Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), who has been lobbying senators to vote for a bill codifying same-sex marriage, said she believes she will be able to find the 10 GOP votes needed for the bill to overcome the filibuster in the evenly-divided Senate.
Continue reading “Baldwin Thinks She Can Still Find 10 GOP Votes To Protect Same-Sex Marriage”Manchin Presses Sinema A Little Harder On Reconciliation Deal
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) on Tuesday appealed to fellow centrist Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) to get on board with Democrats’ reconciliation bill on climate investment, drug pricing and taxes (aka the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022).
Continue reading “Manchin Presses Sinema A Little Harder On Reconciliation Deal”On the Ground in Georgia
TPM Reader SB checks in from Georgia …
Continue reading “On the Ground in Georgia”In Georgia, we’re not seeing much “Roe and Reform” talk from Sen. Warnock (he supports that path, it’s just not an integral part of his stump speeches). We are, however, seeing a big push from the Democratic AG candidate Jen Jordan that she’ll challenge the constitutionality of Georgia’s newly enacted heartbeat bill (SB 481) if she’s elected. Here’s a clip of her talking about that. Her line “If Alito wants to bring it back to the states, I say bring it” is resonating with Georgia Democrats.
Adventures in the Archeology of Time
Months after my father died unexpectedly in 2006 I had most of his belongings shipped to me in New York where I had them delivered to a storage unit several blocks from my home. Most of my father’s possessions, at least the ones that mattered most to me, were his archive of tens of thousands of photographs and his collection of cameras, the ones he used — SLRs, TLRs and various large format cameras — as well as a large collection of antique cameras. I went to check on everything shortly after it was delivered. There it was, in standard moving boxes, packed into a 5 by 10 foot space. I took a few albums of photos and left the rest there for 15 years.
Until last week.
Continue reading “Adventures in the Archeology of Time”Spooked GOP Senate Leaders Backpedal After Holding Vet Bill Hostage
Clean up on aisle four!
Continue reading “Spooked GOP Senate Leaders Backpedal After Holding Vet Bill Hostage”Kansans Getting Phony Texts To Trick Them Into Voting Against Abortion Rights
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Something Fishy’s Going On
Someone’s sending anonymous texts to Kansas voters urging them to vote “yes” on a constitutional amendment on abortion rights on today’s ballot in the state, which the text falsely claims “will give women a choice.”
- “Vote YES to protect women’s health,” the anonymous text says, per the Kansas City Star.
- Yeah, that’s a straight-up lie: Voting “yes” means adding language to the state’s constitution stating that it does not guarantee Kansans’ right to an abortion and allows the issue to go to the legislature, where the GOP majority will be empowered to pass an abortion ban. A “no” vote leaves the Kansas constitution as it is.
US Strike Kills al-Qaeda Leader
Biden announced yesterday that he had ordered an airstrike killing al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, on Saturday in Kabul, Afghanistan.
- Key analysis: “What Ayman al-Zawahiri’s killing means for al-Qaeda” – The Washington Post
- Here’s a list of other al-Qaeda and ISIS leaders who’ve been killed in U.S. raids or airstrikes.
Today’s Conspiracy Theory-Infected Races
There’s a very real chance that Arizona and Michigan, two key swing states, will end up with MAGA election deniers as GOP nominees for governor and secretary of state. Keep an eye on:
- Arizona:
- Kari Lake (governor)
- Mark Finchem (secretary of state)
- Michigan:
- Tudor Dixon (governor)
- Kristina Karamo (secretary of state)
Moment Of Reckoning For More Pro-Impeachment GOPers
Three House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol attack are on the ballot in today’s primaries: Reps. Dan Newhouse (R-WA), Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) and Peter Meijer (R-MI).
- Then it’ll be House Jan. 6 Committee chair Liz Cheney’s (R-WY) turn on Aug. 16 in the final GOP primary with a pro-impeachment Republican.
- Two other pro-impeachment GOP lawmakers have already had their primaries: South Carolina’s Tom Rice (who lost) and California’s David Valadao (who survived).
- The rest of the 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment decided to ditch Congress instead of running again: Ohio’s Anthony Gonzalez, New York’s John Katko, Michigan’s Fred Upton and Illinois’ Adam Kinzinger, the only other Republican on the House Jan. 6 Committee besides Cheney.
- And Arizona state House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) has his primary for the state Senate. (Even though he obviously wasn’t involved in the impeachment vote, Bowers gets a mention here as a Republican whose fate is uncertain after royally pissing off the ex-president by holding him accountable to Jan. 6 in some capacity.)
