House Democrats Pass Climate And Health Care Bill While Republicans Parrot Conspiracy Theory

House Democrats easily passed the Inflation Reduction Act Friday, a historic climate package that will also lower certain health care costs. 

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Vos Fires His Own Election ‘Investigator’ After Beating Trump-Backed Challenger

Just a few days after defeating a Trump-backed primary challenger, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) fired the partisan election “investigator” he himself had hired more than a year ago, in what turned out to be a futile attempt to appease Trump and others who lied about the supposed theft of the 2020 election, the Associated Press has reported.

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Fox Shows Fake Image Of Trump Raid Judge With Ghislaine Maxwell

In an escalation of the conservative media’s attacks on the judge who signed the search warrant for the FBI’s raid on ex-President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, Fox News on Thursday aired a photoshopped image, claiming it showed the judge hanging out with child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

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FBI Recovered ‘Sensitive Compartmented’ Docs From Mar-A-Lago

After a week of attacking the Justice Department, claiming victimhood, and offering nonsensical defenses of the classified documents that were apparently still residing in his seaside resort post-presidency, Donald Trump appeared to selectively leak search warrant documents ahead of formally agreeing that a judge could unseal the documents in a court record.

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Into the Storm

We are, we might say, deep in the thick of it. Until recently we heard constantly how there was no accountability for the ex-President, no investigations or prosecutions, of anything tied to the denouement of the Trump presidency, save for the men who actually entered the Capitol complex on January 6th. Now we learn that there are and have been multiple investigations touching on various incidents tied to the end of the Trump presidency. There was a bunch of frothy and nonsensical chatter earlier in the week about how the FBI had just given the presidency back to Donald Trump. This morning the House Freedom Caucus, ground zero of Trumpism and coup plotting, canceled the press conference they had planned to bewail the FBI search of the ex-President’s home. Facts change and you have to react to them.

It is probably best to say that we are back in one of those fugue windows Trump Republicans have, much like January 7th-9th 2021, in which there’s a period of relative silence while a story is devised to explain why something inexplicable and indefensible is in fact awesome and totally fine. They’ll get there.

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Republicans Flail In Deciding Who To Blame Before Warrant Release

When former President Donald Trump first announced the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago residence, many Republican lawmakers rhetorically rushed to his side. 

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Trump Insists He Wants MAL Search Warrant Released–Which He Can Do Himself

Ex-President Donald Trump said shortly after midnight on Friday that he welcomes the Justice Department’s move to release the search warrant the FBI used in its raid on his Mar-a-Lago resort earlier this week.

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FBI Looking For Classified Nuclear Weapons Docs In MAL Raid, WaPo Reports

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Don’t Most People Just Steal Office Supplies?

A new jaw-dropping Washington Post report reveals that FBI agents who executed a raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort on Monday were digging for, among other things, classified documents related to nuclear weapons.

  • We don’t know if the agents actually found those documents, however.
  • It’s also unclear if the documents were about the U.S.’s nuclear weapons arsenal or another country’s.
  • Trump lawyer Christina Bobb flailed on national TV under questioning on Thursday night from that tough interlocutor Laura Ingraham:

DOJ Moves To Have Mar-A-Lago Search Warrant Unsealed

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday publicly addressed the FBI’s blockbuster raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and announced that the Justice Department was asking the courts to unseal the search warrant.

  • DOJ asked the court to unseal a copy of the search warrant, the property receipt Trump got for the White House records that he kept at Mar-a-Lago, and two unspecified attachments to the warrant.
  • Trump announced shortly after midnight that he won’t oppose unsealing documents related to the warrant and is in fact “ENCOURAGING” their release.
  • Several news organizations have joined together to support the DOJ motion to unseal the search warrant. The New York Times had already filed a motion to unseal it the day before:
  • Garland also said on Thursday that he had “personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant.”

Man Who Tried To Break Into FBI Field Office Dead After Standoff

Ricky Shiffer, the man identified as the person who allegedly tried to break into the FBI’s field office in Cincinnati, Ohio, was fatally shot by law enforcement during a standoff yesterday after the alleged break-in attempt.

  • Shiffer was allegedly at the Capitol on Jan. 6 last year, according to NBC News.
  • Investigators are probing Schiffer’s apparent ties to far-right extremist groups, according to the New York Times.
  • An account on Trump’s Twitter knockoff, TRUTH Social, under Shiffer’s name posted about killing FBI agents in response to the Mar-a-Lago raid.

House Slated To Pass Sweeping Climate And Tax Bill Today

The House is back in session today to vote on Democrats’ historic reconciliation bill on climate investment, taxes and drug pricing, aka the Inflation Reduction Act, per House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) “Dear Colleague” letter.

Ex-Trump National Security Adviser To Meet With Jan. 6 Panel

Robert O’Brien, Trump’s former national security adviser, is scheduled to have an interview with the House Jan. 6 Committee today, NBC News reports.

Jan. 6 Panel Interviews Trump’s Ex-Transportation Secretary

The House Jan. 6 Committee has recently had an interview with Elaine Chao, Trump’s former Transportation secretary and the wife of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), according to CNN, yet more testimony from an ex-Trump Cabinet official.

  • The panel’s been digging into alleged discussions the then-Cabinet members had about invoking the 25th Amendment to oust Trump after the Capitol attack.
  • The committee has already spoken to six other former Cabinet members who were still part of the Trump administration on Jan. 6: 
    • Ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
    • Ex-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin
    • Ex-acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf
    • Ex-Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia
    • Ex-acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller 
    • Ex-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen

The Right-Wing Swamp

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade wants to know: If Merrick Garland is oh-so-transparent about the FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid, then why didn’t he publicly announce in advance that the raid was going to happen, huh?

Alabama Governor’s Office Went Radio Silent For A Week

AL.com columnist Kyle Whitmire reported yesterday that sources had told him last week that Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R), who had struggled with lung cancer three years ago, was ill. But when Whitmire reached out to Ivey’s office last Thursday–and then for an entire week–to confirm whether or not the governor was sick, he didn’t get any response.

  • Whitmire reported that Ivey’s spokesperson only got back to him yesterday after his column on the governor’s disappearance went up earlier in the day. Before then, he and a colleague repeatedly tried to get in contact with Ivey’s office to no avail.
  • After a week of radio silence, Ivey’s spokesperson put out a statement saying the governor was “doing great” and staying “healthy and cancer-free.”
  • Whitmire noted that this isn’t the first time Ivey’s office has clammed up over her health status: Three years ago, her reps had initially claimed she was fine, then admitted weeks later that she had been diagnosed with cancer, according to the columnist.  

Twitter Unveils Pre-Midterms Misinfo Safeguards

Twitter announced its new “approach” to the upcoming U.S. midterms yesterday aiming to combat “harmful misleading information” about the elections, voting process, candidates, etc. on its platform. 

Twitter also promised to implement special measures “to get ahead of misleading narratives” and “proactively address topics that may be the subject of misinformation,” so maybe they should start with this guy:

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WaPo: FBI Searched Trump Resort For Classified Nuclear Docs

The Washington Post has a breaking new development this evening that’s worth your attention:

Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Read the full piece here.