Doug Mastriano, the far-right Republican gubernatorial nominee in Pennsylvania, has come under fire in recent days for a deal his campaign struck with Andrew Torba, the anti-Semitic founder of the social media platform Gab — though it’s not clear Mastriano cares.
Continue reading “Five Points On Doug Mastriano’s Relationship With An Anti-Semitic Tech Founder”CNN: Draft Opinion Leak Killed Roberts’ Efforts To Convince Conservative Justices To Save Roe
Supreme Court Justice John Roberts tried to persuade his fellow conservative justices against fully dismantling Roe v. Wade, but the infamous opinion leak in May thwarted his already long-shot efforts, CNN reported on Tuesday.
Continue reading “CNN: Draft Opinion Leak Killed Roberts’ Efforts To Convince Conservative Justices To Save Roe”GOPer Who Voted Against Marriage Equality Goes To Son’s Gay Wedding Days Later
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Just Three Days Afterward, In Fact
Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA), one of the 157 House Republicans who voted against a bill to enshrine the right to same-sex marriage into federal law (aka the Respect for Marriage Act) on Tuesday, went to his gay son’s wedding on Friday.
- Thompson and his wife were “thrilled to attend and celebrate” their son’s marriage and are “very happy to welcome their new son-in-law into their family,” the GOP lawmaker’s spokesperson said in a statement to CNN.
- Thompson voted against the marriage equality bill because, according to his spokesperson a day after the vote, the legislation was “nothing more than an election-year messaging stunt for Democrats in Congress who have failed to address historic inflation and out of control prices at gas pumps and grocery stores.”
Top Pence Aides Appear Before Grand Jury
Marc Short, who served as Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, confirmed in an interview with ABC News last night that he testified under subpoena in front of a federal grand jury in the Justice Department’s investigation into the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. ABC News, NBC News and Politico had reported earlier on Monday that Short testified last week.
- Greg Jacob, Pence’s former legal counsel, also testified to a federal grand jury last week, according to ABC News, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
- What the prosecutors focused on, according to the Wall Street Journal:
- A meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 4 last year when then-Trump legal adviser John Eastman tried to pressure Pence into disrupting the electoral vote count
- Ex-Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who tried to rope Pence into the fake Trump elector scheme
Judge To Shoot Down Hice’s Bid To Avoid Testifying In Fulton County Probe
A judge in Atlanta said on Monday that she will reject Rep. Jody Hice’s (R-GA) motion to quash the subpoena from the special grand jury in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Trump election meddling investigation.
Judge Disqualifies Fulton County DA From Investigating Fake Trump Elector
A Fulton County judge on Monday ruled to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office from questioning Georgia state Sen. Burt Jones (R), one of Trump’s sham electors and who is also the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor, in her investigation into Trump’s election interference.
- What this means: A whole new team of prosecutors chosen by the Prosecuting Attorney’s Council of Georgia will decide whether to subpoena or bring charges against Jones.
- The judge agreed with Jones’ argument that Willis was politically biased because she had hosted a fundraiser for Jones’ Democratic rival last month.
- 11 other fake Trump electors similarly tried to get Willis disqualified in their cases, but the judge rejected their bids. Like Jones, those electors (and all the others, 16 in total) are now being criminally investigated for their roles in the sham elector scheme.
Trump’s ‘Law And Order President’ Cosplay Implodes Yet Again
House Jan. 6 Committee member Elaine Luria (D-VA) on Monday posted a video with more material on Trump’s unwillingness to condemn the Capitol attackers. The video included a draft of Trump’s Jan. 7 address showing parts that the then-president had crossed out, and if you had any doubts that Trump’s self-identification as America’s “President of law and order” was, uh, bullshit, seeing him striking out the following lines about holding his violent supporters accountable to the law might convince you:
“I am directing the Department of Justice to ensure all lawbreakers are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We must send a clear message-not with mercy but with JUSTICE. Legal consequences must be swift and firm.”
– A full paragraph Trump refused to say
Trump also changed “And if you broke the law, you belong in jail” to a vaguer “And if you broke the law, you will pay.”
And he got rid of the line telling the violent insurrectionists that “you do not represent me. You do not represent our movement.”
Biden Says He’s Feeling Good Amid Treatment For COVID
After four days of being treated for COVID-19, the President told reporters during a virtual press conference on Monday that he’s “feeling great.” And earlier in the day, White House physician Kevin O’Connor reported that Biden’s symptoms “have now almost completely resolved.”
Manchin And Murkowski Get COVID
Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) both announced on Monday that they had tested positive for COVID-19.
(In his tweet, Manchin said that he was experiencing only mild symptoms and would “continue to work remotely to serve West Virginians,” and if you check the responses, you’ll see that Twitter critics had, well, a lot to say about the last three words there.)
The Woes Of OAN
OAN has been howling about Verizon’s “Marxist agenda” after the carrier dropped OAN last week, leaving the MAGA conspiracy theory machine without any major TV carrier to peddle Trump propaganda after DirecTV dumped the network back in January.
