar Staffer And Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, Call For Investigation”