Trump Endorses ‘ERIC’ To The Delight Of Two Different Erics
Last night, the ex-president put out a baffling endorsement in the GOP Missouri Senate primary, declaring, “ERIC has my Complete and Total Endorsement!” and no one knows if he’s talking about disgraced ex-governor Eric Greitens (whose wife has accused him of domestic abuse) or state Attorney General Eric Schmitt.
- The endorsement: “I trust the Great People of Missouri, on this one, to make up their own minds, much as they did when they gave me landslide victories in the 2016 and 2020 Elections, and I am therefore proud to announce that ERIC has my Complete and Total Endorsement!”
- Greitens and Schmitt are, of course, very confident that the endorsement was for Greitens/Schmitt and are graciously thanking Trump for the endorsement he personally gave Greitens/Schmitt:
- And now the bizarre endorsement is at the center of a tug-o-war between the two Erics:
Greitens’ victory lap up there prompted Schmitt to retweet Fox News contributor Dan Bongino’s post calling out the ex-governor as a big fat liar:
Ex-Top Jan. 6 Panel Investigator Reaches Petition Signatures Needed To Launch Senate Bid
John Wood, who served as a senior investigator on the House Jan. 6 Committee, announced on Monday that he reached the 20,000 signature threshold to get his Missouri Senate bid as an independent on the ballot in November.
Graham Challenges Georgia Election Probe Subpoena
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has filed his challenge against the subpoena issued to him by the special grand jury in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ Trump election probe in Georgia.
Biden Still Testing Positive For COVID
The President continues to test positive for COVID-19 in a “rebound” case but “continues to feel well,” White House physician Kevin O’Connor reported on Monday.
Insurrectionist Who Threatened Own Kids Gets Longest Sentence Of Jan. 6 Defendants
Guy Reffitt, a Texas man who tried to break into the Capitol on Jan. 6 while carrying a gun and later threatened to shoot his kids if they turned him in, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison on Monday. It’s the longest prison sentence any Jan. 6 defendant has gotten so far.
WTF Read Of The Day
“How Devin Nunes and Kash Patel appealed to QAnon extremists to build Truth Social’s user base” – Media Matters
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Top Dems: DHS IG May Have Tried To ‘Cover Up Extent’ Of Missing Secret Service Text Messages
Democratic chairs of the House Oversight and Homeland Security committees said in a letter to DHS inspector general Joseph Cuffari on Monday that they obtained new evidence showing that his office may have “secretly abandoned efforts” to collect text messages from the Secret Service more than a year ago and that it possibly took steps to “cover up the extent” of the missing records.
The top Dems also renewed their calls for Cuffari recuse himself from the investigation into the deleted Secret Service text messages around Jan. 6.
Continue reading “Top Dems: DHS IG May Have Tried To ‘Cover Up Extent’ Of Missing Secret Service Text Messages”Where Things Stand: A Bipartisan Shrug At The Bare Minimum
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) said it himself upon unveiling a new, bipartisan bill that would, at the very least, codify the right to an abortion into federal law: it’s the bare minimum.
“What the four of us were trying to do was put a statutory minimum in place that replicated what the law was a day before Dobbs,” Kaine said of the Reproductive Freedom For All Act, which he introduced with Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) this afternoon.
The language of the law is a bare bones compromise, seemingly aimed at putting something on the books that would prevent red states from outright banning access to abortion, which we’ve seen proposed and passed in several states across the nation since the Supreme Court overturned Roe in June. It could also help protect people living in states with old trigger laws on the books that are now going into effect post-Roe.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: A Bipartisan Shrug At The Bare Minimum”Fake DHS Agent Admits To Impersonating Feds
When FBI agents stormed the luxury D.C. Navy Yard apartments of two men impersonating federal law enforcement in April, what they found was stunning: weapons, fake law enforcement badges, and extensive surveillance equipment, including video cameras.
Continue reading “Fake DHS Agent Admits To Impersonating Feds”Graham Follows Through On Challenge To Fulton County DA Subpoena
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) followed through on an agreement he reached with Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis last week. Graham is now seeking to move his challenges to the legality of the subpoena Willis issued in her special grand jury’s investigation to district court in Georgia, Graham’s lawyers said in a court filing on Friday.
Continue reading “Graham Follows Through On Challenge To Fulton County DA Subpoena”