Do you like Morning Memo? Let us know!
It’s So Important
Our new and revised “Roe and Reform” list has just been published. A new, cleaner format. Details on where all 50 Democratic senators currently stand on passing a Roe law and committing to suspending the filibuster rules to guarantee an up or down vote. I’ll be honest. This isn’t moving fast enough. It’s frustrating. If Democrats can line up commitments to pass a Roe law in January 2023 if they hold the House and add two additional senators, their chances of holding Congress will increase substantially. I really think it’s likely the make-or-break thing. But Democrats across the country need to pressure their senators to get on board, make the clear and public commitment. The problem is that senators living in Senateworld have their own instinctive resistance to committing, even to things they support. When you live in Senateworld, the importance of these kinds of things can be lost on you. The tens of millions of people who are devastated, angry, outraged, afraid don’t necessarily focus on the admittedly kind of obscure issue of legislative vote counts and how they interact with election messages in a topsy turvy midterm. But there’s this big, big opportunity that just requires getting all the wires connected so the machine can really move. That’s why this list is so important. It’s a guide that can help ordinary voters actually put Roe on the ballot in November, not just as a vague slogan but for real.
Continue reading “It’s So Important”Biden Torches Trump For Jan. 6: He ‘Lacked The Courage To Act’ As Insurrection Unfolded
President Biden on Monday took aim at former President Trump’s inaction as the Capitol insurrection unfolded on Jan. 6, saying that law enforcement had to suffer through “medieval hell” during the attack.
Continue reading “Biden Torches Trump For Jan. 6: He ‘Lacked The Courage To Act’ As Insurrection Unfolded”Where Things Stand: Alito’s Roe Opinion Was Filled With Language Pushed By Evangelical Group
A former leader of a religious right activist group recently admitted on a podcast that the language that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito used in his damning majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade mirrored rhetoric the Christian group has been pushing on Supreme Court justices for decades.
Rev. Rob Schenck recently appeared on an episode of the State of Belief podcast to discuss his efforts as a former member of the group Faith and Action to, essentially, sway justices’ views on social issues through prayer sessions. The interview is from earlier this month, but Politico surfaced it here. It’s worth a listen if you want to get a better understanding of how these unofficial evangelical lobbying-via-prayer efforts work, but it reinforces a theme we covered earlier this summer when an official at the evangelical organization, Liberty Counsel, was caught on a hot mic bragging about secretly praying with Supreme Court justices.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Alito’s Roe Opinion Was Filled With Language Pushed By Evangelical Group”Does Trump Still Need the Big Lie?
On Saturday, in a post about the current state of and future of Trumpism, I said that a key reason for the slow deterioration of Trump’s 2024 support is his relentlessly backward-looking and self-centered focus. In other words, it’s the Big Lie and the ways in which the Big Lie has incorporated the Mueller probe, his impeachments and all of his other first term wounds and grievances. TPM Reader TS wrote in to say that while he agreed with my argument he wondered whether Jon Chait’s related piece modified or changed my view of this. Chait argued that the conventional wisdom, which holds that Trump needs to give up his fixation on the 2020 election, is plainly wrong. Not only does he not need to drop the Big Lie — in fact, it’s his best strategy for getting the 2024 nomination.
So who’s right?
Continue reading “Does Trump Still Need the Big Lie?”Biden’s COVID Symptoms Now ‘Almost Completely Resolved,’ WH Doc Says
Several days after testing positive for COVID-19, President Joe Biden’s health status is quickly improving, White House physician Kevin O’Connor reported on Monday.
Continue reading “Biden’s COVID Symptoms Now ‘Almost Completely Resolved,’ WH Doc Says”All Going Swimmingly in AZ-2
I got this fascinating report from TPM Reader EK about the situation in Arizona’s 2nd district …
Continue reading “All Going Swimmingly in AZ-2”I wanted to share a closer look at one House race to get some insight into where Nate may be off.
FiveThirtyEight shows Walt Blackman with an 84% chance of winning over incumbent Tom O’Halleran in Arizona’s new 2nd Congressional District.
First, the Republican primary is in disarray. Blackman has proposed murder charges for women who get abortions. Trump came to Arizona to endorse Ed Crane, who has very few ties to Arizona. Trump was actually booed by the audience because they want Ron Watkins, who had a key role in forming Q Anon.
Attached is a flyer Crane supporters mailed to Republicans attacking Blackman for the Aug. 2 primary.
Jan 6 Panel Releases New Videos Showing Trump’s Reluctance To Condemn Insurrectionists
Then-President Trump crossed out “you do not represent me” in a draft statement his staff prepared for his video address on Jan. 7, urging him to condemn the mob of his supporters who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Continue reading “Jan 6 Panel Releases New Videos Showing Trump’s Reluctance To Condemn Insurrectionists”